Glossary

A quick reference to the names and terms used across this wiki. Definitions are given at the level a well-traveled person of Sanctuary might know them, not the deeper truths that scholars and the initiated keep to themselves.

Peoples and orders

• Nephalem - A legendary race said to carry the blood of both Heaven and Hell. Several of Sanctuary’s oldest civilizations name them as their founders; whether any still walk the world is left to myth.
• Horadrim - An ancient and now-dwindled order of mages, formed to hunt the Prime Evils and bind them away. Its best-known surviving member is the scholar Deckard Cain. The Horadrim are the ones who summon the player characters.
• The mage clans - The old sorcerous houses of the east, foremost among them the Vizjerei. Their wars broke the Age of Magic, and magic has been mistrusted ever since.

The orders and peoples a character can belong to each have a full entry in the Factions section:

• Askari (the Amazons) - a matriarchal warrior civilization native to the Skovos Isles.
• Barbarians of Sescheron - northern clans sworn to a sacred and closely guarded duty.
• Crusaders - wandering holy warriors who split from Zakarum to hold it to its ideals.
• Demon Hunters - survivors of demonic slaughter who have turned their grief to the hunt.
• Druids of Scosglen - nature-mages of the remote forests of the northwest.
• Monks of Ivgorod - warrior-ascetics devoted to the Thousand and One Gods.
• Priests of Rathma - keepers of the Balance between life and death.
• Sisterhood of the Sightless Eye - archer-scouts of Khanduras, guardians of a stolen relic.
• Umbaru - spirit-speakers of the deep jungles of the south.
• Viz-Jaq’taar - secretive hunters who root out mages tainted by demons.
• Vizjerei - the oldest and most notorious of the eastern mage clans.
• Zakarum - the great church of the Light, dominant across the west.
• Zann Esu - an all-female clan of disciplined elemental mages.

Powers, cosmology, and faith

• High Heavens - the celestial realm of the angels.
• Burning Hells - the infernal realm of the demons.
• Eternal Conflict - the endless war waged between the two.
• Angiris Council (the Council) - the archangels said to govern the Heavens: Tyrael, Auriel, Itherael, Imperius, and Malthael.
• Prime Evils - the three greatest demon lords, blamed for Sanctuary’s worst calamities and hunted and imprisoned by the Horadrim.
• Soulstone - an arcane shard capable of trapping a demon’s essence, and the Horadrim’s chief weapon against the Prime Evils.
• The Light - the divine force venerated by the Zakarum faith.

Places

• Sanctuary - the mortal world, and the setting of the campaign.
• Khanduras - a poor farming kingdom of the west, home to ruined Tristram.
• Tristram - the fallen Khanduran town where the campaign begins, raised over an old Horadric vault.
• Westmarch - a wealthy western kingdom and a bastion of the Zakarum faith.
• Kehjistan - the ancient land of the east, cradle of both magic and the Zakarum faith.
• Kurast - Kehjistan’s holy city and the seat of Zakarum, said to have fallen into trouble.
• Lut Gholein - a desert port city on the far side of the Aranoch.
• Aranoch - the vast desert of the east.

The full map and regions are described in The World.

History and the calendar

• Anno Kehjistani (AK) - the eastern calendar, reckoned from the prophet Akarat’s vision. The campaign opens in 1265 AK.
• The Sin War - an ancient conflict over the fate of humanity, followed by the great forgetting that wiped the higher powers from mortal memory.
• The Mage Clan Wars - the sorcerers’ war that shattered the Age of Magic and left magic feared.

A fuller account is given in History & Recent Events.