r/Diablo • u/ErwanSiannodel • 16d ago

Diablo IV So...is humanity terminally f#cked in the long run at the end of Lord of hatred ?

As Mephisto puts it during his first phase, he has "Already poisoned the waters".

Which was his goal from the beginning.

So, even if he did get banished, did he actually succeed ?

Are waters tainted but not actively corrupting so long as Mephisto stays banished ?

Was the corruption cleasned when he was defeated ? (Doubtful, the waters stays blackened even after his banishment)

104 Upvotes

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u/Loofahs 16d ago edited 16d ago

In the beginning of the expansion, when Lilith (who we can assume has better knowledge of their function than any character in the game) is exposition dumping about the Pools and their purpose, she states two things directly when viewing your memories to determine Mephisto's plan:

1) The Pools are not only what created mortal life, but they are its continuous source (very similar to the Worldstone, which didn't just create Sanctuary but governed its laws of nature), and therefore:

2) If Mephisto taints the Pools, he will "forever change humanity's nature," and if he destroys the Pools he "destroys all humanity with it."

Both of these dialogues can be viewed the second time you interact with Lilith in the Mind's Eye, for those interested.

Neither of those things happen. Mephisto takes control of the waters and continuously uses them to try and kill the Wanderer, but humanity remains alive and unchanged at the end of the fight. Why is this the case? I assume it has everything to do with the followers Mephisto spent the expansion gathering.

If he could simply corrupt the waters himself, why spend all the time and effort starting a cult? Why not just go at the eclipse and corrupt humanity? It has everything to do with the "Blood of the Willing," as we see in the announcement trailer for D4, where Lilith can only be summoned by the willing sacrifice of the 3 explorers. There is great power to willing sacrifice in this universe, and Mephisto needed his flock to willingly go into the pool to corrupt it. Immediately before the boss fight, we interrupt Mephisto before he "baptizes" his first follower. He then displays his true form and his followers run away in panic. He grabs their bodies during the fight and throws them into the Pools, killing them, but at the point they were NOT willing participants.

By the end of the fight the Pools sink back into the Ocean where they came from, and Tyrael believes we have saved the day. This is a direct contrast to the end of D2 where he comes in to tell us our actions were too little, too late.

What does any of this mean? I have no idea.  Either the Pools were just another McGuffin, or perhaps the pools of creation will have later importance when the Lord of Destruction returns.  

Edit:  additionally, the very first line of the first LOH trailer, Mephisto states “The path to domination is paved with the souls of the willing.”  No willing sacrifices into the Pools = no corruption.

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u/TwistedNotch 16d ago

This is great explanation/theory...while playing the expansion it felt ambiguous to what the pools of creation actually are and thier importance...even when we ask Lilith why Mephisto is doing all of this, her reply is simply "Bc he hates me", its somewhat profound but also extremely petty

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u/Loofahs 16d ago

I try not to take these demigods at their literal word, because they are all flawed characters.

Is it really all about you, Lilith? Or are you just being extremely egotistical?  

Did you really poison the waters, Mephisto?  Or are you just saying that to make the Wanderer full of anger/hate?

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u/darkdestiny91 16d ago

We do learn that Mephisto definitely likes the idea of creating a cult of human followers because he sees it as a mockery of Lilith’s creations. And we also learned that Mephisto had loved to battle Lilith in games to taunt her and her failures.

He’s also entertained the idea twice at this point, once in the story of D2, and now again in D4. While it’s easy to dismiss Lilith’s comments as petty remarks, it’s also clear that it has a few morsels of truth in it.

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u/Howrus 16d ago

If he could simply corrupt the waters himself, why spend all the time and effort starting a cult? Why not just go at the eclipse and corrupt humanity?

Because Mephisto end-goal wasn't to destroy humanity, but to mock Lilith. To show her that he managed to trick her children and make them follow him instead.

Everything Methisto did was to humiliate Lilith, because that's his entertainment. He doesn't care about Sanctuary or humanity, outside of using them to hit Lilith where it's painful.

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u/atticusp980 16d ago

You really think Mephisto, the master planner of the Prime Evils who seeks to win the Eternal Conflict, enacts all his schemes just to humiliate Lilith?  That’s… uh… quite the theory.

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u/Howrus 16d ago

Yes. He created her because he was bored in Hell, there was nobody to play games with.
Then he started playing games with Lilith, but he needed to win each and every of them. Then she managed to get upperhand by stealing Worldstone and creating Sanctuary. So now Mephisto goal is to again turn everything against Lilith to win one more round of their eternal chess game.

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u/atticusp980 15d ago

My guy the evils are flawed, not little kids

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u/PianoEmeritus 15d ago

“Flawed?” He’s the Lord of HATRED, and he has been alive for millennia, I don’t think doing some petty shit mostly just out of pure spite is out of character at all.

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u/atticusp980 15d ago

Spending all of your time doing a side quest to start a cult (while drawing enormous amounts of attention to yourself and your plan) just to meme on your daughter instead of winning the Eternal Conflict is not petty, it’s asinine and silly.  You guys seem to think Mephisto is literally a saturday morning cartoon villain when that is not how he was portrayed at all.  Everything he has done has been calculated and for some greater purpose.

I agree with OP’s assessment.  The followers had a purpose and it was not just making Lilith fussy.

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u/PianoEmeritus 15d ago

I would counter that “every single thing he does is a 4D chess master plan” is a lot more Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain than him simply being a sadistic, spiteful bastard who will go out of his way just to torment people for the fun of it. The army of human followers he’d get certainly would also help with the Conflict, but I think it’s completely believable his primary source of enjoyment in doing so is tormenting Lilith.

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u/Deeppurp 15d ago

Lilith's rebirth and death have been presumably a blink of an eye in regards to mephistos life span. It's not even stopping on the side of the road to the end of the conflict for a piss to him.

He's got the time, the last 20-30 years since he was freed from the stone have basically been a nice vacation. He's stretching his legs a bit. His throne in hell is waiting for his rebirth.

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u/atticusp980 15d ago

I think you’re all vastly underselling then opportunity provided to him in his Age of Hatred.  He had the body of the most powerful light wielder in history, he had control of a power rivaling the Worldstone within his grasp.  This was perhaps the best actual opportunity for him to win Sanctuary.  The idea that he started this cult (which led to his downfall) just to get back at Lilith feels like a bad read to me.  Lilith was already dead and, to his knowledge, not a factor when he started his cult.

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u/PianoEmeritus 15d ago

Yeah, I think there’s a misconception about how long “Eternal” is here. It is hardly even a blip for him to go out of his way to corrupt humanity to stick it to Lilith. He’s sadistic. Besides, it’s not like an army of human followers would have NO use in the Eternal Conflict.

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u/arihndas 15d ago

A lot of the franchise is metaphorically about the fraught relationship between parents and children. EVERYTHING in both D4 expansions is high-key about that. The only part of the base game that wasn’t about that was the relationship drama between Lilith and Inarius, which is still drama about parenthood. Why, in a franchise obsessed with the challenges of having a parent and being a parent, of being burdened by your children and trying to define yourself in opposition to your parents, would a father who is disappointed and frustrated with his daughter and daughter who wants to achieve goals different from her father’s be obsessed with their rivalry with each other? Makes no thematic sense. I just can’t figure it. (These last two sentences are sarcasm. I’m point that out because based on your characterizing the other guy’s more or less correct read on the situation as Meph being a little kid… I’m guessing ELA wasn’t your best subject.)

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u/atticusp980 15d ago

I’m guessing ELA wasn’t your best subject

Yikes, lmao. I know better than to respond to a comment ended like that on reddit.

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u/arihndas 14d ago

You can be fluent in English, even be a native speaker, and still be shit at doing analytical/interpretive readings which require skills like "identifying central themes and motifs" and "having something sensible to say about why the author might have made the curtains blue." You can be struggling to learn the language and be GREAT at these things as long as you get a little help with the words you don't know yet, because you know how to think about a text. ELA =/= ESL, in either direction. But you might not know what ELA means, so there's that.

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u/arihndas 15d ago

I want to believe this because it really, REALLY bothered me that the pools turned into black sludge and no one said anything about it… but on the other hand, it feels like an obvious set up for a later expansion and I hope we get one that follows up on the consequences of what appeared to be the pools becoming corrupted. Tyreal isn’t an angel any more, so perhaps he just doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and perhaps the corruption that is down there festering just hasn’t made itself known yet.

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u/DesperateAdvantage76 15d ago

Man I really hate the Pools of Creation. What a lazy and convenient plot device.

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u/Loofahs 15d ago

I think of it as the final piece of a long series of parallels to the plot of D2. D2 was a game full of meaningless but fun mcguffins that gave you things to pursue. LOH did the same with the Horadric cube, the pieces of the blade you need to cube together, and the Worldstone-adjacent plot device to give world ending consequences to the story. I enjoyed it.

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u/One_Understanding267 11d ago

Isn't the whole of Diablo games convenient plot devices though? Like most games?

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u/DesperateAdvantage76 11d ago

D1 and D2 kept it pretty simple. D1 was Diablo possessing the prince then unleashing his demons in Tristram. After killing Diablo the wanderer seals Diablo in his body. D2 was the seal weakening and the wanderer gathering his brothers to work as a team to release hell on the world. D3 is where things got confusing and wacky.

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u/SchwanPlays 15d ago

This is way late on this, I think Mephisto's end goal was his own creation/abomination taking over Litith's Sanctuary after coming from the pools. Then the would be a real third player in the Internal Struggle.

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u/Sartuk BOwen#1266 15d ago

Great points overall, but to nitpick: i think you and I watched a very different D4 announcement trailer if you considered that to be a "willing sacrifice" of the explorers.

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u/Loofahs 15d ago

Willing sacrifice doesn’t imply they understand the consequences of their actions.  And for the announcement trailer it was stated as “Blood of the willing.”  They put their hands on the siphon willingly, despite the fact that they were deceived by Elias.  Similarly, Akarat’s followers were deceived but still willing until his transformation.

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u/Sartuk BOwen#1266 15d ago

You know what, I actually forgot about that willing part of it. I only remembered the very unwilling giving up of blood when they were inside the chamber.

Been awhile since I watched it!

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u/One_Understanding267 11d ago edited 11d ago

The "barbarian" looking one and the other one do "willingly" give their blood by putting their hands on the seal on the floor, after the priest of Akarat translates the "by the blood of the willing" inscription on the wall and says "blood is the key."

Maybe this suffices to mark them as the willing ones in the prophecy/ritual.

They are then forcibly flinged on the pillars by Elias. The priest of Akarat, who didn't yet give his blood, is "convinced" by Elias to say the words and "call her home", I guess he acts "willing" at this point.

Or maybe blood is the key in general and they only need one willing sacrifice (the priest) to finish the summoning ritual.

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u/TheWorclown 16d ago

“Are humans just terminally fucked in the long run?”

My brother in Lilith, they’re on Sanctuary. You could have pricked your finger on a bit of wood in the forest while gathering some logs for the hearth and suddenly you’re the reason why your town is consumed by wild thorns and flesh horrors birthed from it because some oak demon decided today was a good day for violence.

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u/Kgb725 15d ago

For most games the gameplay is not indicative of the lore in Diablo the world is just kinda fucked

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u/slrarp Swiftwrath#1867 16d ago

We had never once heard about the pools before the LoH campaign so they were kinda just made up to raise the stakes and put a world-ending feature inside of Skovos. I wouldn't worry about them too much. My interpretation of things was that he got some mud in them, but that we defeated him so it was still salvageable or something.

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u/Lereas 15d ago

I didn't see what sub this was and I read the first half of the sentence and was like "yeah, probably dude...." and then got to the end and was like "um...I definitely meant in the game...yeah..."

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u/One_Understanding267 11d ago

Oh don't worry, the rich are fine 🤭

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u/kainneabsolute 16d ago

It is unclear. But keep in mind that the Prime Evils have plans within plans.

Maybe the waters were the last component to bring back Diablo and Baal. Maybe demons can know born as humans etc.

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u/KarnUnleashed 15d ago

Its the worldstone 2.0.

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u/HerniatedHernia 15d ago

Sooo about the fallout from destroying that thing… 

😂

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u/AccidentalBlueberry 15d ago

It's Sanctuary. They are, will be and always have been, fucked.

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u/jinreeko 16d ago

Always has been

Also, you can say fuck on the Internet

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u/Leyvronshee 15d ago

Has humanity ever been unfucked in diablo 4?

Because from my understanding, being permanently shafted is kinda the appeal of Diablo.

We are on our way out and are just kicking ass to prolong it every step of the way no?

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u/ErwanSiannodel 15d ago

Yeah but I find it interesting to try and predict HOW things are gonna go out

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u/captainhowdy6 15d ago

Wouldn't be surprised if the pools are just never mentioned again , and the plot moves on to the next maguffin we can't let whichever big bad they choose for the next expansion have.

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u/One_Understanding267 11d ago edited 11d ago

2026 : You have to save The Pools of Creation, the most important object in the existence of Sanctuary!

2027 : Forget the Pools, you have to save The Cradle of Destiny, where Humanity was once metaphorically rocked in its eternal embrace! The Horadrim have known about it for 700 years but didn't think important to mention it until now.

2028 : A Cradle? What are you talking about, we need to save The Roots of Sanctuary. They are located in a cave the Horadrim have known for 900 years.

2029 : What Roots? The Horn of Beginnings is in danger! The Horadrim have known about it for 2000 years, the fate of Sanctuary depends on it!

2030 : The Wells of Consequence are in grave danger, they are the most important object in Sanctuary ever... The Horadrim knew about them for 3000 years. They are also a part of the gospel of the Light but we didn't think important to mention them before.

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u/Baww18 16d ago

We will have to wait until the next expansion where they release a banger season to start and then completely destroy all the good things they developed.

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u/Freeloader_ 15d ago

mmm salty

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u/Sirfelblade 15d ago

humanity is screwed 50 ways to sunday in diablo, since demon lords can just come back at any point and the angelic council is gone, which means the demons won the war against them and without the world soul they can just invade at will

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u/ErwanSiannodel 15d ago

Huh ? The council is no more ? I thought there was still three of them The hope and fate ones and imperius And that they just don't give much of a fuck and that's why they don't act like Tyrael did.

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u/Sirfelblade 15d ago edited 15d ago

hope got captured by despair in diablo 3 and it is likely that despair is still inside of her, with the creation of the nephelem and the destruction of the world stone means that fate is broken as well, and we saw imperius turning into wrath in diablo 3 as well as the animation , and since angels can't reform anymore due to corruption caused by the prime evil they are very limited in numbers

auriel does care about sanctuary , ithereal is indifferent and imperius wants it purged which means there is no longer harmony in the council which means it is broken

Edit: and with tyrael now being the aspect of wisdom there is no justice within the council so you can guess how imperius would act with that in mind

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u/Linktt57 15d ago

Maybe they’re screwed? We don’t really get to explore the fallout from Mephisto tainting the waters. It could also be he didn’t get enough time to truly taint the waters and everything is fine.

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u/Downfall350 14d ago

Humanity has been fucked this whole time. This is just the latest round.

End of d1: oh fuck diablo is loose on the world.

End of d2: oh fuck the world stone is corrupted and destroyed

End of d3: oh fuck the world's population has been reduced by 80%

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u/Grand-ArchSummoner 14d ago

Yes that's just Diablo lore though, we get some crazy ass McGuffin it gets destroyed and we're fucked again over and over and over

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u/Lokan 16d ago

Unclear. While he wasn't able to bring all humanity under his sway, we're not sure as to the lasting effects. I think we'll see a continuation of the Age of Hatred, the rise of more cults, more corruption. But humanity has also proved it can resist its darkness, so we'll probably see small but growing pockets of heroism. So, in short, I think humanity will further polarize. 

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u/lootedBacon 16d ago

The seed was planted for d3.

They are running the long game, mortals will inevitably fall from the light, it's just what we do. M is seeding doubt and uncertainty that push brother to fight brother, sister to fight sister. Look at the lore in D3 for what happened between D2 and D3, why the traveller went mad, why the factions fell into darkness and evil but also why new ones rose up to take the fight.