Deckard Cain

Deckard Cain, sometimes called Cain the Elder, was a scholar of the Horadrim, with a deep knowledge of obscure traditions and the history of the arcane. He was the last of the Horadrim, the ancient order of mages who had once hunted the Prime Evils. Players remember him because he is present in every main Diablo game, from the first through the third, as the keeper of old knowledge and the storyteller who linked each era to the next. He began as a schoolmaster in Tristram and ended as a memory carried by those who followed him. His death did not end his role in the story.

Cain was born in 1202 in Tristram, a town in the land of Khanduras. His mother, Aderes Cain, told him stories of the Horadrim, an ancient order of mages who had once hunted the Prime Evils, and from those stories he came to think of himself as the last of the Horadrim. He imagined himself traveling the world and fighting evil wherever it appeared. His father was a tanner, but his mother would not allow Cain to take his father's surname. As a young man he studied archaic writings in Kehjistan, and in adulthood he returned to Tristram as a schoolmaster and storyteller. The children of the town did not take to him. Later he married Amelia Cain, and they had a son named Jered Cain, a name also borne by an ancestor.

During the period known as the Darkening of Tristram, Cain watched King Leoric's mood turn dark. He began keeping a journal and asked himself if the old stories of an evil buried under the town had any truth. When Leoric's son Aidan returned from war, Cain saw that the spoiled boy he had once tutored had become a man, and he called Aidan the hero. Aidan wanted to enter the catacombs beneath the cathedral quickly, but Cain tried to slow him down. Aidan defeated Diablo, and the town spent weeks celebrating. Cain could see wounds in Aidan that went deeper than the body. He believed the ground was cursed and thought the town should be burned. Before he left, he gathered books from the cathedral.

The next chapter began when Aidan, whom Diablo's soulstone had corrupted—a Horadric gem made to contain a demon's spirit—became the Dark Wanderer. Tristram was ruined, and Cain remained trapped in a cage until a new group of heroes rescued him. They were pursuing the Wanderer east, and Cain joined them, hoping his knowledge could help. He travelled with them through Khanduras, Aranoch, Kehjistan, and beyond. In the events of Lord of Destruction, the heroes reported that Diablo and the soulstones of Diablo and Mephisto had been destroyed, but there was no time to celebrate, because Baal's army was already marching on Mount Arreat. Cain stayed in Harrogath while the heroes climbed the mountain. After Baal's defeat, Tyrael destroyed the Worldstone, an ancient artifact that had shaped the realm of Sanctuary. The breaking of the Worldstone killed Baal, shattered Mount Arreat, and ruined much of the surrounding land. Cain and his companions came through alive and then parted ways, and he warned them that the loss of the Worldstone might change Sanctuary in ways no one could yet predict.

Five years after the Worldstone's destruction, Cain was still trying to contain its consequences. Using a Horadric ritual, he located three Worldstone shards, in Wortham, in Ashwold Cemetery, and in the Dark Wood, and set out to destroy them before they could bring calamity. In Westmarch he worked with a hero called the Shard-seeker. Cain had no way to destroy the Wortham shard, so he hid it; with the hero's help, most of the shards were destroyed, but the demon Skarn obtained one. When Skarn was killed, Diablo's soul was freed to return from the Black Abyss. Cain continued to study the prophecy of the End of Days and worked with Ormus's apprentice Karshun against the Cult of Terror. In the novel The Order, seven years after the Worldstone, Cain traveled to Westmarch, met the paladin Akarat, told his stories, and searched a Vizjerei repository in the Borderlands. His sleep had started to fill with the stories his mother used to tell. In Caldeum he visited Gillian, a woman broken by what had happened in Tristram, and watched over Leah, Adria's daughter, sensing magic in her. He and Leah traveled toward Kurast to find mages who called themselves Horadrim. By a campfire he told Leah that Gillian was not her real mother. They passed Lord Brand's sickly town, met the monk Mikulov, reached Kurast and then Gea Kul, and met the First Ones, a divided group who believed in the Horadrim's future. One of them, Egil, was possessed by the demon Rau, who tormented Cain with visions. When Leah was abducted, Cain led an assault on the Dark Tower, with the captain Jeronnan creating a distraction and the First Ones gathering explosives, and he rescued her.

In 1285, Cain was living in New Tristram, where he had raised Leah as his ward and continued his research. Investigating the Fallen Star, the landing of the mortal Tyrael, he was captured by the Coven. The witch Maghda tortured him, and after the hero rescued him, Maghda and her cultists returned and killed him. His death set Leah and the hero on the path against Belial, Azmodan, and Diablo.

Cain's research and journals guided the heroes of Diablo III long after he was gone. Leah carried his memory into that conflict, and Tyrael later rebuilt the Horadrim, giving the order a new beginning. Reaper of Souls mentions him, and in the years after his death he appears in a flashback in Diablo IV and as a playable hero in Heroes of the Storm. For players, he remains the last of the Horadrim, the voice of old warnings, and the figure who kept Sanctuary's history alive.