Duriel

Duriel is a demon of the Burning Hells, known by the titles Lord of Pain and the Maggot King. He belongs to the Lesser Evils, a rank of demon lords beneath the three Prime Evils: Diablo, Mephisto, and Baal. He is often called the twin brother of Andariel, the Maiden of Anguish. Though he served Diablo for a time, his allegiance has shifted across eras. In Diablo II he stood as the guardian of Tal Rasha's tomb, and he later reappeared in Diablo IV, where he acted directly against the Wanderer. His status remains active, meaning he continues to exist and threaten the mortal realm.

The history of Duriel is tied to the Dark Exile, a term for the period after the Sin War when the Lesser Evils grew resentful of the Prime Evils' obsession with humanity. Led by Azmodan and Belial, the Lesser Evils moved to overthrow the three Prime Evils, believing the Great Conflict had been abandoned. Duriel and Andariel initially doubted, fearing they would fall in the coming fight, but Belial persuaded them to join. The result was that the Prime Evils were cast out of Hell and into Sanctuary, the mortal world. That exile set the stage for Duriel's later actions.

Nearly three hundred years after the Dark Exile, events in Diablo II brought Duriel back into prominence. Diablo had escaped his prison beneath the Tristram cathedral and traveled east to reunite with Mephisto and Baal. Andariel and Duriel judged that the Prime Evils would inevitably regain their place in Hell, so they sought to earn Diablo's favor by protecting his human host, the Dark Wanderer. After Diablo freed Baal from the Tomb of Tal Rasha in the desert of Aranoch, Duriel was left in the tomb's inner chamber to guard the path behind them. It was there that the heroes of Diablo II slew him, shortly before they discovered the captive archangel Tyrael.

During the era of Diablo III, Duriel was connected to the Black Soulstone, a device used to capture the essences of great evils. The witch Adria marked him as the second Great Evil to be absorbed into the stone. She approached him in fear, knowing that if she failed and he imprisoned her in his domain, she could expect years of torture. Yet when she found his soul, there was no confrontation; the absorption proceeded without resistance. That event suggests Duriel's soul was stored in the stone, though his ultimate fate from that point remained unclear until later.

In the era of Diablo IV, Duriel broke free of Diablo, regenerated, and came to reside in Sanctuary. Over the following decades, he and the other Lesser Evils formed an alliance, waiting for the right moment to seize control of the mortal realm. That opportunity came during the Age of Hatred in 1336, when Lilith entered the Realm of Hatred through the Hell Gate beneath Caldeum. She summoned Duriel with a single task: to ensure that the Wanderer, the player's hero, did not follow her into Hell. Duriel laired in a cistern near the gate, where the Wanderer, aided by Donan, Lorath Nahr, and Neyrelle, found and killed him. Not long after, he and the other Lesser Evils re-emerged in Sanctuary and began their takeover, opposed by the Wanderer with Heaven's aid. His appearances span Diablo II, Diablo Immortal, Diablo III (through mention), Diablo IV, and the expansions Vessel of Hatred and Lord of Hatred.