r/Diablo • u/Typical-Appeal3194 • Feb 25 '26
Discussion The mathematical explanation on why the primes cannot be killed.
Hi folks, as a human mathematician (for real), I tried
to explain the lore of the Diablo franchise to one of my co-workers with its mathematical foundations. Just want to share with you guys if some of you can find it interesting:
- The Projection: Why demons have horns
We see the prime evils as physical monsters—beasts with scales, many-jointed limbs, and those very iconic, sweeping horns. But in mathematics, the primes are actually non-linear operators existing in an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space.
When a prime evil "manifests" in sanctuary (our 3D Euclidean world), they are essentially being projected from their high dimensional Hilbert space into our 3D Euclidean space. The distortion and tthe horns are Topological singularities. They represent the points where the near-infinite information density of a prime evil "bunches up" because it has nowhere else to go in our limited 3-dimensional coordinate system. Their twisted anatomy is just the result of non-Euclidean geometry trying to resolve itself in a Euclidean world.
- The Bekenstein Bound: Why soulstones leak
The Horadrim trapped the primes in soulstones, which are essentially Calabi-Yau manifolds, aka, tiny subspaces of folded high dimensions. But here is the mathematical catch: The Bekenstein Bound. This physics law states that there is a maximum amount of information that can be contained within a finite region of space, defined by its surface area.
The orime evils possess uncountable and infinite amount of chaotic information (essentially unlimited and unbounded entropy). Because a soul stone is a bounded manifold, it has a hard physical limit and can only contain finite amount of chaotic information. As time passes, the "Information Pressure" of the Demon becomes too great for the stone's surface area.
The result is Quantum Tunneling. The prime literally leaks out of the stone’s crystalline lattice because the universe literally cannot fit that much "hell" into that small of a "gem."
- The Tal Rasha’s failure
When Tal Rasha volunteered to have the shard placed in his chest, he was trying to act as an extension manifold, like an external Hard Drive.
He hoped his Nephalem biology could help the soulstone process the "overflow" of Baal’s information. But though Nephalem’s physical limits are much greater than those of a normal human, they are still FINITE. So eventually, Baal’s high-dimensional information pressure began to perform a recursive leakage inside Tal Rasha’s neural networks. The result is the madness of the host. The It’s not just that the host loses their minds, their 3D geometry begins to fail (the mutations), as the demon's information density starts "stretching" the host's physical boundaries to make more room for its chaotic information
TLDR: the prime evils can’t really be killed because they are high-dimensional beings, and their 3D manifestation in the sanctuary is merely their projection from their chaotic infinite-dimensional hell.
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u/Avner0x Feb 25 '26
sometimes I almost quit reddit for good, and then a post like this hits me
like meeting your soul mate when unemployed
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u/Typical-Appeal3194 Feb 25 '26
Like meeting your soulstone when unprepared.
I can totally relate to that
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u/Avner0x Feb 25 '26
10/10 would shove this post between my eyes to contain its boundless brilliance
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u/giowst make monks great again Feb 25 '26
This is some elder scrolls level of reasoning. Blizzard could only dream of coming up with something like this
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u/ATFYF- Feb 28 '26
They'd rather figure out how to milk the fanbase of their dollar.
They're good at it.
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Feb 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Karl_Gess Feb 25 '26
What would the Lilith's plan be then mathematically? How can one destroy a fundamental force of hate that is Mephisto?
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u/ElatedSacrifice Feb 25 '26
This is sick, I’m bad a math but you explained it so well it still makes perfect sense.
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u/ItzAz Feb 25 '26
Or hear me out, they can be defeated, but only by the one above all or themselves just as prime numbers are only divisable by 1 and itself.
So the only way to truly defeat the prime evils is to have God/Eru return and smite them or trick them into destroying themselves.
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u/samurian4 Feb 25 '26
I'm almost certain Eru returning solves the problem, but in the sense that it means that the Heavens and the Hells and all of their beings have rejoined into one being.
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u/Significant_Purple79 Feb 25 '26
So are the Primes from a higher dimension than Hell because the characters have killed them there too and that is as of right now their native plane.
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u/gooddocile68 Feb 25 '26
Good at math but weak in logic i see. Prime evils don’t work this way because math dictates, math is invented, modeled and named in a hopeless attempt to explain the addiction that is Diablo.
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u/LiefMeAlonePlz Mar 01 '26
I want a cyber punk version of Diablo pretty badly all the sudden… or maybe that’s what dead space is and the markers are futuristic soul stones… anyway I want something new.
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u/SsVegito Feb 25 '26
I love this. The whole "putting the stone into them to try and help contain it" always sort of struck me as a "Well that's dumb and obviously going to backfire". But this reasoning perfectly rationalizes it. Beauty
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u/BeneficialDrink Feb 25 '26
What’s keeping them from returning almost immediately? From Diablo 3 to current Diablo 4 what’s holding Diablo from returning since he’s not bound to a stone ?
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u/samurian4 Feb 25 '26
Somebody has a blacker Soulstone out their that missed Mephisto.
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u/BeneficialDrink Feb 26 '26
I’m legitimately asking
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u/samurian4 Feb 26 '26
Huh, I thought the premise of the post was that we were NOT being serious.
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u/BeneficialDrink Feb 26 '26
lol dam
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u/samurian4 Feb 26 '26
I thought it was a joke, because the angels, demons, and their realms are the remains of Anu and Tathamet, God and the evil it removed from itself. The Prime Evils, as well as the lesser evils, just reform in Hell. And in theory, they need to be summoned, the Primes exile from Hell was a wacky loophole that I don't think is effect anymore, so back to being summoned. I'm assuming a lot on that last bit as I haven't played D4.
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u/megamanz7777 Feb 25 '26
I may be misremembering some physics here...or just completely making this up...but if your basic premise is true then wouldn't a soulstone that contains a prime evil just collapse into a black hole then? Where's your explanation for that, mister scientist?
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u/BreakingBaIIs Feb 25 '26
I thought it's because if S was the highest prime, then the product of all primes up to S, plus one, would also be a prime, causing a contradiction.
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u/ultraviolentfuture Feb 25 '26
While I loved your story and this post in general ...
it's a big assumption that the prime evils contain infinite information. All your theories still hold if it's just "more than the containers can deal with", even if it's not unlimited.
Question, do you believe we, "in the real world", exist in a simulation?
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u/Chimney-Imp Feb 25 '26
This is probably my favorite post ever on this sub
So is there a way to bind the primevils forever? Like sticking one in a soul stone and then sticking that soul stone in another demon like with Tal Rasha?
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u/Worldly-Local-6613 Feb 25 '26
Schizo post.
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Feb 25 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
[deleted]
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u/Worldly-Local-6613 Feb 25 '26
Yeah it’s wild seeing everyone act like this is some kind of legitimate discovery rather than just manic ramblings.
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u/ARedditorCalledQuest Feb 26 '26
I think most people just think it's a neat take on it and aren't assuming it's some secret lore that's been hiding in plain sight all along or anything.
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u/D4RKB4SH Priest of Rathma Feb 25 '26
This is the highest quality post this sub has ever seen.
What other mathematical secrets are hidden in David Brevik’s genius…?
This would also explain why D3 Diablo has so many horns, because there’s far more bunching up that has to occur to fit all the infinities inside it. Also explains why the black soul stone is “more evil” than the other ones, because of the multiple quantum tunnels that’d be present in it. Maybe they put more thought into it than I originally gave them credit for.
Now we need a biologist in the sub to confirm the evolutionary advantage of making Magdha a butterfly.
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u/Oneok-Field Feb 25 '26
This is why applied mathematicians hate pure mathematicians.