This year, I got the Diablo III 2012 Wall Calendar as a Christmas gift. I stare at the artwork on it every day. Usually, I recognize the character, or monster, or class, that appears in each piece of art. This time, however, it is mostly a mystery to me. This blog is part of my series about the artwork in the Diablo III 2012 Wall Calendar. I did a whole lot of research, but I am still not entirely sure that I have figured out who “Mr. September” was.
There stands our “Mr. September”. On the first day of September, I stared at this piece of artwork, and thought: “Who the hell is that supposed to be?” My quest to discover more about “Mr. September” started out by knocking down some variables. I figure that this is a “Mr.”, and not a “Ms.”, so that means it certainly isn’t supposed to be Leah, Adria, Lilith, or any of the other female characters in the Diablo universe.
“Mr. September” clearly isn’t Deckard Cain, or Tyrael. He’s not the male version of the Demon Hunter, Barbarian, Monk, Wizard, or Witch Doctor, either. He’s too big to be Emperor Hakan. This mysterious figure clearly isn’t an angel, and doesn’t really resemble a demon in any obvious way. So, who is he?
Perhaps a better questions is: “What is he?” The only category of entities in the Diablo III universe that I haven’t ruled out is “monsters”. He doesn’t look much like a monster though, because “Mr. September” is humanoid. This narrows down the potential types of monsters by quite a bit.
I basically hit a “brick wall” trying to research this one. I’ve learned that this is a good time to start using the Google image search for key phrases. It isn’t the most efficient way to search for information when you have nothing to go on but one piece of artwork, but it did result in something somewhat useful. I found this sketch that shows a figure that looks similar to “Mr. September”.
Thankfully, this sketch was labeled. The guy in the sketch is a Triune Cultist. This guy is wearing an odd looking headpiece that protects the top of his head, the back of his head and neck, and the sides of his head at the same time. It has a weird box-like shape to it. That looks very similar to the “popped collar” that “Mr. September” is wearing. Could “Mr. September” be the finished product of the sketch?
The sketch says “Triune Cultist”. It says it was drawn by Victor Lee in June of 2006. He is the same artist who drew the Wizard, (or, Sorceress, if you prefer), that was our “Ms. August” You can find the artwork for “Mr. September” on Battle.net and you can download it from the Gallery if you like. It doesn’t say who the artist was, only that it was added to the Gallery on August, 1, 2011.
From this, I believe that our “Mr. September” is a Triune Cultist, who evolved from the original sketch that was done in 2006. The Triune played a big role in The Sin War Trilogy, which was written by Richard Knaak. You can run into Dark Cultists, and other kinds of Cultists as enemies in the Diablo III game. None that I’ve come across look exactly like “Mr. September”, though. This raises the possibility that I may be wrong about “Mr. September” being some sort of Cultist. Until I see evidence indicating otherwise, I’m going to stick with my answer.