The World Map of Sanctuary.
Contents
Magic in Sanctuary
Sanctuary is located on the Physical plane of the fabric of reality, and intermingling with this is the Etheral plane, as some explain it; located "under" the plane of reality. Certain strong-willed individuals are able to harness the spiritual essence of themselves (called "Mana") and use it to channel power from the Etheral realm, creating magical effects in the physical one. Read more in the Magic article:
- Magic in Sanctuary
Sanctuary Languages
As most fantasy worlds, Sanctuary consists of cultures that shares different social traits. For now, the only thing that is known about these is that there is a mutual understanding of languages between the continents, and whether this is due to the fact that people speak multiple languages through their culture, of if there is a "common" language that everyone shares is unknown. Players as well as characters and NPCs in the world travel to either site of their globe, and can still communicate with people.
Names are more socially inspired though, and country names such as "Westmarch", and town names such as Tristram, has a clear "Western" reference from our world, as does the architecture. Deckard Cain, is a character name from a person of the west, while "Abd al-Hazir" is the name of a character from the flourishing East. If everyone shares a "common" language, they still seem to retain their own cultural names.
The only known specifically mentioned language is the Umbaru people's tounge from the Teganze area of the Torajan jungles [1].
Sanctuary Calendar
This is a list of known date names and numbers from the Sanctuary Calendar (really the Kehjistani calendar), based on journals made by Deckard Cain and Elder Aust of Harrogath in the years 1265-1266, during the war with the Prime Evils. From Cain's notes, it looks like months are about as long as our own world's, and they obviously have both their own month names as well as week day names.
It is unknown exactly how many days are in a month, how many months there are in a year (but we can make a guess at 12), how many days there are in a week, if weeks/months/years length vary (like Earth's "Leap Year") and many other details. We currently know this:
- There are at least 9 months in the Kehjistani calendar.
- There are at least 28 days in one of the months (Kathon), and 27 in another (Damhar), indicating similar month length to our own earth.
- Kathon is the first month in a year.
- Solmoneth is the second month.
- Montath is the third month.
- Ostara is the fourth month.
- Vasan is the fifth month.
- There is an unknown number of months between Vasan and Jerharan
- Jerharan is the fourth last month.
- Damhar is the third last month.
- Ratham is the second last month.
- Esunar is the last month.
- There is at least 5 days to a week: Lauds, Sext, Vespers, (unknown day name), Matins.
These are the dates we know to exist from the journals of Cain and Aust:
- 1265 Anno Khejistani
- Montath
- 3rd - Lauds
- 4th - Sext
- 5th - Vespers
- 7th - Matins
- Montath
- Unknown months
- 1265 Anno Khejistani
- Jerharan
- 15th
- Damhar
- 1st
- 12th
- 20th
- 27th
- Ratham
- 1st
- 21st
- Esunar
- 6th
- 18th
- 20th
- Jerharan
- 1266 Anno Khejistani
- Kathon
- 2nd
- 28th
- Solmoneth
- 11th
- Montath
- 1st
- Ostara
- 4th
- Vasan
- 2nd
- 10th
- Kathon
Sources
Worth noting is that these two sources would be more or less compatible if it were not for the fact that Aust is talking about events in 1265 and Deckard Cain talks about 1266. As Deckard Cain's Journal is more recently released from Blizzard, it's probably safe to say that this is the "canon" lore.