We study the optical and magnetic properties of quasi one-dimensional dilute magnetic Zn(1-x)Mn(x)S and antiferromagnetic (AF) MnS as a function of size, Mn content x, and sample morphology. On the one hand, we discuss the temporal dynamics of the yellow Mn-related luminescence of the samples under resonant excitation demonstrating that the non-exponential behavior of the luminescence decay is an intrinsic feature of such nanostructures and is strongly related to interplay of the characteristic length scales such as the extensions of the sample, the distance between killer centers, and the distance between Mn ions. The transients of the Mn related luminescence can quantitatively be described on the basis of a modified Forster model accounting for killer center statistics and reduced dimensionality. On the other hand, we investigate the paramagnetic to AF phase transition of spherical MnS nanostructures as a function of diameter. The phase transition is gradually suppressed whilst the local magnetic interactions such as the nearest neighbor and next-nearest neighbor exchange constants remain unaltered, demonstrating that the suppression of the magnetic order is driven by the increasing surface to volume ratio leading to an effective reduction of the numbers of nearest and next-nearest neighbors. (C) 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH \& Co. KGaA, Weinheim