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Ivern

Ivern the Cruel was renowned as a fierce warrior, in the latter days of the ancient Vorrijaard. His clan followed the most warlike of the old gods, and would not kneel before the upstart “Three Sisters” like so many others had.
However, the dark sorcery that strengthened their armies was undeniable. Ivern and his kin plotted long and hard to overthrow these hated Iceborn, eventually setting sail into the east—in search of the land where the sun first rose, from where it was said that all magic flowed into the world. If Ivern could seize such power for his own, then he could surely break any foe.
As his fleet sailed over the horizon, they passed out of memory and into myth, for they were never seen in their homeland again.
In truth, Ivern the Cruel landed on the shores of Ionia. After cleaving through a dozen coastal settlements, he and his warriors discovered a sacred grove known as Omikayalan, “the Heart of the World”. And there, in that strange and verdant garden, they met the fiercest resistance. Chimeric beings—half human, half beast—came at them again and again beneath the twisted branches.
Undeterred, Ivern pressed on, until the battered remnants of his expedition reached what the Ionians held so sacred: the legendary God-Willow.
Ivern was transfixed, even as the fighting raged around him. It was a truly colossal tree, dripping with long gossamer leaves that shimmered with golden-green light. It was magic like nothing he had ever felt before, and it was clear these inhuman creatures would die to protect it. Seeking to shatter their resolve, he took up his war axe, and roared with hatred as he struck at the God-Willow over and over again.
The great tree fell. In a riot of life-energy, Ivern the Cruel was instantly undone.
Detached, drifting, he saw the battle was over. The flesh of the fallen fed carrion birds and insects alike, or decayed under bursts of colorful mushrooms. Bones rotted into fertile soil, and seeds within it budded and sprouted into trees bearing fruit of their own. Leaves and petals pulsed like colorful hearts. From the death that surrounded him, life exploded forth in ways too numerous to believe.
Never had Ivern beheld such beauty. Life, in all its forms, was tangled together like an impossible knot that didn’t want to be untied. He wept, and those dewdrop tears fell upon his changed body. He was taller than he remembered, his limbs rough with bark and leaves. The magic of an entirely different world coursed through him. He did not know why, or how, but he was all that now remained of the God-Willow.
With that realization, he heard the bawling of hills, the howling of trees, and the dripping tears of moss. He reflected on the mistakes he’d made, the cruelty he’d visited on others. Remorse washed over Ivern, and he cried out for forgiveness.
When he finally moved, so much time had passed that the world felt… new? The violence and sadness of his former self were mere echoes in his heart. He found he could dig his toes deep into the soil, and commune with the roots, rocks, and rivers. Even the dirt itself had opinions!
Ivern wandered far—across Ionia, and beyond—and the strange magic of Omikayalan followed in his wake. He developed close kinships with creatures great and small, observing their foibles, delighting in their little habits, and occasionally offering a helping hand. He shortened the inchworm’s path, played tricks with mischievous bramblebacks, hugged thorny elmarks, and laughed with wizened elder-fungus.
In one instance, he found a wounded stone golem. Knowing the poor thing’s spirit was fading, he fashioned her a new heart from a river pebble, and the golem became Ivern’s devoted life-friend. He named her Daisy, after the flowers that mysteriously sprouted from her stone body.
Sometimes, Ivern encountered mortals, and many of them were at least somewhat peaceful. They called him Bramblefoot, or Green Father, or the Old Woodsman, and told tales of his strange benevolence. But he was filled with sadness to see how they still took more than they gave, how they could be so cruel and so careless, and he retreated from their company.
If he bore the God-Willow’s legacy, he needed to cultivate humanity—help them watch, listen, and grow. Being mortal once himself, Ivern knew this would be difficult, so he smiled and challenged himself to complete this task before the final sunset.
He knew he would have time.
Gift of Venom

For most people, a hundred years is a very long time. In a century, one could explore the entire world, meet thousands of people, or complete countless works of art. Now, anyone could easily assume that standing in one spot for over a century would be a colossal waste. But during that time, Ivern Bramblefoot accomplished more than any could dream.
For instance, he settled a longstanding dispute between a colony of lichen and their host boulder, helped each generation of winter squirrels find their forgotten autumn acorns, and coaxed a lone wolf to rejoin her pack, despite the fact that they once called her howling “shrill.”
Ivern’s toes burrowed deep beneath the topsoil, curled between vigilant tubers and oblivious earthworms to mingle with the roots of older trees, and the forest around him bloomed. There was much more, of course, but those examples alone are proof enough of a good century’s work.
Things were going swimmingly until the sassafras started murmuring about dark doings on the edge of the forest.
Hunters! they cried through their roots, alarming half the forest.
Ivern knew sassafras to be anxious trees, raising their leaves in panic over the slightest stray saltsnail, and after all, hunting wasn’t so bad, for nothing is wasted or senseless in the cycle of life. But the sassafras had worried the robins, who told the butterflies, and if butterflies knew a secret, so did the entire forest.
So Ivern stood up, and after briefly soothing the clipper ant colony whose ancestral home he had just displaced, he stalked away, shaking off layers of crusty bark. With each flower-blooming step through the forest, the alarm grew more frantic.
Three of them, nattered the squirrels.
Eyes like twin blood moons, gibbered the scuttle-crabs as they hid in the river.
More bloodthirsty than elmarks, proclaimed the elmarks.
The peregrines swore the hunters were after their eggs. The ivory-wreathed chrysanthemum feared for her illustrious petals—that worried Daisy, who loved her flowers dearly. Ivern calmed each of them, and urged them to hide until trouble passed. He pretended not to notice Daisy following him, since she thought herself to be quite sneaky.
He saw an eight-tusked shagyak dead in the grass. Three arrows were thrust deep into the thick hump of muscle at the base of its neck. As a sappy tear escaped Ivern’s eye, a squirrel he’d named Mikkus scampered up the Green Father’s chest and lapped it off his cheek in solace.
“Hunters take meat for food,” Ivern said aloud. “Hunters whittle bone into toys and tools. Hunters sew pelts into garments and tan skin into boots.”
The corpse was missing its eight shimmering, pearlescent tusks. Ivern touched the ground, and a circle of daisies bloomed around the dead shagyak. He saw a baby stonescale viper slithering away. Stone-scale vipers are wise beyond their years.
“Ssssssssafe?” the snake hiss-asked.
Ivern knew snakes were embarrassed by their lisps and for a long time had avoided words with sibilant sounds. He’d challenged them to embrace the words they feared the most, but they took the lesson to heart and now spoke exclusively in words beginning “s.”
Snakes; such overachievers.
“It’s safe now, little one.” Poor thing must’ve witnessed the whole ordeal. “Coil up here and watch the shagyak for me,” Ivern urged the baby viper. “I’ll return once I get to the bottom of this.”
The shagyak horns clacked relentlessly with each step Risbell took, so much so that she had to stop and repack the tusks lest the noise scare off their next kill. Upriver, those horns would earn them a fortune. City people paid well for half-cocked backwater remedies these days.
Niko, the square-jawed hunter with one eye, uncovered another set of shagyak hoof prints. She beckoned behind her to Eddo, the rich city man with the whalebone bow, and grinned. Eddo’s toothy smile and malicious eyes made Risbell, the youngest of the crew, shiver.
Up ahead, in a glade, another eight-tusked shagyak grazed on its very favorite variety of grass. Each of the three hunters approached slowly and quietly, rustling nary a dead leaf.
In rehearsed synchronicity, all three readied their bows and took careful aim. The shagyak’s head was still bent low, as it dined on the soft mulderberries and scullygrass, obscuring the knot of muscles at the base of its neck. When pierced, the hump would keep the blood flowing while the hunters hewed off horns. It was very important that the shagyak still be alive when the tusks were harvested to increase their potency, Eddo said.
Sweat beaded down her neck as she waited for the shagyak to raise its head. Just as the beast’s head swung up, the glade of low scullygrass bloomed impossibly fast, from ankle height to over their heads in a moment. The stalks stretched toward the sun, flowers blooming instantly in an array of radiant petals. A flowering wall of scullygrass completely obscured the shagyak.
Eddo dropped his bow. Niko’s one good eye looked as if it was going to bulge from its socket. Risbell’s arrow errantly soared through the air. She didn’t command her fingers to release the bowstring. She backed up against the nearest tree, terrified.
“I told you these woods were cursed,” Risbell whispered. “We should leave now.”
“I’ve dealt with sorcery before,” Niko said. “I will do this the old way.”
She placed her arrow back in her quiver and pulled a long, mean-looking dagger from her belt.
Eddo did the same. They both beckoned for Risbell to stay put with the tusks as they stealthily disappeared into the wall of grass. She waited and held her breath, but couldn’t even hear their footfalls. One day she hoped to be as silently deadly as her companions. Still, she couldn’t shake the unnerving feeling that the wall of vegetation was a warning to be heeded. Stories her grandmother told her, of the strange creatures of magic that wandered this world, came back to her. Just children’s tales, she reminded herself.
An eerie and unfamiliar sound echoed through the glade. It wasn’t the shrieking of a shagyak, but the heavy sound of rocks smashing into ground with loud, splintery thuds. Whatever caused the sound, it was enough to make Eddo and Niko race out of the brush, running at full tilt. Their skin was pale and their eyes were wide. Then she saw what had caused her companions to flee.
A flower, a simple ivory-wreathed chrysanthemum, was dancing on top of the grass. It was a rather curious sight.
Then Risbell realized it was getting closer. The grass parted, and there stood a behemoth of stone and moss. A living incarnation of granite, massively strong, and moving with rhythm. In the moment it took Risbell to reconcile what was happening, she heard a calm voice calling to the creature.
“Daisy! Be careful. And... gentle!”
Risbell grabbed the satchel of tusks and ran after Niko and Eddo, trying to remember the route that led back to their camp. At each tree, a new wall of grass sprouted up. Something stalked within the grass, rustling through the leaves as it walked, giggling as Risbell spun in circles trying to find her way out. She was alone in a strange forest, and behind every infernal tree lurked more grass, springing up nearly instantly.
Risbell realized she was being corralled the same way grandmother used to herd sheep. Knowing full well that she was walking into a trap, Risbell squared her shoulders and followed the grass.
Ivern watched as the young hunter stepped out of the grassy maze and approached the shagyak’s body. The poor thing looked positively terrified. She clearly had never seen anything or anyone quite like himself before. He tried to be gentle, but humans tended to be so individual in their reactions. Unlike, say, the caterwauling of smug mewlarks.
“Please. Don’t be frightened. Unless that is your natural state. In which case, fright away. I’ll wait. I really don’t mind.”
It wasn’t Ivern’s intention to frighten anyone. But no one can account for another being’s experience.
“Get on with it,” Risbell said. Her voice quavered and her eyes flinched. “I’ve trespassed, I know. I’m at your mercy. Just let it be quick.”
“Be quick?” Ivern shrugged. “Certainly. It didn’t cross my mind that you might have better places to be. Very well then.”
The girl closed her eyes and lifted her chin, exposing her throat. She reached her hand back toward the scabbard at her belt and wrapped her knuckles around the dagger. If he came for her, there would be a surprise.
“But I only want to know why,” Ivern said in a voice filled with merriment. He gestured with his branchlike fingers to the shagyak’s body. His arm stretched longer than it should, to the dead beast’s back, where he lovingly stroked its blood-mottled fur.
Risbell drew her dagger and then felt a sharp pain in her ankle. A cold sensation spread up her leg. When she looked down, she saw the culprit: a stone-scaled viper, the most venomous asp in all the Aulderwood.
Out of anger and instinct, she lashed out at the snake.
“No!” Ivern shouted.
Viney roots sprouted up from the soil and caught her arm, preventing her strike. They wrapped around her wrists and ankles and knees. She dropped her dagger in her struggles to break free.
“I’m going to die!” she cried. The venom’s coldness spread up past her knees.
The serpent slithered to Ivern’s feet and coiled up the outside of his leg, climbing up and around his body until it vanished into his armpit. It emerged from the back of his head, curling around one of the branches, and licked its forked tongue at Ivern’s ear.
“Sssssssorry,” hissed the snake to Ivern. “Ssssstartled.”
“Please,” Risbell said. “Help me.”
Ivern thought for a second.
“Ah yes!” His honey eyes twinkled with an idea. “There’s one thing that loves shagyaks. Especially dead ones.
“And please, forgive Syrus; he’s only recently hatched and doesn’t know how to control his venom. Gave you a full dose, I’m afraid. He’s asked me to tell you that he’s awfully sorry. You startled him and he reacted purely on instinct,” Ivern said. “Now, watch.”
The tree man knelt before the shagyak’s body, closed his eyes, and hummed a deep, earthy tune. His hands were in the soil, fingers splayed out. Twinkling green pops of light cascaded from his rune-carved head, down his arms, and into the dirt. Odd purple mushrooms popped up from the carcass. They were tiny at first; then their stalks rose as rot overtook the shagyak’s corpse. Soon there was only fur, bones, and an army of violet mushrooms.
“Ah, stingsalve fungus,” Ivern sighed. He plucked one delicately. “Always so punctual.”
The vines retracted from Risbell’s body. She collapsed in a heap. Her hands immediately shot to her heart. The icy pangs of stone-scale venom had reached her chest.
“Eat this,” Ivern said, offered the purple mushroom to the dying woman. “It might not taste like salamander dew or sunshine, but it’s not as bad as lippertick apples.”
Risbell had no idea what the strange treeman was on about, but her options were severely limited at that moment. A voice came back to her from the past. Her grandmother’s. Trust in nature; the Green Father never leads you astray.
She grabbed the mushroom from Ivern’s hand. It tasted like bitter tea and mulch; a disappointing final meal. Then the icy grip around her heart thawed and retreated. Within minutes, her legs worked again.
As she recovered, Ivern made her a tincture of odd leaves, tree sap, and water from a spring he’d discovered with his toes. He served it to her in a bird’s nest cup that a peregrine dropped into his hand.
“You’re him, aren’t you? The Green Father.”
Ivern shrugged as if he didn’t know. “You know what we could do here?” he said, turning his attention to the shagyak bones. “Moss always loves to pretty up the place.”
As soon as he said it, a thick carpet of moss crept over the bones. With the mushrooms, what once had been a grisly sight was now beautiful.
“Sheldon would love how beautiful his bones turned out to be. Badgers will use his ribs as shelter from the autumn storms. Nothing is ever wasted,” Ivern said, turning his attention to Risbell. “It seemed so senseless, but it makes perfect sense. If it wasn’t killed, you wouldn’t have lived.”
“We wanted its tusks,” Risbell said. She fixed her eyes on her boots in shame. “Rich people clamor for them. Willing to pay a lot.”
“I remember money. It’s rarely a good motivator.”
“I knew we shouldn’t have killed it. My grandmother used to tell me that if one must kill, one must use all parts to honor the beast.”
“I would love to meet your grandmother,” Ivern said.
“She is gone to the ground.”
“Returning to the soil that which the soil gave is noble.”
“I’m sorry,” Risbell said after a long moment of silence.
“All life is precious.” The gentleness and warmth and forgiveness in Ivern’s voice moved Risbell to tears. Ivern patted her on the head. “I probably couldn’t have handled the whole thing better myself. I’ve so much to remember about humans, and so much too I had forgotten to ever learn.”
Ivern helped Risbell to her feet.
“I must be off now. I promised the tadpoles of Southern Pond that I would monitor their elections for the king of lily pads. It’s quite the contentious race.”
A while later, Risbell emerged from the tree line near the river. After gulping down some water, she dug a hole on the banks and tenderly placed the shagyak tusks inside. She scooped up a handful of dirt and recited the prayers of honor her grandmother had taught her. She repeated this ritual until the horns were buried. Then she bowed her head in reverence and left the site marked as a grave.
From the depths of the Aulderwood, Ivern smiled at the gesture. The shagyak herd would be proud.
Janna

Since ancient times, there have been those who prayed to the winds. From sailors seeking good weather to the downtrodden calling on winds of change, mortals have placed their hope in the tempests and gales that sweep across Runeterra.
Surprisingly, the wind sometimes would seem to answer. Seafarers might spot a bright blue bird just before a healthy tailwind billowed their sails. Others could swear they’d heard a whistling in the air right before a storm, as if to warn them of its approach. As word of these omens spread, sightings of the bird grew more common. Some even swore they had seen the bird transform into a woman. With tapered ears and flowing hair, this mysterious maiden was said to float above the water and direct the wind with a flick of her staff.
The faithful called this wind spirit Jan’ahrem, an ancient Shuriman word meaning “guardian,” for she always seemed to appear in moments of great need. As time went on, she came to be known more simply as Janna.
Her name spread across the Shuriman continent’s coasts, and the seafaring people of Oshra Va’Zaun were her most fervent believers. They depended on calm seas for the trade ships that traveled through their city’s port. Statues and shrines were raised in gratitude for Janna’s benevolence. After the Shuriman empire enveloped the city, these displays of devotion continued… for a time.
When the emperor issued decrees suppressing “false idols,” Janna’s statues were torn down. Yet despite the growing worship of the Ascended god-warriors, many still offered quiet prayers to Janna, for what could god-warriors do to protect ships from storms? These mortals often wore amulets with the image of a bluebird—smaller, more personal tokens in Janna’s honor.
Through all of this, Janna continued to aid the vulnerable who called upon her. In a region rife with upheaval, she remained constant. Those with an eye toward history might appreciate the irony of “winds of change” being the only thing that did not.
After the great empire fell, once verdant lands became a desert as the remaining Ascended brought war and chaos—yet Janna shielded the city, now known as Zaun, from the turmoil.
Over the centuries, Janna watched as Zaun’s ambitions grew. While the city was still a robust trade port, its denizens aspired for more. They dreamed of cutting a canal through the isthmus on which they lived, opening a path that would unite the seas surrounding Valoran and Shurima. The city poured great effort, wealth, and time into the construction. Prayers to Janna waned as mortal dreams focused on mortal machinations.
However, the canal’s excavation made great portions of Zaun unstable. On one cataclysmic day, entire districts on the River Pilt collapsed below the western sea level, and thousands suddenly found themselves fighting for their lives against the clashing currents.
As these unfortunate souls faced their doom, they prayed for salvation. They called out the name of their ancient protector:
Janna.
Though these mortals had seemingly forgotten her until now, Janna did not hesitate to help them. An immense gale swept over the city as she took corporeal form. Impossible walls of air held flooding waters at bay as people fled the drowned ruins of their homes. Ferocious gusts of wind cut through the suffocating smoke from fires caused by the destruction. Yet while she saved many, thousands still perished that day—but all who survived witnessed Janna’s benevolence. Never again would the city’s people forget their savior.
To this day, through the rise of Piltover and the ongoing struggles of modern Zaun, Janna’s faithful wear bluebird medallions and show reverence to the winds. And through it all, Janna stands steadfast by the humble and the meek. Zaunites all know that whether they fight for breath amid the toxic clouds of the Zaun Gray, stand against the brutality of violent chem-barons, or fend off other threats, Janna will not abandon them.
Deep Breath

They think Zaun is where the losers live.
They won’t admit it, of course – they’ll smile through their teeth and pat us on the back and tell us that Piltover would be nowhere without Zaun. Our hard workers! Our bustling trade! Our chemtech that everyone in Piltover pretends they don’t buy, except they constantly do! Zaun is a vital part of Piltover’s culture, they’ll say.
All lies. Obviously.
They think Zaun is where the idiots go. People too stupid to make it in Piltover’s golden towers.
People like me.
I spent months dealing shimmer so I could afford to apply for Clan Holloran’s apprenticeship. I studied every crusty, dog-eared book I could find on gearwork machinery. I built a prototype gearbrace for people with broken or arthritic wrists that increased their mobility. I did everything I could have done to earn an apprenticeship in Piltover. I even made it to the final stage of the vetting process: a face-to-face meeting with Boswell Holloran himself.
They said it was a formality. Just a way to welcome me to the family.
He entered the room, looked down at my Gray-stained clothes, and laughed a strangled, joyless laugh. He said, “Sorry, my boy – we don’t take sump-rats here.”
He never even sat down.
So now I’m back here. In Zaun. One more idiot.
The Gray rolls through the streets, welcoming me back. Most days, it’s thin enough that you can breathe deep without coughing up something wet. Today, though, is what we call a Grayout. You choke with every breath. Your chest feels tight. Can’t see much past your fingertips. I want to run, but I know there’s nowhere to run to. The Gray feels like it’s closing in on me, crushing me, smothering me.
These are the times I pray to Janna.
Not everyone in Zaun believes she’s real, but my mother always had faith. She told me a bluebird hovered outside her window on the day of my birth, and she knew – she knew – it was Janna telling her I was going to be fine.
She was wrong, of course. I wasn’t fine, in the end. Couple of years ago, she – my mother – died while sump-scrapping, and I had to raise myself with the few gears she left me. Then, the usual: couldn’t make friends. Got beaten up a lot. Boy I loved didn’t love me back. Tried to study, tried to think my way up to Piltover. Couldn’t. Figured Janna had forgotten about me.
But I still keep the pendant my mother gave me: a wooden engraving depicting the bluebird she saw. Just in case of moments like these.
So I sit on the wet ground because I don’t care enough to find a bench, and I take out the bluebird pendant I always keep tucked in my shirt, and I talk to Janna.
Not out loud, of course – don’t need people thinking I’m some chem-burnt freak – but still, I talk to her.
I don’t ask her for anything. I just tell her about my day, and the day before that, and how scared I am that I’ll never become anything worthwhile and that I’ll die down here knee-deep in the Sump with nothing to show for it just like my mother, and that sometimes I just want to run away somewhere I can breathe and stop being so frightened and not feel like crying all the time and how I hate myself for feeling like I want to cry because I have it so much easier than some other people, and how sometimes I think about throwing myself into the chem pools of the Sump, just throwing myself in with my mother where I’d let myself sink to the bottom and my lungs would fill with fluid because then it’d be over, at least. I tell Janna I hope she’s okay. I hope she’s happy, wherever she is.
That’s when I feel the breeze caress my cheek. Just a light flutter, but it’s there. Soon, I can feel it blow hair across my face. The wind whistles loud and fast, and soon it’s whipping my coat in the air and I feel as though I’m at the center of a maelstrom.
The Gray swirls before me, pushed up by a breeze that seems to flow from everywhere at once. The fog slowly dissipates, and I can see other passersby on the Entresol level watching it float away.
The wind stops.
The Gray clears.
I can breathe.
Not just small, cautious gasps, but deep breaths that fill my lungs with cold, fresh air. No longer veiled in Gray, the sun shines past the towers of Piltover into Zaun itself.
I can see the Piltovans above, peering down at us. Without the Gray clouding their view, they can see us from their lofty bridges and balconies. I don’t think they like it very much. Nobody wants to be reminded they live above a slum; I see a few scowls.
That’s when I see him again: Boswell Holloran. Holding a sweetcake in his hand, looking down at me again. An expression of disgust on his face, just like before.
I’m so busy staring at his contemptuous face that I don’t notice the presence behind me until her hand is on my shoulder.
“It’s okay,” she says, and I know without turning who it is.
She squeezes my shoulder, then kneels and crosses her arms in front of my chest, pulling me into a hug.
“It’s going to be okay,” she says.
Strands of her hair fall onto my shoulders. She smells like the air after a long rain.
“It might not be okay now. You might not be okay for a while. And that’s fine. But someday, without knowing exactly when or why or how it happened, you’ll feel happy,” she says. My face is warm and wet and I don’t know when I started crying but it’s a relief, like the clouds are clearing, and I hold her arms and she holds me, just telling me over and over that it’s okay, that she’s here, that things will be better.
I don’t know how long she holds me, but soon I see everyone on Zaun’s Entresol and the balconies of Piltover above are staring.
Before I can say anything, she says, “Don’t think about them. Just take care of yourself. Will you do that for me?”
I try to speak, but instead I just nod.
“Thank you,” she says, and she kisses my wet cheek and gives me one last, quick squeeze.
She rises and glides past me. For the first time, I see her in her entirety – a tall, ethereal figure that I would’ve assumed was from my imagination if she hadn’t just touched me. I notice her long, pointed ears. Feet that don’t touch the ground. Hair flowing in the wind, even right now when there isn’t any. Eyes so blue I feel a little cold just looking at her.
But then she smiles, winks, and says, “You’ll want to watch this next part.”
There’s a massive gust of wind, so fast and sharp I have to cover my eyes. When I open them again she’s gone, but the wind is still blowing. It blows up toward Piltover and its gawking citizens.
It whistles as it picks up speed and strength, and the Pilties run for cover but it’s too late, the breeze hits them full force, sending their frocks sailing and mussing their hair. Boswell Holloran shrieks in terror as the wind launches him off the balcony.
It seems as if he’s about to plummet toward certain death, but another gust of wind shoots up toward him, and his descent slows significantly, as if the wind is guiding him down. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, though. Even though he’s falling with all the velocity of a tumbling leaf, He screams the entire way down. Very high pitched. Very undignified.
His clothes flap upward, smacking him in the face as he descends, until he’s hovering a few inches above a puddle.
“I –,” he begins, before the wind disappears altogether and he plops ass-first into the puddle, ruining what I assume was a very expensive ensemble. He yelps in a mixture of surprise, pain, and irritation, splashing around like an angry child. He tries to get to his feet, only to slip and fall back down all over again. If I’m being completely honest, he looks like an idiot.
And I can’t stop laughing.
In Sight of Land

Ian St. Martin

The waters were eerily still at night. Their surface was so undisturbed, one might mistake it for dark glass mirroring the starlit skies above. Moonlight bathed everything in cold, silver light, though its radiance was slowly dying.
The moon was being suffocated. The sky between it and those who looked upon its beauty had been overtaken by questing tendrils of shadow that branched across the night like living, malevolent storms. Their like had been seen many times before, and many were the souls carried off within them into fathomless torment, but never had they grown so large, or reached so far.
For all their horror, the world had grown used to Harrowings, tempests of darkness teeming with monstrous wraiths that emanated from the horrid Shadow Isles. Those in their path learned how to watch for the signs, how to survive their wailing fury, and how to mourn those taken by them. But what was happening now, what was reaching up to swallow the sky, was something different.
Almost like there was some unseen hand guiding it.
Tonight, though, one could still glimpse the world and the stillness of the sea. Tonight, its perfection was marred only by tiny islands of splintered wood, torn cloth, and the bobbing forms of the newly dead.
Tudre tried not to look at them. In the first hours after their doomed flight and the desperate struggle to abandon the ship, he had screamed himself hoarse, calling out in hope that anyone else might have survived. But it was in vain. He was alone.
And so Tudre marshaled his remaining strength to cling to a hunk of driftwood, and resist the icy waters seeking to carry him down to their lightless depths. He could almost hear the deep calling up to him to join all the others, her silver tongue carrying the promise of sleep, if he would just draw her water into his lungs.
The sea had numbed his legs, but Tudre willed himself to move them. He shut out the clarion call of despair that tugged at his boots with the gentle comforts of death. Tudre had not reached this far in life through submission, and he would not start now.
He just had to get to land. Tudre had sailed with all speed to make for Fallgren, a small island off the Valoran mainland. They had gotten so close—it couldn’t be far.
Though exhaustion and the cold blurred his vision, Tudre caught movement out of the corner of his good eye. He focused, revealing it to be a scrap of oiled vellum drifting close to the splintered sanctuary he held fast to. Tudre peered at it. The marks and ink on its surface were marred and smeared by water, yet still intelligible.
It was a piece of their navigation chart. Scrawled onto it was a rough, timeworn map of trade and shipping routes and measurements of maritime distance. The names of known places, and even a few secret ones. Crude drawings of clouds with faces, breathing out gusts from between their lips to mark the best lanes where the winds might bless a ship with speedy passage, for those who dared—
“You’re insane.”
Tudre snorted, reaching up to catch the swinging lantern that was the cabin’s sole source of light. The seas were getting rougher, and he had no time to suffer his quartermaster’s nonsense.
“Gettin’ soft in yer old age, Mister Bowsy?” Tudre grinned his big, cunning grin as he baited the old corsair next to him. “No shame if ye are. Y’can tell me, though do me a kindness and say so now. I would need someone else in your spot, to keep the crew in line.”
“I ain’t scared.” Bowsy steadied himself to spit a wad of phlegm onto the deck through the gap made by a missing tooth. “But I see sense. This’ll get us killed, skipper. And I ain’t the only one who thinks so.”
“We go fast, we get rich.” Tudre stabbed a finger down at the old map set on the table before them. He swept aside a tiny puddle that had collected on it from a drip above their heads, and then traced a route denoted in dull red ink. “Every other ship around is docked, crews actin’ like they be back on dear ol’ mum’s teat. But commerce ne’er sleeps, Mister Bowsy. Think on what’s sittin’ out there, unguarded! We make a run, we can get what they’re all too craven to collect.”
“They’re tied to dock because it’s a damn Harrowing.” Bowsy crossed his thick, tattooed arms over his chest. “Biggest anyone’s seen, mind you, even the oldest ones. Whatever’s out there ain’t worth bein’ swept up in that, I’m tellin’ ya!”
Tudre straightened, finding some of the red ink had come off the map to stain his finger. He stared his quartermaster in the eye. His voice dropped, settling into the colder tone that meant the discussion had run its course. “Anyone wants out can go, no repercussions. Less hands means a greater stake for those with the grit to be going out. And we are going out, make no mistake.”
Bowsy tried, one last time. “At least let it be put to a vote. Let the crew have their say in it.”
“Not this time.”
Tudre’s good eye bored into the quartermaster, unyielding. Bowsy held his gaze for a moment that stretched into another, but no further. He looked away.
“Now.” Tudre’s grin returned, full and cunning. “You in or not?”
Shaking his head, Tudre tried to banish the memory from his mind, but the effort left him dizzy. The unwelcome remembrance held fast despite his efforts, clinging behind his eyes like pitch. Or as though something was holding it there, forcing him to see.
He felt a strangeness fall over him then, almost like mist curling up off the water. A sailor’s life was fraught with omens and ill portents, gut feelings and lucky breaks. Tudre had long become attuned to a world that existed side by side with his own, and every now and then the walls between them thinned. It was happening to him now, like a dull throb. An insistent sense of dread and anger, seeking to work guilt into his bones. But he’d have none of it.
“Boat’s made fer sailin’, ask any man,” Tudre wheezed through chattering teeth. “I done that run dozens o’ times. See a chance at fortune, ya take it. Can’t live this life if ye ain’t the darin’ sort!”
Tudre’s words bore the hallmark bravado he had carried so well in his life, a bounty of natural grit and ruthlessness that had seen him not only rise to captain his own ship, but keep it. The high seas were unkind to the weak, as was Bilgewater and any big port whose doors he had ever darkened. Pass on an opportunity, and you might look back and see it was the last chance you had to hold onto your stake, or keep your guts in your belly.
But out in this night, and this cold, there was no one to be cowed by his speech. Only the dread that rolled up from the deep. It persisted, undiminished.
“Land is close,” Tudre told himself. “It has t’be.”
Tudre had not realized he was moving. His hunk of driftwood lived up to its name, lazily edging forward into a tangled field of debris. The corsair looked over the floating collection of scraps and splinters, but found no better means to keep from drowning. There was a bolt of sailcloth among it, but Tudre knew it would prove more a hazard than a savior. He had seen more than one panicked sailor ensnared by such in a storm, as good as chains if the winds and spray carried them over the side.
Concern creased Tudre’s weathered features as the sailcloth came closer. He put out a hand, trying to push it away, but his arm sank into it to the elbow, stealing his balance. He snarled through clenched teeth, fighting the sails—
“Hold fast!” Tudre bellowed, trying to raise his voice above the storms. “Secure that line!”
He couldn’t tell if anyone could hear him as he moved about, shouting orders. Rain and spray and shadows lashed the deck, the sails, the crew. Gales roared over and around them, not with wind but with voices. A howling choir of the harrowed damned had befallen Tudre on the last leg of his run. His ship was fast, but not fast enough to stay ahead of it.
Their hold was swollen with treasure. Goods pilfered from coastal stores, trade ships at anchor, all of it easy taking as their keepers had abandoned their posts to flee the Harrowing. That fortune was slowing them now. Bowsy would have admonished Tudre for not believing him, if he hadn’t been the first man plucked up by the darkness bearing down on them.
“Skipper!”
Tudre whirled around, hearing the boy Flir and seeing him grappling with a bolt of sail. Flir was fighting desperately to lash the sail to the mast, to keep it from stripping and snapping loose, but he was losing that fight.
Tudre locked eyes with Flir, the boy pleading for his help as the oiled cloth whipped and defied his every attempt to secure it to a spar of timber. Tudre weighed going toward him, but then saw splinters fly from the base of the spar, and all doubt fled.
“Skip—”
The timber snapped, carrying Flir up into the roiling dark. Tudre saw his eyes, wide in terror as he flew into a cloud of twisted faces and outstretched, clutching hands. A heartbeat later the boy vanished, just one more scream added to the choir.
“Better him than I,” Tudre snarled against the silent accusation of the sea. He felt the pressure of it inside his skull, the feeling of being watched even though he was alone.
The sailcloth tangled around his forearm, holding tighter the more he tried to escape.
“Better him,” he repeated, glaring down at the scrap of sail clinging to his hand, “than I.”
Why? The cloth encircling his wrist seemed to ask.
Tudre shivered, but not from the cold. The mind was playing tricks now, beaten and worn out and desperate as he was. He tried to yank his arm free, but stopped midway as he nearly lost hold of the driftwood.
“Because I be the damn captain!” Tudre spat. “’Tis my ship, and my charge. Mine’s a duty to every lad and lass aboard, not just Flir the boy. I run off to aid him, get snatched up too, what then? What becomes of the rest of me crew, without me there?”
For a moment, anger got the best of Tudre. He twisted, pulling his arm back sharply, and the sail finally relinquished its hold. But it swung him around, putting his back to the driftwood, and it was another second until his grip left him and he was under the water.
Silence rushed over him, and shocking cold. Tudre flailed for a few heartbeats before asserting control over himself. He was a seasoned man of the sea, not some green deckhand. He looked up, seeing the surface just above him, and tried to pump his arms, his legs, to raise himself back up. But he couldn’t move.
It was more than just tired muscles numbed by cold. Tudre’s good eye flicked this way and that, seeing only faint silhouettes in the waning moonlight. More debris, the lighter bits of a ship that had yet to settle down into the inky deep. And bodies. Bodies of women and men who called him captain.
Who relied upon you...
The words struck Tudre, a feeling rather than a sound.
... and you betrayed them.
Tudre broke free of whatever had been holding him, panic lending the strength he needed to surface. He gasped for air, twisting about in search of the driftwood. He spotted it and grabbed hold, embracing it like his first love.
It was only then, as his fingers sought purchase on its slick shape, that Tudre realized what it was. It was part of a lifeboat. One of the lifeboats—
“Into the lifeboats!” someone was screaming. “Abandon ship!”
There were things on board the ship now. Wretched, horrible, blighted beasts that had detached from the storm like lice shed from a dog. They stalked through the torrent without effort, undisturbed by the chaos as they butchered Tudre’s crew with fang and claw.
Tudre and his mates had earned monikers over their careers. Privateers, merchants, businessmen, all true, but just as true were pirates, corsairs, reavers. They were not strangers to violence, and every one of them walked the decks with more weapons strapped to them than they had hands to carry.
But they fell to the wraiths like wheat before the scythe. Men and women Tudre had seen brawl, hunt great leviathans of the deep, fight in the vanguard of boarding actions braving cannon and steel, begged like children to monsters that couldn’t understand a thing like mercy, much less provide it. All they provided was the severance of body and spirit.
Tudre punched and shoved his way through the mass of panicked faces crowding around the few leaky lifeboats the ship had. Several had been left behind at port to reduce weight so they could load more spoils, and now men and women packed the tiny wooden craft, far more than the boats could carry.
“Make way!” Tudre cuffed a shipmate aside, swinging one leg onto the closest lifeboat.
“Hold!” a man called out from the bow of the lifeboat. “This one’s full up! Any more, and she’ll roll us all down below.”
“Cast off!” said Tudre, fingers tightening on the hilt of the cutlass at his waist.
“Can’t risk it with this many on ’er now!” the man replied.
Tudre put a hand on the back of the man’s neck, pulling him close as though to whisper a secret in his ear. Instead the captain’s cutlass found his gut, steel bursting out the man’s back in a welter of blood rendered black by the madness swallowing them all. In one smooth motion, Tudre withdrew his blade and pitched the lifeless body over the side.
“There,” he hissed. “One body fewer. Now cast off!”
“I be a survivor,” Tudre argued, though the strength was missing from his words. “The strong live on, and the weak die. I chose life, a chance at it, for everyone in that boat, rather than capsizing it and leaving all to drown. They at least had the chance.”
He didn’t know who he was trying to convince anymore. The sense of guilt that had become a voice was now many, thundering in his mind like broadside cannon.
... you did this...
... our lives forfeit...
... your greed...
... killed us all...
... murderer...
... turncoat...
Tudre lowered his head, resting his brow against the wreckage of the lifeboat, buckling under the weight of their silent condemnation. “Stop.”
The moon’s light was nearly gone. Tudre looked up, seeing a faint blurred strip on the horizon. His soul flared with delirious hope.
“Land,” he gasped.
Nervous, hysterical laughter bubbled from Tudre’s lips, overcome with relief and the prospect of seeing the sun rise over another day. The laughter stopped abruptly, when something jostled him from behind.
He noticed then the dark shapes all around him. He could have sworn none of them had been near just moments before. Yet here they floated, bobbing gently, the still flesh of his crew surrounding him.
“I never did you ill,” said Tudre, his voice shaking. “Anythin’ we did was for yer fortune as much as mine. All of you knew the risks. You’d have done the same as me!”
The voices assailing Tudre seemed to emanate from the corpses. Their cries buffeted him, stripping his nerves bare.
“Stop!” he pleaded. “I beg ye!”
But they would not cease. They merged into a single terrible chorus, repeating a single word like a dirge to drive down and bury in Tudre’s heart.
BETRAYER!
“No!” he screamed in denial, the sound carrying over the lightless water.
As one, the spirits of Tudre’s crew sat up, peeling away from their bodies. Flir, Bowsy, all of them staring at him with slack faces and clouded eyes. No sound left their blue lips, but Tudre’s head was filled to bursting with their rage.
“No,” he wailed, screwing his eyes shut. “Just leave me be!”
Suddenly the driftwood sank a fraction, as though under added weight. Tudre forced open his eyes, and found himself staring up into the face of death.
It was a woman, tall and lithe, standing atop the driftwood with a balance that was as effortless as it was impossible. Where her flesh should have been was instead smoldering, spectral blue energy. She was clad in battered armor and a helm with a long, black plume. A trio of spears had been driven through her chest, and she had another gripped in her hand.
The sight of her turned Tudre’s insides cold and leaden. Everyone knew the legends, the whispered things a man could laugh off as stories meant to scare children. Stories of an avatar of revenge, appearing wherever injustice had been done and voices cried out for vindication.
They cried out for Lady Vengeance, and with spear in hand, she would answer with damnation.
Tudre’s crew came closer, the woman’s eerie light reflected in their blazing, sapphire eyes.
“No,” Tudre pleaded, as the sight before him, cutting him off from the promise of land ahead, wrenched away the last of his resolve. “I was only tryin’ to make me way in this world. My crew didn’t deserve their fate, no, but nor do I deserve this. You don’t know what it be like, leading those in your command to their doom, to be responsible for the damnation of their very souls!”
Sudden life was brought to her cold, unreadable features, almost as if there was a sound in the distance that only she could hear. The woman glared down at Tudre, boring into the core of him. Rage twisted her face in a rictus for an instant, and then it was gone.
Slowly she lowered her spear, resting it just under Tudre’s throat. She pushed, though not with enough pressure to pierce his flesh and impale him. Just enough to separate him from the driftwood, and push him under the water.
Tudre’s mind screamed to fight, the urge to survive willing him to rise, but he could not. The spear tip at his throat held him beneath. Tudre looked up at that shimmering, dispassionate visage. Lady Vengeance had come for him at last.
The voices had all gone silent. His crew sank down with him, closing around him like fingers making a fist. All light faded. Tudre finally succumbed to the deep, and drew her into his lungs. The last bubbles slipped from his lips as he drifted lower into the darkness, and he went down, just in sight of land.
Irelia

Even as a small child, Xan Irelia was fascinated by the grace and beauty of human movement. Under her grandmother’s tutelage, she learned the traditional silk dances of her province—though she was dubious of their supposedly mystical connection to the Spirit of Ionia, Irelia’s love for the dances was real. Seeking to master the art, she eventually left home to study with some of Ionia’s most respected performers at the Placidium of Navori.
Irelia’s people were peaceful and sought harmony with their neighbors, but rumors of foreign invaders sighted off the coast unsettled many at the Placidium. Irelia returned to her village to find it already occupied, with steel-helmed soldiers from distant Noxus shoving unarmed civilians through the streets with the butts of their spears. The Noxian Admiral Duqal had seized the Xan home to quarter his fleet officers.
Irelia’s brothers and her father Lito had evidently protested; her entire family now lay in unmarked graves, in the gardens.
Ravaged by grief, the young girl saw Duqal’s men hauling valuables from the house. Among the loot was a large metal crest, depicting the Xan family emblem. Irelia raced to it, wrenching it from Noxian hands. The admiral himself hurled her to the ground, and had his warriors shatter the crest with a heavy iron maul, before ordering them to dig a fresh grave for this upstart child.
As they surrounded her, Irelia averted her eyes, looking to the pieces of the Xan crest scattered on the ground. From deep within her soul, she felt a strange rhythm begin to beat. The shards of metal began to twitch, to twist, moving seemingly on their own, and Irelia felt the serene joy of the ancient dances once more...
With a sweep of her arm, she sent the pieces flying like ragged blades, cutting clean through two of the Noxians. As Duqal and his officers reeled in shock, Irelia snatched up the shards of her crest, and fled the village.
In the quiet forests beyond, Irelia mourned her family, and thought back to her grandmother’s teachings. She realized that the techniques she had learned were more than mere dances—they were a powerful expression of something far greater.
The Noxian occupation soon began to test the fragile peace of the First Lands. It was said that even the religious leader Karma had been forced to strike back at the invaders with deadly magic, though her followers had now withdrawn to the Lasting Altar and would not condone any further violence. Across Navori, dissenting voices began to band together. A resistance was forming, one that would not rest until Ionia was free once more. Irelia joined their ranks, performing her cherished dances for them in the woodland camps, to preserve some vestige of their vanishing culture.
She was barely fourteen years old when she found herself back at the Placidium. Her band of resistance fighters joined the militia who had sworn to guard the monasteries and wild, sacred gardens.
But Noxus knew only too well what this place represented. A particularly cunning general named Jericho Swain captured the Placidium and took its defenders hostage, hoping to lure the inevitable reinforcements into a trap.
It was in this moment that Irelia rose to meet her destiny. Freed from her bonds, she unleashed the full potential of her ancient blade dance, lashing out with graceful zeal. A dozen of Swain’s veterans fell, sowing chaos in their ranks as the other captives joined her, before she struck down the general himself—the sight of this rebellious girl hefting his severed arm over her head would be the turning point of the war.
This victory, the Great Stand at Navori, ensured that everyone in Ionia knew the name of Xan Irelia, and looked to her for leadership. Reluctantly, she led the growing resistance for almost three years of grueling battle before her triumph at Dalu Bay. There, she finally cornered the defeated Admiral Duqal, and exacted the vengeance she had sought for so long.
Though the war has long since ended, Ionia has been permanently changed by it. The First Lands are now divided, with rival factions fighting each other almost as bitterly as they did the Noxians. Many continue to look to Irelia for answers but, while others might welcome such power, Irelia remains uneasy with it.
At heart, she still yearns only to dance alone.
Stains on a Name

John O’Bryan

“I believed in you, Blade Dancer!” the man choked, his lips frothing red. “You showed us the path…”
Irelia held her stance. She looked down at him, this devotee of the Brotherhood, on his knees in the mud. He had been pierced over and over by her blades.
“We could have been strong... United as one people...”
“That is not the Spirit’s way,” she replied. “If that’s what you think, then you are wrong.”
He had come to this village, waiting for the perfect moment before making his move. But he was clumsy and awkward. She had danced around him easily.
He had been determined to kill her. The worst thing was, he wasn’t the first. Irelia’s blades now hovered at her shoulders, following the graceful, circling movements of her hands. One simple gesture, and it could all be over.
He spat blood on the ground, his eyes burning with hatred. “If you will not lead Navori, the Brotherhood will.”
He tried weakly to raise his dagger against her. This man would never be taken alive.
“I believed in you,” he said again. “We all did.”
She sighed. “I never asked you to. I’m sorry.”
Her limbs flowing lithely around her body, Irelia whirled to the side, sending the blades out in a deadly arc. They sliced cleanly through his flesh, as much an act of mercy as self-defense.
A simple turn, just one elegant step, brought the blades back to her, their edges slick with blood. The man’s lifeless body toppled forward.
“May the Spirit bring you to peace,” said Irelia.

Her burden was heavy as she returned to the camp. When she finally entered the privacy of her tent, she released a long, tense breath, and lowered herself to the reed mat.
She closed her eyes.
“Father,” she whispered. “I have bloodied our family’s honor once more. Forgive me.”
Irelia spread the blades out before her—like Ionia itself, they were the fractured pieces of something that had once been far greater, now turned to violent ends. She poured water into a small wooden bowl, and dipped in a rag. The simple act of cleaning the shards had become a ritual, one that she felt compelled to undertake after every battle she fought.
The water slowly turned red as she worked. But beneath the fresh blood, the metal carried much darker, older stains that she could never seem to remove completely.
This was the blood of her people. The blood of Navori itself.
Lost in thought, she began to slide the blades around, slowly reforming them into her family crest. Its three symbols lay cracked before her, representing the Xan name, her home province, and the rest of the First Lands, all in harmony. Her ancestors had always lived by the teachings of Karma. They inflicted no harm on anyone, regardless of circumstance.
And now, here was their seal and crest turned into weapons, and takers of countless lives at that.
She could feel the eyes of her brothers upon her. Even in their eternal rest, at one with the Spirit of Ionia, she feared earning their disappointment, their resentment. She pictured her dear old O-ma too, broken and sobbing, devastated by each kill...
Many times, that thought had made Irelia weep more than any other.
The blades would never be clean. She knew that—but she would still do right by those she had harmed.
She passed many of her followers on her way to the burial grounds. Though they looked to Irelia for leadership, now more than ever, she recognized so few of them. With each winter the faces became less familiar, as the last of the old resistance were replaced by new and more zealous fighters. They came from faraway provinces, and towns she had never heard of.
Even so, she halted often to return their half-hearted salutes and bows, and would accept none of their help in dragging the shrouded body of her dead attacker along the road.
Finding an open patch beneath the blossom-heavy branches of a tree, Irelia set him down carefully, and turned to join in the grief of the widows and widowers, the orphaned sons and daughters.
“I know it is never easy,” she said, placing a consoling hand on the shoulder of one man, who knelt before a pair of fresh graves, “but each life, and each death, are part of—”
He batted away her hand, glaring at her until she retreated.
“It was necessary,” she murmured to herself as she prepared to start digging, though she remained unconvinced by her own words. “It is all necessary. The Brotherhood would grip this land in an iron fist. No better than Noxus…”
Her eyes fell upon an old woman, sat on a simple wooden stool at the foot of the tree, singing a soft lament. Streams of tears had dried on her face. She was dressed plainly, with one hand resting on a grave marker next to her. It was adorned with food offerings for the deceased.
To Irelia’s surprise, the woman halted her song.
“Bringing us some company, are you, daughter of Xan?” she called out. “Ain’t much room left round here. But any friend of yours is a friend of ours.”
“I did not know this man, but thank you. He deserved better than he was given in life.” Irelia took an uncertain step closer. “You were singing one of the old songs.”
“Helps keep my mind off bad things,” said the old woman, tamping down a patch of dirt on the grave. “This is my nephew.”
“I… I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sure you did all you could. Besides, this is all part of the Spirit’s way, you know?”
Her kindly demeanor had put Irelia entirely at ease. “Sometimes I don’t know,” she confided.
The old woman perked up, expecting more. Irelia continued, finally giving voice to the doubts that had plagued her for a long time.
“Sometimes… Sometimes I wonder if I killed our peace.”
“Killed our peace?”
“When Noxus invaded. Perhaps we lost something when we fought back, something we can never restore.”
The woman stood, trying in vain to open a large nut. “Child, I remember peace well,” she said, thrusting one gnarled, knobby finger at Irelia. “Those were good days! Nobody misses peace more than me.”
She pulled a knife from her belt, and began to pry open the nutshell.
“But the world’s a different place now. What worked then don’t work today. No point dwelling on it.”
At last, the shell cracked, and she placed the broken kernel into a bowl on the grave.

“See, there? Used to be able to open these with my hands alone, now I need a knife. The young me would’ve fretted about it, damaging the nut like that. But that me don’t matter, because she don’t have to live in the here and now.” The old woman nodded kindly, then went back to her singing.
For the first time in a long while, Irelia smiled. Within her satchel, wrapped in protective cloth, were the shard-blades of her shattered family crest. She knew it would never be clean, never be whole again.
But they were always ready, and that would have to be enough.
Brand

The son of a Freljordian healer, Kegan Rodhe was born an outsider. The little magic and herbcraft his mother possessed allowed them both to survive on the fringes of a small coastal community named Rygann’s Reach. Friends were few and far between. Even as a young boy, he knew his father was an enemy reaver, and that he—and Kegan by extension—was the reason his mother was shunned. The villagers called him “the reaver-bastard”. Kegan allowed his loneliness and resentment to smolder, often turning violent.
After enduring years of seemingly endless winter, his mother’s frail body finally gave in. As Kegan spread her funeral ashes, he thought of the people she had spent her life healing. None had come to pay their respects. He knew they wished him to disappear into the cold air as well.
He would oblige them, but not before he took his revenge. He burned down the village and fled into the night, leaving himself with scars that would never heal.
Kegan wandered the frozen tundra of the Freljord. He told himself that he was searching for his father, but he knew deep down he was looking for a friend... or, at the very least, a kind face. Finding neither, he holed himself up in a cave, and waited to die.
It was not death that came to him, but another outsider.
The mysterious mage named Ryze saw potential in this half-frozen young man, and took him on as an apprentice. Teacher and student struggled as Kegan’s nascent, wild magic frustrated them both, and Ryze’s requests for patience and humility often fell on deaf ears.
Unfortunately, instructing Kegan would always come second to Ryze’s original mission. He had long sought to collect and hide away a power that could be Runeterra’s unmaking—the legendary World Runes. After tracking down one such fragment, Kegan faced the same desperate temptation that had driven so many before him to madness. The Runes were the source of all magic in the world and, against his master’s warnings, he chose to seize that power for himself.
Ryze was forced to watch in failure as his apprentice was burned away by the raw magic, Kegan’s soul utterly consumed. The creature that was born in that moment was no longer the bitter young man Ryze had rescued from the snows, nor the Freljordian mage he had come to know as his friend.
Rather, this vengeful being of fire and fury that now walked the mortal realm would eventually become known as Brand.
Cursing his former master, and every other living thing that would ever come between him and the Runes, Brand lashed out with magical flames, and Ryze barely escaped with his life.
Over the centuries since that day, Brand has lived an anarchic, wildfire existence, taking and never giving anything back to the world. At times, he blazes across the heavens like a comet. At others, he sinks into the cold earth and slumbers, waiting for the unmistakable scent of magic that will lead him to another World Rune… and should he find one, there are precious few in Runeterra with the power to stop him.
Braum

Even as a child, Braum was much larger than other Freljordian youngsters, but his mother taught him never to use his size to intimidate or bully. She came from a proud line of herders, and believed true courage lay in using one’s power not to dominate, but to protect those in need.
When Braum was still a boy, ice giants devastated a neighboring tribe. That tribe had long preyed upon the herds of Braum’s people, but his mother didn’t hesitate to head out across the tundra to help the survivors, bearing furs, foodstuffs, and healing supplies. At first, Braum didn’t understand why she would aid their rivals—but after her actions saved many lives, they became lifelong allies. He finally understood what his mother meant when she said all the Freljord’s people were a family, and from that day forth, he pledged to bring that family together.
As Braum grew, it was clear he was one of the revered Iceborn, though even among their number, his strength and ability to endure the elements were legendary. He became a local hero, rescuing children who had slipped into icy ravines, saving travelers stranded in blizzards, and protecting families from ravaging wildclaws. Whenever he appeared, people knew help had arrived. He was a figure of hope, known for his liveliness and laughter, and the easy way he made friends.
Eventually, Braum realized he was needed beyond the valleys and tundra where he’d been raised. Bidding his mother a tearful farewell, he set out to travel the Freljord.
Over the years, countless stories spread of Braum’s mighty feats and good deeds. While most had at least a kernel of truth, they grew increasingly far-fetched and mythic—such as the legend of how he chopped down an entire forest in a single night using only his bare hands, or how during a volcanic eruption, he saved an isolated farmstead by picking it up and carrying it to higher ground.
A more recent tale spoke of how Braum found his immense ram-headed shield. As the story went, it was an enchanted vault door, forged in ancient times and set into a mountain. Braum heard cries from within, but he couldn’t break the door down. Undeterred, he punched his way through the mountain’s bare rock, rescuing a troll boy who was trapped inside. He ripped the unbreakable door off its hinges, and has borne it ever since.
As with many legends about him, Braum laughed uproariously when he first heard this particular tale—but far from refuting such stories, he embraces them. Why let the truth get in the way of inspiring others to acts of generosity and kindness?
No matter how he actually found his shield, soon afterward Braum made his way to the sacred site of Rakelstake, where many tribes had gathered to hear the words of the Avarosan warmother, Ashe—said to be the reincarnation of Avarosa herself. There, he witnessed the barbarian Tryndamere, desperate to prove his worth, savagely beating any who would face him.
As Braum watched, he saw that Tryndamere was growing increasingly unhinged. During one duel, he was so lost in his fury that it seemed certain he would kill his opponent, despite having already prevailed. Deciding things had gone far enough, Braum planted himself in front of the downed fighter, shield raised, and Tryndamere hacked and smashed against the impenetrable bulwark. When the barbarian’s rage finally subsided, Braum’s good humor won him over, and before long the pair were laughing and drinking to each other’s health. Some even say that it was Braum who first introduced Tryndamere to Ashe. The barbarian would later marry her, becoming her only bloodsworn.
Braum doesn’t hold any particular tribal allegiance, for he views all within the Freljord as brothers and sisters. Even so, he sees in Ashe someone who can end the centuries-old feuding among the Freljord’s tribes, and the Avarosans have informally adopted him into their number. Braum’s dream, as he often tells adoring children, is that someday the Freljord will be united in one big family… and then he can retire to become a humble poro herder.
Though Braum counts no one as his enemy, he has had a few run-ins with the Frostguard since he started carrying his shield. He doesn’t understand why they have a grudge against him, nor why they seem so interested in what he now bears…
Tomb of the Troll Boy

''Would you like to hear a bedtime story?''
''Grandma, I'm too old for that.''
''You're never too old to enjoy a good story.''
The girl reluctantly crawled into bed and waited, knowing she wouldn’t win this battle. A bitter wind howled outside, whipping the falling snow into devil whirls.
''What kind though? A tale of the Ice Witch, perhaps?'' asked her grandmother.
''No, not her.''
''What about a story of Braum?''
The girl nodded and the old woman smiled.
''Ah, there are so many, which to choose…? My grandmother used to tell me of the time Braum protected our village from a great dragon! Or once, this was long ago, mind, he raced down a river of lava! Or-''
She paused and shook her head. “No, none of them. Wait, have I ever told you how Braum got his shield?''
The girl shook her head. The hearth fire snapped, its warmth holding off the night’s chill.
''Well, in the mountains above our village lived a man named Braum. He mostly kept to his farm, tending his sheep and goats, but he was the kindest man anyone had ever met, and he always had a smile on his face and a laugh on his lips.
''Now, one day, something terrible happened. A young troll boy around your age was climbing the mountain and happened upon a massive stone door with a shard of True Ice at its center. When he opened the door, he couldn't believe his eyes! Beyond was a vault filled with gold and jewels. Every kind of treasure you could imagine!
''What he didn't know was that the vault was a trap. The Ice Witch had cursed it, and as the troll boy entered, the magical door clanged shut behind him! It locked him inside! Try as he might, he couldn't escape.
''A passing shepherd heard the boy’s cries. The entire village rushed to help, but even the strongest warriors couldn't open the door. The boy's parents were beside themselves. His mother's wails of grief echoed around the mountain. It seemed hopeless.
''And then they heard a distant laugh.''
''It was Braum, wasn't it?'' asked the girl.
''Aren't you clever? Braum had heard their cries and came striding down the mountain. The villagers told him of the troll boy and the curse. Braum smiled and nodded. He turned to the vault and faced the door. He pushed it. Pulled it. Punched it. Kicked it. Even tried to rip it from its hinges, but the door wasn’t for budging.''
''But he's the strongest man ever!'' cried the girl.
''It was perplexing,'' agreed her grandmother. ''For many days and nights, Braum sat on a boulder, trying to think of a solution. After all, a child's life was at stake.
''Then, as the sun rose on the fifth day, his eyes widened, and a broad grin lit up his face. ‘If I can't go through the door,' he said, ‘then I'll just have to go through-’...''
The girl thought for a moment. Her eyes went wide as she exclaimed, ''The mountain!''
''The mountain indeed. Braum headed to the summit and began punching his way straight down, pummeling his way through the stone, fist after fist. Rocks flew in his wake, until he had vanished deep into the mountain.
''As the villagers held their breath, the rock around the door crumbled. And when the dust cleared, they saw Braum standing amidst the treasure, the weak but happy troll boy cradled in his arms.''
''I knew he could do it!''
''But before they could celebrate, everything began to rumble and shake. Braum's tunnel had weakened the mountain, and now it was caving in! Thinking quickly, Braum grabbed the enchanted door and held it above him like a shield, protecting the villagers as the mountain collapsed around them. When it was over, Braum was amazed. There wasn't a single scratch on the door! Braum knew it was something very special. And from that moment on, the magical shield never left Braum's side.''
The girl sat upright, struggling to conceal her excitement.
''Grandma,'' she said, ''can you tell me another story?''
The girl’s grandmother smiled, kissed her forehead and blew out the candle.
''Tomorrow,” she said. “You need to sleep, and there are many more stories to tell.''
Briar

Near the end of his reign, Grand General Boram Darkwill entrusted the Black Rose and its many hemomancers with creating a new kind of living weapon. Unlike their previous experiments on the deceased, this would be a being born from and fueled by blood—one driven to hunt down targets without requiring the sustenance of food and water.

And so Briar was born.

Her creators wanted an assassin, but all she wanted was to eat, eat, EAT! When her first mission ended in a frenzied, gory failure, the Black Rose decided that Briar was too dangerous to use, but too powerful to be destroyed. In order to control her, they devised a special pillory—locked by a hemolith gemstone—to restrain her and focus her mind. Once shackled with the pillory, Briar, along with the rest of the Black Rose’s living weapons, was quickly deployed during Jericho Swain’s coup against Darkwill.

She was given a handler to help direct her, but when released from her pillory, Briar immediately devoured him and everyone near her—everyone but her target, Swain, who escaped while the living weapon fed upon friend and foe.

After an arduous capture, Swain’s guards managed to trigger Briar’s pillory and restore her restraint, enabling them to transfer her to their holding facility.

Alone in her cell, Briar could focus on nothing except her hunger. Though she couldn't die from starvation, the absence of fresh blood weakened her day by day.

At first, she thought the chorus of crazed wails echoing around her room were her own starving thoughts... until she realized the sounds were drifting in from unseen neighbors. Did Swain’s forces manage to capture other living weapons during the coup? Was she locked up with them now, each having failed their mission? Their purpose?

The voices cried out for blood—a sentiment Briar could relate to. But what she couldn’t stand wasn’t how often they did it, nor how loud they were, but that it was ALL they talked about. Their unrelenting hemomania was the most boring thing she had ever experienced.

As hungry as Briar was—and she was hungry—her thoughts stayed focused on the pitiful sounds of the others. What if she managed to break out of the pillory? Would her frenzy make her even more unhinged than her neighbors? Would she become as single-minded and boring as them? The idea was too horrifying to dwell on, so she instead resigned herself to listless solitude.

Years passed, and the time alone allowed Briar to reflect on herself and consider the possibilities of the world outside her cell. Entertainment consisted of eavesdropping on the guards’ conversations, devising new ways to pester them for raw meat, and agonizing over whether she should race her pet spiders or eat them.

By chance while she was toying with her pillory one day, she inadvertently loosened the hemolith, which settled into a position just short of unlocking the restraint. Briar froze as thoughts of her hemomaniacal neighbors filled her head—is that what she’d become? But then she realized something: Being under control was just as dangerous as being out of control. She wanted to strike the balance.

Having discovered the hemolith’s mechanism, Briar devised a plan.

By this point, the guards were so used to her calls for attention that when she lured one close to her cell, nobody noticed he was missing until it was too late. The guard’s blood surged within her, lighting a fire that had been waiting to spread.

Briar was finally free.
Now the living weapon gleefully roams the streets of Noxus, pillory locked back in place—until she wants to unlock it. As she acclimates to the world outside, with the Black Rose monitoring the unexpected development, Briar eagerly learns all she can, making new friends and discoveries in a world she is starving to experience.
Caitlyn

Born into a wealthy and influential merchant clan, Caitlyn Kiramman swiftly learned the social graces of life in Piltover, but preferred to spend her time in the wilder lands outside it. Equally adept at mingling with the moneyed elite of the City of Progress or stalking a deer through the mud of the forest, she could confidently track a bird on the wing over the merchant districts, or put a shot through the eye of a hare at a hundred paces with her father’s repeater musket.

Caitlyn’s greatest assets, however, were her intelligence and willingness to learn from her parents, who reinforced her understanding of right and wrong, even within a life of comfort and privilege. Her mother was one of the highest comptrollers in Clan Kiramman, and would always warn Caitlyn of Piltover’s seductions, and its gilded promises that could harden the kindest heart. At first, Caitlyn paid little heed—to her, Piltover was a place of beauty and order that she cherished after each trip into the wild.

All that was to change one Progress Day, some years later.

Caitlyn returned to find her home ransacked and empty. The family retainers were all dead, and there was no trace of her parents. Caitlyn secured the house, and immediately set out to find them.

Tracking within the confines of a city was very different from hunting in the wild but, one by one, Caitlyn located the thugs who had invaded her family home. The trail eventually led her to a hidden safehouse, where her mother and father were being tortured for information. She rescued them under cover of darkness, and alerted the Piltover Wardens… though not one of the kidnappers they arrested knew the identity of the individual who had hired them—only a proxy with the initial C.

Caitlyn and her parents began to rebuild their lives… but something fundamental had changed. Her mother in particular could no longer face the politics and duplicity of clan life, and gave up her prestigious role, leaving something of a vacuum in the Kiramman leadership. And, though she loved her parents dearly, Caitlyn had no desire to take her mother’s place, nor to learn her father’s trade as an artificer.

Instead, her focus turned toward breaking through the web of intrigue surrounding the mysterious "C". Utilizing her hunting skills, she established herself as a private investigator, and quickly made a name for herself as someone who could find anything or anyone. In recognition of her self-made success, Caitlyn’s parents crafted her a hextech rifle of exquisite artifice, with greater accuracy than any musket. The weapon could take a variety of specialized shells, and be easily modified in the field.

After a particularly traumatic case involving a missing hextech device and a series of child abductions, Caitlyn was summoned by the Wardens.

She had been recommended by one of their number who had also developed something of an affinity for stranger cases—and their battle with a host of rogue chimerics in the employ of a lunatic chem-researcher driven mad by his own concoctions led to her being offered a formal position as a sheriff. At first, Caitlyn refused, but eventually came to realize that the Wardens’ resources could potentially get her closer to discovering the true identity of “C".

Caitlyn has since become a highly respected officer within the ranks of the Wardens, always striving to make the City of Progress a better and safer place. She recently partnered with a new recruit from Zaun, the brash and reckless Vi. How such an unlikely pairing came about—and been proven so effective—is the subject of wild rumor and tavern speculation among their fellow Wardens, as well as those they haul away to jail.

What Caitlyn doesn't know, however, is that "C" is also keeping tabs on her... especially as her investigations bring her ever closer to the truth.
The Thrill of the Chase

Even three bells after the Sun Gate had closed, Piltover was still full of life - life that was currently getting in her way. Caitlyn sprinted down Mainspring Crescent, weaving a path between midnight revelers strolling down the fashionable promenade of cafes and bistros. The supper clubs were emptying, as were the nearby theaters inside the Drawsmith Arcade, so this street was going to get a whole lot busier. If they didn’t catch up to Devaki soon, they were going to lose him.
“Do you see him?” shouted Mohan from behind.
“If I could see him, I’d already be drawing a bead on him!”
The hextech rifle slung over Caitlyn’s shoulder was loaded and ready to shoot, but she needed a target, and Devaki was more nimble than a spooked doe. He’d robbed three clan workshops (that they knew of) in the last five weeks, and Caitlyn had him pegged for two others. Working a hunch that something big was in the works, she and Mohan had been keeping watch on one of House Morichi’s workshops, and sure enough, Devaki had shown. Though they hadn’t known it until the city lighters had worked their way down the street to ignite the glow-lamps and Caitlyn caught his reflection in the glass of the cafe across the street. Devaki had seen her in the same instant, and took to his heels like a startled wharf-rat.
Caitlyn skidded to a halt at the next junction. The caged flames atop the fluted lampposts bathed the dozens of surprised people staring at her with a warm, amber light. Her pale blue eyes darted from person to person, seeking Devaki’s distinctive silhouette.
A young man crossed the street toward her, his cheeks ruddy with a night’s enjoyment. He waved at her.
“You looking for a man on the run?” he asked. “Fella with a big hat?”
“Yes,” said Caitlyn. “You saw him? Where did he go?”
The young man pointed left and said, “Down that way at a good clip.”
She followed his gaze and saw cheering theater-goers spilling from the Drawsmith Arcade, a vaulted structure of colored glass and ironwork columns. They mingled with stall-holders selling refreshments and promenade-girls looking for a wealthy mark. Mohan finally caught up to her, sweating and breathing hard. He bent at the waist and propped himself up with his palms on his knees. His blue uniform coat was askew and his hat tipped back over his head.
“Figures he’d try to lose himself in the crowd,” he said between gulps of air.
Caitlyn took a moment to study their public-spirited helper. His clothes were finely-tailored and must once have cost him a pretty penny, but the cuffs were frayed and the elbows worn. Her eyes narrowed as she took in last season’s colors and a collar that hadn’t been in style for a year.
Wealthy, but down on his luck.
Mohan turned toward the busy street and said, “Come on, Caitlyn! Let’s go or we’ll lose him.”
Caitlyn dropped to one knee to look at the street from a different perspective. The cobbles were slick from the evening rain and were well trodden. From this angle, she saw the scuffs of heel marks on stone that only a running man would leave. But they weren’t heading left, they were heading right.
“How much did Devaki give you to tell us that?” said Caitlyn to the unfashionably dressed young man. “If it was less than a gold hex, you were swindled.”
The young man put his hands up and said, “It was five, actually,” before turning tail and running toward the crowds with a laugh.
“What the...?” said Mohan, as Caitlyn sprinted in the opposite direction. She’d lost valuable seconds, but knew exactly where Devaki was going now. She soon left Mohan behind, her sometime partner a little too fond of the sugared pastries the District-Inspector’s wife made for her husband’s officers.
Caitlyn ran a winding path through the city, along seldom-traveled alleyways and crooked paths between the gables of tall, brick-fronted warehouses. She cut across busy streets, drawing cries of annoyance from those she barged out of her way. The closer she came to the great canyon bisecting Piltover, the narrower the streets became, but she was betting she knew the shortcuts of Piltover better than Devaki. After a dozen twists and turns, she emerged onto a crooked street of undulating cobbles that followed the jagged line of the cliff. Known locally as Drop Street thanks to the wheezing hexdraulic conveyer at the end that ran late into the night, it was deep in shadow.
The iron-framed cabin hadn’t yet opened, the lozenge-patterned grille still in the closed position. A group of fifteen Zaunites, a great many of whom were intoxicated, gathered around the ticket booth. None of them were the man Caitlyn was looking for. She turned and dropped to a crouch, resting the barrel of her rifle on a packing crate bearing the brand of Clan Medarda. Stolen property, no doubt, but she didn’t have time to check it.
Caitlyn thumbed the rifle’s primer switch to the upright position. A gentle hum built within the breech as she worked the action to ready a shot. She pulled the butt of the rifle hard against her shoulder and slowed her breathing. Her cheek pressed into the walnut stock and she closed one eye as she took aim through the crystalline lenses.
She didn’t have long to wait.
Devaki swung around the corner, his long coat billowing out behind him and his hat a tall silhouette. He appeared to be in no hurry, but then, he believed he had shed his pursuers. He held a heavy brass-cornered case in his metal-clawed hand; a crude thing Vi said he’d had done in one of Zaun’s ask-no-questions augmentation parlors when he was a foolish youth.
Caitlyn focused her aim on the pneumatic monstrosity and squeezed the trigger. A searing flash of orange-red exploded from the weapon’s muzzle and Devaki’s hand vanished in a pinpoint blast. He cried out and fell back, his hat toppling from his head as the case fell to the ground. Devaki looked up, his eyes widening in pain and surprise as he saw Caitlyn. He turned to run, but Caitlyn had been waiting for that. She toggled a thumb-switch on the breech and pulled the trigger again.
This time the beam struck Devaki in the back and exploded in a web of crackling energy. Devaki’s back arched and he fell, twitching, to the ground. Caitlyn powered down her rifle and slung it over her shoulder as she walked toward the fallen Devaki. The effects of the electro-net were dimming, but he wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. Caitlyn bent to retrieve the case he’d dropped and shook her head with a tut-tut sound.
“H-h-h...how?” said Devaki, through the spasms wracking his body.
“How did I know where you were headed?” asked Caitlyn.
Devaki nodded, the movement jerky and forced.
“Your previous thefts were meaningless in themselves, but when I looked at them as part of a larger scheme, it seemed like you were gathering components to build a version of Vishlaa’s Hexylene Caliver,” said Caitlyn.
She knelt beside Devaki to place a hand on his rigid body.
“And as we all know, that weapon was outlawed as being too dangerous, wasn’t it? No one in Piltover would dare touch that kind of banned hex, but someone, maybe in Noxus? They’d pay handsomely for that, I imagine. But the only place you could get something like that out of the city is through one of Zaun’s less reputable smugglers. This is the only quick route down into Zaun that’s still running at this time of night. Once I saw you weren’t going to try and hide out in Piltover, all I had to do was get to the conveyor before you and wait. So you and I are going to have a long talk, and you’re going to tell me who you’re working for.”
Devaki didn’t answer, and Caitlyn grinned as she reached over his prone body.
“Nice hat,” she said.
Wukong

Within Ionia’s magical forests dwells a tribe of vastaya known as the Shimon. A cautious people, they see life as an evolutionary climb to wisdom—upon death, they believe they become stones, returning to the soil to begin the climb of life anew.
Impulsive, clever, and easily bored, young Kong never had much in common with other Shimon. For countless years, they endured his pranks… until the day he arrived in a panic, insisting that a great elemental dragon was coming to burn their woodland home.
But Kong only chuckled as his tribe began to flee. Realizing he had fooled them, and with their patience finally at an end, the Shimon named him outcast. Kong, for his part, was ambivalent. He would seek out people with a better sense of humor.
Living as something of a charlatan, he proclaimed himself “the Monkey King” and often challenged mortals to duels, or games of cunning. He claimed to be undefeated—until he crossed a Noxian headsman in the hinterlands of Zhyun. The Noxian and his comrades chased the Monkey King deep into the wilderness, where he hid, only emerging again after the invaders left the shores of the First Lands for good.
And in time, Kong saw the brutality Noxus had inflicted upon his homeland.
He set out to meet the fabled combat-masters of Wuju, but found that their village had been annihilated. The only living soul was a man sitting quietly among the ruins, so Kong challenged him to a good-natured fight. In a single motion, the man stood, knocked the vastaya down, then resumed his meditation.
For weeks, Kong returned again and again, determined to defeat this dour man—but the Monkey King was always outmaneuvered, no matter if he approached from behind, above, or below. The warrior could sense whenever Kong was about to attack, even when the vastaya tried to distract him with hilarious jokes, and he somehow knew not to drink his tea when Kong laced it with stupefying spirits.
Eventually, the Monkey King knelt before the man and begged to learn his ways. Kong wanted to be the greatest warrior, but he also sought something more. He just couldn’t quite put it into words.
The man saw Kong’s humility, and knew the vastaya was ready. He introduced himself as Yi, the last master of Wuju, and agreed to train Kong in its virtues of discipline and patience. He could help channel Kong’s recklessness and impulsiveness into a lethally swift and surprising fighting style.
The two grew to respect each other, yet Yi refused to speak much of his past, or why he would not leave the ruined village. Kong made a proposition. The two would engage in a friendly sparring bout. If Kong won, Yi had to reveal why he’d stopped fighting. If Yi prevailed, Kong wouldn’t speak for four full seasons.
Yi eagerly accepted.
When Kong had first arrived at Wuju, he crept through a field of smokepoppies, and he lured his master back there now. Each time Yi attacked, the agitated flowers would burst around him—until finally he struck out through the growing haze at what he believed was Kong, but instead hit a straw decoy. Kong seized his opportunity, and grappled Yi to the ground.
Finally, Yi told Kong the truth. He and his fellow disciples had gone to defend Ionia during the war, bringing the wrath of Noxus down upon Wuju in turn. He blamed himself for the death of every last villager, and watched over the ruins as penance.
This, Kong realized, was what he sought. Although his tribe had cast him out, he wanted to defend the Shimon, who had sheltered him for so long, and set him on the path to wisdom and enlightenment. Proud of his student, Yi also felt a renewed sense of purpose—he granted Kong an enchanted staff, crafted by the legendary weaponsmith Doran, and a new honorific, reserved only for the brightest students of Wuju.
From that day forward, he was known as Wukong.
Though the war is long over, Noxus’ influence continues to defile Ionia. Roads have been carved through the ancient forests, self-styled “tax collectors” hound peaceful folk who have nothing left to give, and the great festivals of renewal have been slowly declining, year after year.
But the great warriors Wukong and Master Yi are ready. Side by side, they roam the First Lands, resolved to combat injustice and hatred wherever they find it.
Fast and Dumb

Anthony Burch

Fast and dumb, or slow and smart?
That’s what Yi always asks me. Well, I say “asks,” but it’s not really a question. Not up for discussion. Not really. You can be impulsive and quick and improvisational and have fun... or you can do things Yi’s way. The right way. Slow. Patient. Strategic. With a gruff, determined expression on his face, like he stepped in crap. Because he did. Because I shoved some inside his boot, thinking he’d find it funny.
He didn’t.
(I did, though, so it all kinda worked out in the end.)
The really irritating thing, though: he’s usually right. Through the years we’ve trained together, I’ve beaten him in combat something like...twelve times? Versus the hundreds of times he’s walloped me. And every time – every single time I ate a mouthful of dirt – I knew it was because I’d gotten impatient. Took a swing I wasn’t sure would land. Lunged for an opening that ended up being a trap.
And I’m not being humble. I’m good. Really good. Yi, humorless as he is, just happens to be one of the best warriors I’ve ever met. It’s not like the guy is slow, either: he’s fast. Faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. As in: he unsheathes his blade, then there’s a blur, then three guys are bleeding on the ground. That fast.
So when he tells me to choose slow and smart over fast and dumb, I try to listen most of the time.
Keyword being “try.”
And “most of the time.”
We were wandering through a forest of man-high mushrooms when we heard the shouting.
In addition to cutting off the punchline of an incredible joke I’d been telling, Yi made me dive into the thick of a thistleshrub to avoid detection.
There were six of them. Five bandits and their rope-bound captive, an elderly farmer with anxious eyes.
I felt this situation called for a liberal application of hitting people in the head with my staff, but Yi held me back. He put a finger to his lips, then pointed at his eyes. Observe. Strategize. Fast and dumb, or slow and smart?
I sighed and looked over the group with a discerning eye.
Raggedy clothes hung off their hunched backs, taut with stress. They seemed to take far better care of their blades than themselves. Their eyes scanned their surroundings as they marched, on the lookout for any potential ambush. One shoved a gag into the old farmer’s mouth, presumably to stop the shouting we’d just heard.
Bandits.
The old farmer collapsed to the ground. The tumble was intentional; anyone could tell that. His captors certainly did.
The leader stopped and faced the old man. “Well, that tears it,” he said. “You’re old, my friend, but you’re not that old. Falling over every few hundred steps to stall for time? Give yourself a second to think about how you’re gonna get out of this? That’s an old trick. Older than you.”
He squatted to the farmer’s level.
“You don’t really have a chestful of precious stones at home, do you?”
The old man stared at the bandit, terror slowly replacing itself with resignation.
He shook his head.
“That’s a shame,” the bandit said, a genial smile on his face. The kind of smile that usually leads to somebody pulling out a dagger.
“I’m gonna go save him now,” I whispered to Yi.
Yi shook his head as hard as he could without rattling his goggles. I didn’t have to ask why. He likely wanted one of us to sneak around them and attack from the other side of the pass, trapping them in a pincer. Or something equally cunning and time-consuming. Slow and smart.
Yi’s big problem – apart from not finding me funny, and the fact that his goggles make him look like a man-sized bug – is that he spent the last handful of years sitting alone in a field of flowers. His patience is infinite. He thinks everything can be thought through. Planned for.
Still, Yi had said to go slow. We’d try it his way. I nodded at him, then at the path behind the thugs. You get behind them. I’ll attack on your signal.
Yi circled back through the brush. He darted to the other side of the trail, too quick to notice, even if they had been looking in his direction. Classic ambush setup: he’d get their attention, and while their backs were turned, I’d hit them from my side of the path.
That’s when the lead bandit pulled a blade out of his right pocket. A small little thing, not good for much more than peeling fruit. Or slicing the throat of a tired old farmer.
I couldn’t see Yi in the brush on the other side of the road, but I knew he couldn’t see the blade. He didn’t know what was about to happen.
They were about to kill the old man, no matter how safe Yi wanted to play it. We had no time to go slow.
Thankfully, I had a secret weapon up my sleeve: I’m really, really, really good at fighting.
The leader grabbed the old man’s scalp and put a knife to his throat. I leapt out of the brush, staff held high, and smacked the blade out of his hand. Then we got to my favorite part.
Whenever I get the drop on somebody, I usually get about a two to three second window as they try to make sense of me. Most people have never seen a vastaya, much less a Shimon. They stand there slack-jawed, which typically gives me a chance to hit ‘em before they realize what’s going on.
I drove my knee into the lead bandit's chin, and his teeth clacked together so hard, even I winced at the sound.
“Stay where you are, Yi!” I shouted into the bush where he waited, unseen. “I got this.”
That’s when a knife hit me in the shoulder.
Apparently, one of those jerks had been wearing a bandolier of throwing daggers across his chest, and I hadn’t noticed. I tried not to imagine Yi smirking to himself.
“Still ‘got this,’ do you?,” he yelled from the brush. Likely staying out of the fight just long enough for me to get my teeth kicked in, so he could leap in, save me, and shout that he told me to slow down.
“Completely!” I shouted as I tossed a handful of smokepoppies to the ground. (I always keep a few on me. They’re useful in combat, and even more useful for irritating Yi when I’m bored.)
Then I beat the hell outta the rest of them. I won’t trouble you with the details–
–Wait, yes I will, because they’re great.
I held my staff out and twirled around, aiming high so as to avoid the prone old man. My arms shuddered with every impact of wood against skull. I dodged blows, parried strikes, and only got punched in the face, like, twice.
By the time the smoke cleared, I was the only one still standing. Well, me and the old man, once I got him to his feet.
Yi stepped out of the brush, sighing.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “What are you sighing for? I saved the grungy old man–”
“–Hey!” the old man said.
“And my shoulder will probably heal in a couple of days. Ow,” I said, touching the wound. “What’s disappointed you this time?”
Yi cut the man’s bindings. “I’m not disappointed,” Yi said. “I’m irritated.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like admitting I’m wrong. You were impatient, reckless, and you absolutely made the right call.”
I smiled.
“Fast and dumb.”
He patted me on my non-bleeding shoulder.
“Fast and dumb,” he said.
Mordekaiser

In a previous epoch, the fierce warlord Sahn-Uzal rampaged across the northern wildlands. Driven by dark faith, he crushed every tribe and settlement in his path, forging an empire in blood and death. As his mortal life neared its end, he took great satisfaction in knowing he had doubtless earned a seat at the gods’ table, in the glorious Hall of Bones, for all eternity.
Yet, when he died, he found no halls or glory awaiting him. Instead, Sahn-Uzal stood in an empty, gray wasteland, shrouded by ethereal fog and plagued by discordant whispers. Occasionally, other lost souls drifted nearby—little more than ghostly shapes, wandering their own personal oblivion.
Anger consumed Sahn-Uzal. Had his faith been false? Or was his domination of the world simply not enough to grant him the immortality he craved? Surely this emptiness could not be all there was… yet there seemed no end to it. He watched as the lesser spirits slowly faded into the fog, unmade and lost to time.
But Sahn-Uzal refused to fade.
His will, tempered by rage and torment, held him together. Over time, the unknowable, disembodied whispering in that place crystalized into words he could almost comprehend—this, he learned, was Ochnun, a profane tongue unspoken by any among the living. Slowly, a deceitful plan began to form in what was left of Sahn-Uzal’s mind. He began to whisper temptations across the veil between realms, promising his indomitable strength to any who dared listen.
And, sure enough, the day came when a coven of sorcerers resolved to bring Sahn-Uzal back from the dead. Lacking any flesh or bone, he spurred them to make him stronger than any mortal, binding his spirit-form in dark metal plates wrought in the likeness of his old armor. So he rose, a hulking revenant of iron and hate.
These power-hungry sorcerers had hoped to use him as a weapon in their trivial wars. Instead, he slew them where they stood, their weapons and magic useless against him.
In desperation, they screamed out his name to bind him—but to no avail, for Sahn-Uzal was no more.
With an ethereal rumble, he spoke his spirit-name in Ochnun: Mordekaiser.
Thus began his second conquest of the mortal realm. As before, his ambitions were great, only now empowered by necromantic sorceries he could never have previously imagined. From the fearful, dissipating souls of the sorcerers, Mordekaiser forged a weapon fit for an emperor of death—his brutal mace, Nightfall—and seized control of the army they had raised.
To his foes, it seemed he cared only for massacre and destruction. Entire generations perished under his relentless campaigns.
However, there was far more to Mordekaiser’s plan. He raised the Immortal Bastion at the center of his empire; while most assumed it was merely a seat of power, some came to know the secrets it held. Mordekaiser hungered for all the forbidden knowledge of spirits and death, and a true understanding of the realm… or realms… beyond.
Such tyranny could only bring him enemies. The Iron Revenant was defeated, surprisingly, by an alliance of the Noxii tribes, and betrayal from within his own inner circle. This hidden cabal managed to sever the anchors of his soul from his armor, and sealed the empty iron shell away in a secret place.
And so, Mordekaiser was cast out of the material realm. However, unbeknownst to anyone, he had planned for this—indeed, it was a pivotal part of his design. Domination and deceit had carried him far, but he knew that a destiny far grander than the Hall of Bones awaited him.
There, in the once empty wasteland, all those who had died under his latest reign were waiting. Perverted by dark sorcery, their spirits would never fade. The strongest became his devout, eternal army, bound to his will… but even the weak were given purpose.
From the subtle matter of their souls, Mordekaiser would forge a new empire. They would be the building blocks and mortar of his Afterworld.
Centuries have passed on Runeterra, and another empire has arisen around the Immortal Bastion. Mordekaiser’s name is still whispered in fear and awe by those who study the old histories, and remembered unkindly by the few ancient souls who knew him. For them, the greatest terror would be for Mordekaiser to find his own way to return permanently.
It is something they pray will not come to pass, for they know of no way to stop him.
The Final Reign

Michael Yichao

A raised fist. A surge of necromantic power. Before him, the final spire of the final tower takes form, inky smoke coalescing into black iron. Mordekaiser gazes upon his domain with dark pride.
Mitna Rachnun, his Afterworld, is complete.
Once, he stood in this very place, a mortal soul faced with the emptiness of oblivion. Now, a kingdom stretches before him, forged through his works.
He strides down the path toward his fortress, reveling in the satisfaction of his work. Each stone underfoot, his doing. The battlements and ramparts, all shaped from cruel magic and iron will.
Where there was nothing, Mordekaiser forged his own reality—a realm where all souls will soon dwell in eternity, never to fade.

Sahn-Uzal blinked and looked around. Uncertain, his mind blank.
I am dead.
The thought flitted by, a whisper on the wind. As the truth of it sank in, for just a moment, a fleeting sadness flooded his heart. Then laughter welled up, a rumble from his gut that washed over his entire body, overflowed from his chest, and poured out in a rumbling cascade.
Good.
Sahn-Uzal scanned the distance for the grand gateway of souls that would lead to the famed Hall of Bones. Searched for the attendants who would carry him triumphant into the eternal. Savored his growing excitement to meet the great conquerors who came before him.
Yet there was nothing but fog, as far as he could see.
Sahn-Uzal took a step forward—then looked down, surprised. Fine sand—a coarse grit—shifted underfoot. In the distance, discordant voices rustled, too quiet to make out the words.
This makes no sense.
He struck out across the wasteland, determined to find the truth.
Time passed, untold.
Confusion melted into disbelief. Disbelief kindled anger. Anger flared into fury.
Nothing.
There is nothing.
The dessicated sands extended endlessly. The relentless voices whispered on, a maddening itch in the back of his mind. The fog never abated, an eternal haze that hovered, a shroud over all.
Had the priests lied? Or were they false prophets, prattling fools proclaiming hollow superstitions? Or had the ancestors made a grotesque error of judgement, and not welcomed him into the great halls?
These questions gnawed at him, at first. But they did not matter. Sahn-Uzal realized that now. Nothing mattered but the present, pressing truth—there was nothing here. A vast emptiness, devoid of reward. Devoid of promise.
As this truth percolated through him, the shadow of despair stalked Sahn-Uzal, hungry to consume him.
But he was Sahn-Uzal. Conqueror of the wildlands. Master of the tribes. He had built an empire where there was none. In life, he had overcome all odds and conquered despair through will and ambition. Death would be no different.
If death does not hold the kingdoms I was promised… I will forge them myself.

Mordekaiser walks beneath the inner portcullis, fashioned after that of the Immortal Bastion, his mortal seat of power. He walks through the entryway and into the great hall.
Before him, his throne looms.
All around, in constant cacophony, the endless wailing of souls rises and falls, an unholy chorus of anguish. Yet Mordekaiser does not hear them—or rather, hears them as one might hear the clang of metal in a war camp, or the sound of boots on gravel during a forced march—common sounds, unnoteworthy in their banality.
After all, the worthy souls stand at attention along the hall, and none of them dare speak.
All is as it should be.
Mordekaiser steps toward his throne.

The arcane tome floated above the pedestal, serene and untouched. A strange contrast to all of the blood spilled around it.
The last surviving mage raised a feeble hand, blood trickling from his brow. Small licks of fire danced between his fingers—a final spell, one last, desperate attempt.
Mordekaiser spoke, bemused. “Such magics would consume you, mortal. And your precious book as well.”
The mage spat his words. “I don’t matter. Nothing matters but stopping you from obtaining it.”
A gout of fire, burning blue with heat, burst from the mage’s hands. It engulfed the Iron Revenant towering above him. Scorching energy raced up the arms of the mage, the backlash of the spell splitting his own flesh. Still, the mage pressed on, teeth cracking as he gritted them defiantly.
Mordekaiser stepped forward, a spirit encased in a suit of dark iron armor, shielding the tome from the flames. In his hands, Nightfall, his infamous mace, pulsed an ephemeral green. The heat from the fire cracked the stone and melted the flesh of the other, already dead mages. But Mordekaiser stood stoic against the onslaught.
Finally spent, his body broken, the mage collapsed to his knees, his ragged breath resolving in a whispered prayer for his power to be enough.
If Mordekaiser still had a body of flesh, he would have smiled. “Lacking in conviction.”
The mage stifled a sob as Mordekaiser approached. He squinted up at the specter and spoke through a throat dry and cracked.
“You will not find what you seek! A brutish monster could never understand the secrets of the Tome of Spirits and—”
A swing of the mace. A satisfying crash.
Another surge of blood joined the sticky pools coagulating in the room. Another broken mage—the thirteenth—fell still on the floor.
Mordekaiser laughed.
“You mistake brutality for ignorance.”
He gazed around the room at the corpses and whispered a verse in the unspoken tongue of the dead.
Pitiful struggle
Freed from flesh
You are all mine
He tapped Nightfall on the ground. It glowed brighter, almost seemed to breathe—as thirteen points of light rose from the broken bodies, then sank into the earth.
Mordekaiser turned his attention back to the book, still floating in its place, ahum with spirit magic. Another piece of knowledge for his plans. Another treasure in his conquest.
He stepped forward to collect his prize.

The throne looms before him. Its back of sheer iron pillars extends upward and tapers to vicious points. Ochnun script, angular and sharp, runs around the throne’s dais. The everpresent whispering is almost a roar here, incessant and desperate. Mordekaiser rests a hand on the armrest, taking pride in his work. This piece subsumed more souls in its creation than any other single part in his fortress. The wails emanating from it are music to him.
With a thought, Mordekaiser calls Nightfall to his hands. With a swing, he obliterates the throne.
A squall of a hundred souls echoes in the great hall as they are released from the throne, dissipating into oblivion. Mordekaiser watches them vanish with grim satisfaction.
Thrones are for mortals encumbered by flesh and human exhaustion. He… is now far more.
He steps atop the twisted iron and looks back across his great hall. His generals, souls that were worthy to die at his own hand when he last walked the physical realm, stand at attention. None so much as flinch in response. None will move without his direct command.
Now, his kingdom is truly ready.
Mordekaiser strides out of the great hall, toward the heart of his fortress, the centerpiece of his power and his machinations. Toward the relic that ties Mitna Rachnun to the mortal realm. Toward the place that gives the secret heart of the Immortal Bastion its true purpose.
In his first life, he thought himself a great conqueror, befitting the eternal halls of his faith. How small, how petty, how mortal his ambitions were then! But where others accepted death as the end, he used it forge the beginning of his true conquest. And now… he can hear and understand every whisper of this realm with stark clarity. Now, the magic of death itself courses through him. Now, he holds the arcane secrets gathered over a second lifetime, wrested from the hidden and unknown places of the world. Few other beings can claim the mastery of spirit, death, and mortal magics that he holds. He will wield them to shape all realms to his iron will.
The time has come to return to the world of the living. All the souls of Runeterra await.
Mordekaiser raises Nightfall in one hand.
And so, his final reign begins.
Feast of the Prophet

Jared Rosen

Meir follows a crowd of cultists out of the prophet’s tent city, and down into a low valley at the edge of the desert. He is unsure if this was the right decision; beyond the outcropping of rock where tonight’s sermon will be held is a… he’s not sure how to describe it other than hole, descending deep beneath the Shuriman sands and into an emptiness that is both growing and alive.

Throughout the day, these cultists throw livestock into the hole. They throw each other into the hole. Sometimes they throw themselves into the hole.

And, from what Meir is told, the hole responds by growing steadily larger, so more cultists can throw more animals and more people down into it, and it can keep growing, and the awful pattern can repeat itself until the hole is so large that something big falls in. A city, maybe.

“Like Nashramae,” he mutters—though even if the entire state toppled in, ports and all, it would barely graze the sides.

He caught a glimpse of the hole earlier. It’s too big to be real, and yet...

No one knows this is here, thinks Meir, but he’s smart enough to keep this to himself.

He cannot risk these people turning on him, although he uses the word ‘people’ lightly. Some of them have a deep lavender glint behind the eyes that seems to spread over their faces in veiny, twisting patterns, and they mutter constantly about Icathia... or something called the Void.

He cannot go back home. He’s not even sure if his home still exists. Yet he cannot flee anywhere but further south, where the land turns grey and things named after old storybook monsters squirm across the rocks.

Meir must keep running. If he stops, Noxus will find him—and because he struck an officer, they will kill him.

“Have you come to see the prophet?” one man asks him, as the crowds shuffle into an open area similar to a theater stage. His skin shifts sickeningly beneath a tattered cloak. Meir sees some of the man’s teeth moving inside his mouth.

“Yes,” Meir replies, knowing the cultists won’t let him through without hearing one of their sermons.

The man laughs. “You are new! New to the nameless city, like many others. Some seek the prophet. Others seek nothing. It is all the same.” He motions to his face, which glows faintly in the night air. “Do not be worried, my friend. Soon, soon, you will understand. The prophet will show you.”

The evening stars, black and yawning and somehow closer than before, wink ominously above the crowd’s makeshift lanterns. Beyond this light there is the desert. Beyond that is the hole.

And on the other side of the hole? Freedom. Meir can almost taste it.

Shurima is being swallowed up from three sides: in the north, Noxus spreads along the coast like a cancer, claiming everything from vast city-states to farming settlements of a dozen souls. In the ancient capital, the long-dead, now supposedly-living-again Emperor Azir is said to prepare for an inevitable war. And in the southeast... well…

This is the southeast. These people are eating it.

There has to be something beyond the hole. Down along the grey, lifeless coast, at the southernmost tip of the Icathian peninsula. A smuggler’s port, or maybe a stopoff for fishing ships from Bilgewater? Meir could catch a boat, start over again in the Serpent Isles, and then—

“Stop thinking,” threatens the broken-faced man. Meir looks up and sees a dozen pairs of shattered, glowing eyes looking back at him. “Your thoughts are loud. Be silent.”

The man points to the outcropping, now the pulpit of an emaciated figure.

“Malzahar has come.”

The prophet is covered in scarves and cloaks crudely marked with the symbols of old Icathia. His feet are bare; his hands seemingly frozen in a rigormortis grip, as though he were trying to fend off some kind of monstrous creature. His face is obscured by a long violet wrap, and his head...

Meir feels something like a drill being driven into his brain. He had looked for maybe a half-second into the prophet’s face, and seen within his forehead something... shifting? No, that can’t be right. Malzahar's entire skull was thin, fleshy webbing, with something... horrible inside. A light within a light, pulsating outward. Spreading. Hungry.

“My children,” says Malzahar, though his voice is not a voice at all. It’s a projection inside of Meir’s thoughts, an extension of the prophet's un-light that is slick, glistening, and wrong.

Meir has to get out of here, but he can’t run. The cultists are packed in too tightly, and he’d never make it around the great hole before they caught him, and tossed him down.

“Tonight is a night of confession.”

Now it’s too late. Malzahar sees Meir; Meir is not sure how, but amid the crowd of hundreds the prophet’s gaze rips through him, holding his body in place. Meir cannot even let out a whimper.

“Ah, a newcomer,” says Malzahar. “Then let this be your awakening.”

There are flashes within Meir’s mind. An enormous shape, looming behind the prophet and filling the entire night sky. Buildings... or something like buildings, but inverted and crooked beneath a vast, unnatural ocean. Thousands of voracious creatures swimming in schools so large they block even the dappled light from the not-sun, creating their own currents in the not-water.

And... a name...

A name that dances across the grooves of his brain like an acrobat, elusive but on the edge of realization.

“Believers,” Malzahar continues. “I have always told you that the end is certain. The Void will come, and wash away the world and all its miseries. And with it, each and every one of you.”

Meir’s mind is ripping itself apart. Thoughts snap in and out so quickly he can barely track what he’s experiencing. Wings. Spiders the size of wolves. A figure floating beneath Shurima, a confrontation. He sees Noxus consumed by an impossible wave of creatures, the Immortal Bastion cracking grotesquely before falling into their mass. Ice breaking, things tumbling upwards and out.

He sees Malzahar again, shadowed by a shape too large, why is it so large, why is she—

...She?

“But we are all changed by our experiences, are we not? I watched my parents die in Amakra. Waste away to illness. Yet they are not gone. Their memories serve a purpose, and the imprint they left on me made me what I am, and what I am made you.”

The shape looms larger. It’s not physical, no, but Meir’s mind holds desperately onto anything it can, something to anchor itself and escape the prophet’s suffocating weight.

“The Void has tasted these memories. And it wants more.”

The cultists throw their arms upwards, and the stars wink closer than ever before. Meir must hold on. Freedom is just beyond the chasm, he tries to think.

But the words drain from his mind.

Before him, before them all, is Malzahar. There is nothing else.

“The Void has embraced a new form. A new... possibility. I once saw the world end in the absence of light and darkness, the totality of nothing. And that was wrong. So tonight, to you, to all my children, I confess—the Void has spoken. And now, beneath her sea of lavender, she wants. You, your memories, your experiences, existence. She wants everything.”

Meir only begins to run when the ground gives way under his feet. The chasm’s sudden expansion swallows them all—the tent city, the cultists, everything—as Malzahar floats above, watching them all pour down into the throbbing, animated nothing.

“And,” the prophet concludes, “she will have it.”

Some of the cultists freeze midair, darkly luminous corals bursting from their skin before they are sucked into the undulating walls of the hole. More are torn limb from limb by fast moving schools of strange, iridescent fish. Others loose a scream before vanishing completely, as though suddenly erased.

Meir’s memories, like the stars above, wink out one by one as he falls faster and faster. The Noxian invasion, his hand striking an officer, his family, his friends, his childhood, his dreams. He drifts down beneath the lavender sea, past strange, inverted buildings jutting awkwardly from the light-dappled nothingness beyond the Void’s hideous living sky, and he catches a glimpse of something massive on the verge of being born.

As his memories fade, the shape seems to move, responding to this new source of sustenance—growing stronger as Meir, the cultists, the animals, the tents, as they all fade away, erased utterly from the gentle shores of reality, repurposed into something terrible and new.

A man once named Meir closes his eyes, emptied of all things.

He touches the bottom of the Void.

And then he is gone.
Fiddlesticks

Long, long ago, in a tower by the edge of the sea, a foolish young mage summoned something into the world that he was not prepared to control. What stepped before the boy was something older than recorded history. Something darker than a yawning, starless night. Something the world had desperately tried to forget—and in an instant, the mage, the creature, and the tower itself were lost to all of time.
At least, that’s what the stories say.
In the Freljord, children frighten each other around the fire with tales of a monster that raises itself from untended graves in the ice, its body a shambling mass of helmets, bucklers, furs, and wood. In Bilgewater, drunken sailors trade accounts of something standing alone on a tiny, distant atoll from which no one has ever returned. An old Targonian legend speaks of how a child of twilight stole the only joy from a ragged, whispering horror, while veteran Noxian soldiers prefer the fable of a lonely farmhand who was blamed for a poor harvest and fed to the crows, later returning to the world as a demon.
Demacia. Ixtal. Piltover. Ionia. Shurima. In every corner of Runeterra, these myths persist—reshaped, respun, and passed down by countless generations of storytellers. Stories of a thing that looks almost human and stalks places thick with fear.
But these are simply fables to frighten young children. No one would ever be afraid of a silly old monster called Fiddlesticks…
Until now.
Something has awoken in the Demacian hinterlands, drawn by the climate of rising fear and paranoia. Rural protectorates, separated from the capital by hundreds of miles of farmland, are emptying in mere days. Travelers vanish from the old footpaths. Guard patrols fail to report back from the edges of the kingdom. And wild-eyed survivors claw at their faces from the safety of roadside taverns, wailing of crows that aren’t crows, sounds that aren’t sounds, and a lopsided horror in the shape of a scarecrow that croaks in the stolen voices of the dead.
Most blame rogue mages. Such accusations are common in these days of rebellion.
Yet the truth is far worse. Something has returned, just as it had in the fictitious tale of the young mage in his seaside tower. An evil gone from the world for numberless centuries—long enough that the warnings of a nascent humanity passed into rumor, then myth, then legend… until all that remained were simple fables. An entity so utterly alien that it defies almost all contemporary knowledge of magic. So impossibly ancient that it has always been. So universally feared that even animals grow nervous when someone speaks its name.
In the wake of this revival, another tale, nearly lost to memory, has seen a resurgence throughout the hinterlands. A legend of a great evil that has no form, no thoughts, and no understanding of the world it inhabits, instead building itself into the crude shape of those that fear it. The terror of all living things, given life in that first terrible scream of creation. A demon before demons were known.
At least, that’s what the stories say.
But Fiddlesticks is real.
Voices

Jared Rosen

Ten great kings took ten great thrones,
Nine crowns adorned nine heads.
One left to scratch upon their mounds,
The crow, alive and dead.
— old Demacian poem, author unknown
It started when old Hubard, drunk out his mind on stale mead and the dulled memories of some battle he’d probably run from, locked himself in a shack just outside of Goldweald. Davil tried to break the door in, good neighbor as he was, but the miserable fossil had more strength than anyone could have anticipated, bracing his entire body against the entrance as he babbled about heights and spiders and being pecked to death by birds. No one believed the man was being pecked to death by anything but a bottle, so we all went home, assuming, as one does, that with a day to dry out, the ordeal would sort itself.
Took only one night.
First scream ripped across the village like someone had pulled it out of Hubard’s open chest, followed by a second that was almost the same—but worse. It pitched higher, like rusted metal wrapped in burlap, in almost-human words with an almost-human rhythm until the baker’s wife cried, “Mages!” and all hell broke loose. People arming themselves, the mayor—if that's what you could call the head of some hinterlands piss-hole—shooing whoever he could into the meeting hall, windows being boarded up in blind panic, the works. You’ve seen it a hundred times, probably two hundred since the Claw hit up north. Regular folks going mad at the fairest hint of magic.
Point is, that’s around when everything went bad. But there’s a bottom to bad, and what happened in Goldweald broke right past it.
Don’t believe me?
Go for yourself. Goldweald ain’t there anymore.
But I’m skipping ahead, and that ain’t fair to Davil. See, Davil was a spy from back when the Freljord pacifications were still talked about like there was honor in ’em, and he later served the crown as far out as Shurima and the Blue Flame Isles. The man had seen things. We’re lucky out west, since the worst the hinterlands have to offer are some stray raptors after the hatching season, and maybe a sun-cooked bandit or three, but Davil knew what was out there. What could be out there. And he gathered up all the folk who were willing to listen and organized a peasant militia to bring those supposed “mages” to justice.
His plan was simple: First light, we’re all going on patrol, two by two, no one alone. Military stuff, and that gives us hope, gins us all up for a fight. For king and country! Rah-rah Demacia, and all that.
Until the sun comes up and a family’s gone missing.
Every one of them—five in all. Farmhouse torn to shreds, livestock slaughtered in their pens. Doors all locked from the inside, windows all latched. They’re gone. The mayor calls a meeting, but a pair of fieldhands don’t come in from the rows. When Davil calls for them, something calls back. But it isn’t them. Sounds almost like them, like something is forcing words into almost the right shape, but that old, rusty cage sound keeps cutting through, squeaking and rattling and clicking like it can’t help itself.
Now people are afraid. Some hothead charges into the fields with a sword in his hand—gone. Another follows him—gone. Blacksmith gets the wise idea he’ll ride all the way to Amberfel and call the guard, but the horse bucks him halfway down the old trade road and something pulls him into the rows. Davil calls to see if he’s alright, and that awful voice burbles out, saying it’ll take the road to Amberfel and call the guard.
Davil asks again, and it repeats: “I’ll take the old road to Amberfel and call the guard.”
There’s something about it… like a pin twisting inside your head, poking through the meat into something darker underneath. I could see it on everyone’s faces. Folks holding their kids close, backing away toward their homes, some just running. That voice could cut away all the parts of a person and leave ’em naked and afraid, shivering in the middle of a blistering afternoon. Like it was pulling something out of you. Something it wanted.
A little girl says she saw someone standing above the field out where we keep the scarecrow. It’s such an odd thing to notice, and there’s so much going on, that we pay her no mind.
But we should have.
Night comes and half the houses in town are boarded shut. You can hear folks inside whispering, muttering, giggling like maniacs, but about… I’m not sure. Snakes. Lightning. The dark. Walls closing in. Knives. The sea. They’re laughing and they’re screaming and it sounds like everyone has gone insane, like they’re trapped inside a room with a part of themselves they don’t want to face. It sounds like we’re all stuck in a nightmare.
Then the lights start going out. One after the other in all the boarded-up houses, the lamps flicker and die. And the voices melt away, each suddenly silenced, all save for one. Something croaking behind the old smithy. Muttering to itself. About snakes. About lighting. Muttering about the dark.
Davil, that poor fool, takes the militia and goes in. And I… I’m there with him. I have my blade. I have my lantern. But the rows are deep, and the light casts shadows everywhere you look.
I… I don’t know exactly what happened. I saw a face—maybe. Something looking back at me just ahead of Davil, but it was like he saw right past it. Like that face was just there for me. All lopsided, twisted sackcloth and rusted teeth. And behind it… something huge. Splayed out on thin legs, but alive with hundreds of black birds rattling inside an old cage we’d thrown into the woods last year. And eyes. So many eyes.
There’s no one left in Goldweald now. If no one came after me… I’m the only one left. Hearing those screams fade behind me as crimson light poured out from between the corn stalks—that sickly crunching, and the bellowing, tortured squeals of hogs and horses…
And the crows! Hundreds of them—thousands! But crows they aren’t, can’t you see? They’re smoke and fire! They’re not real! They couldn’t be real…
They follow that voice! The deep, rumbling voice beneath it all! Don’t you see? Don’t you—
Oh, gods… Davil! I left him behind! I left him there—there in the rows with that horrible scarecrow! Everyone—they’re all dead! Gods, gods, it must have followed me. Once it tastes your fear, once it knows you, it never lets go. It won’t let you go, it won’t—
What’s that voice?
Can anyone hear—
You don’t hear it?
…Davil?

All stories

Ivern

Gift of Venom

Janna

Deep Breath

In Sight of Land

Irelia

Stains on a Name

Brand

Braum

Tomb of the Troll Boy

Briar

Caitlyn

The Thrill of the Chase

Wukong

Fast and Dumb

Mordekaiser

The Final Reign

Feast of the Prophet

Fiddlesticks

Voices