Nilah, the Joy Unbound
“Bliss in life, and bliss forever after.”
- Human (Magically Altered) Demon (Ashlesh)
Bilgewater
A confident and joyful woman who always wears an eerie smile, Nilah’s sudden arrival in Bilgewater has sent the city into an uproar. Her duels with rampaging sea serpents defy the limits of human ability: Racing across the surface of the open ocean with a whip-blade formed from glittering, prismatic water, she scales the great beasts before dramatically slaying them, pausing only to thank her “worthy enemies” for their efforts. Any threat taller than a house is guaranteed to draw her into combat, and the deadlier and physically larger that threat is, the more determined she becomes to challenge and destroy it.
Her strength and origins are shrouded in mystery. Yet the truth, known only to Nilah, is that she once had a different name and lived a very different life.
The precocious child of a large Kathkani family, the girl who would become Nilah was not a warrior at all—rather, she was a lanky bookworm with an interest in myths and legends. Kathkan had known relative peace since its neighbor Camavor’s collapse almost a thousand years prior, and had no further need for great warriors or storied heroes. Or, at least, that’s what Nilah believed.
Wishing the age of heroes had never ended, she collected and obsessed over colorful tales of old—epics of great beasts and shining warriors who clashed beneath the eyes of the gods, back when the world was young and humanity’s enemies were a thousandfold. She read of the mad king Viego and his tragic fall, the genesis of the first dragons, and the foundation of the universe in the Kathkan tradition. Nilah memorized each in turn, knowing in her heart that their color and magic were more than simple fiction.
One story, in particular, was her favorite: The Cycle of Ashlesh.
It spoke of the fantastical Lord of Joy, Ashlesh: A many-limbed beast who menaced the world along with its nine ferocious siblings. Hungering for primal joy, Ashlesh attempted to consume the realm of the gods—but the gods struck the monster down, trapping it deep below the earth in an endless, shimmering lake within the seventh layer of the underworld. There it would be guarded by a mythical order of heroes.
An order of heroes that, after unraveling the story’s many riddles, Nilah realized was beneath her very feet in the heart of the Kathkani capital. Overcome with excitement, she struck out to find this hidden order—to learn its secrets and perhaps even stand among the heroes as an equal...
And then she was gone. All knowledge of the girl she was—her face, her voice, her true name—was erased from living memory. Records curled and evaporated, writing vanished from walls and texts, and words failed on the tongues of her friends and family. It was as though Nilah had never been born at all.
The woman who resurfaced ten years later was a stranger to her homeland, unbound from the world she knew, yet possessed of a strange smile and an unending, ceaseless joy. Whatever happened to her during her long absence, she would not say. Perhaps she met the mythical order after all, and they trained her in the arts of magic and war. Perhaps she stood face to face with the primordial demon Ashlesh, battling it in the apocryphal darkness for a decade before finally emerging triumphant. Perhaps this wasn’t the girl at all, but a pretender wearing her flesh... Or maybe the truth was somewhere in between. Whoever or whatever she was, she began calling herself “Nilah,” the name of the legendary river of fate.
And then her work began.
Possessed of wiry, acrobatic strength, and wielding a liquid blade of incalculable might, she embarked on a conquest of the greatest threats of ancient myth: Grandmother Viper, the invincible progenitor of all Camavoran dragons; Imago, demon of change and scourge of the Carnelian Valley; the mad demigod Nabavelicus, perpetrator of countless atrocities.
Each new foe rises against Nilah in challenge, and each is snuffed out in a ferocious battle of color and fury, dazzling all witnesses.
Nilah's own legend grows with every victory. And with it, an epic tale has begun to take shape, following her journey through strange lands near and far. At her side is the power of Ashlesh itself, which Nilah wields against other evils that might one day threaten the safety of Kathkan. In her heart is the memory of what she has lost, and the knowledge of what is to come, driving her to face greater and greater opponents wherever they might be found.
Whatever happened to that lanky girl who was buried in books, Nilah now faces her future with unbridled bliss. Her mere presence inspires others to fight alongside her, while her deeds ensure that people remember the hero she has become, even if they cannot remember the woman she once was.
Facing the mythological villains of Runeterra with unerring glee, she will challenge the end itself if it means she can protect those who cannot protect themselves.
