Viktor, Herald of the Arcane
“Join the Glorious Evolution.”
- Human (Cyborg; Magically Altered)
Zaun
To understand the full impact of hextech, and the legacy it has left behind in our world, one must first understand the minds behind it.
While much is known and written about Jayce Talis—the vaunted “Man of Progress”—it is considerably harder to verify anything about his counterpart, Viktor. Your humble author has made several requests to the Piltover Council and various faculties within the Academy, but they claim that any records relating to his employment there were lost during the tumultuous events that ultimately led to his death. I will leave it to your judgment as to whether this seems plausible, and simply recount what I have been able to glean from public sources such as the unexpectedly superb back catalogs of The Piltover Gazette, and what little remains of the hexgate construction documentation I was able to source by… let us say, less official means.
Born to a poor family in the fissures beneath Zaun, it appears Viktor always knew hardship. The polluted undercity afflicted him with both a limp and a rare, life-limiting illness, which alienated him from the other children. Yet despite all the impediments to his body, Viktor’s mind was allowed to grow without restraint, and flourished.
He once spoke with a colleague of mine, about a formative moment in his youth. Playing in the effluent streams of the Sump with his toy boat, he made reference to encountering a “disgraced doctor” who had gone to disturbing and extreme lengths in pursuit of science. Progress needed boundaries, and this early lesson served Viktor well when he caught the eye of the celebrated Professor Cecil B Heimerdinger, years later.
He was taken up to Piltover Academy for a full education, and to serve as the professor’s assistant. (This is precisely why I find it difficult to believe that no records have survived in their administrative archives—not to mention Heimerdinger himself, who some on the Council claim not even to remember! Such petty revisionism!) But, finally, Viktor had a home where his genius could truly be cultivated.
When a laboratory accident (see Chapter 6: Enforcement in the Undercity) revealed unauthorized experiments on Academy property, Heimerdinger sent Viktor to remove anything hazardous. But instead of danger, Viktor found intrigue—pages of handwritten notes, speaking of a feverish ambition to master magic through science.
It was here that he struck a friendship with the wayward inventor Jayce Talis, and their shared vision would change the world forever.
The fruit of their labors was, of course, hextech, a technology so revolutionary that it propelled Piltover into a wondrous new era. Viktor and Jayce were not just peers in innovation, but brothers in all but blood.
However, Viktor’s illness worsened. He drove them toward a possible solution—an adaptive runic matrix (outlined and illustrated in full in Chapter 13: The Hexcore). With its power to seemingly evolve its own configuration, he hoped it could augment organic matter and heal him… but was met only with failure. Self-experimentation is always risky, and Viktor knew it would likely cost him his standing in the academic community, as well as his loved ones. Even so, by all accounts, he truly believed Jayce would be an exception to this.
But when his friend’s prejudices against the undercity and its people came to light, it seems Viktor felt their bond beginning to weaken. Resolving to hide his plans, he experimented alone, until he ultimately lost control of the hexcore. According to two verified sources within the Academy (see Appendix H for full transcripts) it seems that some loss of life occurred as a result, though details are notably vague.
Nonetheless, it is apparent that Viktor’s mental health was impacted, though he felt unable to destroy the hexcore on his own. Despite their best efforts, both he and Jayce had each failed to save lives with their inventions, and Viktor was determined to make amends.
Any plans he may have formulated in that regard were halted by the terrorist attack on the Piltover Council.
He was critically injured in the blast, and saved only by the quick thinking and rapid intervention of his old friend, Jayce Talis. The hexcore was able to regenerate his wounds to a degree that has astounded and baffled some of the greatest minds in all the world—indeed, such that it sounds almost akin to a vulgar fantasy, or fiction of science! We will cover this more exhaustively in Chapter 21: The Theory of Biomechanics… but suffice to say, the Viktor that stepped forth was to a man as hextech is to the simple wheel!
And he had little gratitude for what Jayce had done for him.
Walking alone among the broken and forgotten denizens of the undercity gifted Viktor a new purpose, for his cold touch could apparently heal suffering and remove emotion. Word spread quickly throughout Zaun of a healer, and soon enough the healer became a savior. The commune that sprung forth around him attracted some of the most hopeless and pitiful cases, until it was attacked by the Noxian garrison (see Chapter 19: Martial Law in Piltover) under General Ambessa Medarda, and Viktor was once again physically incapacitated.
This time, however, something changed. Devoid of fear, love, bitterness, joy, hatred, or compassion, he rose up as the mechanical herald of a second new era, with his followers reduced to little more than puppets of his will.
Doubtless, for all his vast and unsympathetic intelligence, Viktor’s purpose was clearer than it had ever been. He would save humanity from themselves by enacting a Glorious Evolution across the entire world—whether they understood its need, or not.
—extract from ‘The Price of Progress’, a treatise by Prof. Cristobal Lymere
