Runeterra

Not every major player in Runeterra swears loyalty to a banner. Some are bound to powers far older than any kingdom, some were forged by losses too intimate to become a nation’s record, and some have simply never stayed still long enough to put down roots.

Aatrox, the Darkin Blade, was around long before the present map took shape, a survivor of an ancient conflict that still drives him to bend the world into the form he remembers. Mordekaiser, the Iron Revenant, and Nocturne, the Eternal Nightmare, nurse equally ancient and equally hostile aims: one presides over a domain of imprisoned souls, while the other draws sustenance from fear in general, not the dread of any one people.

Still others roam because circumstance pushes them, not because they chose a path. Bard, the Wandering Caretaker, handles cosmic affairs that no mortal authority could ever hope to govern. Kindred, the Eternal Hunters, goes wherever death is owed, unconcerned with frontiers, since death has never honored them either. Fiddlesticks, the Ancient Fear, turns up only where dread has already put down roots, and that could be any corner of the world.

Some are fleeing a past, others chasing one. Lucian, the Purifier, and Evelynn, Agony’s Embrace, are both hunters, yet their motives sit at opposite poles: he wants to stamp out suffering wrought by dark magic, while she inflicts it to keep herself fed. Shaco, the Demon Jester, and Locke, the Ashen Exorcist, share that uncomfortable middle ground between threat and remedy, one taking pleasure in cruelty and the other designed to counter it. Jax, Grandmaster at Arms, and Ryze, the Rune Mage, each carry pieces of a world-shaping history: Jax through a fighting style honed against gods and monsters, Ryze through magic bound to the world’s original creation. Even Smolder, the Fiery Fledgling, follows nothing grander than his own expanding appetite and curiosity.

When the Sentinels of Light need fighters for dangers no single nation can contain, they often turn to this scattered, independent crowd. It shows that some of Runeterra’s most important work is carried out by people who never agreed to speak for anyone beyond themselves.