The Universe has been updated with tons of new lore! The bio and short story for our newest champion,
Kai'Sa, have been released, plus we have new bios for
Kassadin,
Malzahar, as well as an update to the Void region page!
Continue reading for a look at all the new lore content!
Table of Contents
Void Region Page Update
The
Void region page on Universe has been updated with a new story as well as tons of art!
BY GRAHAM MCNEILL
"My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari Icath’or.
Axamuk was my grandsire’s name. A warrior’s name, it means keeper of edges, and it is an auspicious title to bear. Axamuk was the last of the Mage Kings, the final ruler to fall before the Shuriman Sun Empress when she led her golden host of men and gods into the kingdom of Icathia.
Var is my mother and Choi my father. Icath’or is the name of the blood-bonded clan to which I was born, one with an honorable history of service to the Mage Kings.
I have borne these names since birth.
My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari Icath’or.
Only Kohari is a new addition. The fit is new, but already feels natural. The name is now part of me, and I bear it with a pride that burns bright in my heart. The Kohari were once the life-wards of the Mage Kings, deadly warriors who dedicated their lives to the service of their master. When Axamuk the King fell before the god-warriors of the Sun Empress and Icathia became a vassal state of Shurima, every one of them fell upon their swords.
But the Kohari are reborn, rising to serve the new Mage King and reclaim their honor. I bear their sigil branded on my arm, the scroll-wrapped sword.
My name is Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari Icath’or. I repeat it over and over, holding onto what it represents.
I do not want to forget it. It is all I have left.
Was it only this morning I and the rest of the reformed Kohari marched through the streets of Icathia? It seems like a lifetime ago.
The wide thoroughfares were thronged with thousands of cheering men, women and children. Clad in their brightest cloth, and wearing their finest jewelry to honor our march, they had come to witness the rebirth of their kingdom.
For it was Icathia that was reborn today, not just the Kohari. Our heads were high, my chest swollen with pride.
We marched in step, gripping the leather straps of wicker shields and the wire-wound hilts of our curved nimcha blades. To bear Icathian armaments had been forbidden under Shuriman law, but enough had been wrought in secret forges and hidden in caches throughout the city, in readiness for the day of uprising.
I remember that day well.
The city had been filled with screams, as baying crowds chased down and murdered every Shuriman official they could find. Resentment for centuries of humiliating laws intended to eradicate our culture—and brutal executions for breaking those laws—came to a head in one blood-filled day of violence. It didn’t matter that most of these people were merely scriveners, merchants and tithe-takers. They were servants of the hated Sun-Emperor, and needed to die.
Overnight, Icathia was ours again!
Sun disc effigies were pulled from rooftops and smashed by cheering crowds. Shuriman scriptwork was burned and their treasuries looted. The statues of dead emperors were desecrated, and even I defaced one of the great frescoes with obscenities that would have made my mother blush.
I remember the smell of smoke and fire. It was the smell of freedom.
I held to that feeling as we marched.
My memory recalled the smiling faces and the cheers, but I could not pick out any words. The sunlight was too bright, the noise too intense, and the pounding in my head unrelenting.
I had not slept the previous night, too nervous at the prospect of battle. My skill with the nimcha was average, but I was deadly with the recurved serpent bow slung at my shoulder. Its wood was well-seasoned, protected from the humidity by a coat of red lacquer. My arrows were fletched with azure raptor feathers, and I had carved their piercing heads from razored obsidian sourced from the thaumaturges—the magickers of earth and rock. Long runs through Icathia’s lush, coastal forests and along its high mountain trails had given me powerful, clean limbs to draw the bowstring, and the stamina to fight all day.
A young girl, her hair braided with silver wire, and with the deepest green eyes I had ever seen, placed a garland of flowers over my head. The scent of the blossoms was intoxicating, but I forgot it all as she pulled me close to kiss my lips. She wore a necklace, an opal set in a swirling loop of gold, and I smiled as I recognized my father’s craft.
I tried to hold on to her, but our march carried me away. Instead, I fixed her face in my mind.
I cannot remember it now, only her eyes, deep green like the forests of my youth…
Soon, even that will be gone.
“Easy, Axa,” said Saijax Cail-Rynx Kohari Icath’un, popping a freshly shelled egg into his mouth. “She’ll be waiting for you when this day is done.”
“Aye,” said Colgrim Avel-Essa Kohari Icath’un, jabbing his elbow into my side. “Him and twenty other strapping young lads.”
I blushed at Colgrim’s words, and he laughed.
“Craft her a fine necklace from Shuriman gold,” he continued. “Then she’ll be yours forever. Or at least until morning!”
I should have said something to berate Colgrim for slighting this girl’s honor, but I was young and eager to prove myself to these veteran warriors. Saijax was the beating heart of the Kohari, a shaven-headed giant with skin pockmarked by the ravages of a childhood illness, and a forked beard stiffened to points with wax and white chalk. Colgrim was his right hand, a brute with cold eyes and a betrothal tattoo, though I had never heard him talk of his wife. These men had grown up together, and had learned the secret ways of the warrior since they were old enough to hold a blade.
But I was new to this life. My father had trained me as a lapidary—an artisan of gemstones and maker of jewelry. A meticulous and fastidious man, such coarse language was anathema to him, and unfamiliar to me. I relished it, of course, eager to fit in with these leather-tough men.
“Go easy on the lad, Colgrim,” said Saijax, slapping my back with one of his massive hands. Meant as a brotherly pat, it rattled the teeth in my skull, but I welcomed it all the same. “He’ll be a hero by nightfall.”
He shifted the long, axe-headed polearm slung at his shoulder. The weapon was immense, its ebony haft carved with the names of his forebears, and the blade a slab of razor-edged bronze. Few of our group could even lift it, let along swing it, but Saijax was a master of weapons.
I turned to catch a last glimpse of my green-eyed girl, but could not see her amid the tightly packed ranks of soldiers, and the waving arms of the crowds.
“Time to focus, Axa,” said Saijax. “The scryers say the Shurimans are less than half a day’s march from Icathia.”
“Are… Are the god-warriors with them?” I asked.
“So they say, lad. So they say.”
“Is it wrong that I can’t wait to see them?”
Saijax shook his head. “No, for they are mighty. But as soon as you do, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
I did not understand Saijax’s meaning, and said, “Why?”
He gave me a sidelong glance. “Because they are monsters.”
“Have you seen one?”
I was filled with youthful enthusiasm, but I still remember the look that passed between Saijax and Colgrim.
“I have, Axa,” said Saijax. “We fought one at Bai-Zhek.”
“We had to topple half the mountain to put the big bastard down,” Colgrim added. “And even then, only Saijax had a weapon big enough to take its head off.”
I remembered the tale with a thrill of excitement. “That was you?”
Saijax nodded, but said nothing, and I knew to ask no more. The corpse had been paraded around the newly liberated city for all to see, proof that the Shuriman’s god-warriors could still die. My father had not wanted me to see it, fearing it would enflame the desire to rebel that had smoldered in every Icathian heart for centuries.
The memory of exactly what it looked like is gone now, but I remember it was enormous beyond belief, inhuman and terrible…
I would see the god-warriors later that day.
And then I understood Saijax’s meaning.
We formed up on the gentle slopes before the crumbling remains of the city walls. Since the coming of the Sun Empress, over a thousand years ago, we had been forbidden to reclaim the stone or rebuild the wall; forced to leave the rubble as a reminder of our ancient defeat.
But now an army of stonewrights, laborers and thaumaturges were hefting giant blocks of freshly hewn granite into place with windlass mechanisms that crackled with magic.
I felt pride at the sight of the rising walls. Icathia was being reborn in glory right before my eyes.
More immediately impressive was the army taking position athwart the hard-packed earthen road leading into the city. Ten thousand men and women, clad in armor of boiled leather and armed with axes, picks, and spears. The forges had worked day and night to produce swords, shields and arrowheads in the days following the uprising, but there was only so much that could be produced before the Sun Emperor turned his gaze upon this rebellious satrapy and marched east.
I had seen pictures of ancient Icathian armies in the forbidden texts—brave warriors arrayed in serried ranks of gold and silver—and though we were a shadow of such forces, we were no less proud. Two thousand talon-riders were deployed on either flank, their scaled and feathered mounts snorting, and stamping clawed hooves with impatience. A thousand archers knelt in two long lines, fifty feet ahead of us, blue-fletched shafts planted in the soft loam before them.
Three blocks of deep-ranked infantry formed the bulk of our line, a bulwark of courage to repel our ancient oppressors.
All down our line, crackling energies from the earth-craft of our mages made the air blurry. The Shurimans would surely bring mages, but we could counter their power with magic of our own.
“I’ve never seen so many warriors,” I said.
Colgrim shrugged. “None of us have, not in our lifetimes.”
“Don’t get too impressed,” said Saijax. “The Sun Emperor has five armies, and even the least of them will outnumber us three to one.”
I tried to imagine such a force, and failed. “How do we defeat such a host?” I asked.
Saijax did not answer me, but led the Kohari to our place in the line before a stepped structure of granite blocks. Shuriman corpses were impaled upon wooden stakes driven into the earth at its base, and flocks of carrion birds circled overhead. A silken pavilion of crimson and indigo had been raised at its summit, but I could not see what lay within. Robed priests surrounded it, each one weaving intricate patterns in the air with their star-metal staves.
I did not know what they were doing, but I heard an insistent buzzing sound, like a hive of insects trying to push their way into my skull.
The pavilion’s outline rippled like a desert mirage, and I had to look away as my eyes began to water. My teeth felt loose in their gums, and my mouth filled with the taste of soured milk. I gagged and wiped the back of my hand across my lips, surprised and not a little alarmed to see a smear of blood there.
“What is that?” I asked. “What’s in there?”
Saijax shrugged. “A new weapon, I heard. Something the thaumaturges found deep underground, after the earthquake at Saabera.”
“What kind of weapon?”
“Does it matter?” said Colgrim. “They say it’s going to wipe the gold-armored dung-eaters from the world. Even those thrice-damned god-warriors.”
The sun was close to its zenith by now, but a shiver worked its way down my spine. My mouth was suddenly dry. I could feel tingling in my fingertips.
Was it fear? Perhaps.
Or, maybe, just maybe, it was a premonition of what was to come.
An hour later, the Shuriman army arrived.
I had never seen such a host, nor ever imagined so many men could be gathered together in one place. Columns of dust created clouds that rose like a gathering storm set to sweep the mortal realm away.
And then, through the dust, I saw the bronze spears of the Shuriman warriors, filling my sight in all directions. They marched forward, a vast line of fighting men with golden banners and sun-disc totems glimmering in the noonday sun.
From the slopes above, we watched wave after wave come into sight, tens of thousands of men who had never known defeat, and whose ancestors had conquered the known world. Riders on golden mounts rode the flanks, as hundreds of floating chariots roved ahead of the army. Heavy wagons the size of river barques bore strange war-machines that resembled navigational astrolabes; spinning globes orbited by flaming spheres and crackling lightning. Robed priests came with them, each with a flame-topped staff and an entourage of blinded slaves.
At the heart of the army were the god-warriors.
Much else fades from my mind; the blood, the horror and the fear. But the sight of the god-warriors will follow me into whatever lies beyond this moment…
I saw nine of them, towering over the men they led. Their features and bodies were an awful blend of human and animal, and things that had never walked this world, and never should. Armored in bronze and jade, they were titans, inhuman monsters that defied belief.
Their leader, with skin as pale and smooth as ivory, turned her monstrous head towards us. Enclosed in a golden helm carved to resemble a roaring lion, her face was mercifully hidden, but I could feel her power as she swept her scornful gaze across our line.
A palpable wave of terror followed in its wake.
Our army shrank from
from
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