Gods in Runeterra: How they work.
With the Volibear rework coming soon, I thought I’d talk a bit about how gods in the League of Legends universe work. The main issue is that aside from gods there are godlike-beings (ascended, celestials, void creatures and whatever Kindred are) and they aren’t the same thing, so for that reason we’ll look at 3 examples from league that have been confirmed as gods by the developers, those being Janna, Nagakabouros and Volibear.
Nagakabouros, born through belief.
The picture above is concept art of a Naga, a massive creature that lives in the sea’s of Bilgewater and the Serpent Isles. Riot confirmed that it is because of this thing that sailors and the Burhu pray to the “Serpent Mother” or Nagakabouros, the interesting thing being that Nagakabouros wasn’t a real god until people started believing she was.
At first, people could or could not pay the tithe to the ocean, but after enough people believed, Nautilus appeared and he began to enforce it. People believed that sailors were not respecting the sea enough, so Pyke appeared. What we see here is a relatively new god, who through the faith of Bilgewater’s citizens, has blinked into existence.
Janna, redefined through belief.
Janna started as a small shuriman spirit that protected the sailors of Oshra Va’Zaun , whose original name was Jan’ahrem. However as time went on, what Janna did and what she stood for changed, as the faith of those who believed in her molded her new self.
When the Zaun cataclysm event happened, Jan’ahrem stoped being a guardian spirit of the sailors, and became Janna guardian of the humble and meek citizens of her city a process that took centuries to happen.To survive, Janna adapted, whether it was her choice or a choice thrust upon her through her followers.
Volibear, power through belief.
Finally, the main bear himself, as we know through his lore, Volibear’s driving goal is to return Freljord to “the old ways”. His reason being that people have stopped believing in him and his brethren and he has began to lose power, so he has intervened in the war to try and regain followers, something that seems to be working.
That implies that the more followers a god has, the more powerful and the less they have, the less so. Whats interesting is that in contrast to Janna, Volibear acted himself to regain followers, while she has a stroke of luck.
Gods in runeterra are physical manifestations of the faith of the people, they are created by their believers to rule over an aspect of life, the more believers the more power. This puts them in a very interesting position where they are above humans in terms of strength, but they are also below them. If a god suddenly stops being worshiped altogether, then they cease to be, creating a wonderful balance of power between humanity and deities.