Left Corner: A map of Aetherosia which shows the island continent’s four ancient, regional elemental provinces
Top Left: A man from the Hills of Fire executes the Fireclap, considered by many to be the most powerful fire-based attack move
Top Right: A woman from the lands south of the Black Mountai ma kinetically hurls a stream of large rocks and stones with her right land while she conjures a bunch of flowers with her right hand
Bottom Left: A girl from the Green Marshes kinetically raises up a few towering streams of water from the nearby lake
Bottom right: A boy from the skies right above the Black Mountains conjures a few powerful gusts of wind from the palms of his hands as he floats high up in the air
Please read this in order to get started on the lore: https://www.deviantart.com/makairodonx/art/A-Brief-History-of-the-World-of-Sekaia-950293620
A Brief History of the World of Sekaia by MakairodonX on DeviantArt
For hundreds of years during the Third Age, before the Dynasty of Trians founded tributary states there by the start of the Fourth, the many peoples who inhabited the Island continent of Aetherosia, which was raised upon the shell of an Island Turtle that resembled a gigantic alligator snapping turtle covered in moss and was discovered by the Chuseiian seafarer Aetheros, who settled the island-continent with his people after an asteroid impact destroyed the industrial civilizations of the Second Age, were once taught the nearly-lost elemental magic of their First-Age forebears by the Gods and Mages of Water, Earth, Air and Fire, and soon strove to preserve the knowledge and practices of such magic, much of which were lost during the industrialized Second Age, in four different monasteries that specialized in Water-Magic, Earth-Magic, Air-Magic and Fire-Magic. Over time, as these elemental monasteries grew in prominence, four major Elemental Provinces emerged in the vast lands west of the Great Canyon of Duhum-Bazad, where the peoples there specialized in an elemental magic practice of their own choosing depending on that province’s geography and dominant element as well as its qualities; The Aetherosians who inhabited the hot, arid desert regions of the Sands of Fate and Hills of Fire specialized in Fire-Magic, the Aetherosians who dwelled in the swampy wetlands of the Green Marshes specialized in Water-Magic, and so forth. But during the start of the Forth Age, a new multiethnic wave of various invading human settlers from overseas would gradually push the Ancient Aetherosians out from their homelands with their advanced weapons and technology and established cities, city-states, and later feudal kingdoms which soon became tributary states of Triania. Some of these newly-founded states were industrialized, although some of them would assimilate into ancient Aetherosian culture and become, in the words of some prominent Trianian historians, “more Aetherosian than the Aetherosians themselves”. However, the descendants of the Ancient Aetherosians, such as the Udolai of the Green Marshes and the people from the Hills of Fire who maintained an class of priestesses known as the Fire-Maidens, would continue to uphold their elemental magic in certain hidden and remote areas of untouched wilderness with the help of the island-continent’s elves and fairies, and over time, some of the descendants of the second wave of invaders, such as a few dedicated families of human sorcerers and sorceresses, would soon strive to keep and preserve this wisdom for the benefit of future generations as they established universities and libraries in many of Aetherosia’s biggest cities and towns. But as the Fifth Age arrived and the hyper-industrialized Arpanian and Thubanian Empires wrestled for control over the former tributary states of the Trians, the Elemental Magic of the Ancient Aetherosians seemed to be in jeopardy…until a certain young mage from the Southwestern Lands who has been well-versed in this sacred knowledge of controlling, manipulating and conjuring Water, Earth, Air and Fire, will be foretold to fulfill the Prophecy of the West…
It was the duty of the novices of the previous seasons to welcome the new arrivals, but warmth was hard to come by in this season. Winter novices, brought in at the tail-end of the year, were children who had nowhere else to go. Too old for the orphanage but too young for the workhouse, when the temple had beds free before the new year they took in charity cases as the gods demanded.
Eirien had been a springtime novice last year, sponsored by her family, proud and warm and hopeful and eager to share her faith with others. She clutched her hands together tightly in her sleeves and watched the girls enter, wondering which she would be assigned to tutor. Girls her age, shivering in the same uniforms, soon to share the same dormitories and eating hall and time at prayer. Many were sullen, or too cold to find wonder in being welcomed to this holy place.
But one of the Winter novices did not shiver. Her hair was long and dark, and she did not bow her head. Her eyes, bright and sharp, flicked over the building facade, over the empty flowerbeds, and then across the line of the welcoming priests and priestesses and novices and then, finally, locked on Eirien. And the Spring novice felt her breath seize in her chest, as though struck by lightning.
It was late that evening when Eirien had the chance to speak to that dark-haired Winter novice. She had come to prayer, alone, and had not expected to find anyone else in chapel. There shouldn’t have been anyone here. But the Winter novice was standing in the centre of the room, slowly turning to look at each and every alcove, giving each of the statues of the gods a silent - and judgemental? - stare. Candlelight made her hair seem darker, made her eyes seem brighter, gave a gleam of silver to the plain grey robes that she wore.
“You’re beautiful.” The words slipped out of Eirien’s mouth before she could stop herself. Truth did not sit silent on her tongue. That was her gift.
The Winter novice looked at Eirien, not in surprise or modest acceptance, but something like scorn. “That should not matter. The gods are all blind.”
Eirien was shocked by the blasphemy, too shocked for a moment to even speak.
The dark haired novice frowned, then reached out and took Eirien by the wrist, pulling her to stand beside her. “Look,” she said, pointing - pointing! Jabs of her index finger, careless and disrespectful! - at each of the statues that surrounded them, that looked down from their naves. “Each and every one of them is carved with their eyes closed, and those who are not? Look at their eyes. Blank and white and featureless. The gods are blind, all of them.”
Eirien was filled with terror. “That cannot be so!”
“Of course it is.” The Winter novice dropped Eirien’s wrist, slowly turning again, looking at each of the gods just as before. “In all the scriptures, it is said that the gods are pleased by the scent of the offerings and the sound of worship. They never say they are pleased by what they see… because they cannot.” The dark-haired girl gives a thoughtful hum, then looked back at Eirien. “So even if I am beautiful, the gods wouldn’t know, nor would they care. They cannot see me.” She shrugged.
Truth did not sit silent on her tongue. It was her gift. Eirien felt the words spill out again. “I care that you are beautiful.”
“You are strange,” the Winter novice said, unsmiling, but there was a light in her sharp eyes. “Alright, you may care, if you like. But no-one else may, I have now decided.”
Eirien huffed a small incredulous laugh, but the blood in her veins sang in unexpected joy.
The Winter novice’s name was Catriona. It took Eirien three days to learn this, and in that evening she whispered it amongst her prayers. Silly. Foolish. But she was grateful, and she was happy, and she was scared and compelled by this new novice in equal measures. Maybe, when the season changed, she would ask the High Priestess if she may become Catriona’s sister, and guide the new novice in proper responsibilities? The thought of being sisters with Catriona felt right. Felt almost like it would be enough.
When the spring came, Eirien’s family brought her honeycakes, and spent time in saying how proud they were of their daughter, and joined in singing carols and worship. Eirien did not see the Winter novice in the service, and was half afraid that there would be some repercussions, that Catriona’s furtive disrespect of the gods would see her removed from the temple. But she was in the garden, reading, when Eirien went to look for her. She did not seem happy. She did not seem like she had been anywhere else all day.
Eirien pulled apart a honeycake with her bare hands and held it out to Catriona. “My parents made these. Would you like to share?”
Catriona lifted her head, and blinked. There was something fiercely angry in the gesture, and it made Eirien freeze.
“In my next lives,” Catriona said, definitively, “My parents will not be so cruel to me.” She slammed her prayer book together and got to her feet. “They will not die before I have a chance to remember them.”
She stormed off, blinking hard. Eirien’s fingers were sticky; she washed off the honey, and threw the torn cake to the hounds.
Catriona would continue to speak casual blasphemies in the year to come, backed by scripture and unnerving insight. Soon, she was found to speak prophecies. Soon, she was known to be a vessel for Divine Wisdom. Young and destined for greatness, and isolated further by it.
Eirien was named her Sister. Eirien was her only friend.
A night-terror washed through the temple, one unholy eve. Those who saw visions saw monsters, and dire portents, and glimpses of the future. Eirien found herself whimpering and whispering the words of madmen and tyrants, and her hands shook as she forced herself to commit them to parchment, the quill shaky in her hands. Across the room they shared, sitting on the other bed, Catriona’s face was lost in shadow where it was upturned towards the ceiling. She was not shaking. She was still, and calm, and hummed something low and pleased like a cat's purr.
“Catriona,” Eirien whispered. “Help me. Comfort me. I am afraid.”
Her Winter Sister looked across the room, her eyes steady and sharp. “You and I will die together,” she said simply, “In each others’ arms.”
Eirien burst into tears.
Catriona left her bed, taking aside her Sister’s paper and ink and quill, then climbed into bed with her.
“Like this,” she said, as she guided Eirien’s arms around her. “Like this,” she said, as she wrapped her arms around her in return. Winter and Spring together, close enough to breathe, forehead to forehead, pulses mingling skin on skin.
“I don’t want you to die,” Eirien sobbed.
Catriona only nodded, calm and unbothered and her eyes bright. “That is what you will say.”
The air was full of dark thoughts and dread and glimpses of the future. Eirien leaned towards the light, to the brightness in the Winter novice’s eyes, desperate and pleading. Catriona was surprised, and startled from her contemplation with the future. Lips met. Arms tightened. The unholy eve was forgotten. They stayed, together, the first night of many, the beginnings of a future together. Warm. Content. Whole. Complete.
Another fun thing. Just tell me what you like/don't like about a muse of mine and what you'd like to see elaborated on. I want to build off of my characters a bit more and have them more fleshed out. Also let's you guys get a peek into their lives/psyche.
I haven't actually played genshin in a while but I've been having the urge to plan out stuff from the old fic ideas I thought up ages ago
One of them was an entire Bloodborne AU I have a whole document with plot beats and dialogue snippets mixed in from when the game first came out lmao. I think it started from me giving Diluc the BP claymore that looks like bones?? Theres a bit in there about like Rosaria being descended from Cainhurst (vileblood girlies stay winning), Albedo befriending the Doll, and the ragbros using the Old Hunters Bell to talk to their dead dad
Another idea was essentially an Isekai where Rosaria gets dropped into Westeros. Everyone is terrified of this scandalously dressed Silent Sister who is deadly with a spear and may or may not be Directly Blessed By The Seven. With the added irony that she's the least devout nun in Mondstadt and is from a world with a different Seven gods. But now that I'm thinking about it there's a different humor of Albedo being there instead. Who's this weird blonde? He knows alchemy? He's so young to be a maester... (Albedo, who's only answer to the age thing in canon was essentially "younger than 500 lol")
Then the way less thorough idea of wacky vigilante hijinks with Diona becoming the Robin to Diluc's batman, with the added running gag of her Not Realizing that's who he is.
Diona: "I can't stand Diluc Ragnvindr."
Darknight hero, who has issues stacked higher than dragonspine is tall: "yeah fuck that guy"
All topped off with several time travel AU plot bunnies with varying premises such as "Xiao gets to relive his trauma and maybe save his old friends in the process! Ignore the new trauma of all your new friends not being alive yet, and maybe never being born due to the butterfly effect." "future!Diluc gets thrown back after The End Of The World™️ just in time to save Crepus from death by snatching the delusion and curbstomping Ursa the Drake. Somehow he gets reintegrated into his family as a mysterious estranged son because Parental Instincts. Added bonus delusion x2 combo!" and "Qiqi time travels. Does not notice. Comedy ensues."
AKA: Life, death, and the biggest threats to this natural cycle within League lore.
In the original lore, with the exception of Demacia (and, to a certain degree, Ionia), Runeterra was largely depicted as a secular world; phrases about the capital-L Light and the idea of spirits were vague and unsubstantial when it came to deciding what the various nations believed in and why. It wasn’t until the introduction of Illaoi in late 2015 that there was any solid notion of actual quote-on-quote ‘gods’ at all. This large, loose gap in the lore led me to theorising and worldbuilding that there had been gods once, but there weren’t anymore. Considering the nature of the world as tied to rhythms of warfare/violence and peace, it seemed entirely possible that some ancient battle - perhaps one of the first Rune Wars - resulted in an obliteration of deities, and thus an increased focus on mortal power and ingenuity instead. That would certainly explain the barely-filled gap in such a vast and important section of worldbuilding.
As I was focused on writing about Piltover, I saw Runeterra’s natural secularity meshing well with the City of Progress’ idea of a scientifically-ordered world. Yet, at the same time, even a place that has order and precision at its core has a wilder countryside, has ghost stories and spooks and folklore, has a melting pot of cultures, and - in my canon, at least - a significant population of Kindly Folk out in the marshes (Lulu has a fae following her, and The Glade exists, so surely there must be other Courts!). There are things that cannot be explained away by looking to the future or focusing on the numbers; there are things in Piltover’s past that might have been forgotten, but still have bearing on the present, and the future. And so the phrase ‘good gods dead and buried’ came about, as an exclamation of surprise or exasperation. Piltover’s understanding of history crystalised in this small phrase: some gods were dead, some gods were buried, and some gods - if they were lucky - were both. Piltover had gods once. Maybe all of Runeterra did. But there were Rune Wars, and power-hungry mortals, and adventurers and deceivers and power-plays from beings Elsewhere, and this world was rendered without actual active deities.
And so if the gods were dead, buried, or both, what happened to them? Looking at the Journal of Justice, at the Shadow Isles, at the very concept of magic, and at the in-game events like the Battle of the Freljord, I came to the conclusion that life and death on Runeterra is a much more fluid thing. For every culture within the world, there is a different way of explaining it, but it boils down to this: Existence is perpetual. When you die, your soul returns to the world. I posited previously (way back in ye olde 2014) that in Runeterra:
There is no afterlife, no heaven or hell or purgatory, because there are no gods to decide such things. [...] When you die, your lifeforce, your soul, goes back into the world. Maybe a powerful soul can linger, not like a ghost but more as an enriching force that makes a certain bloodline more powerful, or bestows a landscape with better crops, hardier animals, and so on. Maybe reincarnation is possible, if the soul is strong enough or their work unfinished while they were alive. The soul is more powerful than the body, and it is possible that it could linger in a pocket of energy within the world.
A life is born, a life is lived, a life disperses back into the world. But not whole. There is a sense of fragmentation, that everything you were breaks up: some parts might go to nourish the places where you lived, some might enter rivers or stone or forests or landmarks, some might enter the magic stream, some might enliven animals or plants. Some souls might be blown far across the sea or to the other side of the continent, following longing or curiosity felt in life. Most importantly, some pieces of personality might be reborn into a new person; not necessarily reincarnation, but certainly rebirth. Nothing is lost, nothing is wasted. This includes what happened to the gods: slain, imprisoned, unmade, weakened or somehow destroyed, their essence has gone back into the world. What was once divine is now mingled in with the soul-stuff of mortals. Pride, ambition, a hunger for power, maybe even memories might surface now and then, but the gods themselves are dead, buried, or both, in the natural cycle of life and death.
This particular understanding (plot-hole filler?) has influenced my worldbuilding for this blog, in everything from Piltover’s present to its history as well as to the world at large. This concept could be enshrined in spirituality or religion, or accepted as a secular fact: life goes on! There is no end! You are a fragment that becomes something wholly new before breaking apart again at the end of your time on the planet! Different takes on the same situation allow for a lot of expression cultures and societies. For instance, in Demacia the soul could be seen as part of the Light, the same magic that fuels the powers of the royal and noble families (Jarvan’s shield, Garen’s regeneration, Lux’s prismatic magic); it could be spun to the idea of Demacian purity, that all good sons and daughters never stray far from the proper order of things; that life is a holy thing, perhaps as the basis for a cultural religion. Another example could be in the Shuriman enshrinement of powerful personalities, the Ascended. In a nation fractured by warfare and climate and a history of loss and struggle, the idea of souls being being fractured and dispersed by the natural cycle of life and death could be seen in Shurima as terrifying, anathema, a horrible punishment, something to be fought against by a powerful life and a proper burial. The fact that Azir (released late 2014) was entombed in a particular way, his body completely preserved, prevented his soul from rejoining the natural order, and he returned with all his memories intact. The game mode of Ascension also felt like one was collecting the power of other souls, imbuing oneself with stolen power briefly. This very act would be seen as an abomination by many cultures, though within the Shuriman culture it may be an honour to become part of an Ascended’s lifeforce, to be a part of something greater, something close to godly. There is so much variety in the method of approaching a single thought, in depicting a natural cycle through various cultural lenses. But no matter how it is depicted, all the cultures on Runeterra have an understanding that life and death on the planet matters, and that there is a sense of a cycle. Even Death in Runeterra is represented by Kindred (released late 2015): psychopomps who take the form of a wolf and a lamb, creatures of the natural environment. Unlike other psychopomps, however, their role is not to shepherd the soul to the next plane, but to be an end, freeing the soul from a physical form and returning it to the cycle; death comes from close and afar, but the end result is always the same. Their very depiction as natural animals is proof of a natural cycle of death and rebirth.
So if there is a cycle, if there is no afterlife, what is the biggest threat to this, regardless of cultural belief? If all life on Runeterra constantly moves from one form to another, the biggest threats are Stagnation and Obliteration (capitals used for deliberate emphasis on a state of being). Stagnation would be the sense that souls are forced to remain in one single state in perpetuity, and Obliteration would be the complete destruction of the life force in its entirety, the removal of vital pieces of the natural lifeforce from the world.
I could refer to Azir’s entombment as an example of Stagnation, and it is... on a small scale. But if we want to talk about large-scale Stagnation? Let’s talk about Thresh. Released 2013 with a terrifying nursery rhyme soundtrack, Thresh was the Chain-Warden, a jailer who captured souls in his lantern and held them prisoner. He was a cruel and sadistic torturer in life, and in death his methods have only gotten more terrifying. Building on the vague but menacing lore of the Shadow Isles, Thresh was a bright new face to the horrors that happened ‘centuries ago’, to the former shining kingdom that fell to the darkness and the plague of undeath, giving us a new insight into what Runeterra truly fears in terms of the Stagnation of life and death. If souls are designed to fragment and dissolve back into the ether, then the idea of them being held in one form, trapped and enslaved, would be torturous on a spiritual and a metaphysical level. There is also the sense that Thresh would be able to torture these captured souls with various kinds of excess of sensation as well as the deprivation: you’re so used to having a body that being without one AND still feeling the skin being flayed off your back? Overwhelming torture. I was prompted in mid-2014 to write about the return of the Ruined King, focusing on the idea of the King’s Army: tortured souls and stolen corpses. Sensory deprivation, grief, being forced to remain in a single form long after death? Stagnation. Souls caught like this are constantly breaking down, refuelling based on their own power, caught in an endless cycle of self-cannibalism in order to survive, in addition to being physically, spiritually, and metaphysically punished by external forces. There is no renewal of the Isles, or the people, or the world: just isolation and punishment, an ouroboros of suffering. Small wonder Lucian (released 2013) was dedicated to hunting Thresh down. Maybe Lucian never thought he’d get Senna back (which he did in 2019), but he could at least bring back all that was stolen from the world’s natural cycle. Thresh, as an undead instigator of Stagnation, needed to be stopped and destroyed, along with the Ruined King. One day, maybe...
Another kind of Stagnation is mentioned, briefly and obliquely, in the Battle of the Freljord event and through the character of Lissandra. Lissandra was released as a character that hides her true nature: in the lore, she is a centuries’ old Frostguard, undying, manipulating the histories of an entire nation to hide her power and her intentions. She, as a servant of the Watchers, wants the world to be frozen solid. The lore reboot of Ashe and Sejuani has them being reborn from heroes of the past, proving at least that they adhere to the global cycle, that perhaps certain shards of souls are strong enough to persist where they are needed. But in Lissandra’s continued existence, she represents and espouses the idea of Stagnation. Similar to the Shadow Isles, the Watchers want to maintain their power by the subjugation and control of the natural order and everyone within it, but not by pain or torture. Instead, the Watchers want to stop any change from happening at all. What they want is a cruel, unfeeling, unchanging state forever. Everyone exists as they are, or dies in the cold. And when they die? Well... True Ice could be powerful because it is what happens when a trapped soul can go nowhere but becoming crystalised magic. I draw this conclusion based on Kalamanda, from the Journal of Justice, and the idea that magic can become crystalised if it doesn’t flow. Sometimes souls become magic energy, so of course, then, souls can become crystals. And if there is nowhere to go but the ice? Then that’s how you get magic ice; weapons made from pure cold and pure misery. The Watchers’ goal is personal power, harvesting the Stagnated lifeforce of the world to make powerful weapons. But what do they need these weapons for?
Why, to fight against their enemy, the Void, representatives of the threat of Obliteration, of course! The Watchers and the Void have been set up to be antagonists since the Battle of the Freljord event (this magnificent matchup since retconned, alas), with the idea of two massive unearthly powers using Runeterra’s resource-rich world as a playground to fuel either frosty status-quo egos or to feed the endless, ceaseless hunger of the Space Between The Stars. It really is a ‘whoever wins, we lose’ situation, the grand overarching battle for existince on Runeterra, which is undercut by mortal dramas of city-state rivalries, and individuals with power against their rivals, and so on. But I digress.
The idea of Obliteration, of the complete removal of souls from the life-and-death cycle, is a threat that is best represented by the Void. In League’s inception, the Void has been characterised by characters that hunger, that wish to consume. Some of these threats use this hunger as a motive, for self-improvement or for personal strength or understanding. But hunger is hunger, and whatever the Void consumes is gone forever from the current plane of existence. The Void is not of this world. It is a plane outside Runeterra, perhaps even ‘outer space with a consciousness’, that is constantly pressuring on the planet and trying to get in. Sometimes, gaps into the Void are discovered by accident (see Kassadin, or even Rek’Sai’s arrival) or are deliberately opened (see Malzahar). The Void is a great nothingness, true oblivion, where the natural cycle of life and death will be completely erased and the world made physically and spiritually barren if Runeterra ever succumbs to the Void’s hunger. Scratch that - there wouldn’t even be a Runeterra, because it would be devoured and erased from the cosmos entirely. This isn’t just a matter of the world ending, this is the world being eaten. No matter how a culture views the cycle of life-and-death in Runeterra, the idea that the world could end in such a fashion would be terrifying to all peoples (unless you’re brainwashed or suicidal, Malzahar). The Rune Wars in the past might have threatened to end lives, turn entire countries to glass, or somehow upset an ecosystem to be nothing but hostile monsters and/or magic, but there would still be a world at the end of the wars. With the Void? Nothing will be left. Everything will be unmade, everything. It is a cruel and empty future.
So, to summarise: in Runeterra, rebirth is entirely natural, some people have power in their souls, memories of past lives are common. Undeath, a frozen wasteland, or the emptiness of space all act as the major threats to the natural cycle of life and death. These little facts have helped me move forward in understanding the cultures, societies, and personal beliefs of many of the characters within League lore as it stands in my interpretation.
