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Characters / League of Legends: Others

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League of Legends
Main Character Index > Others

This page contains all other characters that are not selectable champions, but present in the game nonetheless via lore, or some notorious NPC's, old designs of a characters that are reworked, other planned champions among other things.

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In-Game NPCs

    Baron Nashor 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/baronnashor2024.png
"This is a very powerful hostile monster, approach with caution! Killing this monster will yield great monetary and magical rewards to the team, but it should not be confronted alone."

Baron Nashor is a giant, hydra-like monster that dwells within Summoner's Rift, and appears in a pit on the northwestern side of the map 20 minutes into each game. With the arrival of the Baron is a major corruption effect around the map, reshaping the terrain of the pit while also causing the Bramblebacks and Blue Sentinels (the red and blue buffs) to become buffed with void energy.

Considered the most powerful monster on the map, Baron Nashor is nearly impossible for one to slay alone. Slaying him is the one of the biggest objectives in the game, just behind the Nexus itself, as doing so rewards all teammates alive during his death an aura that buffs their damage, greatly empowers their nearby lane minions, as well as cutting recall speed in half. As such, slaying him is almost imperative to sieging an enemy base.

Baron Nashor has a fixed moveset of acid breath, displacing tentacle lashes, and brutal spike repellents, and more. In addition, there are also three different variants of Baron that each affect the terrain in different ways and add their own exclusive attack to make things more challenging for its opponents:

  • Hunting Baron, which summons a storm of lightning strikes that deal percent-max-health damage.
  • All-Seeing Baron, which creates rifts to the void surrounding the pit that deal magic damage to anyone standing on them.
  • Territorial Baron, which reaches out to drag large swathes of enemies into close range with its many hands.
Unusually, while Baron Nashor himself does not appear in Legends of Runeterra per se, the game features a Celestialnote  Follower called The Scourge which is a dead ringer for him, if he were made of stars and cosmic dust. The Scourge is a 10-mana 10/10 with Challenger that gains an additional +1/+1 when summoned for every Celestial card you have played in the game and gives all other allies +2/+2 and Overwhelm until end of round whenever it attacks.
Baron Nashor was also part of a limited-time lab event where units based on jungle units would spawn on players' boards, giving the enemy various buffs when killed. He appeared as a 6/12 follower with Immobile and Vulnerable that can't be Silenced or Recalled, and when slain, he creates a Hand of Baron (a 0-mana Slow spell that Rallies and gives all allied units +3/+3 and Overwhelm) in the opponent's hand.
  • Acid Attack: His attacks involve spitting acid at the players, which significantly reduces armor and magic resist.
  • Art Evolution: He was initially introduced as a rather goofy-looking pink dragon-worm, and was completely redesigned along with the Summoner's Rift update in late 2014 into a much more sinister, hydra-like creature (the skull of its original incarnation can still be seen in the left side of its pit). It received another redesign in the 2024 preseason to make it an even more monstrous-looking creature with sleeker, yet more grotesque heads, and adjusting its lower body to feature appendages uncannily resembling human arms.
  • Boss Battle: A very close version to one, as not only is he a tough monster to crack, he's generally a mid-late-game objective who can help close out games.
  • The Dreaded: Baron Nashor is a massive undertaking. An entire team of 5 people can easily kill him, but if your attention is diverted for a second by, for example, the enemy team, the Baron can easily rip your team to shreds and offer an advantage to your enemy. Because of this, people often steer clear of the Baron pit unless they have a critical advantage on the map.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: The 2014-2023 design of Baron Nashor (a gigantic hydra-like tentacled abomination) made a surprise appearance at the end of the "A Twist of Fate" animation over a year and a half before he replaced the old version when the updated version of Summoner's Rift was launched at the end of 2014.
  • Eldritch Abomination:
    • A Voidborn creature, which is par for the course. He only vaguely resembles a combination of a serpent an arachnid, and goodness knows what else, and his presence alone is corrupting his portion of the Summoner's Rift.
    • If The Scourge is, in fact Baron Nashor, it takes this up a notch as a Voidborn Celestial. One theory is that The Scourge is Baron Nashor after he ascended to Celestial form through sheer force of will (something the Mountain Scryer claims if you play The Scourge while he is on the board).
  • Extra Eyes: He has at least 12 eyes on his main face, some of them already damaged before he appears, implied to be injured from previous battles.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: Very bright, and a good sign of his power alone.
  • Kaiju: He towers over everyone else, making even the dragon look like a small lizard.
  • Optional Boss: It's not necessary to fight it to win, but it can give the killing team a crucial advantage. However, fighting him at the wrong time can be disastrous if the enemy steals it or kills your team while they're weakened.
  • Power of the Void: A creature spawned from the Void, just like the Void champions.
  • Purple Is Powerful: Purple and is among the strongest neutral mooks alongside the Elder Drake.
  • Significant Anagram: His name is anagrammatic to Roshan from DotA2, and they both are the ultimate Optional Boss of their respective games.

    The Dragons 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dragons2024.png

"The scent of chaos fuels the flames in the heart of the Dragon. Drawn to this war-torn land, the mightiest of beasts has settled deep within the Summoner's Rift, awaiting the next great war. To those who wake this slumbering ancient, beware: for his sharp teeth and suffocating breath have been tempered by the bravest of champions, and yet it is he that still thrives in the depths of the Rift."

In the world of Runeterra, dragons come in a manner of shapes and forms, and Summoner's Rift is home to several. Occupying the southern jungle is a pit where dragons can be fought as mini-bosses that give teams great rewards for defeating them. The Elemental Drakes are the second most powerful neutral monsters on the rift, while the Elder Dragon rivals Baron Nashor in power.

There are six variants of dragons that will randomly spawn for the first part of the game, each one granting a unique type of permanent buff that will stack if dragons of the same variant are slain. The first two dragons in each game are random, with different elements. The third and every subsequent one will belong to the same type; depending on it, Summoner's Rift itself will change to match their element. Elemental dragons spawn every five minutes until one team kills their fourth, which grants them a powerful Dragon Soul buff that also varies with its element.

  • Cloud Drakes grant slow reduction and out-of-combat movement speed, while Cloud Soul provides a permanent movement speed boost that increases after casting champion's ultimate ability.
  • Hextech Drakes grant bonus attack speed and ability haste, while Hextech Soul adds a slowing, damaging chain lightning effect to wielder's attacks and abilities every few seconds.
  • Infernal Drakes grant bonus attack damage and ability power, and Infernal Soul adds a small, damaging explosion to wielder's attacks and abilities every few seconds.
  • Mountain Drakes grant bonus armor and magic resistance, while Mountain Soul provides a damage-absorbing shield after few seconds without taking damage.
  • Ocean Drakes grant bonus health regeneration, and Ocean Soul heals and restores mana over time after damaging an enemy.
  • Chemtech Drakes grants bonus tenacity, healing, and shield power, and Chemtech Soul provides bonus damage and damage resistance when below 50% max health.

Once a team captures a Dragon Soul, elemental drakes will stop spawning and will instead be replaced by the much more powerful Elder Dragon that spawns every six minutes. Slaying it grant the successful team Aspect of the Dragon, giving them a deadly burn on all of their attacks and spells and allowing them to instantly kill enemies that fall below certain health threshold.

In Legends of Runeterra, the Elder Dragon is a 12 mana 12/12 Runeterra Champion with Fury who costs 1 less with each Dragon Boon the player casts per game. Its Origin is Aspect of the Dragon, allowing the player to put any followers that cost 6+ into their deck during deckbuilding, and when they play a unit with 6+ base cost, they can pick 1 of 2 Dragon Boons to play on it. When its allies have attacked with at least 75 total Power, Elder Dragon levels up, gaining +18/+18 and becoming impervious to being removed from the board, blocked, or otherwise negatively modified. Its signature spell is Elder Dragon's Primordial Roar (8-mana Burst spell that refills the player's mana to full, lets them draw all 6+ cost followers from the top 6 cards of their deck, and creates an additional Elder Dragon in their deck).

Other dragons also appear in Legends of Runeterra as Follower cards:

  • Chemtech Drake, an 8-mana 8/6 Piltover & Zaun Dragon. When the player plays a spell, they draw 1. When they draw while having a full hand, they deal 1 damage to the enemy Nexus.
  • Cloud Drake, a 6-mana 6/6 Demacia Dragon with Fury, who when summoned reduces the cost of all allies in hand by 1.
  • Mountain Drake, a 5-mana 0/6 Demacian Dragon with Fury and Formidable, which gains +0/+2 from Fury instead of +1/+1.
  • Ocean Drake, a 6-mana 3/5 Ionia Dragon with Elusive, who causes it so when the player plays a Fast spell, a Slow spell, or Skill, they heal their Nexus by 1.
  • Classical Elements Ensemble: The mid-season 6 updates added variants clearly based on this structure. The Cloud Drake (air) moves faster than the other drakes, so if you try to leave it during a fight it could chase you down. It also sports the highest attack speed of all the drakes. Aside from the Elder, it's the most difficult drake to defeat alone. The Infernal Drake (fire) attacks with high damage balls of fire that deal damage around its target. The Mountain Drake (earth) deals less damage than the other drakes, but has higher health, armor, and magic resistance, making it take longer to defeat. The Ocean Drake's (water) attacks put a debilitating slow on its victims, making it risky to try and fight with enemies around.
  • Boss Battle: Each variants' attacks are slightly different between one another, but overall Dragons are strong enough to be monsters you typically don't want to fight alone. Much like Baron Nashor, Dragons are something that must be planned around not just for the enemy team, but for the damage they themselves can inflict. The Elder Dragon rivals Baron Nashor as the ruler of the Rift, with more health than the other drakes and much more damaging attacks.
  • Elemental Powers: Dragons are born with elemental rune shards on them, with different bloodlines having different elements. What we see in-game are dragons based solely off the Classical Elements and it's implied there are more terrestrial variants along the lines of the Elder Dragon (to say nothing of the various cosmic dragons that exist among the stars).
  • Finishing Move: The Elder Dragon provides what is probably the most decisive version of this in whatever game it appears in:
  • Geo Effects: Once the third drake is announced, their presence influences the geography of the jungle in a way that remains for the rest of the game. The type of changes are based on its elemental type:
    • Chemtech Drakes bloom the Chemplants, mutating the plants across the jungle and greatly enhancing their usual effects. Prior to patch 12.2, they instead created gas-covered zones that provided Camouflage and bonus damage against higher-health opponents to champions hiding in them.
    • Cloud Drakes bring mighty winds, creating fields across the jungles that grant movement speed boosts.
    • Hextech Drakes activate the Hexgates, creating several pairs of portals that can be used for nearly instant travel.
    • Infernal Drakes blaze through the rift, leaving behind Cinders that can be picked up to gain stacking movement speed and ability haste that are lost upon death. Prior to season 2024, they would instead burn several brushes and create new pathways through some of the terrain.
    • Mountain Drakes raise the earth, creating additional terrain across the jungle, including the dragon pit.
    • Ocean Drakes bring life, producing additional Honeyfruit plants, brush, and water puddles (functioning as the river for mechanics like Qiyana's Terrashape or the Waterwalking mastery) across the jungle.
  • Magitek: Season 12 introduced two additional dragon variants, based off tech respective of Piltover and Zaun:
  • Noble Bird of Prey: All the Summoner's Rift dragons draw heavy inspiration from birds. You'll notice it as soon as you watch their spawn animations.
  • Optional Boss: Of course, it's not required to slay the dragon to win the game, it only helps towards that goal. The acquiring of incremental buffs and a Dragon Soul is a bit of a slow burn that lasts much of the game, but securing the Elder Dragon's buff will almost assuredly make your team untouchable.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Of course. This is the only 'monster'-type dragon in the game, though, with both Aurelion Sol and Shyvana being fully sentient persons with dragonlike forms.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Within the lore of Runeterra, there are many variations of dragons, with the ones we see in game being western-style drakes as opposed to the serpentine dragons in Ionia (Irelia alleges that Ionia has "over 200 species of talking dragon") or the celestial dragons like Aurelion Sol. These types of dragons are said to be found all across Runeterra, but are mostly congregated around Ixtal. They appear to be somewhat intelligent and had supposedly been allied with humans during Shurima's war against the Void, but now are content in occupying domains away from them.

    Rift Herald 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/riftherald2024.png

"An extremely powerful lane pusher whose sole purpose is to crush any minion, Tower and Inhibitor on its path to the Nexus Obelisk. Better own it or kill it while you still have a base."

Originally a Rift Scuttler that mutated due to the Void energy coming from the Baron's pit, the Rift Herald is an epic monster that is only available during the early parts of the game. Possessing high resistances and health, she's very difficult to take down alone, but she has a weakspot in the eye on her back that helps killing her faster.

Slaying her grants the Eye of Herald to the one that picks it up, which replaces the trinket slot for up to 4 minutes and, upon being used, summons the Rift Herald again to push the closest lane mercilessly, until either everything in her path is destroyed or she's finally put down for good. While summoned, an allied champion can ride her into a fearsome, unstoppable charge with limited steering control, but knocking away any enemies in their path, and if she collides with an enemy turret, she'll deal a massive chunk of true damage to it at the cost of her own health.

  • Anti-Structure: When used as a summon, she's one of the most powerful examples of this in the game, serving as a living battering ram that can wreck a tower or two if the enemies aren't fast enough to respond.
  • Attack Its Weak Point: Attacking the eye on her back when it's open deals a big fraction of the Rift Herald's maximum HP as true damage, which helps in killing her faster.
  • Art Evolution: The Rift Herald was first introduced in preseason 2016 with an unassuming appearance, resembling a Baron Nashor-themed Golem, but when she was reworked in the 2017 midseason, her look was updated to more resemble a corrupted Rift Scuttler. In preseason 2024, her appearance was changed again to make her even more grotesque and Void-like.
  • Cast from Hit Points: Her headbutt attack, which deals 2000 true damage onto turrets at the least, but also 66% of her current health.
  • Degraded Boss: When used as a summon, she's not as powerful as she was in the pit, having less health, losing health every second and when she uses her headbutt attack, taking more damage from being attacked on her back's eye, and being susceptible to crowd control.
  • Demolitions Expert: The reason to take her down, as when summoned, her ramming attack can obliterate huge chunks of health off turrets, making lane pushes much faster when played right.
  • Disc-One Nuke: Being able to destroy 2-3 turrets on her own, it can certainly become one when slain early.
  • Easter Egg: If enough champions use their /dance commands near her, she'll join in. This same dance also occurs if she is present when the enemy Nexus is destroyed, making it a Happy Dance.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: The eye on her back, when open, glows brightly to signify it's possible to attack it.
  • King Mook: To the Rift Scuttler, being a stronger (and actually damaging) mutation of one.
  • Mighty Glacier: She's very slow, either in attacking or moving, but very resistant and strong when she gets to her target.
  • Optional Boss: Yet again, it's not necessary to kill her to beat the game, but she does give an advantage to the team that slays her.
  • Permanently Missable Content: If not slain until then, she permanently despawns at 19:45 (19:55 if in combat) to give place to Baron Nashor.
  • Power of the Void: She was originally a Rift Scuttler that mutated by being exposed to the void energy, so it's a given.
  • Purple Is Powerful: Capable of taking down an entire row of towers if left unchecked.
  • Ramming Always Works: One of her most powerful attacks is a headbutt that deals huge damage to everyone it hits, and deals a massive amount of damage to any structure it hits.
  • Selective Obliviousness: When she's summoned, she completely ignores enemy champions, focusing solely on minions and structures. While this means enemy champions aren't in any danger of dying to her, it also means that the only way to stop her from destroying their towers is focusing her down.
  • Use Your Head: Her main attack is to charge headfirst into whatever it is she wants to destroy.
  • Was Once a Man: Well, a Rift Scuttler, but it's the same idea.

    Poros 
Small, white furry creatures that inhabit the Howling Abyss of the Freljord. Some of them hang around on the arches and are completely inaccessible, while some of them can be interacted with on the map. They have since become among one of League's signature Ridiculously Cute Critters, having since spread across all of Runeterra, being inexplicably present on every known continent and in every region and nation.

In Legends of Runeterra, "Poro" is an extensive subtype keyword, with dozens of Poro Followers and relevant spells across many different regions. In addition, they have The Poro King, a 5-mana 4/4 Runeterra Champion, who with each round after summoning another Poro additionally creates a Poro Snack in hand. His Origin is The Poro King's Decree, allowing the player to put any non-champion Poro cards into their deck during deckbuilding. Upon summoning at least 6 other new Poros, The Poro King levels up, gaining 1+/1+, creating a random Special Snax in hand. For each round afterwards, the first time the player summons another Poro, they create a random Special Snax in hand. His Champion Spell is The Poro King's Council Call, a 3-mana Burst spell that draws 2 different Poro followers, grants them +1/+1 each, and creates an additional The Poro King in the player's deck.

    Greyor 

Voiced by: Joshua Tomar (English), Gabriel Jiménez (European Spanish)

"If you hear me sound the horn, the Watchers have returned! If that happens, you must come at once! Bring an army! Bring ten armies! Throw those damned Watchers back into the Abyss!"

The ghost of a Freljordian Iceborn warrior. He was ritually killed and his spirit bound to the Howling Abyss by Avarosa herself to blow a magic horn if the Watchers ever return, and also serves as the southern shopkeeper on the Howling Abyss.

  • The Artifact:
    • The idea of him being originally bound as a spirit by Avarosa following the Watchers' initial defeat got snarled on after a few greater rewrites of the Freljord's lore changed the circumstances. In current canon, Avarosa died during the Watchers' defeat by Lissandra, so it either wasn't Avarosa who sealed him or the battle at the Howling Abyss wasn't their last skirmish.
    • His exclusive interactions with Volibear only refer to the pre-VGU incarnation of Volibear, who was a more heroic, mortal warrior rather than the self-centered demigod of now. Greyor also claims "The Ursine have always been our allies," which makes sense when referring to the original incarnation of the Ursine as a Freljordian race of bear people, not so much for the modern Ursine, who are Spirit Walkers corrupted by Volibear's influence who appear to have zero intent cooperating with mankind.
  • Barred from the Afterlife: Willingly, so he could stand guard against the Watchers.
  • Blood Knight: He loves combat and violence.
  • Deader than Dead: He occasionally asks the champions on his side of the map to bring him the spirits of the slain so he can kill them in the afterlife too.
  • Fantastic Racism: If you happen to be playing a Yordle, Greyor will (loudly) voice his displeasure.
  • Full-Boar Action: He'll occasionally wax sentimental about a former war mount.
    "I should've asked Avarosa to kill my boar and bind her spirit here! I miss you, Boarhilda!"
  • Genre Blind: For a Spirit Advisor that himself isn't quite dead, he quickly disregards the possibility that throwing his enemies into the abyss might not have actually finished them off.
  • Grievous Harm with a Body: One of is stories is that one day, he was fighting a pack of trolls, and he broke his sword on one of their skulls, so he grabbed one by the ears and used it like a club.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: "You lure 'em here and I'll kill 'em! That's the plan." Enemy champions who actually came to Greyor's shop would be within reach of the spawn laser, which deals 1000 true damage per second and would indeed finish them off in short order.
  • Off with His Head!: He seems to regard this as an ideal way to deal with problems.
  • Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: He doesn't really like Lymere, the shopkeeper on the other end of the bridge. Occasionally, when leaving the store, he'll ask you to bash his head in for him.
    "That old man across the bridge is a damned fool! His flying pot seems nice though."
  • Spirit Advisor: To the Freljord champions.

    Lymere and Geeves 

Voiced by: William Frederick Knight (English), Ángel Amorós (European Spanish)

"These runes say, 'Beware the Frozen Watchers'. Hmm... does that mean anything to you?"

Lymere and his robot Geeves are the northern shopkeepers on the Howling Abyss. Lymere is Ezreal's uncle and an archaeologist from Piltover studying the Abyss.

  • Absent-Minded Professor: He sometimes forgets what he's talking about mid-sentence.
  • Adventure Archaeologist: A bit light on the adventuring, but he's not content to sit behind a desk, even in his old age.
  • The Artifact: Lymere definitely still exists in canon (he's referred to in both Ezreal's biography and a few lines of dialogue following his 2018 VGU), but his presence as an NPC in the Howling Abyss is now much more vague. The character originally introduced himself as Lyte, the character's name before it was retconned in 2016, due to the Rioter he was named after (former Lead Designer of Social Systems Jeffrey "Lyte" Lin) having left the company. In the years since, Riot has gone further out of its way to distance the association from the former Rioter even further due to unsavory allegations of behavior before and after his departure, resulting in a claim that the Howling Abyss NPC is entirely nameless, suggesting that he's no longer supposed to be Ezreal's uncle Lymere. This makes some sense as the NPC mentions he left Piltover and has been doing excavation of the Howling Abyss for twenty years, conflicting with Ezreal's biography saying that he's been taking care of Ezreal since a young age following the disappearance of his parents, but the NPC still refers to Ezreal with familial fondness, and there's still the question where if he's no longer Ezreal's uncle, then who is he supposed to be?
  • Eccentric Mentor: He wants Ezreal to join him in his research.
  • Robot Buddy: Geeves, though Lymeredoesn't seem very fond of it, and is looking to make a new one.
    "Robot stands for 'Rusty Old Broken Obsolete Trash'! See what I did there?"
  • For Science!: He doesn't seem to know or care that he's endangering the world by digging around the Watchers, just as long as he learns something doing it.
  • Ship Tease: One response to meeting Ezreal is asking him if the rumors about him and "a Ms. Crownguard" (aka Lux) are true.
  • Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: He's rather annoyed by Greyor, the ghost shopkeeper at the other end of the bridge. The feeling is mutual.
    (to Caitlyn) "Arrest that ghost for violation of... t-the laws of nature!"
  • Sudden Name Change: Lymere was originally named Professor Lyte, though ever since late 2016, it was Retconned that his name is instead "Lymere," which has stuck since. This was seemingly due to concurrent drama surrounding the former Rioter Lyte he was named after, with Riot not wanting the character to stay attached to him.
  • When I Was Your Age...: "...Ezreal, I was already a professor!"

    Bubbs and Finn 
A pair of Bilgewater shopkeepers each occupying ends of the Butcher's Bridge, Bubbs is a deep-sea diving researcher who offers discovered treasure for gold, and Finn is a former sailor-turned-angler offering fresh catch. Not to be confused with those other two shopkeepers in the Howling Abyss.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: Bubbs instantly calls Nami a fake in a costume because "merfolk don't exist," but he doesn't seem too taken aback by the existence of Fizz.
  • The Bore: Bubbs is implied to be one if his various research topics are to be believed:
    Bubbs: Have I read you my thesis on sea-slugs?
  • Cool Helmet: Bubbs wears a cool diving helmet that he never removes, complete with a fin at the top.
    Bubbs: The helmet never comes off! Well, except when I get hungry.
  • Dressed to Plunder: While Bubbs is wearing most of a diving suit and helmet, Finn's outfit fits to an absolute tee despite him not being a sailor anymore.
  • Fishing for Sole: Referenced in one of Finn's lines (which incidentally might explain where he got the boots he potentially sells you):
    Finn: For every sunken treasure promised, you find about ninety-nine old boots.
  • Genre Blindness: Bubbs is remarkably skeptical to a lot of fantasy concepts in Runeterra, including advanced gadgetry in Piltover and extinct overlords in the Freljord. He also thinks Nami is somehow a fake, demanding her reveal her zipper.
  • Genre Savvy: In contrast to above, Bubbs recognizes Tahm Kench and instantly sees him as no good.
    Bubbs: Tahm Kench? What sort of protracted ruination would buy me a trip to the ocean floor?
  • Grail in the Garbage: The two are "shopkeepers" who sell treasure (i.e. items) they discovered while deep-sea diving or fishing. While neither are really sure what their found items do, they know they're valuable, and Bubbs needs funding for his next expedition, while Finn's just trying to make a living.
  • Locked Out of the Loop: Bubbs doesn't recognize the Not Quite Dead Gangplank, only thinking he's just another captain in Bilgewater. Finn also appears to owe him some debt, but judging by his lack of surprise, he likely also doesn't realize exactly who he is.
  • Noodle Incident: Finn recognizes Nami, and forlornly apologizes to her about "the net incident."
  • Retired Badass: Finn retired to a life of angling after the increasing hardships of sailing, many of which he comments as being lucky to have survived.
    Finn: I'll take bug bites over shark bites any day.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Personality and voice-wise, Bubbs and Finn are almost identical to Lymere and Greyor of the Howling Abyss, though otherwise, they're completely different characters. That said, Bubbs seems to recognize Ezreal as a family friend.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: Finn is really unhappy to see Karthus.
    Finn: Ugh... not the Harrowing again...
  • Your Costume Needs Work: Bubbs criticizes Nautilus' suit for looking incapable of reaching the bottom of the ocean.

    Minions 
Minions are allied or enemy units that spawn automatically to charge into battle with the purpose of attacking enemy units in the lanes they are assigned. Lorewise, they're magical constructs created by Veigar to aid him in his bid for domination (And to make him capable of literally reaching new heights).

In Legends of Runeterra the Minion is a 2-mana 2/1 dual Bandle City and Shadow Isles Follower with a Last Breath ability that creates a copy of itself in your hand at the next round start.
  • Attack! Attack! Attack!: All four mook types simple deal damage in different ways.
  • Cannon Fodder: Their entire purpose of the game is to draw fire away from turrets for you to take them down.
  • The Cavalry: Minions will break from their pathing to help a champion being attacked by an enemy champion, often discouraging really low-on-health enemies from engaging with them around.
  • Close-Range Combatant: One of the two basic minions is a melee swordfighter.
  • Elite Mooks: The super minion.
  • Giant Mook: Again, the super minion. Although it's actually a normal-sized minion in a Magitech Mini-Mecha.
  • Homing Boulders: The projectiles fired by caster minions.
  • Kill Steal: Getting the 'last hit' on enemy minions is a big part of earning gold.
  • Malevolent Masked Men: The red minions are designed to look more evil than the blue minions, since they always represent the enemy.
  • The Pawns Go First: "Stay behind the minions" is a core concept in LoL strategy.
  • Replacement Mooks: New waves of mooks will arrive to replace the earlier ones.
  • Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder: "Winions" is a slang term for minions who are destroying enemy turrets, Nexuses without the help of an allied champion or being able to sufficiently kill an enemy champion.
  • We Have Reserves: Hoo boy, do we. With a group of six minions spawning in each of the three lanes on both sides every 30 seconds (with an extra siege minion spawning every few rounds), over 1000 minions are guaranteed to die even in a game where one side surrenders at 20.
  • What Measure Is a Mook?: They're non-sentient magical constructs. Don't feel bad about killing them.

In-Lore Non-Player Characters

The Freljord

    Avarosa 
One of three legendary Warmothers of the Freljord. Ashe named her Freljordian unity movement after her.

    The Seal Sister 
One of the demigods of the Freljord, and sister to Ornn, Volibear and Anivia. She is associated with water, healing and burial rituals, and revered as a retainer of life in the region.
  • Animal Motifs: If the name didn't give it away, she is associated heavily with seals, being revered by sailors across the Freljord and being heavily tied to the water.
  • The Ghost: We have no idea what the Seal Sister actually looks like, nor the full extant of her lore and connections to the other demigods.
  • Human Disguise: Udyr's lore hints that she might be a shapeshifter of some kind given she adopted a human form when meeting him.

Ionia

    Doran 
A former ally of the Wuju Order, Master Doran was renowned as one of the greatest smiths in Runeterra, and served as master to a young Yi for a time. While he's since passed away, his legacy can be found in the creation of Master Yi's multi-goggled helmet, Wukong's great staff, and most prominently, his namesake starting items found in the in-game store: Doran's Blade, Doran's Shield, and Doran's Ring.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Doran was known for his unkempt eccentricity, often seeming like he's living in his own world. Oh, and his talents as an Ultimate Blacksmith, and his knowledge of spirits in conjunction with Wuju tradition.
  • Cool Old Guy: Age had led to him developing a fairly lax and mellow attitude, and he often messed with Yi during their training, but he was also wisened with a deep and intricate understanding of Ionia and its ancient tradition. He led Yi to an ancient battlefield to perform a sacred ritual of leaving behind swords to be blessed by spirits, accompanying his own offering with a handwritten poem... about skipping war to instead eat duck eggs and drink wine.
  • Old Master: While Yi was still a teenager, Doran was already at the twilight of his life, yet he was still very capable at his job and was able to impart lasting guidance to Yi regarding his patience, allowing him to properly master Wuju Style.
  • Posthumous Character: Doran had died long before the present day, with "Homecoming" detailing that he was buried at Wuju, which Yi visits every now and then to pay respects.
  • Retcon: His original backstory during the Institute of War era of League was that he was an Ultimate Blacksmith who was hired by the institute to produce legendary weapons, but his genius was lost after he was kicked in the head by a donkey, leading him to instead produce his lower-scale, but quality starter weapons. Following the game's Continuity Reboot, he instead became one of Yi's masters in the Wuju Order.
  • Retired Badass: He claims to have been involved in a massive war in his earlier years, and has since become content to enjoy his semi-retirement merely creating items for non-violent purposes in peace.
  • Touched by Vorlons: There's very little explanation to back it, but Ornn claims that he "taught everything Doran knows." If this is to be taken completely literally, Doran would be a case of this.

    Master Kusho (UNMARKED SPOILERS) 
The former Eye of Twilight, master of the Kinkou Order within Ionia, father to Shen, and surrogate father to Zed. Kusho was presumably killed by Zed during the uprising that formed the Order of Shadows, but it was later revealed that the two faked his death, with him serving as the true master of the Navori Brotherhood and patron to Zed's Order of Shadows.

    Elder Souma 
Yasuo's mentor in the sword. His accidental death set up several characters for a lifetime of heartache
  • Blow You Away: He was a master of an ancient Ionian sword technique that controls the wind.
  • Fighting Fingerprint: Sword-based wind techniques. When he died in an accidental misuse of the technique, all fingers pointed to his student.
  • Master Swordsman: One of the greatest of his generation.
  • Mentor Occupational Hazard: His teachings — and death — made Yasuo into what he is.
  • Posthumous Character: Never appears in 'life' but was pivotal in the stories of at least three champions.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: He agreed to break the weapon of a Noxian soldier when she begged him to destroy it.
  • Renowned Selective Mentor: Despite being the last master of the wind technique, he seldom took students. When Yasuo refused to become his apprentice, Yone begged him to reconsider.

Noxus

    Boram Darkwill 
The previous ruler of Noxus, up until Swain usurped him and established the Trifarix.
  • The Emperor: Effectively this to all of Noxus, up until his death at the hands of Swain.
  • Immortality Seeker: Later on in life; and it is how LeBlanc was able to get him to send Swain out to Ionia.
  • The Paranoiac: He would become more unhinged later on in life.
  • Pet the Dog: He's the one who gifted Riven her runeblade, and is the one who made Darius the Hand of Noxus and Swain the Grand General.
  • Small Role, Big Impact: We never do get to see much if anything of Emperor Darkwill, but we do know that he's significant in the backstory of a number of Noxian Champions, particularly Riven, Darius, and especially Swain.
  • Uriah Gambit: Tried to inflict this upon Swain by sending him to bring about the Invasion of Ionia; needless to say, it failed.

    Marcus du Couteau 

Appears in: Katarina

Katarina's father and the head of the House du Couteau family of assassins. Perhaps the greatest blademaster in all of Noxus, he was supposedly killed years ago.

  • Abusive Parents: The Katarina webcomic reveals that Marcus was physically and emotionally abusive to both his daughter Katarina and his adoptive son Talon. He constantly belittled them while dangling the possibility of his approval and affection before them to ensure that they would remain subservient to him. As the comic goes on, it becomes clear that he sees his children as nothing more than pawns to be used and thrown away for the glory of House du Couteau, or rather, Marcus' own glory.
  • Asshole Victim: He's killed for real when Swain turns the Wolf's Maw against him, reducing him into nothing but ashes. Considering his horrible treatment of his children and his attempt to have his daughter murdered out of petty spite, he completely deserved it.
  • Big Bad: The villain of the Katarina webcomic, centered around her overcoming her father's abusive training and stopping him from assassinating Swain.
  • Devious Daggers: He taught Katarina and Talon everything they know about the use of daggers as tools of assassination.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: While he's definitely an Abusive Parent to both Katarina and Talon, Katarina is able to make Marcus slip-up by claiming that she's handed Talon over to Swain's men to be tortured. This suggests that Marcus cares at least a little about his son.
  • Faking the Dead: The Katarina webcomic shows that he faked his supposed death with Talon's help in order to monitor Swain from the shadows while plotting to kill the Grand General.
  • Fatal Flaw: Pride. Marcus is an immaculate swordsman, a master assassin, and a keen planner whom Katarina believes to be fully capable of killing Swain. But Marcus is also immensely proud of his achievements and hungers for glory and prestige. Katarina is initially outmatched against him until she insults him to the point that he slips up, allowing her to catch him and deliver a beatdown.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Marcus planned on using the Wolf's Maw, an extremely powerful bomb capable of toppling a fortress, to kill Swain. When Katarina is ready to make a Heroic Sacrifice to spare her fellow Noxians, Swain instead absorbs the explosion with his demonic powers before turning the remnants of the blast against Marcus, leaving nothing but ashes where Marcus stood.
  • Improperly Paranoid: His first reaction to everything is to consider how it might threaten House du Couteau and him personally. Katarina suspects that their father-daughter relationship soured when he realized that she might be a better assassin than he was.
  • It's All About Me: All he cares about is his own glory, even above his own house's, and will do anything to keep it that way.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: He (and Talon) believe that Swain is not to be trusted because of his unknown, likely demonic power. As it turns out, Swain is also wary of what he might become, and looked to the Du Couteau family for an assassin skilled enough to take out a head of state, in case HE needed to be put down someday.
  • Master Swordsman: He was the greatest blademaster in all of Noxus, with only his children Katarina and Talon comparable to him in skill with the blade.
  • Professional Killer: He was a master assassin and the head of House du Couteau, a family almost entirely consisting of master swordsmen who ply a trade as hitmen for the Noxian government.
  • So Proud of You: Averted if not defied. When Katarina hears him say this to her, it serves as an Out-of-Character Alert and makes her realize that she's dreaming.
  • Stern Teacher: Marcus is described in Katarina's bio as "a harsh teacher" and "notoriously difficult to please". He belittles Katarina and Talon for their failings, not even commending Katarina for successfully assassinating the king of Demacia, Jarvan III.
  • Unseen No More: General Du Couteau has been namedropped as far back as 2009, but had never been shown even once for over a decade, with even characters in-universe assuming he was dead. Fast-forward to 2023 and he appears as a major character in the Katarina mini-series, finally revealing himself to be alive and active in Noxus's lore.

    Quilleta 
Darius's childhood friend and former love interest introduced in the Blood of Noxus comic.
  • Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When the healers have to cut off her infected arm, she becomes hysterical and tries to resist.
  • An Arm and a Leg: Loses an arm after being exposed to the remains of Singed's chemical attacks.
  • Heel Realization: The invasion of Ionia and subsequent chemical attacks, as well as the death of her own son, cause her to form a rebellion against Noxus.
  • Killed Off for Real: At the end of Blood of Noxus, she's betrayed by her second-in-command and implied daughter to save the city.
  • The Lost Lenore: Before the rebellion, she was Darius' former lover before they parted ways and raised her own family. She would lose her life during her secession attempt several years after the invasion as she loses her faith and her arm for Noxus as her second in command kills her to spare the city from destruction.

    Arrel, Erath, Marit, Teneff and Tifalenji 
A group of Noxian trackers (And a new blade squire) sent to hunt down Riven. The focus of the "Sisterhood of War" color stories.

In Legends of Runeterra, They are represented in game by the cards Blade Squire (Erath), Brutal Hunter (Teneff), Arrel The Tracker (Arrel), Wrathful Rider (Marit) and Runeweaver (Tifalenji).

  • The Beastmaster: Three of them.
    • Arrel commands several Drakehounds.
    • Marit has Lady Henrietta.
    • Erath was recruited especially for this, his years as a herder proving useful for controlling the group's pack-mule Basilisk.
  • Butt-Monkey: Being a squire, Erath clearly gets no respect.
    Erath: (Upon being summoned) I'm cold, I'm hungry and there is rocks in me boots.
    Riven: (If she was present at the time): I'm sorry. Who are you?
  • Character Death: Of the 5, 3 make it out of the stories alive. Marit slain in a duel with Riven, and Tifalenji run through by Erath when she gets a little power mad.
  • Facial Horror: Marit got the worst of the chemical bombs made by Singed. Her face described as being nothing but scar tissue with black veins.
  • Formally-Named Pet: Marit's fearsome reptilian steed, Lady Henrietta.
  • New Meat: Erath is on his first real mission with the Sisterhood.
  • The Resenter: Marit despises Riven for getting the Runeblade over her.

    Lord Mallat 
A higher-up in Noxus, with ties to the Black Rose.

In Legends of Runeterra, he is represented by the cards "Incisive Tactician" and later on by "Lord Mallat".

  • Agent Peacock: Evidently takes his clothing seriously.
  • Ancient Conspiracy: He's a Black Rose member.
  • Bald of Evil: Given that he's a member of Noxus and that he's especially associated with The Black Rose, it fits, especially considering he's always seen with his head shaved.
  • Dastardly Whiplash: He's not so cartoony for this trope, but he is associated with The Black Rose, and he does have a handlebar mustache.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Later on, when he starts to become more associated with Mordekaiser's set.
    Mordekaiser: (upon being seeing an allied Lord Mallat summoned) Do not fail me, Mallat!
    Lord Mallat: Are your rewards and punishments so different?

    Bladepierced Revenant: (upon being seeing an allied Lord Mallat summoned) Out of my way, you foppish dandy!
    Lord Mallat: Sorry, my tailor doesn't deal in haunted wreckage.

    Shackled Ghasts: (upon being seeing an allied Lord Mallat summoned) See us, we are your future!
    Lord Mallat: Well, until that day then.
  • Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Would be on the receiving end of this by Nilah as she interrogates him about Mordekaiser.
  • Opinion Flip Flop: In his card text in "Lord Mallat", he's very clearly telling Nilah what she's about to get herself into, but changes his tune when he sees an allied Mordekaiser summoned.
    Lord Mallat: (upon seeing an allied Mordekaiser) Beware my lord, Nilah comes for your armor!
    Mordekaiser: Do I look concerned, Mallat!?
  • The Strategist: Given his title as the "Incisive Tactitician", it's very likely that he's got a very keen mind for strategy.

Demacia

    Cithria 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ao6mjtoa9kt31.png
{Top) Cithria Of Cloudfield, (Middle) Vanguard Squire, (Bottom) Cithria The Bold.

Voiced by: Jeannie Tirado (English)
Appears in: Legends of Runeterra. Garen: First Shield

Cithria is a Demacian knight, first introduced in the story "Turmoil", then reintroduced in Legends of Runeterra, with three different cards showing three different times in her life:

  • Cithria of Cloudfield is a common 1-mana 2/2 Demacia Elite Follower.
  • Vanguard Squire is a common 3-mana 3/3 Demacia Elite Follower that reduces her cost by one when you play an Elite while she's in hand.
  • Cithria the Bold is an epic 6-mana 6/6 Demacia Elite Follower that gives other allies +1/+1 and Fearsome when she attacks.
A fourth version of her was released in the 'Guardians of the Ancients' expansion, showing that her career continued even after that:
  • Cithria, Lady of Clouds is an epic 10-mana 10/10 Demacia Elite Follower with Challenger that doubles the power and health of all other allies on the field when she's summoned and grants them Challenger.
  • Ascended Extra: She started as a minor character in a color story, then received three full cards in Legends of Runeterra and then graduated to secondary protagonist of the first LoL book, Garen: First Shield.
  • Braids of Action: Downplayed - she's been wearing the braid even before she enlisted to the Demacian military, though she keeps it as time passes by and her hair's grown longer after she's risen to prominence as Cithria the Bold, going down to her waist when it was once down a bit past her neck.
  • Character Development: She has easily the most fleshed out story arc of any non-Champion character in Legends of Runeterra, with each of her appearances showing her older and stronger than she was previously.
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?: Averted. She begins as a low-level and naive recruit, but Garen and Tianna Crownguard still treat her with respect like any other Demacian soldier. By the time she becomes Cithria the Bold, they treat her as an equal. Lady of Clouds has King Jarvan III himself stating that there's no one else Demacia would choose to save Jarvan IV.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: She was the protagonist the "Turmoil" short story some months before the games release.
  • Fantastic Racism: Averted; as detailed in "Turmoil", she's a Demacian knight who harbors no personal animosity towards mages and doesn't like treating them as a threat.
  • Horse of a Different Color: As Cithria, Lady of Clouds she's apparently been promoted to the leader of Demacia's air cavalry, riding a huge Silverwing.
  • The Magnificent: Later ends up getting the title "The Bold".
  • Naïve Newcomer: As Cithria of Cloudfield, she's only just joined the military and is still wowed by the city of Demacia.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The full artwork of her "Vanguard Squire" card implies that she took part in the Dauntless Vanguard's attempts to explore the Shadow Isles, depicted in other cards. Given how said voyage seems to have ended in disaster, yet Cithria had yet to become "The Bold", the obvious implication is not only that she survived, but she came out much stronger.
  • Rank Up: Repeatedly throughout her career, from recruit to soldier to hero. As of her Lady of Clouds iteration, she's arguably a Demacian leader on par with Garen himself and in is a position called "Warmaster".
  • Rugged Scar: Cithria in her "the Bold" and "Lady of Clouds" incarnations has a trio of scars running down the left side of her face as if she got viciously clawed by something nasty, just barely missing her eye.
  • Schrödinger's Canon: Her Legends of Runeterra incarnations provide an interesting case of this, as while Riot officially claims all elements in the game are canon, the actual League canon indicates that in the "present day", she's still fairly new to her service as a Demacian knight. Her appearance in Garen: First Shield supports this. This suggests that while she may not be Cithria the Bold right now, she soon will be.
    • To an even further extent, Her Lady of Clouds form. While the quotes and interactions surrounding her state that the card shows her going to save Jarvan IV, the problem is that the rescue takes place several years before the present day (because Jarvan III is still alive), where Cithria is confirmed to be just starting out as a soldier. A Runeterra dev confirmed that the card depicts a What If? scenario, where Jarvan III is alive to see Cithria become a Cloudrider.

    Jarvan III 

Appears in: Legends of Runeterra, Katarina

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/j3_3.png
"Times will change, but Demacia must endure."
Father of Jarvan IV and former reigning monarch of Demacia. While already deceased in the League of Legends canon, he was given a card in Legends of Runeterra, where he is a 7-mana 5/6 Demacia Elite Follower with Tough who draws Jarvan IV from your deck when he's summoned, or if Jarvan IV is already in play, instead gives all allies Challenger and Scout for that round.
  • Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear exactly how he died. Sylas was planning to kill him after capturing him and Jarvan IV, but in a public execution that he compared to slaughtering a prized pig, and he is visibly shocked when he comes across his dead body. Sylas also questions his rebels, but they claim they has nothing to do with it either, and the King was alone in his cell. He may have committed suicide, but he doesn't have any visible wounds and is simply found dead on the floor. The Garen novel implies LeBlanc may have been involved, as she is shown to be posing as Demacian nobility and Tianna Crownguard suspects her husband, the head Mageseeker, is not acting like himself. Regardless of the truth, Demacia attributes his death to Sylas. Later revealed to be assassinated by Katarina.
  • Bling of War: Like his son, J3 apparently believed in looking shiny for a battle. As shown in the artwork for his Legends of Runeterra card.
  • Character Death: He is found dead in issue 4 of the Lux comic.
  • The Good King: As seen in his appearance in "What Once Sailed Free", J3 is an understanding and patient king. Even praising Xin when he easily stomps his elite guard.
  • Heel–Face Door-Slam: Just prior to Sylas’ escape, Jarvan III had a Heel Realization about Demancia’s Fantastic Racism against magic and sent Xin Zhao with a letter ordering the mageseekers to stop their arrests. Sadly, he died during the chaos of the mage uprising before the order could be carried out and his son, desiring vengeance on magic-users, has the letter destroyed.
  • Heel Realization: Shortly before his death, he realizes that Demancia’s Fantastic Racism against magic is directly responsible for the mage uprising and tried to send an order officially stopping Demancia’s anti-magic laws.
  • Modest Royalty: He was the kind of man who understood that as king he was Demacia's leader, not its ruler, as evidenced by this exchange from his final conversation with Xin Zhao before his death:
    Xin Zhao: My place is here, protecting you, my lord.
    Jarvan III: Your duty is to Demacia.
    Xin Zhao: You are the king. You are Demacia.
    Jarvan III: Demacia is greater than any king!
  • Start of Darkness: Already distrusting of mages like most Demacians, the death of his lifelong friend Barret Buvelle to a Noxian attack (Specifically a Noxian cadre of mages) spurred him to begin cracking down on magic users within Demacia, sowing the seeds of the Mage Rebellion.

    Lord Eldred 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/06de038_full.png
"I couldn't help but overhear your fervent whispering, dear wife. I advise you to exercise more caution when discussing family matters in so public a place. You can never be certain who might be listening."

Voiced By: Peter Jessop
Appears in: Legends of Runeterra, The Mageseeker

The leader of the Mageseekers who married into the Crownguard Family, being Tianna Crownguard's husband. He's a major antagonist in The Mageseeker.
  • Big Bad: The leader of the titular organization in The Mageseeker. His policies play a large role in Demacia's genocidal stance against mages, and although he's not the Final Boss, his cruelty is responsible for shaping Wisteria into a Knight Templar who quickly takes over the organization.
  • Disc-One Final Boss: He's killed off as a Cutscene Boss partway through The Mageseeker, leaving Wisteria as the main antagonist for the rest of the game.
  • Evil Uncle: He's the one spearheading most of the Mageseekers' operations, putting him in direct opposition to his niece, Lux, who's a mage in hiding. His interactions with her are especially cruel. He's also pretty condescending to Garen, referring to him as "Nephew-in-Law".
    Lux: Not all magic is evil.
    Eldred: Mind your tongue, or I'll arrest you myself.
  • Hate Sink: A cruel, manipulative and oppressive man who leads an entire faction founded on genocide. He even treats his wife and her family like tools. Mageseeker builds a lot of tension for his confrontation with Sylas by using Eldred to exemplify how inhumane Demacia's anti-mage rhetoric truly is.
  • Manipulative Bastard: The way he talks to his family is always tinged with a controlling tone. And in Mageseeker, he orders a bounty on Sylas and to spread falsehoods that he's a threat to Demacian citizens, even though that's far from the truth.

    Tianna Crownguard 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tumblr_pzju7jxyup1ufm3tmo3_500.jpg
"Our House has bled for this realm. You'll not throw away this family's honor for a few tricks of light."

Voiced by: Claudia Christian (English)
Appears in: League Of Legends Lux, Legends of Runeterra. The Mageseeker

Aunt of Lux And Garen, current High Marshall of Demacia, and wife of Lord Eldred, leader of the Mageseeker Order. A prototypical Demacian, for all the good and bad that entails. In Legends of Runeterra she's an epic 8-mana 8/8 Demacia Follower with Tough who grants you a Rally when she enters play.

Piltover

    Professor Andrej von Yipp 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nyandroid.png
Von Yipp as the "Nyandroid".

Voiced by: Jason Spisak (English)
Appears in: Legends of Runeterra

A bungling, unpleasant inventor from Piltover who has managed to swap his brain with that of his cat. Even after becoming stuck in his new form, he's managed to preserve his razor-sharp intellect and found a new home in Zaun, turning his genius towards augmentation and hextech. He appears as the focus of several cards in Legends of Runeterra:

  • Professor von Yipp, a rare 4-mana 2/3 Piltover & Zaun follower that grants 1-cost allies +2/+2 upon being summoned.
  • Purrsuit of Perfection, a 5-mana Piltover & Zaun spell with Slow which, after playing 20 cards with different names in a single game, summons Catastrophe, a 1-mana 30/30 follower with Overwhelm.
  • Subpurrsible, an epic 5-mana 1/5 Piltover & Zaun follower with Elusive, which upon being summoned draws 1. After playing 10 other cards with different names, Subpurrsible is granted +4/+0.
  • Nyandroid, a rare 3-mana 1/3 Piltover & Zaun follower with Augment and Elusive. Can be summoned using Calculated Creations.
  • Fallen Feline, a rare 1-mana 2/1 Piltover & Zaun follower, which upon being summoned generates a Hexite Crystal in the bottom 10 cards of the player's deck. Hexite Crystal is a 2-mana spell with Fast that can be drawn immediately if seen in a Prediction, dealing 2 damage to enemies and the enemy Nexus upon use.

Bilgewater

    Jack, the Winner 

Voiced By: JB Blanc
Appears in: Legends of Runeterra

A former boxer and ruthless combatant, he's the champion of Bilgewater's underground fight scene.

Jack first appears in Legends of Runeterra as a Bilgewater follower. As of the "Glory of Navori" expansion, he's a champion.

  • Ascended Extra: He goes from being a powerful follower unit to a full-blown champion a few years after his first appearance, even sharing the spotlight with the popular champs Sett and Samira.
  • Classy Cane: His ornate cane plays up the image of a suave gentleman, even if that's not truly the case.
  • Hulking Out: His level 2 card has him bulking up further and his sleeves being torn from the size shift.
  • Shark Man: He's got a shark tail sticking out the back and rows of jagged teeth.

    One-Legged Lars 
Lars is an old harpooner from Bilgewater that acted as the narrator in the "Legends of Bilgewater" audio dramas.
  • Action Survivor: While this can be said for many of Bilgewater, Lars can uniquely claim to have meet three non-human champions from the area and lived to tell the tale. Unfortunately, his run-in with Pyke did not go as well.
  • An Aesop: Lars ends his stories with a lesson he learned from it teaching it to whomever he was talking to.
  • An Arm and a Leg: An especially grotesque and tragic case — after suffering Tahm Kench's machinations, Lars was left so destitute that he sold his leg to be made into chum.
  • Butt-Monkey: He spent a whole week getting pranked by Fizz after surviving the destruction of his ship. Adding insult to injury is that Fizz himself turned out to be responsible for the incident after stealing the captain's Golden Kraken as a joke (had it been properly tithed, Nautilus wouldn't have caused any trouble), though Fizz was at least nice enough to give it back to Lars.
  • The Drunken Sailor: It's made very clear from the beginning that Lars is a fan of the bottle.
  • Friend to All Children: His second story was told to a group of children as a bed time story. Of his three stories, it's also the most quaint, being mostly just him getting the run-around from Fizz.
  • The Gambling Addict: Lars third story delves into his past with gambling encouraged by Tahm Kench.
  • Sole Survivor: His First Story is about how he alone survived an encounter with Nautilus.
  • The Storyteller: His role and how it is delivered is based on this; finding someone to talk to and explain a story about Bilgewater to the audience.
  • Tragic Keepsake: His Golden Kraken is something he won't spend as a reminder of the various events of his life and how he managed to survive them.

    Rafen 

Appears in: Tales of Runeterra. Ruined King

Miss Fortune's loyal first mate. Wherever she is, Rafen's bound to pop up as well.
  • Distressed Dude: In "Double-Double Cross", he's being held captive by an ocean cultist, and MF plans to trade Graves and Twisted Fate in his place.
  • Number Two: He's Miss Fortune's personal advisor and quartermaster of their ship, usually maintaining order whenever she's not around.

Shurima

    Xolaani 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/xolaani_lor.png
"They will never die, because I will never let them."

Appears in: Legends of Runeterra

A mysterious and powerful Darkin hemomancer who was once the revered matron of the Shuriman city Xolan. Xolaani is depicted by several cards in Legends of Runeterra:
  • Her sealed weapon form is The Darkin Bloodletters, a 1-mana 1/0 Shurima Equipment that causes the equipped unit to summon a Darkinthrall on death (a 1/1 Shurima Cultist with Can't Block that gains +2/+2 the first time it's equipped) if it's not a Darkinthrall already. The Darkin Bloodletters can also be played for the cost of 6 mana and killing an ally to summon Xolaani as a 7/7 with Overwhelm. When Xolaani dies, a copy of The Darkin Bloodletters is returned to your hand.
  • Her second form is Xolaani the Bloodweaver, a 7-mana 2/2 Targon follower with Overwhelm that passively gains +2/+2 for each ally that died this game with its Power increased. If she has 16 or more Power, she transforms into Xolaani, Aspect's Bane, who additionally has the ability to, upon attacking, transform all non-Darkin followers attacking alongside her into copies of her.
  • Ambiguous Situation: Where exactly she is at the the moment is unclear. Several of her cards, and by extension the entire Darkin saga, revolve around "what-if" scenarios in Legends of Runeterra (i.e. Kayn becoming the Shadow Assassin note , Xolaani winning over Mihira's body, etc.) The Darkin saga ends with Ryze using the World Runes to defeat her, but whether she is alive in the main League timeline is unknown.
  • Arch-Enemy: The Legends of Runeterra cards make it very clear that she and Aatrox despise each other. He calls Xolaani the "Coward of Icathia" for her attempts to enslave their fellow Darkin.
  • The Assimilator: Anyone Xolaani defeats can be absorbed into her being through blood magic. She starts out looking humanoid through her host, but as she conquers more Darkin and eventually the Aspect of Justice Mihira Xolaani gains far more power and becomes far more monstrous.
  • Became Their Own Antithesis: When Xolaani was a human in the past, she protested against the oppressive rulers abusing their powers over others. After being driven insane from fighting the Void, Xolaani did the exact same thing by forcing others into submission with blood magic with the goal of controlling all of Runeterra for the sake of "peace".
  • Big Bad: Of the Darkin saga in Legends of Runeterra.
  • Blood Magic: Xolaani's specialty was her skill in hemomancy. As a healer, she used to it tend the wounded. As a Darkin, she used it to forcibly control the other Darkin in a twisted attempt to end the Great Darkin War.
  • Condescending Compassion: For all her preaching about "love" and uniting everyone in Runeterra, her dialogue against her unwitting host Jun and her fellow Darkin subtly shows she views them as pets who must love her instead of living beings.
  • The Corruptor: Like all Darkin, she must first call to a host and bind herself to them. She corrupted Jun, Yi's student, in Legends of Runeterra.
  • Demonic Possession: Like all Darkin, she started by possessing a single host.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: She was first mentioned in the short story "The Faceless God", followed by her statue making an appearance in "The Call" cinematic.
  • Fallen Hero: She became an Ascended God-Warrior with good intentions, being a healer who wanted to use her divine power to repair the widespread damage of Shurima following the disastrous war against Icathia and The Void. Unfortunately, like with many Ascended, the trauma of the Void War caused her to become far more drastic and extreme with her reach, becoming obsessed with using her hemomancy to assimilate all other Darkin and more into her control.
  • Hive Mind: Anyone Xolaani uses her hemomancy on becomes her puppet, preaching her beliefs and following her will. Unlike some examples however, the victim knows they are being controlled, and this action has lead several Darkin to hate her for it.
  • People Puppets: Xolaani's specialty is controlling others through blood magic, making them into her puppets.
  • Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil: She's a pariah even among other Darkin as even more than just going mad and being heavily destructive, she antagonizes her own kind by attempting to assimilate them into her servitude, an act that has Aatrox repeatedly declaring her a coward.
  • Unperson: Following her initial defeat and imprisonment, Aatrox made vast efforts to erase any traces of Xolaani's existence from history, including defacing her statue in Xolan. Her existence would only be realized once again centuries later as the bloodletters she was bound to were uncovered in Ionia.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Similar to Aatrox, she ultimately acts in what she believes is necessary to return the world to "peace" after the sheer catastrophes of the Void War. However, where Aatrox believes it can only be achieved through total annihilation, Xolaani believes it can be achieved by enslaving everything into total subservience.

Ixtal

    Ne'Zuk 
Ne'Zuk is a long-deceased Ixtali Ascended who was present during the Void's invasion from Icathia, remembered as a tyrant involved in the handling of artifacts including Ezreal's gauntlet, Kassadin's Nether Blade, and an elemental colossus that remains as Malphite.
  • Bad Boss: None of the available information about him paints him as being particularly worthy of his Ascended status. He was unrivalled in his arrogance, his attempt to combat the Void with The Monolith ended in total disaster with countless deaths and him fleeing for his life, and he was later guilty of betraying and killing Horok, another Ascended who was far more successful at fighting the Void using the Nether Blade.
  • Chekhov M.I.A.: Not so much Ne'Zuk himself as his missing right-handed gauntlet. Ezreal only has the left one, so there must be someone out there with the other.
  • Elemental Powers: Owing to his Ixtali heritage, Ne'Zuk was a master elementalist who led the development of a giant, mobile, elemental fortress known as The Monolith to combat The Void... not that it really worked.
  • Flash Step: Originally possessed the gauntlet that Ezreal currently owns, giving him this power.
  • Physical God: Was an Ascended Host of an unknown animal, notable in that he's the first one described as not being from Shurima (given how unlike Icathia, Ixtal joined the empire willingly, it's implied that Shurima was more allowing of them to use the Sun Disc for Ascension).
  • Posthumous Character: He seems to be dead, having a tomb that was lost to time in the depths of Shurima, but his existence left significant ripple effects across the land.

Shadow Isles

    Isolde 

Appears in: Ruined King, Ruination

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/isolde_hint.png

Voiced by: Andressa Andreatto (English and Portuguese)

Viego's wife. Originally a poor but beautiful seamstress, Viego took notice of her and the two married, with Viego becoming unshakably obsessed with her, and her death drove Viego mad in an attempt to bring her back, which eventually led to the disaster that transformed the Blessed Isles into the Shadow Isles. Isolde still remains as a disembodied spirit, attaching herself to Senna's soul until Viego eventually rediscovered and reclaimed her.

  • Depending on the Writer: The exact nature of her relationship with Viego before her demise changes depending on who's writing her: In most lore in League of Legends (including the Rise of the Sentinels event), it's implied that the two were more or less in a genuine, loving marriage before Isolde's untimely death threw Viego off the deep end. Ruined King meanwhile depicts Viego as having been a more openly unsympathetic domestic abuser, being far more of a manipulative Control Freak who forced Isolde into marriage. Ruination meets these halfway: the two were genuinely in love before Viego slowly turned into an obsessive control freak, albeit the result of his insecurity and unwillingness to risk losing her rather than any sort of malice. Even by that point, Isolde recognized that Viego still genuinely loved her, but became increasingly detached from her as an individual and became more engrossed by the idea of her.
  • Face Death with Dignity: Ruination revealed that after getting poisoned, she chose to go out peacefully as she could, encouraging Kalista to take on Viego's mission to find a cure, but otherwise accepting that her days were numbered with grace. However, during a private moment with Kalista, Isolde revealed that she didn't have the heart to tell Viego in light of his sanity rapidly deteriorating before her, that in the face of his mad determination to keep his one true love alive, her confessing that she's accepting the inevitable would destroy him, and possibly everyone else in Camavor. She'd be tragically right on the money with that, highlighting that Viego's horrifying attempts to resurrect her was wholly unwanted.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: In life, she saved Viego by taking the poisoned dagger meant for him, an act which cost her life and spurned Viego into obsessive madness to bring her back. At the end of Rise of the Sentinels, she does this again after Viego successfully revives her against her wishes — not wishing to be with him any longer, she allows Akshan to use the Absolver to put her to rest once again, in turn using its magic to revive Viego's most recent victims.
  • Literal Split Personality: Rise of the Sentinels reveals that Isolde's soul was split into various scattered pieces based off the many facets of her personality, with Viego determined to claim all of them. Karma in Rise of the Sentinels reveals that specifically, Gwen is a manifestation of Isolde's "youthful joy", Senna was accompanied by Isolde's side as a "fierce protector", and it's later shown that the Maiden of the Mist that clings to Yorick represents her rage and pain.
  • Living MacGuffin: She — or rather, all parts of her soul — are the subject of Viego and the Sentinels' pursuit. Rise of the Sentinels reveals that portions of them were tied into various different "fetters" which are scattered around Runeterra and come in varying forms — some as manifestations as entities like Gwen or the Maiden of the Mist, but others as mundane objects like a mirror, a comb, or a flower.
  • Meaningful Name: Her name comes from the tale of Tristan and Iseult (or at least one spelling of it), a much older story about a mad love Gone Horribly Wrong. If you want to go even deeper, the etymology of the name "Iseult/Isolde" is theorized to link to the Proto-Celtic "Adsiltia", meaning "she who is gazed upon".
  • Mind Hive: Hitched a ride with Senna's soul when she was a young girl about to be attacked by the Black Mist to protect her. Unfortunately, she could not separate herself from Senna, forcing her to endure being pursued by the Black Mist all her life.
  • Monster from Beyond the Veil: When Viego dipped her into the Blessed Isles' enchanted water to bring her back, it turned her into a monstrous wraith, and she impaled Viego with his own sword in her pain, rage, and confusion. By the present, though, her spirit seems to be quite lucid and benevolent.
  • Rags to Royalty: From being a poor seamstress to a pampered queen. A big reason why she was devoted to Viego in life in spite of his flaws as a king is because she was so enraptured from being a nobody plucked into the life of luxury, and it wasn't until her death and Viego's mad attempts to bring her back from it that things went horribly, horribly wrong.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When Viego succeeds in making her spirit whole once more, she spends her brief revival telling her wacko husband that what he's doing is wrong, and that he's become a pitiful lunatic. See "What the Hell, Hero?" below.
  • Reimagining the Artifact: She and Viego are a substantial retooling of the pre-Continuity Reboot "Lady" and "Lord" of the Twisted Treeline map's shrines, where The Lord who would encourage Shadow Isles champions to give into their destructive instincts while The Lady who would conversely plead with them to turn away from their path. When The Lord was reimagined as Viego, the Ruined King responsible for the Shadow Isles' curse, Isolde was remade as The Lady's counterpart, expanding her role as a Greater-Scope Paragon that the Sentinels fight to protect, with her passive opposition in emboldening Senna and creation of Gwen additionally framing her as a Good Counterpart of sorts to Viego.
  • Taking the Bullet: She died taking a poisoned dagger meant for Viego, which is possibly part of the reason Viego was so desperate to bring her back.
  • Textile Work Is Feminine: Was a seamstress in life, a trait that Viego continues to remember her for. She also created the doll that would later become Gwen.
  • Unwanted Revival: Makes clear in her words upon revival that this is the case; she believes that living her natural life with Viego was enough, and that he should move on and let their tragedy end.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Globally, the cause of the Ruination — Viego put her body in the Waters of Life, corrupting them when she Came Back Wrong and turning the Blessed Isles into the Shadow Isles. Personally, she is the reason the Black Mist has haunted Senna since girlhood. In neither case did she want any of this harm to happen.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Delivers this to Viego in the "Absolution" cinematic at the ent of the "Ruination" event, calling him out for all of the harm he had caused for a resurrection she never even wanted. However, it seems to be entirely internal monologue, as nobody reacts to it outwardly.
    Isolde: Viego… your black and broken heart, has destroyed everything. You turned our season of love… into an eternity of bitterness and madness. All this death… All this… ruination. And for what? This… obsession? I loved you until my final breath. Why wasn't that enough? Our tragedy should have died with me. Now, let me rest.

    Commander Ledros 

Appears in: Legends of Runeterra, Ruination

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/b1573750691106306.jpg
Ledros was once a glorious soldier of a long-lost empire and bore an unrequited love for fellow warrior Kalista, but was caught up in the invasion of the Blessed Isles, and in turn their ruination as the Shadow Isles. First introduced in the short story "The Echoes Left Behind", he appears as a card in Legends of Runeterra, an epic 9-mana 9/6 Shadow Isles Follower with Fearsome who casts Blade of Ledros (which deals damage to the enemy Nexus equal to half its remaining health, rounded up) when played and has a Last Words effect that returns him to his controller's hand when destroyed. He also appears in Ruined King as a potential bounty.
  • Advertised Extra: A really weird case of this, but as the Ruined King event of 2021 was shaping up, Ledros was teased in the Roots of Ruin◊ infographic, summarizing characters immediately around Viego and his story. Ledros' inclusion implied that he might have been more important for the upcoming storyline, but he was never mentioned again.
  • All Love Is Unrequited: He never told Kalista of his love for her in life, only ever speaking his feelings aloud to himself in the dead of night when nobody could possibly hear him. Kalista seems to have been aware of them, however, and regrets that she could never have returned them.
    Kalista: I could never have given you what you wanted.
    Ledros: I understand, even if I didn’t at the time.
  • Arch-Enemy: Hecarim. Hecarim betrayed and murdered Kalista, and while Ledros slaughtered the Iron Order attempting to avenge her, all three of them are locked in a cycle of endless torment because of the Ruination.
    Commander Ledros: I broke my sword over your men, Hecarim. I'll drive the rest through YOU!
    Hecarim: You can try, Ledros.
  • Black Knight: As depicted in Legends of Runeterra, he's a spectral and particularly ghastly version of one, as to be expected for a Shadow Isles revenant. That said, he's still got a sense of nobility, and is far from the worst thing the isles have to offer.
  • Driven to Suicide: He's been driven to the brink of self-destructive despair many times, not that it ever frees him from the Shadow Isles. In his final attempt to both free himself and Kalista from their curse, he declares himself a betrayer for Kalista to kill, which she follows through with. It doesn't work.
  • Fate Worse than Death: Hoo boy, did Ledros get a dealt a bad hand in life and beyond. Not only did he have to die in battle along with his unrequited love, but due to the Black Mist, he's forcibly reanimated any time he seemingly reaches an end, either from someone else's hand or his own. Even worse, he had to watch Kalista lose herself in a collective Mind Hive driven by blind vengeance, and even in the moments where he can catch her and remind her of her past, it's not long before she loses herself again, and he's left back to square one. It's no surprise that he's left completely devoid of hope.
  • Gave Up Too Soon: When Ledros' Suicide by Cop attempt fails at freeing Kalista from her curse, he finally gives up and throws away her trinket. Thresh finds the trinket later, and ruminates over how Ledros was actually on the right path, as the attempt triggered a moment of lucidity from Kalista. Of course, because Thresh is pure Jerkass, he steals the trinket away forever.
    • A writer at Riot states that he hasn't given up completely- his new goal is simply to end the curse of the Black Mist altogether and free Kalista and himself that way instead.
  • It's All My Fault: He blames himself for not being able to save Kalista from being killed by Hecarim and the Iron Order. This makes up the basis for his suicide attempt at the Spear of Vengeance's hands, claiming that he betrayed her through his inaction.
  • Large and in Charge: Once his king's champion, Ledros is described as a very big man, and even in undeath, he towers over Thresh. In the CCG, he's the single most-powerful unit available to the Shadow Isles (9/6), more powerful than even the actual Champion cards for Elise, Kalista, Thresh and Hecarim.
  • Memento MacGuffin: He kept a trinket that once belonged to Kalista, and in the countless times he confronted her since she became the Spear of Vengeance, this was the only thing that speaks directly to her beneath her merged Mind Hive, albeit briefly. In "The Echoes Left Behind", when his last-ditch attempt to die by her hand fails at freeing her, he tosses it into the Black Mist.
  • My Greatest Failure: Not moving fast enough to save Kalista from being murdered by Hecarim. He also blames himself for not realising his liege's madness and cutting him down before things got out of control and led to the Ruination.
  • Noodle Incident: Out of a combination of despair and desire for release, he participated in a few antics regarding the Black Mist, though it all blurs together for him. He recalls that he participated in invading Bilgewater during the Harrowing (presumably in Shadow and Fortune as he recalls being "blasted to nothingness by the faith of indigenous witches"), and was at one point also blasted apart by Ryze.
  • Percent Damage Attack: The Blade of Ledros skill Ledros casts when he's played deals damage to the enemy Nexus equal to half of its health, regardless of whether it's 20 or 2. Whether the damage is rounded up or down has varied from patch to patch, with it currently rounding up (so it can destroy a Nexus with only 1 HP).
  • Shoulders of Doom: Like most heavily-armoured characters, his black armour features a large pair of pauldrons made of several overlapping plates topped with spikes that reach the top of his head.
  • Token Good Teammate: Although not the only good Shadow Isles character (with some of the few non-undead champions such as Yorick and Maokai being decent enough), Ledros is the only known Black Mist wraith in the Shadow Isles to have any goodness or noble ambition left- Thresh and Hecarim are monsters, while the less said about Viego the better. And as for Kalista, she is too lost to her Mind Hive to have any true agency left beyond her role as an avatar of vengeance.
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: His will is too strong to ever let him be permanently subsumed into the Black Mist, forcing him to be eternally reborn every time he's banished. In the CCG, whenever Ledros dies (assuming he wasn't Obliterated or Silenced first) he is returned to your hand to be played again, which would be not very efficient (as he's very expensive) except that he halves your opponent's remaining life every time he's played. He and Thresh disagree over the nature of their undead curse.
    Ledros: Don’t you ever wish to see an end to this vile existence, Chain Warden? To finally be at peace?
    Thresh: We have what mortals have coveted since time immemorial— eternity.
    Ledros: It makes us prisoners.
  • Wrecked Weapon: Ledros broke his sword in the battle which claimed his life and it's still broken in his afterlife, although the missing part of the weapon is replaced by a blade of spectral energy, making it as deadly as ever.

    Nunyo Necrit 

Appears in: Ruined King

”As the dawn darkens… champions gather…”
Former advisor to King Viego, now a mist walker. He first appears in Ruined King when the champions encounter him on the Shadow Isles.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: His name is mentioned in Viego’s Legends of Runeterra cards before he debuted in Ruined King.
  • Mr. Exposition: Befitting his namesake, he’s the one who informs Miss Fortune’s crew about the Shadow Isles’ origin and Thresh’s plan to resurrect Viego.
  • Tuckerization: Named after Youtube channel host Necrit, who posts videos about Runeterra’s lore.

    Vilemaw 

Appears in: Legends of Runeterra

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/01si027t1_full.png
"Who is your god? What can your god do? Will he let you wither and die defending him? Or will he give you life and vitality like no mortal has ever known? Why serve a god who won't serve you?" - Elise

An Arachnoid horror who dwells deep within the Shadow Isles and Elise's master/granter of eternal youth. In Legends of Runeterra, Vilemaw is a 6/6 Shadow Isles Spider follower with Fearsome that grants other Fearsome allies +1 power while in play. It must be summoned by either Fresh Offerings (a 3-mana Slow spell that summons Vilemaw after 3+ allies die in the same round) or The Twisted Treeline (a 3-mana landmark that destroys itself to summon Vilemaw after 3+ allies with Fearsome or Nightfall attack).

  • The Artifact: Thanks to his connection to Elise's lore, Vilemaw was spared being retconned with the rest of Twisted Treeline, leaving him the sole holdover from the now defunct map.
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: A towering, monstrous spider.

Bandle City

    Norra 

Voiced by: Debi Derryberry (English)
Appears in: Legends of Runeterra

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/norralor3.png
"Home is just around the portal."

Yuumi's erstwhile master, a kindly old Yordle who travels the world with her magic portals. Originally just an unseen background character in Yuumi's backstory, she was properly introduced in Legends of Runeterra during the "Worldwalker" expansion as a Champion unit, making her the first LoR Champion without a League counterpart.

In Legends of Runeterra, Norra is a 2-mana 1/2 Bandle City Yordle Champion with Elusive and a Nexus Strike ability that plants a Mysterious Portal (which summons a random Follower with a 2 or 3 cost) randomly in the top 4 cards of the player's deck. After summoning at least 6 allies, she levels up, gaining +1/+1 and causing her Mysterious Portals to additionally summon Followers costing between 4 to 7. Her signature spell is Norra's Portalpalooza.

Sentinels

    The Rookie 

The protagonist of the Rise of the Sentinels event. They're an unnamed rookie Sentinel left to stand guard over the Sentinels' secluded old headquarters. Their boring routine comes to an end when Lucian and Senna come knocking in search of reinforcements to beat back Viego's latest Harrowing. Inexperienced they may be, their exclusive access to the organization's Wayfinder makes them essential to the Sentinels' mission to recruit warriors to fight the Black Mist.

  • Bodyguarding a Badass: When the team is forced to split up in Noxus, Lucian does not mince words and tells the Rookie to guard Senna with their life. One of the responses lampshades this, with the Rookie saying that they're more scared of Senna than the Black Mist.
  • Canon Foreigner: To what degree they actually are canon among the other versions of the Ruined King saga is debatable, but they are a character exclusive to the Rise of the Sentinels visual novel.
  • Cowardly Lion: Some dialogue trees have them act jittery and easily startled. The thought of facing the Harrowing is terrifying and they're way in over their head. They would much rather run and hide from the monsters than face them, but they still manage to survive and fight their way through the Black Mist despite their inexperience and lack of confidence.
  • Dark Secret: Accessing the Immortal Bastion in Noxus requires someone to tell one of their deepest, darkest secrets. For the Rookie, this can be a time when they committed manslaughter (though they insist it's self-defense), cheated on all of their exams, or how they wetted the bed until they were eight.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Many of their dialogue options have them respond with heavy snark, often in response to Lucian's own snark.
  • Gender-Inclusive Writing: The story leaves it vague whether the Rookie is male or female. The fact that they're exclusively called "Rookie" also keeps the writing from having to attribute a pronoun to them.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: During the very conclusion of Rise of the Sentinels, where the newly-unbound Thresh comes to collect for his deal with Lucian, the Rookie interrupts Lucian's offer to give his soul by offering theirs instead. But at the very last second before Thresh can harvest them, they activate the Wayfinder to teleport them and all their friends back to headquarters.
  • Idiot Hero: Some dialogue trees characterize them as being cheery but somewhat dim-witted, not knowing what "crackers" are and responding with confusion when Lucian calls them a "greenhorn".
  • Jumped at the Call:
    • Some of their dialogue options have them jump at the chance for action, remaining peppy and eager-to-fight even as Lucian constantly derides them.
      Senna: Hmm. Looks like we've got our work cut out for us. What do you say, Rookie. Ready to see the world?
      Rookie: Of course I'm ready. Anything to get out of this place.
    • When faced with the prospect of charging into Demacia's heavily guarded and Mist-infested mageseeker compound, they can choose to say, "Hells yes, let's do this!"
  • Just a Kid: They're continually referred to as a "kid", implying that they're relatively young. Their inexperience is a continual sore spot for Lucian, who is annoyed that he has to bring a rookie along to fight one of the largest Harrowings in recorded history. Senna is considerably more sympathetic to the Rookie, but she still uses her rank to boss them around.
  • Literal-Minded: Some dialogue options characterize them as this, taking Lucian blurting, "What in the hells is that?" as a serious question, wondering just how many hells there are.
  • New Meat: While they're officially a trained Sentinel, they've never seen actual combat due to being stationed at the Sentinels' old headquarters. They're given a trial-by-fire when the Harrowing sweeps over Runeterra and they're recruited to help Lucian and Senna stop it.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: As a rookie Sentinel who has yet to see any combat, Lucian derisively nicknames them "Rookie". The name sticks throughout the rest of the story.
  • Only the Chosen May Wield: Their Wayfinder allows them to teleport back to Sentinel headquarters from anywhere on Runeterra, but only they can use it. This forces Lucian to bring them along, as they're the Sentinels' ticket to return to headquarters where they can teleport to any of the other Sentinel bases.
  • Schrödinger's Canon: This character only exists in the plot of Rise of the Sentinels and likely not of the Ruined King saga as a whole, otherwise never being mentioned in diverging yet equally canon versions such as Steadfast Heart. This also extends to their Wayfinder — if it formally exists in Runeterra, nothing beyond the visual novel suggests where it might be. During an event postmortem, Riot later deemed the Rookie to be a "a non-core, but still impactful detail" primarily made to fit the medium of the Visual Novel; otherwise they have no definitive canon standing.
  • The Social Expert: For all their lack of experience, the other characters comment on their "silver tongue" and others tend to like them rather quickly. Even with their Bad "Bad Acting", it isn't hard at all for them to lure a Noxian guard over so they can hit the guard over the head and swipe his keys.
  • Supporting Protagonist: While they're the main viewpoint character of the Rise of the Sentinels story, it's clear that it's the Champions who are doing most of the heavy lifting, with the Rookie's main contribution being their access to the Sentinels' Wayfinder.
  • Teleportation: The Rookie's Wayfinder allows them and anyone else they choose to be transported straight to Sentinel headquarters in an instant. From there, the headquarters' own enchanted map can take them to any Sentinel base on Runeterra.

Completely Reworked Characters

This section is for those champions whom Riot deemed sub-par and decided to give a complete overhaul, be certain it was advertised as such before moving the champion's previous incarnation here.

Criteria for moving a champion here include:

  • New lore which renders the previous one hundred percent invalid.note 
  • New gameplay mechanics
  • New theme
    Aatrox, the Darkin Blade 

    Akali, the Fist of Shadow 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/akali_originalloading.jpg
As balance dictates.

Voiced by: Laura Bailey (English), Inés Blázquez (European Spanish), Norma Echevarría (Mexican Spanish), Ryōko Shiraishi (Japanese), Aline Ghezzi (Brazilian Portuguese)

"The Fist of Shadow strikes from the cover of death itself. Do not impede the balance."

A prodigy in the fighting arts and a member of the ancient Ionian martial order known as the Kinkou, Akali is part of a triumvirate of warriors that uphold the order's causes in the world. She inherited the position of Fist of Shadow from her mother, who began training her as soon as she could make a fist, and with it the sacred duty of Pruning the Tree - eliminating those who threaten the balance. Though her role may seem morally questionable to some, Akali judiciously follows her mother's discipline to mantain harmony across Ionia.

Akali is an Assassin champion who specializes in using her mobility to relentlessly chase her targets, eliminating one after another with her sizeable burst damage. Like the other ninja champions, she uses a fixed Energy meter as a resource instead of mana. Her passive, Twin Disciplines, empowers Akali's next two basic attacks every few seconds. Discipline of Might causes the first attack to heal Akali, while Discipline of Force causes the subsequent attack to deal bonus damage. With her first ability, Mark of the Assassin, Akali throws one of her kama at an enemy, damaging and marking them for a short duration. Akali's next basic attack against a marked target consumes the mark to deal bonus damage and restore Energy. Her second ability, Twilight Shroud, teleports Akali to a target location and creates a smoke cloud there for a few seconds, slowing enemies inside while making Akali invisible and granting her a large movement speed bonus when inside the smoke. With her third ability, Crescent Slash, Akali flourishes her kamas, damaging nearby enemies. If the ability kills a unit, its cooldown is greatly reduced. Her ultimate ability, Shadow Dance, passively stores charges over time, as well as whenever Akali kills or helps kill an enemy champion, up to a maximum of three. When activated, Akali consumes one charge to dash towards an enemy with a flying kick, damaging them.

Akali's alternate skins include Stinger Akali, Crimson Akali, All-Star Akali, Nurse Akali, Silverfang Akali, Blood Moon Akali, Headhunter Akali, and Sashimi Akali.

  • Achilles' Heel: Anything that can reveal invisible units makes her very vulnerable when using Twilight Shroud to maneuver or escape. Any team can accomplish this with the Sweeper Trinket or Vision Wards to limited degrees though she's really out of luck if enemy champions have anti-stealth abilities like Lee Sin, Rengar, or Twisted Fate.
  • Action Girl: A deadly ninja warrior, skilled in stealth and assassination.
  • Ancient Tradition: Acts as the Fist of Shadow in the Kinkou order.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall/Medium Awareness:
    So many noobs. Will matchmaking ever find true balance?
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: An inherent rule built into the game. Ninja champions have one less point of health (out of, at minimum, a few hundred) per other ninja in the match.
  • Cool Mask: Featured in her Blood Moon Akali skin. But rather than wearing it over her face, she keeps it pushed onto the top of her head.
  • Crutch Character: Strangely, she manages to be both at once. Akali shines during the middle portion of the game, where she can roam the map and help her allies pick up easy kills on small groups of enemies. Once the last stage of the game, which usually involves entire teams attacking together, she has a harder time making her presence known until her allies manage to disorganize enemy champions. That said, she can help her allies snowball during the mid game and gain a huge advantage before the last phase can begin, allowing them to dominate it.
  • The Faceless: Ultimately averted, as two skins have been released which show her face.
  • Fanservice: This◊ is concept art released as a preview. This is her final design after fan criticism.
  • Fragile Speedster: Akali might be fragile, but good luck catching her before she kills you, between her uses of Shadow Dance to quickly rush from target to target and Shroud of Twilight to get out of a bad situation.
  • Glass Cannon: A fed Akali will shred through your squishy teammates faster than you can blink... and falls just as easily if she gets focused (though her smokebomb shroud can get her out of a sticky situation). Rarely the case nowadays as she does quite well with 2-3 damage items, building full tank afterwards. Akali top building full tank also appears to be a viable way to play her. The lifesteal from her passive also makes her quite tough to kill. Furthermore, most people who take her to three top lane use defensive masteries and the grasp of the undying keystone, which causes the champion using it to leech a percentage of its health off an enemy champion. The more HP she has with her tank items, the more she leeches, increasing hey impressive sustain even further.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: People have complained that the Kinkou don't play the way Ninja would be expected to. While this is not untrue (see the next entry down), other champions (Shaco and Evelynn) got to that playstyle first.
  • Gratuitous Ninja: She's a flippin' ninja!
  • Highly-Visible Ninja: She does get a smoke bomb to conceal herself and slow all enemies in it, but other than that her stealth abilities are limited to hiding in the tall grass scattered around the maps, which all champions can do. Including the pirate.
  • Hybrid Power: Scales well with both AD and AP, making hybrid items like Hextech Gunblade very useful on her. This is further emphasized by her Twin Disciplines passive, which lets her AP boost her attacks as bonus magic damage and her AD benefit her abilities by giving spell vamp.
  • Kill Steal: As an assassin, of course she throws a lot of stuff out at once and bursts enemies down so naturally assassins will run in and Kill Steal. Akali however seems programmed to receive kills no matter what. It's been said that she can just sit back and dance during a team fight and receive a pentakill.
  • Magikarp Power: Weak before she hits level 6 but once she is, Do. Not. Feed. Her. Teams that do and let her snowball out of control learn the hard way. And by that we mean they'll suddenly be seeing their champions drop like flies as she targets them, leaps from nowhere, kills them within two seconds, and ducks back under cover as if nothing had happened.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Not as blatant as the likes of Miss Fortune, but memetically considered one of the most desirable characters in the game by the fanbase.
  • Naughty Nurse Outfit: One of her skins.
  • Ninja: A flippin' one!
  • One-Man Army: Once she's got her core items, there's not much you can do to stop a good Akali.
  • Passing the Torch: She inherited the "Fist of Shadow" title from her mother.
  • Power Trio: With Kennen and Shen.
  • Sideboob: This featured prominently in her old splash art. Her new artwork nearly removes it.
  • Sinister Scythe: Wields twin kama (scythes) in battle.
  • Smoke Out: Her Twilight Shroud uses a smokebomb- though enemies' vision is mostly unobstructed, they just can't see her.
  • Spectacular Spinning: Crescent Slash has her spin both of her kama.
  • The Spock: Her role as the Fist of Shadow has her "...do that which must be done." in her role to preserve balance. It's said what she's done wouldn't necessarily be considered morally acceptable. She's also on the trio who advocates that Zed crossed the line and needs to die, period, which is more to say than Shen (who has been wronged by Zed the most, but considers about looking for another way if possible), and Kennen (who even considers him still worthy of forgiveness)
  • The Stoic: She's emotionless about her killings, accepting it as what needs to be done.
  • Teleport Spam: Once she has some levels under her belt, she'll likely use Mark of the Assassin into Shadow Dance over and over in fairly rapid succession in fights as she dashes from target to target or keeps pursuing the same one.

    Evelynn, the Widowmaker 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/evelynn_original.jpg
The night is my veil. Heh ha ha ha ha ha!

Voiced by: Unknown (English), María Blanco (European Spanish), Rebeca Patiño (Mexican Spanish), Mie Sonozaki (Japanese), Luisa Palomanes (Brazilian Portuguese)

"The night is my veil."

Swift and lethal, Evelynn is one of the most deadly - and expensive - assassins in all of Runeterra. Able to merge with shadows at will, she patiently stalks her prey, waiting for the right moment to strike. While Evelynn is clearly not entirely human, and her heritage remains unclear, it is believed that she hails from the Shadow Isles – though her link with that tortured realm remains shrouded in mystery.

Evelynn is an Assassin champion who uses stealth to move around the map and stalk enemies from the shadows, surprising them by appearing out of nowhere. Her passive, Shadow Walk, causes Evelynn to become camouflaged after being out of combat for a few seconds. While camouflaged, Evelynn is invisible to all enemies until she attacks or moves too close to an enemy champion or turret, and rapidly regenerates her missing mana. With her first ability, Hate Spike, Evelynn sends out a wave of spikes that automatically target the last enemy she has attacked, damaging all enemies they pass through. This ability has an extremely short cooldown, allowing it to be repeatedly used over time. Her second ability, Dark Frenzy, removes all slowing effects from Evelynn and grants her a movement speed bonus. The cooldown of this ability is reduced everytime she damages an enemy champion with an ability, and resets entirely if she kills or helps kill an enemy champion. With her third ability, Ravage, Evelynn slashes a nearby enemy twice with her talons, damaging them with each strike and gaining an attack speed bonus. Her ultimate ability, Agony's Embrace, impales all enemies in a target location with spikes, damaging them by a percentage of their current health and slowing them. For each enemy champion hit, Evelynn gains a damage-absorbing shield.

Evelynn's alternate skins include Shadow Evelynn, Masquerade Evelynn, Tango Evelynn, and Safecracker Evelynn.

  • Achilles' Heel: True Sight is a hard counter to her perma-cloak, making Vision Wards and Oracles Elixir effective deterrents against her sneaking up on anyone. This was lessened by game-wide changes to vision which let her have a fighting chance against True Sight.
    • You do not have access True Sight enough to expect to track Evelynn. Reworked Frost Queen's Claim might help, but putting pinks in her jungle is just feeding her free gold. A safer way to track her is to ward jungle camps with regular, green wards, as she reveals herself whenever she uses abilities or attacks. In general, she was purposefully made severely underpowered, so her ganks might be more surprising, but have less impact on the ongoing lane fight.
  • Amazing Technicolor Population: Unlike most normally humanoid champions, Evelynn is bright blue by default, with only Shadow Evelynn changing her to a normal skin tone. Why is unexplained, although it's suggested that the Shadow Isles may have something to do with it.
  • Anime Hair: It's bright pink and sticks up, looking rather like a tongue of flame.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: When her stealth was re-worked, she also gained indicators that warn her if she's close to "visible" range of an enemy champion/tower (yellow exclamation point) and one to alert her when she's entered "visible" range (red exclamation point). This addressed concerns that testers had about players not knowing if their cover was blown yet or not since it's not specified how far towers or champions can see her from.
  • Ax-Crazy: Will tear a man to tiny shreds and enjoy every second of it.
  • Backstab: Previously her Ravage skill only shredded enemy armour and magic resist if she hit from behind. It was removed because it was considered unnecessarily limiting.
  • Beast and Beauty: An inverted example; In the old lore, Evelynn is exes with Twisted Fate. Yes, she's shockingly beautiful, but she's also capable of ripping a man into tiny shreds with her talons and enjoying every second of it. When she broke up with him, he didn't take it very well. Drunkenly so.
  • Bloody Murder: While not explicitly stated, her graphical animations for Hate Spike and Agony's Embrace appear to be spikes of blood erupting from the ground. In the first year of the game, Hate Spike was pink lightning.
  • Combat Stilettos: Hilariously lampshaded in one of her quotes.
    It takes a lot of effort to move like this in heels.
  • Crutch Character: She was infamous for being able to absolutely devastate newer players due to them not knowing how to counter stealth, but useless once players knew better. Nerfs to said counters have made her a somewhat greater threat to players on the more experienced end of the spectrum again.
    • She's this in individual matches as well. Her permanent stealth gives her amazing ganking potential, but once the laning phase ends she's a glorified minion if she isn't fed.
  • Dark Action Girl: Very much fits the design of one.
  • Dhampyr: One possible explanation for her origin and her appearance.
  • Dominatrix: She invokes this a bit, her shadow skin particularly.
    Mmmmm, I like it when they scream!
  • Evil Feels Good: She loves being cruel.
  • Femme Fatalons: Uses them to slash her targets.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Hate Spike, and Agony's Embrace do this.
  • In Name Only: The first remake Riot eventually produced for Evelynn changed almost EVERYTHING about her, being by far the most drastic overhaul any champion in the game had received up to that point (although full champion "relaunches" have followed since, which Evelynn herself has now gotten if one could not tell). Her passive was replaced by her W, which was changed to function totally differently, she was given an all-new W and ultimate and her Q and E skill were drastically reworked. She's effectively an all-new champion, with totally new mechanics and play style and almost nothing in common with the original Evelynn.
  • Invisibility with Drawbacks: The only champion with a permanent stealth ability, even if it has its limitations.
  • Kick Chick: Previously, although changed when her animations were redone so she attacks with her Femme Fatalons as well.
  • Loves the Sound of Screaming: See Dominatrix.
  • Mating Dance: Evelynn and her ex-boyfriend Twisted Fate made quite a splash at the Royal Masquerade Ball (inspiring their Tango skins). They're both guest instructors at the Crown Dance Academy in Demacia.
  • Multiple-Choice Past: She intentionally propagates different theories about herself to keep her past (and motives) a mystery.
  • Not the Intended Use: Evelynn's had a long history of surprisingly viable builds that defy the style her multiple past kits were designed around, mostly due to her gameplay theme relying on stealth, which is notoriously hard to balance. Despite being marked as a mage-assassin, she's also seen an equal amount of success as a tank-mage hybrid, depending on the meta and what currently favors her.
  • The Power of Hate: Hate Spike, and maybe all of her moves. Come to think of it, what exactly ARE those spikes made of?
  • Spam Attack: Her Hate Spike has an extremely low cost and cooldown, and has very high damage potential when continuously spammed.
  • Spikes of Villainy: Her boot straps are covered in small spikes, as well as her collar. Though how villainous she is is hard to say.
  • Stealth Expert: Her re-worked Invisibility made her into a true example of this by letting her sneak around invisible but having her be revealed if she gets close enough and begins her assault on an enemy. This meant that Evelyn-players now played a Solid Snake-like game of lurking in the shadows and not being detected (complete with the "your cover is blown!" red exclamation point) until it was time to strike, as opposed to being invisible all the time and only killable if the enemy had True Sight.
  • Stripperiffic: It's one of the reasons her complete revamp made her into a succubus instead of an assassin- that metal bikini she seems to be wearing isn't a very practical clothing choice for a hitwoman.
  • Took a Level in Badass: She was indirectly buffed greatly at the start of Season 4 by the changes to True Sight. Between Oracles Elixir being removed, players being limited to one Vision Ward per person, and Vision Wards being vulnerable to being destroyed, Evelyn became significantly greater as a threat and is being taken seriously once again (though she still has to watch out for the Sweeper Trinket revealing her).
  • Tricked-Out Shoes: The heels on her... stilettos... are very literal. She uses them extensively in her attack animations.
  • The Vamp: Both literally as well as metaphorically — she's not only Ms. Fanservice, she's also dangerously sultry.
    "I may be bad, but I feel good..."
  • Violation of Common Sense: Her ultimate deals damage based on a percentage of her enemies' current health and hits everyone within the area. To maximize this she would have to initiate on a number of full health enemies, which is a bad idea for assassins, or else let her damage output suffer. At least the shield she gets with it helps.
    • Oddly enough some Eve players built like tanks, which with her shield made her initiation very nasty. She sprang out, got everyone to focus her, then refused to die.

    Fiddlesticks, the Harbinger of Doom 

    Galio, the Sentinel's Sorrow 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/galio_originalloading.jpg
A guardian is always prepared.

Voiced by: David Lodge (English), Juan Carlos Lozano (European Spanish), Shunsuke Sakuya (Japanese), Élcio Romar (Brazilian Portuguese)

"There is no such thing as redemption. Only penance."

Galio is a golem in the shape of a gargoyle crafted by the artificer Durand to guard him while he made other magical golems to protect the border villages of Demacia from Noxus. Galio failed to fulfill his duty; Durand was assassinated by Noxians, causing Galio to fall into deep depression. It wasn't until years later, when he saw Poppy stoically delivering her cargo of a Demacian helm to complete her father's final task, that he was inspired to fight for the city-state his master loved.

Galio is a Warden champion adept at protecting allies and disabling enemies while he absorbs and deals magical damage. His passive, Runic Skin, transforms a percentage of his magic resistance into ability power, allowing Galio's spells to deal more damage as he becomes more resilient to enemy spells. With his first ability, Resolute Smite, Galio releases a concussive blast of energy from his eyes, damaging and slowing enemies in a nearby area. His second ability, Bulwark, protects himself or an ally with a shield that increases their armor and magic resistance, and also heals Galio when the shielded target takes damage. With his third ability, Righteous Gust, Galio flaps his wings, releasing a typhoon that flies forward, damaging all enemies in its path and leaving behind for a brief duration a draft of wind that increases the movement speed of allies that enter it. His ultimate ability, Idol of Durand, transforms Galio into an immobile statue that channels for a few seconds, taunting nearby foes and forcing them to attack him at reduced damage. At the end of the channel Galio bursts out of his rocky shell, damaging all nearby enemies depending on how many times he was hit during the channel.

Galio's alternate skins include Enchanted Galio, Hextech Galio, Commando Galio, Gatekeeper Galio, and Debonair Galio.

  • Achilles' Heel: His passive that allows him to build lots of magic resistance and a reasonable amount of damage in return makes him strong against teams that are incredibly AP heavy. Against an AD heavy team, however, building magic resistance wouldn't do much and autoattacks and AD scaling skills that deal physical damage will shred him like paper.
  • The Atoner: He'll never forgive himself for his master's death but he's still trying to make up for it.
  • Big Red Devil: Gatekeeper Galio.
  • Blow You Away: And afterwards he and his allies can surf the jetstream it leaves behind to gain a speed boost.
  • Cool Shades: Like all members of the Demacian Commando unit, Commando Galio has a pair.
  • Energy Absorption: Bulwark boosts an ally's defense and heals Galio each time said ally is hit with an attack. With enough defenses and AP under his belt, turret shots will start healing him with Bulwark on.
  • Evil Costume Switch: Gatekeeper Galio turns him into a Big Red Devil with darker lines and voice in addition to more ghostly Faux Flame effects.
  • Exact Words: Bulwark will heal a targeted ally (including himself) every time they take damage for a few seconds. Because of how damage-over-time spells work, this means that each tick (which is either every second or every half-second) of damage will also trigger the heal, making Galio a strong counter to DoT reliant mages like Cassiopeia or Malzahar.
  • Eye Beams: One of his abilities, Resonating Smite, is depicted by its icon to be this. - although it looks more like a circular blast in game.
  • Foil: Riot intends for him to be a new foil and rival to the newly reworked Sion. They saw potential in a rivalry between them - Galio is an unwavering, eternal guardian, while Sion is an unstoppable, relentless juggernaut. They also saw irony in how Galio is a golem given sentience and a sense of humanity, and Sion is a former human who lost his humanity and has become little more than a war machine.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration: His "everlasting shame" is that he failed to protect his charge Durand. In game, Galio is a tank, a class meant to protect the damage dealers - and his greatest drawback is that he has no way to draw attention to himself and away from said damage dealers. Except for his ultimate, which mind controls nearby enemies to force them to attack him and then blows them up. Unfortunately it has one of the longest cooldowns of any champion ability in the game, and if it is down during the big teamfight, you will have to sit there and watch helplessly as the enemy runs past you and plows through your carries... and you will lose the game and it will be all your fault. It becomes Fridge Brilliance if you realize his ultimate is named "Idol of Durand." It's highly possible Galio learned the ability after Durand died so he wouldn't fail at protecting anyone again, and named it after the master he failed to save.
  • Heroic BSoD: Had one for years after Durand died. Poppy helped him get better.
  • I Shall Taunt You: His ultimate, which is one of the best AoE taunts in the game.
  • Last of His Kind: Not only is his creator, the great artificer Durand, dead (an in-universe example of Died During Production) but sanctions now exist to prevent golems from being instilled with the amount of intelligence he has. He really is on his own.
  • Mage Killer: Naturally turns magic resistance into ability power, has an ability to temporarily raise himself or an ally's armor and magic resistance for a massive amount for a few seconds. Properly timed, it can largely invalidate the burst damage that makes up mages' value.
  • Mighty Glacier: One of few tanks in the game that actually hurts more as he makes himself tougher to kill. The "glacier" part is apparent when attempting to position optimally for Idol of Durand (i.e. in the middle of the enemy team) when the closest thing he has to a gap-closer aside from Flash is a speed boost.
  • My Greatest Failure: His inability to protect Durand.
  • The Needless: Sentient golems don't need food or sleep- this became a problem when Noxus got sick of having to deal with 24/7 guards everywhere in Demacia and decided to do something about his creator...
  • Not the Intended Use: He was originally conceived as a tank support, with 3 of abilities being ostensibly to aid his teammates. He's more commonly used as a mid lane mage at the moment, with players exploiting his passive to build so much magic resistance that enemy mages will want to tear their hair out while still dealing respectable amounts of damage in turn.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: It's mentioned that he was designed to look like a large simpleton to hide his mental acuity.
  • Our Gargoyles Rock: Averted, he's a golem made in the image of a gargoyle but was given sentience.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: He serves the well-meaning (but very lawful) Demacia after his master of the city-state was killed, so the trope's impressions of evil is pretty much averted.
  • Self-Inflicted Hell: His ultimate has him voluntarily turn into stone, force everyone to attack him instead of his teammates, then unleash a lot of damage as payback when he breaks out. Fittingly, he probably does it to protect his team the way he would have protected Durand if he could.
  • Situational Sword: Highly effective against AP-heavy teams (and especially champions that rely on damage-over-time spells like Cassiopeia or Malzahar), much less effective against AD-heavy teams.
  • The Stoic: The only time his voice isn't calm and serious is his roar at the end of this ult (perfectly understandable). Played for laughs when one year's April Fools Day patch claimed that he would now shout "DEMACIA!" instead.
  • Too Awesome to Use: His ultimate is one of the best abilities in the game, capable of locking down an entire enemy team and heavily damaging them. It also has the longest cooldown in the game, so long that it will probably not be up by the next teamfight... which may well be game deciding and you may well lose because you cannot ult yet.
  • Top-Heavy Guy: Galio has a huge torso and a buff set of arms...and tiny little legs that couldn't ever hold all that up. Thankfully, he seems to fly everywhere he goes.
  • Warrior Therapist: His wisdom apparently has a calming effect on the rage of half-dragon and fellow Demacian warrior Shyvana.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: His ultimate is a channelled ability and can therefore be interrupted by any stun or silence effect. Enemies spellbound by it cannot use abilities, but there are a few champions (Xin Zhao, Leona, Udyr) that can activate a stun that will go off on their next auto attack. If there is one on the other team, you will likely stun yourself every time you use your ultimate and you be rendered almost completely useless.

    Irelia, the Will of the Blades 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/irelia_originalloading_9.jpg
My blade is at your service!

Voiced by: Unknown (English), Celia de Diego (European Spanish), Unknown (Mexican Spanish), Mariana Torres (Brazilian Portuguese)

"The sword flourishes, as though painting with blood."
— Taken from a Noxian Field Report

The Ionians have developed some of the most breathtaking and deadly martial arts in all of Runeterra — just one manifestation of their pursuit of enlightenment. The most remarkable blade style to emerge, however, was the unusual byproduct of foreign intervention.

Master Lito was a swordsman whose teachings were sought by ruling classes from nearly every city-state. His art was a highly-guarded secret, but it was said that swords would breathe in his grasp. He withered unexpectedly from a mysterious disease which baffled the brightest of Runeterran physicians. When he died, he left behind Zelos and Irelia, his son and daughter, and a truly unique weapon. Zelos became a sergeant in the Ionian military and left to seek assistance from Demacia immediately prior to Noxus' invasion of Ionia. Irelia, charged with the protection of their home until Zelos returned, was alone when the Noxian forces struck.

The Ionians fought admirably, but soon Ionian blood stained the land beneath the prints of foreign boots. At the Great Stand of the Placidium, Ionians prepared for surrender, but were inspired to maintain their resistance when the young Irelia lifted her father's enormous blade and pledged to hold until her brother returned. In the chaos of the ensuing fight, Irelia was cursed with dark Noxian Necromancy.

As her life ebbed, Soraka, the Starchild, made a final attempt to anchor her fading soul. Unwilling to relinquish her home, Irelia rose at the brink of death, and her father's weapon lifted into the air alongside her. Irelia rushed back to the fore, unfazed by the blade's sudden animation. The weapon danced around her effortlessly, cutting down Noxians as they gaped in horror. The decimated invaders were forced to retreat from the Placidium, and Irelia was appointed Ionia's Captain of the Guard for her brave defense of her homeland.

Irelia is a Diver champion who combines innate survivability and resilience with strong single target sustained damage. Her passive, Ionian Fervor, reduces the duration of crowd control effects on Irelia depending on how outnumbered she is: if there are more enemy champions that allied champions nearby she gets a great reduction, if the number is even she gets a small reduction, and if she and her allies outnumber nearby enemies she gets no reduction. With her first ability, Bladesurge, Irelia dashes to a nearby enemy, damaging them. If the ability kills its target, the cooldown is instantly refreshed and she regains half the mana cost. Her second ability, Hiten Style, passively makes all basic attacks heal Irelia for a small amount of health, and can be activated to double the healing and make all basic attacks deal bonus true damage for a few seconds. With her third ability, Equilibrium Strike, Irelia stabs a nearby enemy with her blades, damaging and slowing them. If the target's health percentage is higher than Irelia's, they are stunned instead of slowed. Her ultimate ability, Transcendent Blades, summons four floating blades that Irelia can individually fire to pierce all enemies in a target direction, damaging them and healing her for a percentage of the damage dealt.

Irelia's alternate skins include Nightblade Irelia, Aviator Irelia, Infiltrator Irelia, Frostblade Irelia, and Order of the Lotus Irelia.

  • Action Girl: Charges into the fray and starts hacking away, with dashes, slows and bladethrows galore.
  • Back from the Dead: Kinda, in the sense that her life ebbed away, but not completely, thanks to Soraka anchoring her soul to Runeterra.
  • BFS: A Logical Extreme to being able to wield it effortlessly — she doesn't even hold it! Somewhat of a subversion as it's actually four smaller swords in one.
  • Bring My Red Jacket: Her clothing's copious use of red kinda brings this trope up since she practically died in her background, along with her death animation being rather violent and explicit compared to other champions.
  • Came Back Strong: Brought back from the brink of death with telekinetic powers.
  • The Captain: Well, In Name Only, as her character doesn't really have any other use of the trope.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Unlike other melee assassins whose gap closer / Crowd Control is "E", her charge is her "Q" and her crowd control and damage is her "E".
  • Deadpan Snarker: While ingame her personality is very no-nonsense, in her League Judgement, she has her moments.
    Zelos: "Irelia, dad's really hurt!"
    Irelia: "Well, he does have a sword sticking out of him."
  • Death by Origin Story: She got better, thanks to Soraka, even if she didn't completely die.
  • Determinator: She was described rising from the brink of death due to being unwilling to relinquish her home to the Noxian invaders. Although, that a fellow champion from the league used her magic to anchor her soul to Runeterra probably helped. In-game, surrounding her with superior numbers just means that she'll regard your crowd control as even more of a joke as she does her best to slice her way out of the situation.
  • Disappeared Dad: Master Lito from an unknown illness, leaving her and brother Zelos.
  • Empathic Weapon: "The sword flourishes, as though painting with blood." It's not stated, but it could be why Irelia can use the weapon without touching it. It has a mind of its own.
  • Empowered Badass Normal: Already a gifted swordfighter before her "death", she became even more deadly with her Soul Jar acting as telepathic blades.
  • Family-Unfriendly Death: Upon falling in battle, her psychic blades rise up for a moment... and stab her in the chest. Possibly a Shout-Out to the Demon Hunter of Warcraft, who did the same.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration: In her backstory, Irelia (nearly) died fighting many enemies to defend her home and was able to resurrected due to her sheer willpower. This is reflected in her passive, which grants her the ability to shrug off inhibiting crowd control effects the more outnumbered she is.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Borders on Informed Attribute. One of the biggest reasons Riot gave her a VGU is because, aside from her animations and ultimate (the latter of which could easily be explained as throwing knives), Irelia didn't do anything with her "telekinetic" blades that other champions couldn't do with normal weapons.
  • Heroic Second Wind: Definitely invoked with her passive, which grants her greater crowd control reduction the more outnumbered she is, and her third ability, which is empowered if she's at lower health than the enemy she uses it on.
  • Homage: With her bright red clothing, ability named "Hiten Style," and elements of blinding speed kills in her Bladesurge ability, Irelia may be one to Himura Kenshin. Her femininity still helps this as Kenshin's a guy that has caused much Viewer Gender Confusion and was voiced by a woman in the Japanese anime. Xypherous confirmed that she is indeed based on Kenshin.
  • Implacable Man: Her passive, combined with Mercury's Treads, allows her to shrug off a SHITLOAD of crowd control when surrounded by enemies; it still affects her, but it lasts for such a short amount of time that it barely even matters. Combined with Olaf and there is a duo of berserk chargers coming your way.
  • Implausible Fencing Powers: Her character and gameplay gives a bit of reference to this trope — her easy use of her BFS is a Justified Trope since she wields it telepathically, and using Bladesurge as long as she has enough mana on weak targets when she's strong enough will lead to a razor storm of One Hit Kills.
  • Lady of War: She's calm and reserved, and her use of her sword without even holding it gives her attacks a graceful quality. It's practically a Logical Extreme of the belief that ladies don't rely on strength to fight.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Has a dash, is tough as hell, and can dish out good damage. After a bit of time for the community to figure her out, she proved to be such a Egregious example of the trope she received a slew of Nerfs to balance her. After some base-stat increases, she went back to being a ticking bomb on a fairly short-fuse to her enemies, and saw a lot of play/banning at the Season Two World Championships. One of the game's developers suspected her existence power creeped the top-lane she generally went to as champions that hoped to be competitive there would desperately need to shut her down hard, and quickly. Irelia could be seen as the codifer for a particular brand of Lightning Bruiser in League of Legends with powerful mobility, means of sustainability, and their own forms of crowd control all in one. Many new champions have taken this formula since.
  • Living Weapon: Her father's ability with swords was rumored to "make them able to breathe." Now she uses one without even touching it.
  • Magikarp Power: Starts out a bit unimpressive. Arises to near-One-Man Army status in a bit of time.
  • Mind over Matter: After being brought Back from the Dead by Soraka, her sword rose along with her, and she fought without even touching it. It has not been stated if she can do this over other objects, so it's assumed she can't.
  • Ninja: Nightblade Irelia replaces her polished parade armor with a dark, purple-and-black outfit.
  • One-Man Army: After she gets going, she can easily charge into mobs and slice her way through without any fear of dying thanks to her massive damage output, enormous crowd control reduction, natural tankiness, and sizable lifesteal, not to mention that she's one of the few characters in the game capable of dealing all three types of damage (physical, magic, and true), making it extremely difficult to itemize against her.
  • Over-the-Shoulder Pose: The splash art of her Frostblade skin uses this to display her rear end, earning it the nickname "Frostbutt".
  • Seppuku: One possible interpretation of her death animation is that she commits this instead of dying. Although another interpretation is that she loses control of her blades, which opens up some Fridge Horror — her own Soul Jar wants her dead, and only her control over it is preventing this.
  • Soul Jar: Thanks to some quick thinking by Soraka, her sword has become one — it's why she's able to move it effortlessly..
  • Stone Wall: Irelia can be hard to kill or force out of lane early on, as her Equilibrium Strike allows her to freely choose when and when not to fight if her opponent engages her, and her Hiten Style gives her impressive sustainability. However, before she levels up Hiten Style or builds her core Trinity Force, her killing potential is mostly limited to patiently waiting for her foe to make a mistake. This suits her fine, as she scales well into the mid game and doesn't need to force an early kill to be effective later on. Late game tends to become this again, as her damage levels off later on. She's still frighteningly good at fighting squishy carries later on, but she's not likely to do as well against sturdy bruisers.
  • Storm of Blades: Her Transcendant Blades flings some around.
  • Vapor Wear: You can see her nipples through her coat on her Aviator skin if you look closely.

    Karma, the Enlightened One 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/KarmaSquare_2013.png
An enlightened decision.

Voiced by: Danielle McRae (English), Victoria Angulo (European Spanish), Marize Motta (Brazilian Portuguese)

"Her fan technique is a deadly art of grace and poise, but her truest strength lies in the hearts of those willing to die alongside her."
— Irelia

An Ionian leader and diplomat, Karma possesses almost supernatural composure. Karma was an extremely important figure in the Ionian resistance to the Noxus/Zaun invasion, at the end of which she decided to join the League. She fights with twin fans and channels a supernatural resource called Mantra.

Karma is a hybrid mage and support-type champion who can unleash a spray of blades from her fans, create a bond of energy between her and another unit that speeds up allies and slows and damages enemies, and place a shield on a friendly unit. Karma is unique in that her ultimate skill, Mantra, is available from level one and can never be upgraded. Over time, she stores charges of Mantra and expends them to add a powerful secondary effect to her other the skills: healing to her blade attack, doubling the slow/haste of her bond, and an area of effect blast to her shield. Her passive gives her extra ability power based on how much health she's missing.

Karma's alternate skins include Sakura Karma and Sun Goddess Karma.

  • Ambiguously Brown: Karma has much darker skin than the average Ionian champion, most notable on her Sakura/Lotus skin.
  • Animal Motif: Her Mantra fans fly around her in a shape similar to butterflies. Her attacks also release a small burst of flowers.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Even though she can do some pretty neat things, her pros still don't outweigh her cons. Not having an ultimate ability sets her behind the other supports just for STARTERS. Not for nothing is she one of the least-played champions in the entire game.
  • Combat Medic: She's a magic damage and support hybrid champion. All of her abilities have both a directly offensive component along with a defensive or support component when using her Mantra passive with them. She also takes hits like her dress is made out of Kevlar — making it even better, because unlike other support champions, she has to be within melee range to heal someone.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: Mastering Karma is incredibly difficult as she is by orders of magnitude the most complicated support character to play. You have to keep an eye on her Mantra and know when to best deploy it offensively or defensively. She also requires considerable amounts of farm to be effective (where the majority of support champions do not and are often deliberately played with NO farm to let their lanemate have it all) as she is highly dependant on cooldown reduction to keep her Mantra on hand when she needs it. Still, she can do some pretty neat things once you've got the hang of her...
  • I Can Still Fight!: Gains extra ability power corresponding to the percentage of her health she's missing. Combined with her shield and Mantra heal, this makes her deceptively more durable.
  • Joke Character: While her small pool of dedicated defenders would disagree, the simple undeniable fact is that Karma is the least used and least successful champion in the game, regarded by most as a being completely non-viable on any competitive level. Luckily, Riot remade her.
    • Note that this only applied to summoner rift. Karma was surprisingly good in dominion and ARAM (before she was remade). Post-remake, she is only marginally more played, marginally more viable but is still a beast in ARAM.
  • Mayincatec: The theme behind Sun Goddess Karma.
  • Not So Above It All: In a video made by StephanosRex (the voice actor for several League characters including Shaco, Tryndamere, and Jax) in which Shaco tries to get one of his fellow champions to rap, we have this exchange (done by Karma's actual voice actor to boot!)
    Karma: I have more fans that you ever will.
    Shaco: I'm afraid hand fans don't count.
    Karma: Fuck off, clown.
  • Paper Fan of Doom: She throws the blades from her her fans at enemies for her basic attack, a trick based on real-life weapons.
  • Shoot the Medic First: Unless they're focusing a carry such as Gangplank, expect to be focus-fired first if you're playing as Karma. not only can she throw shields with huge amounts of health on, but she can also heal... and it's not a fixed amount, it's a percentage. It doesn't help that she winds up having to practically be in melee range to use her heal. She is also a much tougher nut to crack than the typical healer, because she can cast all the above goodness on herself as well and it even gets more powerful when she is about to die.
  • The Stoic: Her background itself states her composure is virtually superhuman. Her League Judgement, showing her inner thoughts, clearly shows she does feel emotion, but she probably doesn't show it very much. She cries out in pain from being struck by corrosive acid, but quickly changes her outward reactions to that pain to blinking.
  • Supermodel Strut: An ironic example. She's probably one of the more conservative girls in the game, yet her walking animation was a strut that had her swish her hips quite a lot. This was eventually patched and replaced by a more normal walking animation.
  • Violation of Common Sense: Oftentimes, people want you to harass her because then they'll put a shield nuke up and hurt you, or heal their lane partner for a boatload of health. She can also be quite tanky, meaning that if you Shoot the Medic First, you'll really regret it.

    Kayle, the Judicator 

    Mordekaiser, the Master of Metal 

    Nunu, the Yeti Rider (and Willump the Yeti) 

    Pantheon, the Artisan of War 

    Poppy, the Iron Ambassador 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/poppy_originalloading.jpg
Valoran will know harmony.

Voiced by: Unknown (English), Pilar Coronado (European Spanish), Marisa Leal (Brazilian Portuguese)

"Poppy may be small, but Whomper — or her will — is not."

A Yordle who used to work at her father's smithy. Her father was killed by Noxian assassins while transporting a helmet commissioned by a general of Demacia, but Poppy took it upon herself to finish her father's delivery. The general was so impressed with her iron-willed determination he sent a recommendation back to Bandle City, who instituted her as ambassador of the Yordles to Demacia. With her father's hammer Whomper, she joined the League to crush Noxus.

Poppy is a fighter-assassin champion whose abilities are geared largely towards going after and quickly taking out a single opponent of the enemy team, making her a very bulky assasin. Her passive, Valiant Fighter, halves any damage that exceeds 10% of her current health, giving her great resistance to bursts of damage and making her deceptively tanky when she gets low on health. Her first ability, Devastating Blow, makes her next basic attack deal bonus damage equal to a percentage of the target's maximum health. Her second ability, Paragon of Demacia, passively increases her armor and attack damage everytime she receives or deals damage stacking up to five times, and can be activated to give her maximum stacks and grant her a movement speed bonus for a brief duration. With her third ability, Heroic Charge, Poppy tackles a nearby enemy, damaging then and pushing the target back with her. If they collide with terrain, the target is stunned and is damaged again. With her ultimate ability, Diplomatic Immunity, Poppy focuses on a nearby enemy champion so intensly that, for a brief duration, she becomes completely immune to damage and crowd control effects from other enemies, and also deals bonus damage against that target.

Poppy's alternate skins include Blacksmith Poppy, Noxian Poppy, Lollipoppy, Ragdoll Poppy, Battle Regalia Poppy, and Scarlet Hammer Poppy.

  • Action Girl: Charges straight into the vanguard and starts bashing faces in. She's notable for being the only Yordle classified as a pure fighter (Rumble is a fighter-hybrid mix) and she's female, no less.
  • Ambadassador
    "Let me demonstrate 'hammer diplomacy'!"
  • American Kirby Is Hardcore: This is your Poppy.◊ This is your Poppy on Chinese art.◊
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Even by melee carry standards, a fed Poppy is one of the scariest possible things late-game, being able to 1v5 reliably and fairly easily. However, she has a good risk of getting shut down before then and becoming rather useless if the enemy team is aware of this possibility. There is basically no middle-ground between being dead weight and single-handedly carrying because of how binary she tends to be.
  • Badass Adorable/Cute Bruiser: She's a Yordle warrior, of course she is (though less so than Tristana or Lulu).
  • Foe-Tossing Charge: Her 'Heroic Charge' ability will knock back even champions twice her size.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Her ult works by making it so Poppy focuses on its target with all her will, ignoring everything else. This doesn't stop her user from triggering her ult upon a target and then attacking somebody else, allowing her to nonsensically focus on an individual, and then proceed to ignore said individual in favor of beating up someone else.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: Her Scarlet Hammer skin is actually quite menacing, largely due to these.
  • I Call It "Vera": "Whomper"
  • I Can Still Fight!: Her passive works best when she has low health, practically halving all damage she receives when below a certain threshold.
  • It Only Works Once: Poppy's role is essentially to use her ult to brutally beat to death one member (usually the most deadly) of the enemy team very quickly and efficiently, however, she might not survive the getaway after the enemy is dead. Or you could target the least threatening person on their team, ignore him/her completely and make to smash in the enemy carry with invulnerability.
  • Knight in Shining Armor: Battle Regalia Poppy pulls off the look.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Her Paragon of Demacia skill makes her pretty darn speedy.
  • Magikarp Power: Has a bad early game due to her atrocious farming, but becomes an unstoppable force of destruction capable of winning an entire game on her own once she gets her core items. A common joke is that Poppy doesn't farm minions, she farms champions. Changes to the meta over time have made Poppy's early game issues less significant. She is a passable jungler and a strong solo top vs most AD top lane champions. Farming has become a lot less about how many creeps you can sweep up in a few moves, and more about beating your opponent to death in the lane, therefore preventing him from getting farm while you take the creep waves free and clear. Poppy is, if anything, really good at fighting, even in the early game.
  • My Greatest Failure: Riot themselves have admitted that she's, together with Sion, one of their worst designed champions gameplay-wise, mainly because of her incredibly powerful ultimate and how non-flexible she is (she either dominates the game, or is useless). She has a really bad early game, which makes her un-fun during that time period, but if she actually gets fed she can trainwreck an entire team by herself at late game. She has no hard counters, since her ult basically makes her invincible for 8 seconds, more than enough time to kill or heavily damage the whole team if she targets a non-threatening opponent with it. Since she's hard to play, she isn't seen much in high-level games, but Riot has admitted that if she did, they would need to heavily nerf her.
  • No Sense of Humor:
    "Jokes? I don't know any jokes."
  • No-Sell: Diplomatic Immunity doesn't just negate damage, but all forms of debuff and crowd control from anyone but her target.
  • One-Man Army: A Poppy focusing on attack damage or a mixture of attack and ability damage can easily butcher the entire enemy team single-handedly and essentially eliminate even the basic concept of a teamfight come endgame. And, unlike other melee carries, she's FAR harder to shut down once she reaches that state.
    • For reference, Poppy can stomp Jax, generally considered the king of one-on-one once he has the items he needs.
  • Pintsized Powerhouse: It doesn't matter how big a champ is, she can shove them with her charge.
  • Take Up My Sword: Well, hammer anyway.
  • Technical Pacifist: She wants peace, and makes some references to diplomacy. Of course, there is none in the game.
  • When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Literally. She's an ambassador but on the Fields of Justice the only diplomacy to be found is the weapon or spell in your hand.
  • You Killed My Father: Noxian spies killed her father, and so she joined their rival, Demacia, to fight against them.

    Ryze, the Rogue Mage 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ryze_originalloading.jpg
Let's go, let's go!

Voiced by: Adam Harrington (English), Miguel Ayones (European Spanish), Jorge Vasconcellos (Brazilian Portuguese)

"There is no doubt. Ryze is no longer a mage — he has become a creature of magic."

A traveling mage and hermit who acquired forbidden and dangerous magic from around the world. Ryze is covered in magical tattoos that make his magic more potent, and carries a dangerous scroll on his back containing forbidden knowledge he seeks to protect from the world. Through the League, he continues his studies among the best mages Runeterra has to offer.

Ryze is a mage-fighter champion who offsets his short range with powerful multi-target damage and the ability to launch a continuous barrage of spells. All his damaging abilities deal damage based on his maximum mana as well as his ability power, allowing Ryze to build tankier than most mages and not lose too much damage in return. His passive, Arcane Mastery, grants Ryze a stack everytime he uses an ability. When he reaches five stacks, Ryze becomes supercharged for a few seconds, during which he gains a damage-absorbing shield equal to a percentage of his maximum mana and reduces the cooldown of all his other abilities when he casts one by an amount equal to the cooldown of his first ability. With his first ability, Overload, Ryze launches an large blast of energy forward in a line, damaging the first enemy hit. His second ability, Rune Prison, encases a nearby enemy in a cage of runes that damages and immobilizes them for a brief duration. With his third ability, Spell Flux, Ryze fires a ball of energy at a nearby enemy that damages and reduces their magic resistance by a percentage for a few seconds. The ball then splits into several bolts that target up to four nearby enemies, applying the same effects to them. The bolts then return to Ryze's original target, damaging it depending on how many additional targets they hit before returning. His ultimate ability, Desperate Power, unleashes Ryze's full power for a few seconds, increasing his movement speed, making all his spells heal him for a percentage of the damage dealt and causing all his spells to deal a percentage of the damage they inflict to all enemies around their main target. Each rank of this ability also passively reduces the cooldown of Ryze's abilities and increases the duration of his passive's supercharged state.

Ryze's alternate skins include Human Ryze, Tribal Ryze, Uncle Ryze, Triumphant Ryze, Professor Ryze, Zombie Ryze, Dark Crystal Ryze, Pirate Ryze and Ryze Whitebeard.

  • Amazing Technicolor Population: The magical energies running through his body turned his skin purple.
  • Bad Ass Bookworm: To its logical extreme: the "Twist of Fate" CGI features Ryze channeling his power through the runes in his book.
  • Boring Yet Practical: Requires no skillshots, has an ultimate that's essentially a self-buff, and has combos that can be executed as "press all the buttons". Still a very effective mage that can lock down and lay the damage onto single targets quite nicely.
  • Button Mashing: His passive reduces his cooldowns by a one second every time he uses an ability. His ability Overload has a very short cooldown, and passively grants more cooldown reduction. With a cooldown-reducing item or two, this short-cooldown ability becomes even shorter and the other two become fairly short. And keeping in mind that as his cooldowns get shorter, his passive triggers more often; using Overload, something else, using Overload again, and something else, rinsing and repeating, allows him to cast his abilities over and over.
  • Combos: Players usually have their own spell casting order they prefer though Q->W->E->Q is a classic one for harassing and Q->R->Q->W->E-Q->E->Q->Ignite works well for all-out fights. Or they just hit them all in no particular order, that works too.
  • Desperation Attack: Appropriately enough, Desperate Power can give him the Heroic Second Wind he needs to turn a fight around, though it can be activated at any time, including the start of a fight.
  • Energy Being: Averted, he could have gone down Xerath's path if he wanted but stayed human (and sane), albeit a human that's a very powerful conduit for energy magic.
  • Foil: To Xerath. Both are more or less beings of energy magic but Ryze is more like a master of his magic and is morally good (if somewhat of a jerk) while Xerath let his magic consume him and is ambitious enough to not stop there.. Gameplay wise the two are opposites: Ryze is a low skill-cap mage champion with low spell range, no dependence on skillshots, and a spell that locks his opponents in place and Xerath is a much more difficult champion with some of the best ranges in the game, depends heavily on aimed abilities, and locks himself in place with a spell.
  • Good Is Not Nice: His goal is to protect the world from the forbidden magics only he knows about and is quite sane compared to other spellcasters that have reached his level of power. Still a bit of a Jerkass.
  • Human Notepad: Easily the most obvious part of his character. He's tattooed himself with spells from head to toe. The term "living conduit of magic" comes up in fluff pertaining to him.
  • Humanoid Abomination: He's not evil, however. He also has a VERY dim opinion of Xerath who like Ryze became a master of energy magic. Ryze states how he despises Xerath's lack of self control making him a mere slave to magic whereas Ryze has controlled his magic. Case in point, Ryze doesn't need skillshots to hit his enemy.
    "The creature called Xerath is an abomination of a mage. To master magic is not to lose oneself to it entirely! The power at his command, however great it might be, he's holding in a feeble grasp. His own will can't match the will of the arcane. The ancient mages of Shurima did everyone a favor locking Xerath away, and the Institute of War would be wise to follow their example!"
  • I Did What I Had to Do: He stole the scroll on his back from his teacher (and implied lover) Lilith, claiming she would have brought ruin on the world if he hadn't. He's clearly bothered by the act and how his "betrayal" upset Lilith.
  • Insufferable Genius: One would be hard pressed to describe him as "patient" or "nice".
  • Jerkass: He's kinda unpleasant in his lines.
    "Unpleasant? I'll show you unpleasant!"
  • Magikarp Power: He has a well-deserved reputation for having awful early levels due to his low attack and spell ranges as well as his low mana pool, making it difficult to both farm and counter-harass simultaenously. However, he scales hard even by mage standards into late-game due to high consistent area-of-effect damage and potential tankiness from mana items that keeps him alive as he blasts away.
  • Mighty Glacier: By caster standards, Ryze will end up resilient from buying tanky mana items and still remain powerful but he lacks any blink abilities to help his mobility (though the movement speed boost from Desperate Power helps).
  • Pirate: His Pirate Ryze skin.
  • Power Tattoo: The key to his unknown magical abilities.
  • Pure Energy: He even has abilitites that scale off of his mana, rather than AP.
  • Purple Is Powerful: He's noted as having a high amount of magical strength, to the point of being called a magical being rather than a mage. Taken to the logical conclusion with this one, as his sheer power turned his skin purple.
  • Series Mascot: You can pretty much count on him showing up in any official art or promotional materials. The season 1 CGI trailer even featured him as the leader of the protagonist team and he's the only character to appear in all 3 of the CGI battle videos (the Season 1 trailer, the Dominion trailer and the Twist of Fate trailer).
  • Skill Gate Characters: Ryze's mp scaling is unusual among mages, and thus he teaches players to pay attention to how abilities scale and to consider unusual itemization to best suit their strengths. He also teaches how to combo skills together: while it's true that simply Button Mashing can do a lot of damage, executing a proper combo can burst down enemies before they even knew what hit them.
  • Spam Attack: Ryze using his 3 abilities as a combo probably won't burst as hard as another mage's 3 spells. The solution? Go for quantity over quality and keep casting while the enemy is waiting for their own cooldowns.
  • Splash Damage Abuse: An attribute of his ultimate gives his spells splash damage, so his Spell Flux potentially quadruples in damage output if his targets are standing near each other.
  • Squishy Wizard: Though he is this at the start of games, will most likely be averted. Because he powers up his spells with Mana as well as AP, he can get away with building tons of items made for tanks. It is possible for Ryze to be the single toughest person on your entire team if you don't have a true tank.

    Sion, the Undead Champion 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/SionSquare_171.png
I do it.

Voiced by: J.S. Gilbert (English), Juan Carlos Lozano (European Spanish), Gutemberg Barros (Brazilian Portuguese)

"For Noxus, death is a promotion."
— Pantheon

Sion was an insane berserker and warrior of Noxus who was captured and executed by Demacian forces. His remains were stolen and he was brought back to life as a zombie/golem, adding dark magic abilities to his already formidable physical strength, to fight once more for his city.

Sion is a fighter-mage champion who can be built as either a resilient attacker or a burst mage, in both cases preferring to fight up close and personal. His passive, Feel no Pain, grants him a chance to ignore a percentage of damage taken from basic attacks. His first ability, Cryptic Gaze, damages and stuns a nearby enemy with a terrifying gaze. His second ability, Death's Caress, surrounds Sion with a damage-absorbing shield made of souls for a duration. When the duration ends or the ability is reactivated the shield bursts, damaging nearby enemies. His third ability, Enrage, is a toggled ability that, at the cost of some health per attack, increases Sion's attack damage and grants him a permanent bonus to his maximum health whenever he kills a unit. With his ultimate ability, Cannibalism, Sion goes berserker for a duration, gaining a large bonus to his attack speed, making his basic attacks heal Sion for a percentage of the damage dealt, and also healing all nearby allies for a percentage of the amount healed to Sion.

Sion's alternate skins include Hextech Sion, Barbarian Sion, Lumberjack Sion, and Warmonger Sion.

  • Affably Evil: Even as an undead behemoth, Sion and his Choppa don't seem very sinister. His death sounds calm compared to Nocturne and like Singed is just plain calm in battle.
  • The Ahnold: Half his lines are Arnold Schwarzenegger shout-outs.
  • The Artifact: Since the % chance of slowing an enemy on Phage / Frozen Mallet / Trinity Force got reworked, Sion's passive is literally the only element of chance in the game (besides critical hit chance). Since the developers' stated goal was to remove RNG mechanics from the game (the exception being crit chance), this is going to be the first thing to go when Sion gets his re-work.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: A Sion with many accumulated stacks of Enrage to boost his max HP as well as a full build (including an Atma's Impaler to convert bonus HP into AD) will be nigh-unstoppable as hacks everything to death in his path. However, he requires the majority of a game's length to farm to make this happen, which ends up making him a liability compared to other fighters that can achieve sufficient amounts of damage with much less investment.
  • The Berserker: Once he's built properly, a Sion can probably just run into the enemy team and chop them all to pieces.
  • Blood Knight:
    "Lead me to Battle."
  • The Brute: Probably the least intelligent of the Noxian champions and also among the strongest.
  • Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon: Sion is a huge undead brute with a huge axe...named Choppa.
  • Combat Medic: He doesn't fulfill the healer's role per-se, but his ultimate causes his physical attacks to heal both himself and his allies close by for the duration. When built as a physical DPS, Sion can easily keep his whole team alive with this massive lifesteal.
  • Crutch Character: As AP, He starts off very good, but falls off late game.
  • Dissonant Serenity: He's a raging undead berserker that for some reason never raises his voice, not even when dying.
  • Feel No Pain: The name of his passive, verbatim.
  • Frankenstein's Monster: Pieced back together and resurrected in a similar way.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: It's even incorporated into his ability, Cryptic Gaze.
  • I Call It "Vera":
    "Get on my Choppa!"
  • Implacable Man: A fully leveled Sion is virtually impossible to kill and can take disgusting amounts of punishment thanks to Enrage's permanent health boosts, Cannibalism's sky-high lifesteal, and his natural bulk. There's gameplay footage of a fully-built Sion killing an entire enemy team from full health in their spawn while the 1000-damage-per-second laser is damaging him, a feat that pretty much no one else can do.
  • Life Drain: His ultimate grants this to his melee attacks for him and his allies during its duration.
  • Magikarp Power: With an AD build he needs to farm to be of any use lategame, but becomes a true beast when fully built. Enrage lets him permanently stack HP for each minion killed and without a limit, giving him the highest feasible HP pool in the game (and potentially highest AD with Atma's Impaler converting HP to AD). This means that like Nasus or Veigar his effectiveness is directly proportional to how many creeps he's farmed over time.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: He's less of a "mindless, shambling, brain-eating" zombie and more of a resurrected berserker who's also ridiculously hard to kill now that he's undead.
  • My Greatest Failure: Riot has admitted that, together with Poppy, he's one of their worst designed champions, both gamplay and flavor-wise. He's a huge hulking zombie with an axe, but he isn't very encouraged to fight at melee and doesn't make any use of the axe in any of his abilities, and has some abilities that don't make sense flavor-wise (why is a warrior zombie able to emit stunning, glittering eyebeams and generate exploding energy shields?). Gameplay-wise, he has only two builds: an AP mage build, which completely ignores and doesn't make use of his E and R, or an AD-build, which also gets no use out of his W ability. The main problem thus is that his abilities and gameplay don't mesh well with his appearance, and that he's forced to forego several of his abilities if he wants to be viable. They have already announced that, if he gets reworked, he's going to undergo pretty hefty changes.
  • Not the Intended Use: While Sion is made to be a fairly beefy physical-damage bruiser, a few players haven noted his ridiculously high magic scaling. Thus, AP Sion, who is known for his ability to kill most champions with only two spells.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: He's undead too, do you need anymore reason to keep away?
  • Shoot the Medic First: In one of the strangest (and most counter-intuitive) examples in game, killing him while his Cannibalism effect is active will make killing his team significantly easier. Targeting the giant bruiser in front instead of the squishies behind him is not often the best way to proceed in teamfights.
  • Unskilled, but Strong: Described as a "human battering ram" in his lore.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: One of the biggest problems with AP Sion is that if his shield gets broken before it blows up (a very real possibility late game), it eliminates roughly half of his damage output.

    Skarner, the Crystal Vanguard 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/skarner_originalloading.jpg
"My stinger brings ugly death."

Voiced by: David Lodge (English), Pablo Adán (European Spanish), Gerardo Reyero (Mexican Spanish), Shunsuke Sakuya (Japanese), Márcio Simões (Brazilian Portuguese), Jang-Hyuk Ahn (Korean), Sergey Pinchuk (Russian)

"We are one. We cannot be shattered."

Skarner is an immense crystalline scorpion from a hidden valley in Shurima. Part of the ancient Brackern race, Skarner and his kin are known for their great wisdom and deep connection to the land, as their souls are fused with powerful life crystals which hold the living thoughts and memories of their ancestors. In an age long past, the Brackern entered hibernation to avoid untold magical destruction, but recent, threatening events have roused Skarner. As the only Brackern awake, he strives to protect his kind from those who seek to harm them.
Skarner is a Juggernaut champion who excels at both being extremely hard to shake off once he gets to an enemy, and offering his team great map and objective control.
  • His passive, Crystal Spires, causes six crystal spires to spawn in set locations around the map; either team can capture these crystal spires by standing close to them for a few seconds, gaining gold upon doing so. While Skarner is close to a crystal spire that is captured by his team, or while an enemy is disabled by his Fracture or Impale abilities, he becomes energized, gaining a massive increase to his movement and attack speed and quickly regenerating mana.
  • With his first ability, Crystal Slash, Skarner lashes out with his claws, damaging nearby enemies and briefly increasing the damage of subsequent uses if he hits at least one. Basic attacks reduce the ability's cooldown.
  • His second ability, Crystalline Exoskeleton, protects Skarner with a crystal shield based on his max health. While the shield holds, Skarner also gains bonus movement speed that increases over the duration.
  • His third ability, Fracture, sends out a blast of crystalline energy in a target direction that damages and slows enemies it passes through. Enemies hit are also marked with Crystal Venom for a few seconds, causing Skarner's next basic attack against them to consume the mark, stunning them and dealing increased damage. Fracture's cooldown is reduced when Skarner disables an enemy with Crystal Venom or Impale.
  • With his ultimate ability, Impale, Skarner stabs a nearby enemy champion with his stinger, damaging them and encasing the target in crystal for a short duration, during which they are completely incapacitated and Skarner drags them behind himself as he moves. When the effect ends, the target is damaged once again.
  • All-Natural Gem Polish: Skarner and other Lifestones we've seen shimmer brightly, although some of the ones we've seen have been refined.
  • Badass Boast: From his short story, he encounters a group of thieves who're mistreating a Lifestone. They're burning fat over a fire and their voices are rough and coarse. Skarner?
    "You sing only death. I, too, can sing this song."
  • Balance Buff: Skarner was one of the subjects of the 2015 midseason juggernaut updates, which introduced the Crystal Spires mechanic to give Skarner more interesting paradigms to work around. Prior to the update, his only passive was Crystallizing Sting, which has since been compacted into Fracture's current passive behavior.
  • Berserk Button: Mistreating the Lifestones. He first tries to reach out to a group of people thieves who've stolen one diplomatically by singing to their minds, but he's met by laughter. In response, he burrows under the sand, closes the distance, and erupts from underneath them before slaughtering all of them but one.
  • Beware My Stinger Tail: Did you not see his selection quote? Par the course for being, y'know, a giant scorpion.
  • Boring, but Practical: Skarner has a reputation of not exactly being the most exciting champion to play, featuring low base mobility, moderate damage, dependency on outside factors like his spires or items to really increase his tempo, and teamfight gameplay more about engaging to land precious crowd control over making big standalone plays. This can make him feel less like a singular threat and more like an asset for the rest of the team... but on the upside, he can be quite a powerful asset, with his durability and unique pick-off potential able to contribute a lot of power to winning skirmishes and teamfights, especially if he gets ahead.
  • Crystalline Creature: He's a Brackern, a race of crystalline scorpions imbued with magical crystals.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: Contrary to most Juggernaut champions, who strike hard in a single ability, Skarner is kitable when away but nearly impossible to peel off once he actually reaches someone, and proceeds to rip them apart with a hundred slashes of his claws. This is both to his benefit and his detriment; if an enemy will stay still, Skarner has the most DPS of any Juggernaut in the game, but most enemies don't simply stand still.
  • Depending on the Writer: A very unique case. This doesn't apply to his story, but rather, to his game design. Employees at Riot can't decide whether he should be a Juggernaut, Vanguard, or Diver. They began with Juggernaut with his rework, nerfed him when his damage was deemed too high and reclassified him as a Vanguard tank. Players were unsatisfied because Skarner's legacy is as a damage dealer, not a tank, so they continuously switch between Diver and Juggernaut. Mechanically, he's much more like a Juggernaut, because he doesn't have any mobility options.
  • Empowered Badass Normal: In their normal form, Brackern aren't very powerful. Once they fuse with their Lifestone, however, they gain immense strength and wisdom. Every Brackern must find their lifestone. Skarner is the most powerful of his kind, having bound with a particularly ancient stone.
  • Evil Laugh: Subverted. He's not actually evil, but he has one heck of a cackle that might make you think he is. Check it out.
  • Fish out of Temporal Water: His species sealed themselves beneath the earth long ago when humans ravaged the world with their Rune Wars. Skarner doesn't understand humans at all, especially their penchant for violence and cruelty.
    This world is so strange.
  • Hair-Trigger Temper: Has one around the Lifestones because of how people use them.
  • Hypocritical Humor: One of his jokes.
    Eeaugh! Bugs are gross! Ugh!
  • The Juggernaut: A Skarner built with tank items can just activate Crystalline Exoskeleton, run through the enemy team and Impale a vital target. He'll proceed to either drag them into his team, or just rip them to pieces on the spot.
  • Lightning Bruiser: EXTREMELY durable, and despite lacking a hard gapcloser, the movement speed buff of Crystalline Exoskeleton and other tricks like the Predator rune, the Ghost summoner spell, and the Turbo Chemtank item can get him terrifyingly fast and nearly impossible to flee from.
  • Magikarp Power: His early game can be quite a slog as he's lacking all the stats he really needs for his tankiness, damage, and speed, and even the spires he'll really need as a crutch will only marginally improve things early on. However, things can accelerate for him pretty dramatically once he gets his items, his ultimate, as well as a successful gank or few, and by late game, he can scale into a pretty frightening Lightning Bruiser. Some patches and major e-sport events over a decade ago saw Skarner as a pick-or-ban type of character because he was remarkably simple, but an absolute horror to play against if he got the ball rolling with gold-per-5 items and successful early jungle ganks when picked alongside laners with crowd control, and in the mid and late game a single Trinity Force turned him into an unstoppable brawler with Area of Effect damage that slowed everyone around him that became absurdly effective with some attack speed buffs from allies or items.
  • Meaningful Name: "Skarn" is an old Swedish mining term referring to silicate rock.
  • Natural Weapon: His claws, and venomous tail.
  • Non-Indicative Name: His ultimate, Impale, does not, well, impale anything. It's more like a crystalizing Tractor Beam.
  • Pokémon Speak: As a shoutout to his resemblance to the Pokemon Skorupi, when Skarner idles in brush, he'll occasionally randomly trigger an Easter Egg voice clip of Skarner going "Skar! Skar! Skarner!"
  • Poisonous Person: His Fracture ability applies Crystal Venom to his targets. Impale also presumably uses a large dose of Crystal Venom to stun the target, given the similar effects of the effect from Fracture and ultimate.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: His race's description says it right there: "As vicious as they are wise". He himself seems to have a bit of a temper.
  • Retcon: Originally, the Brackern was originally just an isolated race of beings who went into hibernation after their crystals and lifeblood were tainted by the Rune Wars, with Skarner serving as a vanguard when he was awakened by recent mining activity disrupting the area by the League of Legends. After the mass Continuity Reboot, it was rewritten that the Brackern crystals are actually the original sources of hextech, and Skarner was awoken when robbers were directly attempting to harvest them from their hosts, with his new motivation to seek out and retrieve all those that had been lost.
  • Scary Scorpions: Subverted. He and presumably the other Brackernnote  are actually very true to real-life scorpions; they avoid conflict where they can and are pretty shy and retiring, preferring to keep to their underground homes. When provoked, through, they're ruthless, dangerous, and terrifying.
  • Shown Their Work: On announcement, the debuff applied by Fracture was called Crystal Poison. It was quickly pointed out that since Skarner impales his foes, it would not be poison (which is ingested), but venom, and so Riot changed the name accordingly.
  • Silicon-Based Life: While it's possible he's not entirely crystalline (his backstory suggests as much), what we see is a giant rock-and-crystal arthropod.
  • Single Specimen Species: For now. He's not the last of his kind, but the others are buried deep beneath Shurima. They won't wake up until humans have died out, and Skarner will rebury himself with them when he's gathered all of the Lifestones.
    I miss my kind...
  • Spam Attack: See Death of a Thousand Cuts above: Attacking reduces his Crystal Slash cooldown, Crystal Slash is empowered as it's used repeatedly. Using Fracture and the subsequent Crystal Venom enables him to stay close to his target and continue attacking. As he has high attack damage growth, his base AD at level 18 is only beaten out by Mordekaiser, Garen and Darius, allowing him to focus more on attack speed itemization to fully take advantage of this.
  • Strange-Syntax Speaker: Skarner, in the recent short stories, has a tendency to combine words to make new words. The crystals his people bond with are 'Lifestones' or 'Namestones'. Their hibernation is 'Longsleep'. Where they sleep is the 'Deepdark'. Below the earth, they feel the warmth of the planet's core, or 'Wombfire'. The surface is the 'Aboveplace'. As they sleep, he hears their 'Dreamsongs'. As volcanoes erupted, he sang with the 'Underground'. The rage ended in the 'Raintime'. He describes his shell as 'Skywhite', and his magic as 'Sunbright'. Humans are called 'Softskins'.
  • Super-Persistent Predator: Riot attempts to portray this theme through him. No matter where the enemy runs, Skarner is fast enough and has enough sticking power to make sure they don't get away.
    You'll never escape!
  • Taken for Granite: His venom appears to have this effect on people, temporarily crystallizing them.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Previously, Skarner in the span of even one rework was considered a very difficult pick due to his lack of meaningful sustain and item dependency. However, the recent Juggernaut reworks have had him up to par with some of the many top-tier junglers with tons of new items being able to synergize with him, namely, Sterak's Gage, which boosts the damage of Trinity Force (Skarner's most important item), his Crystal Slash, and Impale because they scale off of 'total' Attack Damage, whereas most abilities only scale off of bonus Attack Damage, and Dead Man's Plate. Runes Reforged looks to make him even better, since the Predator keystone means he no longer needs to use Flash to reach a target.
  • Tractor Beam: Expect to be dragged into his team then eagerly devoured if you're the target of his Impale.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: If a Skarner's Impale is too much of a threat for you, Quicksilver Sash and its derivative items will instantly free you from Skarner's clutches and put him back on a very long cooldown. This renowned "Skarner tax" does demand a pretty big price of at around 1300 gold, but it can mean the difference between life and death when he's on the enemy team, especially if you're very squishy.
  • You Will Not Evade Me: Did you just flash away from one of Skarner's ganks? He can easily catch up and pull you right back where you started.

    Swain, the Master Tactitian 

    Taric, the Gem Knight 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/taric_originalloading.jpg
More than just precious stones, I bring you an ancient power.

Voiced by: Dennis Collins Johnson (English), Abraham Aguilar (European Spanish), Duda Espinoza (Brazilian Portuguese)

"As Taric's father taught him, every stone has its meaning. For Taric's enemies, they all mean trouble."

The son of a magical healer who learned his father's skills, Taric was determined to incorporate his fascination with gemstones into his craft. He decided to master his craft and become more than a healer, becoming a wandering knight who fought for justice until he was pulled into Valoran by League summoners. Deciding this world needed his abilities, he agreed to stay.

Taric is a support-fighter champion who prefers to aid allies in close-quarters combat with his array of buffs, being much tankier than the average support. His passive, Gemcraft, makes his next basic attack after using an ability deal bonus damage equal to a percentage of his armor and reduce the cooldown of all his abilities. With his first ability, Imbue, Taric uses earthen energy to either heal both an ally and himself at the same time, or only himself for a bonus amount of health. His second ability, Shatter, passively protects Taric with a crystal armor that grants him bonus armor and also emits an aura that increases the armor of nearby allies. When the ability is activated, Taric shatters the crystal, damaging all nearby enemies and reducing their armor, but losing the passive armor bonus while the ability is on cooldown. His third ability, Dazzle, fires a blast of light from his shield at a nearby enemy, stunning them and damaging them depending on how close they are to him. With his ultimate ability, Radiance, Taric slams the ground with his hammer, damaging all nearby enemies and, for a brief duration, emitting an aura of light that gives himself and nearby allies an offensive stat bonus.

Taric's alternate skins include Emerald Taric, Armor of the Fifth Age Taric, and Bloodstone Taric.

  • All Gays Love Theater: According to the Journal of Justice, he was the lead designer for an incredibly colorful and frilly musical called The Sound of Magic.
  • All-Natural Gem Polish: Reconstructed... somewhat. Taric's classic art shows him in a cave of rock crystals, but these have the flaws and irregular shapes you'd expect from uncut minerals.
  • Ambiguously Gay: And that's all we'll say about that.
  • Boring Yet Practical: Of all the "aggressive" supports (those intended to set up kills for the carry in lane and initiate in teamfights), Taric takes the least amount of skill compared to others like Leona or Blitzcrank. Unlike them, he also only has one skill (his stun) that is useful for securing kills. However, his other abilities make him a useful hybrid between "sustain" supports and "aggressive" ones that even beginners can utilize well and makes for a solid support because of this.
  • Camp Gay/Manly Gay: Zig-Zagged Trope, if one assumes he's actually gay. On one hand he's a durable mage knight in very heavy armor and weaponry and has a deep manly voice. On the other, he has long hair, speaks in a gentle tone, directs flashy musicals, and LOVES his gemstones.
  • The Cape
  • Combat Medic: Even if he can heal people, then the very term 'knight' would logically imply this. He can take a lot of punishment, especially for a healer, and attacking in melee both restores his mana and reduces the cooldown on his heal substantially, meaning that he's actually a better medic when he's attacking something. His widely-preferred use in lane is stunning a target with Dazzle and reducing their armor with Shatter for him and his allies to tear them up, using the medic as secondary aspect to him.
  • Computers Are Fast: Taric Bot is annoying to fight because he'll always manage to pull his stun off at the worst possible time, and manage to do it from max range almost every time. If you dink around and let them farm or receive all their items on a timer, it gets worse.
  • Darker and Edgier: Bloodstone Taric discards the cape and dons a new set of red armor and even has menacing red eyes.
  • Dissonant Serenity: Never raises his voice, ever. Not even when threatening his enemies with death, or when he's killed. Even then, he just sort of sighs or moans.
  • Gemstone Assault: Basically his entire schtick.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: Enemies won't be laughing at Taric while he's using his gem-enchanted hammer to smash their faces in. He's not just as sparkly as a gem; he's as durable as one too, and he can use his magic to keep himself and his allies in the fight for a very long time.
  • Knight in Shining Armor: Both literally and figuratively. Three of his abilities revolve around it, in fact.
  • Magic Knight: Magic? Check. Beautiful armor? Check. Hideously heavy-looking melee weapon? Double check.
  • Master of None: Does a bit of each support role: healing, buffing, debuffing, and crowd control, but does not particularly stand out in any area.
  • The Medic: At one time, he was good enough at chucking out heals that he often did this and nothing else. After some game-wide sustain changes, Taric still has arguably one of the best heal-others abilities, and certainly has the best heal cooldown rates assuming he's in the thick of it.
  • Meaningful Name: Taric's name most likely originates from the Arabian name "طارق/Tariq", which means "The striker." A commonly used Quranic idiom of tariq also relates it to brilliant stars, furthering its connection to him as a character.
  • Mutual Disadvantage: Activating Shatter removes Taric's sizable Armor bonus and lowers surrounding enemies' by the same amount for a few seconds. While Taric can probably live without it, suddenly losing 30 or so Armor is a very bad thing for his enemies if his AD carry happens to be nearby.
  • Not the Intended Use: Some players would take Taric as a solo-laner against a physically-inclined opponent, building armor and supportive items to simply outlast his foes and boost the power of his Shatter ability. This strategy became particularly effective after the introduction of the Iceborn Gauntlet, which provided the armor, cooldown reduction, mana, and damage he needed to stone wall most AD-based characters while also dealing surprising amounts of damage in return. An upgrade to his Gemcraft passive also allowed him to constantly refresh his cooldowns by going toe-to-toe with his enemies. Thus he became a nigh-unkillable Mighty Glacier against champions that are heavily reliant on basic attacks.
  • Orgasmic Combat: Taric's death cries tend to be the subject of many jokes confirming he's gay. His Japanese voice over though... You might wanna have headphones on.
  • Performance Artist: His day job? Musical theater director.
  • Real Men Wear Pink: His Fifth Age skin is very, very pink.
  • Shield Bash: One of his auto-attacks is to smash his giant gem shield into his enemies.
  • Shoot the Medic First: Tanky or no, he will find himself the center of the enemies' attention more often than not.
  • Skill Gate Characters: His easy-to-use stun teaches players when and where to catch opponents out of position and initiate fights, which carries over to other initiator champions that require skillshots to do the same.
  • Stone Wall: When Taric heals his allies, it heals himself as well, potentially making anyone resilient along with him. And if he heals just himself, it heals even more. On top of that, his second skill passively increases his defenses, so he's able to start soaking damage that way anyways. Since another defensive aura also applies to his allies based on his own defense, Taric players have good reason for building lots and lots of it.
  • Took a Level in Badass: For a while he was regarded as a sub-par support since nerfs to his stun duration and defensive aura made him less capable of being a sturdy defender for his team. Season 4 changed him significantly to be more offense-oriented, re-working his passive to give him much stronger autoattacks and reducing his cooldowns to encourage aggression as well as shifting his ability scalings to Armor and HP instead of AP, letting him empower himself by buying defensive items.

    Trundle, the Cursed Troll 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/TrundleSquare_5557.png
Time to troll!

Voiced by: Unknown (English), Paco Vaquero (European Spanish), Ronaldo Júlio (Brazilian Portuguese)

"I've learned a thing or two about pain! Let me show you."

Born to the Ruhgosk trolls who were cursed with leprosy by a vengeful necromancer, Trundle's regenerative abilities were far beyond his peers. He selflessly took on his entire tribe's curse through magic, but his body could only heal slightly faster than the disease could damage it, leaving him in a state of unending pain. He has joined the League to seek somebody who can purge his flesh of the affliction.

Trundle is a fighter-type champion who specializes in stealing his opponents' strength to boost his own. He can deliver an attack damage-stealing bite, infect an area with his curse to increase his movement and attack speed and reduce the duration of disables placed on him, call forth a pillar of ooze to block and slow enemies, and steal an enemy's health and defensive stats for himself, building them up over the duration to double the initial amount. His passive absorbs the life of any nearby enemy units who die, healing Trundle for a percentage of their maximum health.

  • Artificial Brilliance: When the CPU controls him, he is very annoying to fight because he'll put the pillar in the worst possible spots.
  • Artificial Stupidity: Unless he's trying to escape, in which case he has a habit of cutting off his own escape route or knocking himself back into the enemy team with it.
  • Body Horror: His skin is covered with boils and scabs and one of his eyes bulges out.
  • Carry a Big Stick: He uses a rocky club as tall as he is!
  • Cursed with Awesome: To some extent. The curse of his people on him is extremely painful, but it's pretty useful for combat since his body can regenerate past it. His people have been Blessed with Suck in some way by having their curse removed, since it's apparently grown into their regenerative factor; removing the curse has also removed that.
  • Geo Effects: Created by himself — he temporarily infects a large area with his Contaminate, which improves his stats while he's standing on it. He also may make an immovable pillar that can't be passed through while it lasts, which also slows enemies. Place in front on enemies running away or to you to keep em' stiller than they'll want.
  • Implacable Man: Contamiate, along with a tenacity granting item, allows Trundle to shrug off crowd control like it's water off a duck's back.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Can throw down Contaminate and become fast as hell on it, able to run down nearly any opponent and beat them to a pulp while using his ultimate to simultaneously make himself hardier than your toughest champion and making that guy less durable.
  • My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Subverted, he certainly didn't like being bullied or ostracized, but he feels that if there was another target that would be considered beneath even him to that everyone would have bullied, he would have joined in as well.
  • Pungeon Master: Almost as bad as Vladimir.
    "Let's go clubbing!"
    "I'm not heartless! I love beating!"
  • Status Buff: There may be tons within the game, but he's unique in that he causes Ability Down (Rabid Bite steals Attack Damage while Agony steals Health, Armor and Magic Resistance) to his enemies while giving a proportionate Ability Up to himself.

    Urgot, the Headman's Pride 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/urgot_originalloading.jpg
Eternal life... endless torture.

Voiced by: Unknown (English), Miguel Ayones (European Spanish), Mario Castañeda (Mexican Spanish), Flávio Back (Brazilian Portuguese)

There are warriors who become great for their strength, cunning, or skill with arms. Others simply refuse to die. Urgot, once a great soldier of Noxus, may constitute a case in support of the latter. Prone to diving headlong into enemy battle lines, Urgot sowed chaos throughout the enemy ranks, often sustaining grievous injuries in the process.

When his body was unable to weather further abuse, the crippled Urgot was delegated to the position of High Executioner of Noxus. By this time, his hands had been ruined and he could barely walk. Scythe-like grafts affixed to his maimed limbs served to carry out his bloody work.Urgot finally met his end at what should have been his finest hour. Because of his military background, he often accompanied detachments into foreign territory to carry out judgment. After ambushing an enemy force, Jarvan IV, Crown Prince of Demacia, fell into the clutches of Urgot's division. Too far from Noxus to risk transporting their prize for ransom, Urgot prepared to dispose of their captive. At the final moment, however, Garen led the Dauntless Vanguard to intervene, and Urgot was cut in two by the zealous warrior as he scrambled to free his Prince.In recognition of his service, the executioner's remains were remanded to the Bleak Academy for reanimation. However, a lifetime of abuse had left his body in a catastrophic state, proving problematic to the necromancers' craft. Professor Stanwick Pididly, the prevailing scholar of Zaun, offered a solution. Within Pididly's laboratories, a nightmarish new body was forged for Urgot.

Now, as much machine as man, with necromantic energies coursing through his metal veins, Urgot searches for the man who ended his life.

Urgot is a Unique champion who dominates his lane with his extreme damage and bullying potential early on, but transitions into more of a utility tank later in the game. His passive, Zaun-Touched Bolt Augmenter, causes Urgot's basic attacks to reduce the damage their target deals for a few seconds. With his first ability, Acid Hunter, Urgot fires a bladed missile in a target direction, damaging and applying his passive to the first target it hits. This ability has an extremely short cooldown and mana cost, allowing it to used repeatedly. His second ability, Terror Capacitor, protects Urgot with a damage-absorbing shield. While the shield holds, Urgot's basic attacks and Acid Hunter slow targets they hit. His third ability, Noxian Corrosive Charge, launches an acid bomb to a target location, dealing damage-over-time and reducing the armor of all enemies inside for a few seconds. Additionally, if Urgot holds his cursor over an enemy afflicted by the acid, his Acid Hunter missiles will lock onto the target, ignoring all other units and flying directly at them from a humongous range. With his ultimate ability, Hyper-Kinetic Position Reverser, Urgot targets a nearby enemy champion and, after a brief channel, swaps his position with theirs, slowing them and fearing all enemies around the location he teleported to. Additionally, for a few seconds after swapping, Urgot takes reduced damage from all sources.

Urgot's alternate skins include Giant Enemy Crabgot, Butcher Urgot, and Battlecast Urgot.

  • Arm Cannon: Also a Swiss-Army Weapon; It shoots bolts of green stuff, canisters of more green stuff, and green missiles which home towards targets hit by the canisters of green stuff.
  • Ascended Meme: Someone made a joke post on Reddit about an Urgot rework in 2017. In this rework, Urgot's new lore was "Urgot has a dark, secret past." Then on patch 5.5, Riot buffs Urgot, and guess what they said about him?
  • The Berserker: Was one of these until Garen chopped his hand off while he was attempting to dislodge his axe from a tree that wasn't Garen.
  • Body Horror: Being crippled with countless injuries over a long time-frame didn't help his physique. Being cut in half, killed, possibly mutilated further, and stitched back together with techmaturgy didn't either.
  • Butt-Monkey: As far as the fandom is concerned, Urgot is a variation of this, if people draws an art of him, it'd be about how he's ignored by everyone else. If there are comments about ignored champions towards Riot, you can bet that Urgot will be mentioned, moreso than other ignored ones like Poppy. His currently not-at-all-pretty look is also a factor, it seems. Also, lore-wise, Garen didn't seem to remember cutting him off so he's like reduced to an Unknown Rival.
  • Cursed with Awesome: He's bristling with tons of incredibly dangerous and powerful weaponry and is far deadlier than he was in his berserker days, but the extreme, neverending agony he's in is a pretty significant downside.
  • Crutch Character: Subverted. While Urgot is hard to catch up with if he loses his lane badly, it turns out the huge amount of armor penetration on his kit makes him amazing at killing targets he can nail with his grenade, especially tanks.
  • Cyborg: A hideous, weaponized cyborg of different body parts in constant agony and rage. Before was cut in half and as High Executioner, he also had several weapon attachments to replace his missing body parts.
  • Determinator: It's explicitly stated by Stanwick Pididly that all other attempts at creating cyborgs like him ended in the death of the subject and that the only reason Urgot is still alive is because of his immense, all-consuming hatred for Demacia in general and Garen specifically.
    "There are warriors who become great for their strength, cunning, or skill with arms. Others simply refuse to die."
  • Fate Worse than Death: Urgot considers his reanimation this; given the agony he's obviously in, it makes perfect sense why. He doesn't completely hate it, however — not as long as he's still alive to get his revenge on Garen.
  • Giant Enemy Crab: Giant Enemy Crabgot
  • Gonk: See Jiggle Physics
  • Half the Man He Used to Be: Garen got him with a sword. Twice.
  • Jiggle Physics: UGH.
  • Leeroy Jenkins: This was essentially his job prior to his first disfigurement.
  • Macross Missile Massacre: If you get locked on with the acid, expect a lot of Missile Hunters to fly at your face.
  • Mighty Glacier: Fairly slow and cumbersome, but can waste anything he sets his sights on, not to mention being naturally bulky and benefiting from a fairly tanky build. Something of a misconception: Urgot is actually FASTER than the majority of AD carries (base 335 movement speed where most of them have only 325 or 330) but feels slower due to his shorter autoattack range (425, by far the shortest of any of them). This forces him to do a lot more running and get much closer than is generally safe for an AD carry to attack if he can't get his Acid Hunter locked, which is why he's more often built as a semi-bruiser.
  • Missile Lock-On: Once you're hit by a Corrosive Charge, locked-on Acid Hunters can hit you from anywhere; good movement prediction allows Urgot players to hit targets they can't even see anymore.
  • My Greatest Failure: On the part of the developers, who almost uniformly consider his mechanics (ranged-DPS-mage-tank hybrid) the most muddled thing they ever made. A few adjustments helped him find a stronger place in the game. He was Riot's first attempt to integrate some of the more advanced HoN and DotA abilities: his ultimate ability causes him to swap places with an enemy. Of course the HoN version comes on a support champion while Urgot is a ranged damage dealer and has no reason to even want to plant himself into the middle of the enemy team. The DotA version can also be used on anyone, friend or foe. After much confusion the community declared him useless and he stayed that way for a while. Then they realized that his early and mid-game damage was absolutely staggering and that a lane with Urgot was a lane that essentially belonged to his team and that his late-game damage was still pretty impressive, plus his ult made for excellent ganks, tower dive thwarts, and initiations. Mind you, he only got better after removing quite a bit of the "mage" aspect he had on release by changing his missiles from magical attacks into physical attacks.
    • However, the developers still consider him a failure. While nowadays he's much more effective and playable than what he was at the beggining, Urgot is still a very niche character whose only strong point is bullying opponent during lane, as late game he can't deal noticeable damage. He's slated for a rework to make him less binary.
  • The Power of Hate: A letter to the Journal of Justice enquired why Professor Pididly hadn't begun mass-producing Urgot-like killing machines. Pididly replied that no other subjects had shown the necessary mental fortitude for the cyborgization/reanimation process to work, theorizing that "Urgot’s raw hatred is what keeps him alive, even battling back from behind the jaws of death."
  • Revenge: His outright purpose for joining the League as shown in his League Judgement, on Garen.
  • Spam Attack: Acid Hunters is not an ability made to be cast merely once. A Missile Lock-On with his Corrosive Charge ability will make doing so much easier for you.
  • Unstoppable Rage: This is the sole thing that gives him the resolve needed to stay alive.
  • We Can Rebuild Him: We have the techmaturgy.
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: Urgot sure doesn't, and he's quick to remind you of just how painful his immortality is. Mind you, that doesn't mean he wants to die — at least, not before avenging the necessity of his new life against Garen.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: He may be a monster, both inside and out, but with most of his lines expressing how painful his immortality is, it's hard not to feel a little sorry for him. On the other hand, lore outright states that the current in-universe theory by Urgot's creator for why Urgot is able to live in constant agony while all other attempts to create similar projects have failed is because of his all-consuming hatred and desire to kill Garen.

    Volibear, the Thunder's Roar 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/volibear_originalloading.jpg
"Let the storm follow in my wake."

Voiced by: Unknown (English), Antonio Esquivias (European Spanish), Miguel Ángel Ghigliazza (Mexican Spanish), Tsuguo Mogami (Japanese), José Santa Cruz (Brazilian Portuguese)

"The Ursine cannot know peace without war."

The unforgiving northern reaches of the Freljord are home to the Ursine, a fierce and warlike race that has endured the barren tundra for thousands of years. Their leader is a furious adversary who commands the force of lightning to strike fear within his foes: Volibear. Both a warrior and a mystic, Volibear seeks to defend the ancient ways and the warrior spirit of his tribe. A vague vision was revealed to Volibear before he became leader of his tribe; a vision that told him a single thing - war was coming. The elders desired peace, but Volibear would not have it, and wrested control of the storm as an omen and symbol to convince them to break their passive peace. Since, Volibear and the Ursine have aligned with Sejuani's Winter's Claw, ready to fight whatever war is coming to plague the Freljord, and to return the Ursine to their old, warrior traditions.

Volibear is a Juggernaut champion who can both deal and take a lot of punishment, coming back from the brink of death and ripping through both single and multiple enemies.

  • His passive, Chosen of the Storm, triggers when Volibear's health drops below a certain percentage, healing him over a short duration by a large percentage of his max health. This effect has a long cooldown before it can be used again.
  • With his first ability, Rolling Thunder, Volibear drops to all fours for a few seconds, gaining bonus movement speed that increases when moving towards a visible enemy champion and empowering his next basic attack, causing it to deal increased damage and fling the target into the air behind him.
  • His second ability, Frenzy, passively grants Volibear increased attack speed whenever he attacks an enemy, stacking up to three times. Upon reaching three stacks, Volibear can activate the ability to ferociously bite a nearby enemy, damaging them based on both Volibear's max health and the target's missing health.
  • With his third ability, Majestic Roar, Volibear lets out a powerful roar, damaging, knocking back and slowing nearby enemies for a few seconds; damaged minions are also feared, forced to flee away from Volibear. Enemies that were dashing or knocked airbone when hit take bonus damage based on their max health.
  • His ultimate ability, Thunder Claws, releases chain lightning from Volibear's claws that hits a nearby enemy and then bounces to other surrounding foes, damaging them. For a few seconds afterwards, Volibear's basic attacks also release the same chain lightning, dealing bonus damage to the target and other nearby enemies.

Volibear's alternate skins include Thunder Lord Volibear, Northern Storm Volibear, Runeguard Volibear, Captain Volibear, and El Rayo Volibear.

In season 1 of Teamfight Tactics, Volibear is a Tier 3 Glacial Brawler. His ability, Thunder Claws, empowers Volibear's attacks with lightning that bounces to nearby enemies, dealing damage and applying on-hit effects. In season 2, Volibear was changed to a Tier 2 Glacial Electric Berserker. His ability was changed to Frenzied Bite, which does damage to an enemy and, if they're below 35% HP, instantly kills them and restores Volibear's mana to full.
  • Achilles' Heel: Volibear needs to build a lot of health in order to maximize his passive and Frenzy strength. This can easily be countered with Percent Damage Attack items* and abilities.*
  • Ascended Meme: He was created in response to an ongoing joke on the forums about armored bears, and was named after then-producer Travis "Volibar" George, who greatly supported the idea. His "Chronokeeper Hater" buff when in the presence of an enemy Zilean is also a reference to this origin, as fellow Rioter Tom "Zileas" Cadwell (who Zilean was named after) was conversely opposed to the idea.
  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Volibear became the new chieftain of his people by taking on the former triumvirate and, by summoning the maelstrom, subduing them. He immediately got the position afterwards since being able to wield the maelstrom is considered a chief's divine right to lead the Ursine.
  • Bears Are Bad News: He is a bear. A giant, armored, and lightning-infused bear.
  • Chain Lightning: His ultimate makes his autoattacks apply this for its duration. It also has a surprisingly high amount of "bounces" compared to other Chain Lightning attacks in media; if you have to flee from Volibear, don't do so by running past your own minion train or you'll just make his job that much more satisfying.
  • Challenging the Chief: Subverted in that the triumvirates (the chiefs at the time) challenged Volibear, not for the title, but so he would keep his mouth shut about telling others of his vision of the Ursine being wiped out and therefore, rousing them out of their life of peace.
  • Close-Range Combatant: As it turns out, letting an angry armored bear charge toward you and get into mauling range is a bad idea.
  • Fire, Ice, Lightning: Volibear is Lightning, Anivia is Ice, and Ornn is Fire.
  • Finishing Move: His Frenzy's active ability increases its damage to its target proportionately to the percentage of currently lost health on the target.
  • I Can Still Fight!: His passive heals 30% of his health over 6 seconds when he drops to below 30% health, giving him the potential to force through a close fight and win. Only every 120 seconds, though.
  • The Juggernaut: He's officially classified as such and possesses the tanky damage to back it up.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun:
  • Leeroy Jenkins: Volibear has no ranged abilities (aside from his ultimate, which requires one target at melee range). He has to get into melee. Coupled with the speed boost on his Q, and he is an intentional example of the trope. Once fed, Volibear upgrades into an Implacable Man, however.
  • Man Bites Man: The active for his Frenzy ability is this. It's only usable if his passive has stacked three times and makes a good Finishing Move.
  • Mighty Glacier: By comparison, since his speed comes from a charging ability that is susceptible to stuns or slows unlike other instant gap-closers (somewhat like Garen). Volibear has no problems at all ripping his opponents to pieces, he just has to get to them first.
  • Mighty Roar: His Majestic Roar ability, damaging and slowing enemy champions hit, and making minions and neutral monsters run in around uselessly in terror for its duration.
  • The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: To Zilean, if his special soundbites are anything to go by.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: Although he had to shake them out of retirement, but the Ursine are incredibly fierce warriors.
  • Punny Name: Based off the screen name of a Riot Games producer.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: Subverted. Until he became the chief of the Ursine, Volibear started out as a well-respected shaman who worried about his people losing their warrior spirit. The triumvirate that ran the tribe wouldn't listen to him, so Voli took matters into his own hands.
  • Red Baron: Is called "The Thousand-Pierced Bear" by the people of the Freljord.
  • Shock and Awe: He throws lightning around with his Ultimate.
  • Skill Gate Characters: Newbie players can master his ganking power since his Q grants him movement speed and can put someone out of position by flinging the victim behind him along with slowing enemies down with a mighty roar. More experienced players will save their CC on Volibear to prevent him from doing a lot of collateral damage on the team's squishies.
  • Token Good Teammate: Of Sejuani's Winter Claws. While Sejuani is ruthless and Olaf is also pretty rude, Volibear is calm and is interested in peace, but recognizes that it can only be attained through war.
  • Unstoppable Rage: His Frenzy's passive ability gives a lot of attack speed if he maintains it, along with an active ability that's a Finishing Move for when he's done with letting you live.

    Warwick, The Blood Hunter 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/warwick_original.jpg
Let's make this fun.

Voiced by: Brian Sommer (English), José Ángel Fuentes (European Spanish), Luiz Carlos Persy (Brazilian Portuguese)

"Eventually the beast catches up with all of us."

A ruthless manhunter employed by the amoral scientists of Zaun to bring them human test subjects, Warwick bit off more than he could chew when he asked his friend Singed to create a potion that would allow him to surpass his human limitations in his hunting. To obtain the final ingredient, the heart of a celestial being, Warwick set his sights on Soraka the Starchild of Ionia, befriending her and tricking her into losing her immortality. Although he stabbed her, she drove him off with her powers, leaving him disfigured and disgraced. Enraged and desperate, he returned to Singed and demanded the incomplete potion, which transformed him into a vicious wolf-man form. While he exalted in the power the tranformation gave him, he began to lose control of himself, succumbing to the vicious beast instincts of his new body. Now he is faced with a race against time, to slay Soraka and consume her heart to stabilise his transformation before he loses his last traces of self and becomes nothing more than a slavering beast.

Warwick is a Diver champion who specializes in sustaining himself as he fights while he picks off and mauls a target of his choice. His passive, Eternal Thirst, makes his basic attacks deal bonus damage and heal Warwick for a small amount of health, with these effects stacking up to three times if he keeps attacking the same target. With his first ability, Hungering Strike, Warwick slashes a nearby opponent with his claws, damaging them based on their maximum health and healing himself for a percentage of the damage dealt. His second ability, Hunter's Call, lets out a bloodthirsty howl that grants Warwick an attack speed bonus and half that bonus to all nearby allies. His third ability, Blood Scent, is a toggled ability that reveals all enemy champions with less than half health in a large area around Warwick and grants him a movement speed bonus if any enemies are revealed this way, but lets the affected targets know Warwick is near. With his ultimate abillity, Infinite Duress, Warwick jumps to a nearby enemy champion, keeping them completely immobilized as he savagely mauls them for a brief duration, damaging them and healing himself for a percentage of the damage dealt.

Warwick's alternate skins include Grey Warwick, Urf the Manatee, Big Bad Warwick, Tundra Hunter Warwick, Feral Warwick, Firefang Warwick, Hyena Warwick, and Marauder Warwick.

  • Ax-Crazy: He doesn't just hunt out of necessity, it's obvious he enjoys it thoroughly.
    "It's only fun if they run!"
  • Blessed with Suck: His transformation has turned him into an amazing hunter, but he's at risk of losing his sanity every passing day.
  • Foil: To Ahri. Warwick is a human who gained a wolf form, and enjoys the merciless cruelty he can inflict on others, even though he is slowly losing his sanity due to the wolf form. Ahri is a fox who gained a human form, who intends on atoning for her past life after gaining a conscience that came with the human form.
  • Genius Bruiser: Warwick is a very intelligent and cunning hunter, setting up a very clever plan to ensnare Soraka, but the threat of losing his human intelligence is hanging over his head like the Sword of Damocles. In his old lore he was a brilliant alchemist who apprenticed Singed.
  • Healing Factor: He's one of few junglers that can consistently keep his health high throughout his entire clearing route.
  • The Hyena: Hyena Warwick. Naturally in fitting with this trope, he also has a more crazed laugh that he does a lot more.
  • Injured Vulnerability: Press "E" to turn on Blood Scent and reveal low-health enemies and increase your own movement speed. Though they are now aware that you're in the area, that's alright, because it's only fun if they run!
  • Jerkass: 'Asshole' is probably too nice a word to describe Warwick even before his transformation. See here for more details on how much of an asshole he can be, then make a guess on who's more of an asshole: Him or Singed.
  • Lightning Bruiser: He's naturally durable and hard-hitting, but when he's stalking his prey, he can speed up greatly with Blood Scent and immediately close gaps in Infinite Duress for the kill.
  • Psycho for Hire: A manhunter who specialises in acquiring "test subjects" for the mad scientists of Zaun.
  • Psycho Serum: Drank a transformation elixir made by Singed, though the Psycho part comes from it being incomplete (lacking a celestial being's heart) and thus unstable.
  • Retcon: Was originally a brilliant chemist that apprenticed Singed that was transformed into a werewolf by Soraka (in the old lore).
  • Savage Wolves: Huge, strong, and without a shred of pity.
  • Screaming Warrior: Howling, really, but close enough. Often the first thing you hear before Warwick even appears on the screen is the howl from his Blood Scent ability.
  • Skill Gate Characters: Being on the low end of the IP cost spectrum makes him and Nunu a likely choice for a new player's first jungler. Warwick in has high innate sustain that makes it easy to clear camps as well as an enemy-revealing ability, both of which make him a safe choice to learn how to jungle. However, his dependence on Infinite Duress to gank means he's practically limited to ganking after level 6 (which can be bad) and in general his kit is lacking in options compared to more difficult but more versatile junglers like Jarvan IV, Lee Sin, or Elise.
    • Averted when you take him top lane, however.
  • Super-Senses: If you're at low health, it can trigger one of his abilities and reveal your location to him. On the other hand, it can also warn you that he's in the area.
  • Super-Toughness: When built fully defensive, Warwick's innate sustain makes him extremely difficult to kill, as the sustain from his passive is independent of the damage his auto attacks deal and he has arguably the single best attack speed steroid in the game. Even if he only has two or three defensive items built, Warwick can hold the line against an entire enemy team far longer than you'd expect.
  • What Could Have Been: Warwick's first lore was similar to that of Varus', being forced to defend a stronghold against hopeless odds in the Ionian Invasion (and fighting for Ionia). He drinks a potion that turned him into a werewolf and since then became a free agent to avoid being hunted down by all sides. Interestingly, this concept was revisited in his third lore, drinking an incomplete and unpredictable potion that transforms him. Only he does it of his own free will this time.

    Yorick, the Gravedigger 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/yorick_originalloading.jpg
Death is only the beginning.

Voiced by: Unknown (English), Vicente Gil (European Spanish), Mauro Ramos (Brazilian Portuguese)

"Die first, then we’ll talk."

Hundreds of years ago, Yorick was a gravedigger on the mysterious Shadow Isles and next in line in a family who considered their jobs a sacred duty. Although he performed his task in life, he never produced an heir and died in shame. He didn't stay dead long, however, as his spirit returned to ferry souls to the next stage of the afterlife. After centuries, he started to fear that he would never redeem himself and, when he couldn't find his old body, he turned to the League for help in passing on.

Yorick is a fighter-mage champion who makes extensive use of the summoning mechanic, continuously summoning undead creatures to help and support him in battle. All his basic abilities summon Ghouls in addition to their other effects, which have a percentage of Yorick's health and attack damage, continuously lose health and authomatically attack nearby enemies. His passive, Unholy Covenant, reduces the damage Yorick takes and increases the damage of his basic attacks for each Ghoul he has out. His first ability, Omen of War, increases the damage of his next basic attack and makes it summon an Spectral Ghoul that grants Yorick a movement speed bonus as long as it lives. His second ability, Omen of Pestilence, summons a Decaying Ghoul at a nearby area in a violent explosion, damaging and slowing all nearby enemies. The Decaying Ghoul also emits an aura of death that slows all surrounding foes. His third ability, Omen of Famine, damages a nearby enemy and heals Yorick for a percentage of the damage dealt, while also summoning a Ravenous Ghoul that attacks that target. The Ravenous Ghoul heals Yorick everytime he attacks an enemy. His ultimate ability, Omen of Death, creates a Revenant, a ghostly clone of a nearby ally champion or himself that Yorick can control, which has a percentage of the target's health and attack damage. Additionally, if the cloned target dies while the Revenant still lives, the Revenant will sacrifice itself to bring them back to life for a few seconds, giving them a short chance to take revenge in death.

Yorick's alternate skins include Undertaker Yorick and Pentakill Yorick.

  • Ancestral Weapon: His shovel has been passed down his family for generations. Well, the weapon part likely only really happened with Yorick since his ancestors were all gravediggers.
  • The Atoner: Yorick has always regretted not managing to continue on his family's name. His undead state and inability to finally rest, however, eventually led him to find a way to make up for letting his family fade — being a champion within the League.
  • Crutch Character: Yorick can both take and dish out plenty of damage in the laning phase, but his lack of mobility and mediocre scaling with offensive stats cripple his potential afterwards. A lot of his usefulness come lategame revolves around his ultimate on your team's strongest autoattacker, with Yorick himself acting as the frontline and soaking as much damage as possible.
  • Cursed with Awesome: Sure, he feels ashamed about his family dying out with him, is unable to rectify that, and can't die to end that shame, but he's still a hulking immortal who can summons ghouls. And now he uses that within the League of Legends.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: He just wanted to finally pass out of this world. Unable to do that, he decides to bring his family's name back into the light by being a champion.
  • Fate Worse than Death: Yorick, after reaching undeath somehow, ferried souls in the haunted Shadow Isle in the hopes he would at some point fulfill a quota from a legend to let him ascend. He did that to no avail for centuries. Funnily enough, being afflicted by his Game-Breaking Bug would probably be a Fate Worse than Death also.
  • Game-Breaking Bug: It was possible for someone resurrected by his ult to keep dying every second, so people could have over a hundred deaths even if they were swimming in the summoning pool.
  • Glowing Eyelights of Undeath/Supernatural Gold Eyes: An undead gravedigger would fit these tropes, wouldn't he?
  • Heavy Metal: Is the bassist of the Pentakill band, with Mordekaiser, Sona, Olaf, and Karthus.
  • Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Referenced in the names of his abilities.
  • Magic Knight: He's very resilient because otherwise he wouldn't live long enough for his damage to make a difference. He has to get in close and bash someone to summon his most damaging ghoul because otherwise his resilience wouldn't be put to the test.
  • Meaningful Name: His last name is Mori. As for his first name, where else have we seen a Yorick in a graveyard setting?
  • My Greatest Failure: The reason he's a champion is because he felt ashamed that he died without an heir, letting his family's cemetary and their traditions fall from memory. Champions, though, are quite famous.
  • Necromancer: He summons ghouls out of the ground. However, it isn't explained how a gravedigger in life (and in undeath for centuries as well) got these powers. The Journal of Justice explicitly considers it necromancy, dealing with how necromancy is outlawed for summoners — only for summoners though, as the champions are apparently perfectly free to use it. A more likely explanation is that the ghouls aren't necessarily undead. Yorick is a gravedigger, meaning he's constantly around the dead, even moreso in his undeath state. It would make sense that ghouls started to follow him around simply because they knew when he was done there would be a fresh meal in the dirt. Centuries past and the ghouls made sort of a symbotic relationship with Yorick. He's not summoning undead, he's calling his pets in for a meal.
    • Alternatively, Yorick could simply have a Grandfather Clause. After all, he's been an immortal undead with necromantic powers for centuries at this point. If he had these powers when he was alive, then Yorick would have been a necromancer since the first Rune War.
  • Odd Friendship: Is the bassist in a band with Sona, Karthus, and Mordekaiser, and Olaf.
  • Our Ghouls Are Creepier: No legs, spindly arms, and teeth. Lots and lots of teeth.
  • Revenant Zombie: Fits all the characteristics (no obvious major physical deterioration, retained intelligence and memories, driven by a single all-important purpose), though it's up in the air whether he's actually a true zombie or something else.
  • Shout-Out to Shakespeare: Obviously, "Alas, poor Yorick."
  • Shovel Strike: His weapon is his family shovel.
  • Token Good Teammate: Of the Shadow Isles champions. While he seems more neutral than good, Yorick is very laid back compared to his fellow Isles residents and is the only one to have a sympathetic (and fully explained) backstory. The altars on the Twisted Treeline reflect this, with the eastern altar treating him like a hired laborer rather than an ally and the western altar granting him sympathy while it condemns the other Shadow Isles champions.
  • The Undead: He's not exactly dead, but he sure isn't alive anymore.
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: Yorick finding himself alive on the Shadow Isles didn't make him think "I could do something with this immortality." He just acted as a ferryman for the souls on the Shadow Isles since he thought that would allow him to go past the place he was.

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