#Malzahar the Prophet of the Void

[mwolf0epsilon]

With Viktor's rework in the making, I am not only losing OG Viktor, but also losing what made Malzahar special as well...

Like I said before, I don't mind Arcane Viktor. I think the whole eldritch/otherworldly/corrupted-transcendence-of-the-self fits his overall themes, but only as another Alternate Universe (and considering LOL and Arcane both have the Multiverse's existence as a core part of its overall worldbuilding, it's not even a stretch to insinuate Arcane could live as it's own independent universe outside of the main universe of Runeterra). One where instead of looking to machinery as a means to re-adapt and evolve, magic was his poison of choice (although calling it a choice is a bit of a stretch, considering Viktor has no real agency in what transpired until it was too late).

The thing is... Why was it ever necessary to make Arcane Viktor the base to which all versions of him are built upon?

His original storyline was much more compelling than him being "just another mage". An engineer who's inventions are so fantastically innovative and powerful that some would consider them to be akin to magic? The desire to help his people adapt to an ever declining environment via mechanical augments and other inventions that clean and rebuild infrastructure? A strong moral compass and refusal to override consent because the future he has in mind is not a hivemind but a society run by logic and no conflict? The constant mislabeling as a villainous figure because of a heavily biased account of what he does that was built on lack of context and understanding? The Blitzcrank Legal Debacle? These were features that made him a complex and very intriguing character!

And, the fact of the matter is that the storyline Arcane put upon him is very much just a cheap knockoff of Malzahar's story. Something which personally slights me not only as a Malza fan, but also as an OG Viktor fan due to one very simple detail:

Malzahar is an immoral being through which the unknowable horrors beyond the veil of the fabric of reality acts. A puppet molded to further an agenda that would obliterate the world around him via its consumption by the Void, because he truly believes in its inevitability. He is a cult leader, figurehead, and more than willing to sacrifice everyone and all to the unholy beings he worships, whether he has their consent (and some of his followers do consent to being sacrificed because he charms them into believing his cause) or not (the Kai'Sa incident that turned Malzahar and Kassadin into mortal enemies).

He was, in essence, the opposite of Viktor. An actual villainous monster who at some point was just another victim of circumstance, and who now tries to push the world into annihilation because to him that is not only his purpose but also the perfect outcome for their world... Which sounds terribly familiar right now, doesn't it?

Alas, I know how this is going to end and it's not gonna be fun in the slightest. I'm just happy I recently unlocked Viktor again to give him one last hurrah before he's inevitably changed from what he used to represent.

[paskariu]

Just got caught up to episode 6 of arcane and first of FINALLY THE WARWICK IS VANDER THEORY IS CONFIRMED.

The "riot please expand Warwick's lore" crowd has been fed beautifully.

In general I am excited to see how the champions end up in the present day in game forms.

Viktor is very much the "machine herald" but in arcane he still keeps his theme of GLORIOUS EVOLUTION although this time using Hextech as opposed to replacing humans with machinery. And a bit of void corruption??? The shapes of the Hexcore and the settlement later and marks on the people very much look like void corruption and void creatures like Vel'Koz are capable of pulverising life.

But in that, he is very much taking on the role of an existing champion called "Malzahar" - the prophet of the void taking on an almost Jesus-like role to the people of zaun. Viktor's announced rework is bound to be exiting as I want to see how they keep those two from turning into the same character. Or maybe they throw in a wrench and say that actually Hextech isn't connected to the Void at all?

Next up would be Jayce who in game has very much not been touched by the arcane. In game jayce is more akin to him before the hexcore incident. Although perhaps Arcane Jayce is something far removed from the stable timeline? No clue how they want this to match up with the in game version.

And third is suprisingly Orianna aka "Singed's daughter". Her lore got severely retconned in Arcane. Her father was changed to Singed as opposed to ghe actual piltovan merchant. And instead of replacing each failing part of her body with machinery until she was turned fully into a robot, she remains in a form of stasis. In Arcane they retconned her father to Singed and she's very much not a robot.

As for Warwick? They could just show Vander gradually turning more and more into a beast. He had so little lore to begin with that the Arcane lore might as well replace the scraps of Warwick's current backstory.

[mollysunder]

The Icathian Roots of Zaun's Story and the Enduring Influence of the Void

The most important change to Zaun in Arcane is the addition of Shimmer which has not only become the crux of Zaun's origin, but the element of Arcane that has actually managed to tie Zaun closer to its Shuriman history and the Void's influence in the region.

To understand Zaun, it helps to know about Icathia, the city-state of free people and magic. Icathia was once a free society that had been subjugated into a vassal kingdom of Shurima, the powerful slave-owning expansionist empire for which the entire region remained named after. Shurima was notorious for how it would enslave the populaces of its defeated territories. Desperate to free themselves from Shurima's rule, the Icathian mages sought to use the Void against the Shurimans in their rebellion. But the power of the Void was too much and instead destroyed their civilization.

The similarities don't stop there. Icathia and Zaun both seem to have encountered the Void by similar means. Icathia first encountered the Void because a large earthquake exposed a Void rift to the surface in a coastal province. Zaun itself is a massive fissure broken into the Earth from Piltover's expoitative mining industry. In Runeterra, the creatures of the Void lie dormant beneath the earth, so to encounter them would require great force whether by nature, or man-made.

In some ways, Zaun is almost a divergent history for Icathia, because while Icathia was quickly overwhelmed by the Void's power, Zaun still exists. Silco and Singed managed to apply a more passive means to integrate the Void into Zaun's power structure through Shimmer.

The success of Shimmer's proliferation within Zaun has inadvertently promoted the worship of the Void. In League, the one known prophet of the Void, Malzahar, is depicted with a corrupted third eye. The eye is meant to represent the physical connection between him and the Void, even the Void Empress Bel'veth wears it. Now, in Zaun, the figure that embraces and spreads the benefits of the Void to the people has made that product, Shimmer, synonymous with his own corrupted eye that persists thanks to the Void.

Crowds are now seen offering real eyes to a giant vastayan turtle with eye tattoos, and we as the audience aren't sure if their worshipping their prophet Silco, or the Void. All we can be sure of is that the crowd of worshippers and the turtle vastaya recognize the eye as a source of reverance and believe it's physical presence is necessary for worship.

With the next season we're likely to see the two remaining elements that were a part of Icathia's story that were teased to soon exist in Zaun. Those two elements being the installation of the mage king and the time mage.

Icathia used to be ruled by mage kings but that institution was destroyed once Shurima conquered them. In Icathia's last stand for independence, a committee of mages, academics, and philosophers elected a new mage king, one who carried a starmetal staff, to lead the charge. But the mage king failed once the Void grew uncontrollable. I think the story of the mage king might best be embodied by Viktor. Not only is he one of the few characters that is actively studying the Void, but his future presence in Zaun is associated with royal imagery. In the card scene, his tarot, the Magician, wears a mask that doubles as a horned crown, something that's never existed in any of his alternate iterations. In the post-timeskip montage of Zaun there's a well-guarded cultivar, a public park for Zaun, with a sign that calls it "The Herald's Palace".

Then there's the time mage, also known as Zilean. Arcane seems to have made both Zilean and Ekko's stories more closely parallel echother. Zilean was one of the few to reject the idea to use the Void against the Shurimans, while Ekko seeks to destroy Silco's Shimmer supply that he uses to combat Piltover. Knowing that the Void was dangerous, Zilean creates a space outside of time to save as many people as he can before the Void destroys everything. Ekko does something similar with Firelights, where he creates a small hideaway for few to hide from the influence of Shimmer in Zaun. Once the fighting intensifies and the Void's power becomes more intense and Ekko builds the Z-Drive will he try to save as many as he can by hiding like Zilean? Or will he fight the Void on his own side?

Tldr: Arcane has gone out of it's way to make Zaun's story mirror the story of Icathia, a civilization long swallowed by the Void. A lot of things are similar yet different that it offers new possibilities in the way the characters of Zaun will change next season.

Sidenote: If the story of Icathia survived into the setting of Arcane and was retained in the public conscious, it would likely serve as a cautionary tale against the "warmongering of mages" for Piltovans. They'd completely sidestep the part about how the desperation of a subjugated people will force them to do monstrous things.

Extra sidenote: I couldn't fit this in anywhere because it isn't about Icathia, but it seems that Jinx's imagery is supplanting Janna's place in Zaun.

[league-of-skins]

Malzahar, the Prophet of the Void

[league-skins]

Malzahar, the Prophet of the Void

Nothing Yet…

[soraka-in-warhammer40k]

Tbh I doubt that Viktor's form at the end of wherever the story of Arcane goes will look much different from the form we currently have in the game or that is depicted in LoR, bar some minor cosmetic changes.

Void-Viktor however might be a decisive factor on how we get there - and that's not because the purple goo makes him crazy in the head (at least not permanently), but because the Void preys on all things living, and a walking machine is much MUCH less suspectible to its influence. The Glorious Evolution being a logical conclusion from the question of "how can mankind evolve to live in a reality that akwnowledges the existence of the void?". Heck, he does not even have to know the Void exists, just let Shimmer get out of control a little to the point where the substance becomes almost like an infectous disease, and he has a solid motivation to augment Zaun against this threat or at least consider it the most logical method of medical treatment.

My guess is that Viktor will ALMOST drift into stealing Malzahar's job of being a Void Prophet, but then he comes back to his senses, realizes that it is impossible to flush its influence out of his body, and proceed to become the non-purple herald we have known for a decade now.

hallo - I'm probably the umpteenth person to ask this, but have you seen the very brief shot of Viktor's new design in the Arcane S2 teaser? if you have, what are your thoughts ? I'm a little worried about it if I'm being honest, given that they're leaning even MORE into the "sickly twink mage" thing :(

man I'm going to miss og viktor

Hi! Don't worry even if you're the bazillionth, I'll always reply, it's no problem (I like getting messages!)

Unfortunately based on the leaked screenshots, this is my prediction (I haven't invested more than one day into this art as it's frustrating to imagine):

The spindly fingers and his height in the leaked images inform me (I suppose) that they are indeed leaning into the "little timmy has a cough" design as a friend of mine would say.

They're gonna stretch him and have him feel like a tree, like he's made out of metal branches pulsing with Void energy. The Hex Core is clearly going to be in the middle of his chest to power him instead of on the tip of his staff. The staff already got converted into a cane. Expect to see a LOT of holes and veins in him because that's the very first design thought a person comes up with when they want to convey something "ooo creepy! ooo alien!" (we usually discard our first ideas because they are generic.) And Riot is clearly transplanting Malzahar's thing onto Viktor because apparently they don't know what to do with this Machine Herald character. He's gonna be going mad because of VOID WHISPERS instead of actually suffering from a real untreated mental disorder.

The staff design is already clearly visible in the leaked image, and the only thing I have to say about it is that it looks like a lot of pointless design noise. None of those lumpy metal parts serve a purpose.

The claw may replace the third hand and it may come out of the shoulder itself for some reason, which is insanely impractical. It was mounted on his back in the original design for a reason. Current designs seem to think that an actual hand is too "naive"?

Even if on first glance they may share many elements, fundamentally they are two different characters. They fulfill completely different archetypes.

It doesn't matter if Arcane Viktor's cape is still blue on the outside and red on the inside, because the core of the character would be different. A coat of paint on the top doesn't determine his structure.

[undyne1]

[cenfitto]

malz

[regalentempire-a]

Vladi.mir having Malz.ahar with him whenever he goes into dangerous places or face dangerous/deadly persons/things. He’d always consult with Malz and give him a list of things he would do and wait for the prophet to say if he would die or not and then proceed.

 I live for these two bastards. 

@voidsought (because your malz is now stuck with vlad. )

[cilundi]

Malzahar doodle

FB - IG

[mr-swoops]

(ง ° ͜ ʖ °)ง  Let’s go Season 8

[mwolf0epsilon]

Support Slumber Party

Decided to use @deweyart‘s hilarious draw the squad base to mess around with some of the champs I play. Viktor probably wishes he didn’t associate with these people; Thresh never agreed to play this terrible game; Malzahar wants to get back to corrupting this new victim; Morgana just wants to see some possessed prophet on wraith action; Lulu likes the look of that butt in those panties; Rakan regrets all of his life choices that have led him to this moment; Soraka worries for all; Sona is considering never using that lipstick ever again; And Janna is tired of everyone’s bullshit.

[yourfriendlysummoner]

I should now change my title to Malz carry at mid, after today's events xdddd

(but i was ks'd so hard by Lux, grrr)

[ask-malza]

There is not much Malza related on tumblr tbh

[redzeverin]

Malzahar - The Prophet of the Void

Leeeeeeet’s just say I’ve gone back to playing him and it feels so good to have my lil voidlings deal the last hit on enemies~

On a side note, here’s a fun thing I found while browsing for references of him:

The fact that his whole torso isn’t shown is a preeeeeeetty good tease if you ask me---//KICKED

[icathiaism]

my bloodborne malzahar !! thank you @queenyharnam for drawing my pretty choir boy 💜