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ohnoitstbskyen · 7 months ago

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What’s the difference between Ascended, Aspects, Freljordian demigods, Aurelian Sol, and whatever Soraka’s got going on? Are they all just different varieties of League gods?

Hoo boy, okay, so. First of all, Riot have been pretty adamant that there are no gods in Runeterra, every god-like being that exists in that universe is actually a spirit or just a very powerful being of some kind, but definitely no real gods, no matter how much it seems like they are definitely writing these characters to be actual literal gods.

I don't 100% know why they are so insistent on this, but I imagine it has something to do with censorship and ratings agencies, or maybe they just don't want to have to establish any actual theology on Runeterra. Volibear isn't the god of storms for real, he's just a super powerful spirit that can create storms in the Freljord, but not all of them, so please don't ask us whether every single thunderstorm in the Freljord was something he did deliberately. That sort of vibe.

To go through them point by point:

Celestials & Aspects

The Celestials are beings like Aurelion Sol and Bard, which exist as cosmic entities operating on levels of power and motivation beyond human understanding. They came into existence with the universe itself, and tend to busy themselves governing various parts of its operation. They are, again not gods (Riot is very insistent on this), but Aurelion Sol literally made every star in the galaxy, he's functionally the progenitor god of Creation.

Some of them, though, like to interfere in the mortal world of Runetera in various ways, and they tend to use mortal vessels to do it. That's where we get Aspects: Aspects are mortals who are chosen by the Celestials that live on Mount Targon to contain their power and be their avatars in the mortal world.

Leona is the Aspect of a Sun celestial, Diana of the Moon celestial, Pantheon is the Aspect of War (or he was, until Aatrox killed it, but he retains access to many of its powers), and Zoe is the Aspect of Twilight, and so on.

Soraka is another Celestial in mortal form, but she is NOT an Ascended. Rather than possess a mortal, she created a mortal body for herself and poured the whole of her being into it, which is causing her body to permanently burn up from the inside while she regenerates it with her magic. She lives on Runeterra and acts as a mysterious mystical wise guide and mentor to mortals who need it.

Ascended & Darkin

Ascended are somewhat similar in kind to the Aspects, but usually lesser in power. The Ascended are also human beings infused with Celestial magic and power, specifically with the power of the Sun, although as far as I know, that power is drawn not from the Celestial of the Sun who empowers Leona, but directly from the physical Sun itself. This means the Ascended aren't possessed by Celestials and retain full free will, at the cost (or let's be real: benefit) of being transformed into furries, which extremely coincidentally just so happen to closely resemble the gods of the Egyptian pantheon. but again, they are definitely not gods, please don't put it in the newspaper that they are gods.

I don't know exactly how canon Riot considers this anymore, but the lore was that the Aspects of Mount Targon gifted the power of Ascension to Shurima in order to produce Ascended that could serve as shock-troops in the war against the Void, which is a swarm of extradimensional horrors that are constantly trying to eat the world. Whatever the case, the Ascended DID fight the Void, and it traumatized and corrupted them so badly that they degenerated into body-horror blood monsters called the Darkin.

The Darkin fell into civil war and it got so bad that The Aspect of Twilight (not Zoe but her predecessor in the role) decided to use some magical trickery to imprison them all in their weapons, which is where they've stayed for a few thousand years, getting even more traumatized and mentally destabilized by the total sensory deprivation and solitary confinement. If any mortal touches a Darkin weapon, it immediately assimilates them and uses their flesh as a new host, and then goes on a killing rampage about it. That's where you get your Aatrox, your Varus and (eventually, once he devours Kayn) your Rhaast.

Gods, Spirits & Demons

This is the category for Ornn, Anivia, Volibear, The Seal Sister and so on. The Freljordian people worship them as gods, but they are, technically, only extremely powerful nature spirits, manifestations of the nature of the Freljord itself, which draw power from the land and to a lesser extent from their worshipers. There are many, many lesser nature spirits, which might be worshiped as gods by particular tribes or hold power over particular areas, but Ornn, Anivia, Volibear, The Seal Sister and the Iron Boar are the most powerful and most widely revered.

On a similar note, Ionia is absolutely choked to the gills with spirits, because those lands are soaked in magic. They are usually not worshiped as gods specifically, but take the shape of everything from dragons to living trees to sprites and will-o-wisps and which roam fairly freely in Ionia. This includes characters like Lillia, who is the daughter of a magical tree of dreams on whose branches the dreams of mortals grow and mature, and it includes Ivern, who is an extremely powerful and ancient nature spirit formed from the soul of a magical tree.

Demons are distinct from spirits, in that rather than drawing on the power of the land or fountains of magic, they draw on the emotions of living things for their powers. The most powerful demons are known as The Ten, who get their power from the most primal emotions that living things feel. Fiddlesticks is the demon of Fear, and Nilah somehow draws her strength from Ashlesh, the Demon of Joy, whom her order has imprisoned. We don't know who the rest of the Ten are yet, but Riot seems to have that worked out somewhere in their internal deep lore.

Swain has a lesser (but still powerful) demon of secrets called Raum bound in his arm through some sort of deal, Evelynn is a demon of anguish and pain, Tahm Kench is a demon of addiction, and Nocturne is a demon of nightmares.

Besides those, there are an untold number of lesser demons, who feed on more and more specific feelings, and thus are less and less powerful because there's simply less of that stuff around to feed on. They are often called Azakana, and may be demons that feed on feelings as niche as, like, noblemen's fear of their extramarital affairs with handsome commoners being discovered. Yone hunts the Azakana and collects their mask, although even he doesn't know quite what for.

Death

This is where we place the Kindred. Technically they are merely Spirits of Death, but more than perhaps any other category of creature, Riot keeps writing them as Literal Gods of death and I don't think it makes sense to think of them any other way.

The Kindred take on many different shapes all across Runeterra, seemingly influenced in large part by the expectations of the people or creatures who are dying, but their most popular visage is that of a Lamb and a Wolf, hunting together. Lamb's merciful arrow ends your life if you accept that your time is up and go gently into that good night, but Wolf hunts you down and rips you to shreds if you resist and fight to your last breath, destiny be damned.

The Kindred are there for every death on Runeterra, they are the mediators (as far as we know) of all forms of death everywhere, and by far the most classically "anthropomorphic embodiment of universal existence" style god in the lore that we know of. Where a god like Anivia only really has power in the Freljord, the Kindred have power everywhere there is life. Only the undead escape them, and even then, only temporarily.

In Conclusion

YES Runeterra has tons of gods, it obviously has gods, you can't walk five feet in that universe without tripping on a god, but they tend to be gods with hard limitations on their power and influence, and rarely have powers on the level of bending reality itself.

Even Aurelion Sol, who literally makes stars, can't snap his fingers and undo causality, for example, or suspend the laws of physics wholesale.

Riot's weird insistence on "no gods in Runeterra" is more of an affectation, a bit of a put-on, than an actual narrative principle, and most of the gods of Runeterra can be understood very comfortably through the lens of various non-Christian religions like Norse or Greek mythology, or the hero/god characters of something like Polynesian myth.

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mollysunder · 1 year ago

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Silco, Amara, and the Blood Moon Cult in Zaun

It's more likely that Silco was sending his shipment of Shimmer to Ionia rather than Noxus. It's easy to conclude that Silco was expanding his market into Noxian war bands because it's Noxus, of course they'd want it. But why would Silco trust Noxian clients with such a sensitive weapon when Noxus is so close to Piltover? A good chunk of Piltover's upper crust, which includes Councilors, go out of their way to accommodate their Noxian clients, even if it means engaging in illegal trade. Despite their principles on "peace" Piltover is fine to host a Noxian war lord, and when the Hexgates temporarily closed the people they voice concern for are for no one else but their Noxian clientele.

If Silco supplied Noxians with Shimmer and he managed to successfully establish Zaun. There's nothing stopping disgruntled Piltovans to call upon their own allies in Noxus to crush his revolution using the same weapon he used to start it. Once he sends it to Noxus, Silco has no real control over which war band actually gets the Shimmer, and who they're loyal to. Plus trusting Noxians is a losing game, they're more likely to try to steal Shimmer factories then do business.

If anything, the show points toward Ionia interacting more commonly with Zaun than with Piltover. Sure there are some cool easter eggs that reference Ionian champs like Jhin, and skinlines like the Blood Moon, but there's an actual tangible presence not found in Piltover. And it starts with the two mysterious figures in the background of episode 1.

They stand out not just because they're height and clothes, but because they're wearing very specific masks. Both these monks are wearing masks with the Blood Moon on their forehead. Despite the fact it's just the Lunari symbol flipped upside down, the Blood Moon cult is Ionian in origin. Technically the cult only exists in an alternate universe skin line where they're characterized as members of a secret order that performs arcane rites to merge with demons and harness their power, in the canon line it's only supposed to be a holiday in Ionia, like the lunar new year. Then again, Arcane isn't beholden to canon and tends to do its own thing.

We never see them topside in Piltover, but we do see someone dressed in a similar fashion, it's Amara. The Blood Moon cultists cover themselves in purple cloth and wear two orange ornaments shaped into the blood moon sigil that hang on either side of the front of their hats, with a third purple sigil on the forehead of their masks. On the two different occasions we see Amara she largely wears purple. And up close we can see that her she wears orange-red earrings with a purple bindi at the center of her forehead. The only thing missing are the crescents that wrap around the blood moon.

At first, I would have called this coincidence, but then I took further notice of her appearance. She appears to dress like a typical wealthy merchant from Piltover, but if you look closer, you notice glaring inconsistencies. Her entire outfit is off, it's got the general cut of a Councilors outfit, but it's also purposefully uneven in length of cloth and adornments, almost like you'd find in Zaun. I've mentioned before that the rich in Piltover probably play around with Zaunite fashion at parties, but Amara's outfit is practically casual in its asymmetry compared to her peers.

Amara's outfit makes her look like an outlier compared to everyone else. We already know Amara is corrupt, she donates large sums of cash to Piltover Academy so that Piltover looks the other way when her charters don't make sense, which means she's a smuggler.

But what does any of this have to do with Silco and the Shimmer trade? It's because Amara was helping Silco facilitate it through her own ships.

Let's thinks about it. One, Silco may be an industrialist to the Council but he needs contacts on the inside to keep track of developments in Piltover, he can't just rely on Marcus. He needs more established cover when he has Shimmer shipped out. Two, his crew may have been on the ship, but that doesn't mean the ship belonged to Silco. Silco has money, but not THAT much money by Piltovan standards. A part of their arrangement could just be that Amara provides her name and a ship (not a nice one), but Silco needs to cover the bribe, and give Amara a percentage of the profit.

Silco's probably cultivated a litany strange bedfellows both within and outside Piltover's borders to ensure Zaun's rise. Amara's donations means she gets to be among the first to hear about new developments in Hextech before the market does. Amara might share the news with Ionia and Silco, because how else did Jinx know where to find the hexgem with time to spare for graffiti? How would Silco know that the gem was actually important when he saw it for the first time and not just a high quality rock? According to the Council Archives, this wouldn't even be the first time Silco has recruited a Piltovan, one of his chembarons, Chross of the Hush Company, is originally Piltovan but is now dedicated to Zaunite Independence.

But what does Amara get out of it? Easy, arms for Ionia, or at least her faction.

Ionia's situation is tricky to explain because Arcane doesn't really follow League of Legends canon. It gets the general idea, but then does other stuff. The First Invasion of Ionia by Noxus led to the slaughter of countless Ionians during Noxus's occupation, which included soldiers and civilians alike. The Ionian region was wildly unprepared for the war as the people of the region promoted a culture of peaceful resolution towards each other and nature, while the Emperor of Noxus wanted to kill as many Ionians as possible to steal anything that MIGHT grant him immortality. To drive out Noxus, they had to take arms and defend themselves to end the brutality. After barely winning, plenty of provinces within Ionia (there's no real centralized government) we're left to decide how to move forward both culturally and geopolitically. Some factions sought to return to their pacifist isolationism, other groups are building an ultranationalist movement to unify Ionia under one leader and to militarize Ionia's magic, it's a mixed bag.

The Blood Moon cult, or whatever they call themselves in Arcane, is probably one answer some Ionians found as they dealt with Noxus's occupation. If you noticed the original iteration of the Blood Moon cult is bathed in red, but the cultists cover themselves in purple, Lunari purple. I've already talked at length about the possible Lunari diaspora in Zaun, but I didn't mention the one that canonically exists in Ionia!

To escape the ongoing pogroms organized the Solari, many Lunari either went into hiding or fled the Targonian region altogether. Some Lunari managed to flee all the way to Ionia. Imagine the utter devastation to know all the struggle to find safety meant nothing when Noxus invaded. It all just doubles over because in Arcane, we see Noxian war lords like Ambessa terrorize Targonian Lunari like the princess in Mel's flashback, likely with the aid of Solari allies. It never stopped for them. What's even worse is that NONE of the other regions aided them during the slaughter, the only real aid was the emperor's own incompetence.

After the war, I'm sure a good portion of Ionia's Lunari diaspora, and plenty of other Ionians never wanted to be that vulnerable again and are currently seeking ways to increase their military strength. Thematically, it goes hand in hand with Silco's own struggle to create an independent Zaun to escape Piltover's brutality, the willingness to do anything, no matter how dark to defeat a superior enemy. So, as problematic as Shimmer can be, it's an effective healer and strength enhancer in a vial for the desperate.

But how do we know that the First Invasion of Ionia even happened yet? Because Arcane has already hinted at Urgot appearing next season.

Urgot as a champion was a former executioner for Noxus. In Urgot's lore, Swain had to make sure Urgot was out of Noxus before he could execute his coup against the emperor after the failed Invasion of Ionia. So Swain had Urgot sent to Zaun on fake mission to have him subdued and subsequently imprisoned to never return to Noxus.

In this still of post time skip Zaun, we see that the central figure of the image is technically the tattoo that's supposed to reference the League of Legends band Pentakill. But to the left is the real hint, it's the tattoo artist. It's the same tattoo artist that appeared in Urgot's debut splash art in League. I'm sure Urgot's story won't be 1-to-1 with League lore, but it will fit enough to put him in Piltover because the Medarda family is in a bad spot against a man who clearly has more sway in Noxus than them.

I can't say whether or not the robed cultists work directly under Amara or not. Amara and them might be separate agents where the robed figures make deals and she provides cover. What I do know is that the cultists have shown up in Zaun since Silco was ready to distribute Shimmer from the very beginning and show up again after their largest shipment yet was destroyed. Does this make any of them friends? Probably not. Frankly, Amara probably wants to take control of the trade in my opinion. Why, because Amara is the name of a large fish species that acts as an ambush predator in river systems (it's just spelled Aimara). And Finn had said there's bigger fish than Silco (it's such a dumb pun, it has to be true). She might care about what Ionia suffered and can still feel like Shimmer should be under her control instead, but that's a post for another day.

There's a larger discussion to be had about the ways in which the moon(s) of Runeterra and Lunari have blended into Ionian culture in Arcane. Clearly the moon and Lunari imagery is more synonymous with Ionian culture in Arcane, and then it's juxtaposed against the Mel's Solari aesthetics mixed with Ambessa's Noxian violence. Then over the show Piltover is typically bathed in daylight and the shining sun while housing Noxians and their intrigue. It practically begs the final scene to mean more, that it isn't just Jinx striking back for herself, for Silco, or Zaun, but it's larger retribution against the existing order of power.

#arcane #zaun #ionia #arcane silco #arcane amara #if that pun really does mean amara was after silco's empire I'll scream #lunari #league of legends #aimara is also called a wolf fish #noxus #piltover #long post #arcane meta #arcane speculation #arcane season 2 speculation #targon #silco #ridiculously long post

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