Hello, I'm Lord Gyarados, an avid League player and high school junior. I've always loved storytelling, and this is my first serious attempt at writing something big... ha, Sion pun. Sion himself is one of my favorite champs, and also my ticket out of Bronze 1 :P. Hopefully I make a good impression on you folks. Reviews and comments/constructive criticism is always well received. Enjoy!
But before that, here's a boring prologue. Skip to Chapter 1 if you're tired of lore.
The Continent of Valoran: A Note on History and Time
Most humans, yordles, and other sentient species on Valoran use the same solar calendar and unanimously set Year Zero's beginning on the day of completion of the original Crown Palace of Demacia, and the ascension of King Sorren Ironspear to the throne.
Year Zero is a slight (some might even say bigoted) misnomer, as Valoran has several thousands of years of history before the ancestors to the Demacian race set foot on the land. However, for the purpose of simplicity, we will use the common calendar and Year Zero. Most of the residents of Valoran operate on an 8-month year, with each month being forty-five days long. This was likely conceived by influence from the ancient Shuriman empire, which believed in the inherent perfection of eightfold systems. Ironically, the calendar is slightly discordant with the motion of the sun and the stars; every five years, the calendar is given two extra days on the end of the eighth month to compensate for this error.
Now, back to the Demacians. They sailed from a land in the southeast, fleeing from a cataclysm that had torn their cites asunder. These people settled on the eastern coast about fifty years before Year Zero, and learned to cooperate with the people already residing on Valoran. The Demacian ancestors introduced great stone-cutting and metal-working techniques, which were quickly copied by their neighbors. However, their copies generally fell short of the Demacian standard, largely in part due to the ageless demigod Durand, who for centuries had perfected his craft in both sculpting and magic, and combined both by creating living, thinking creatures of stone, which collectively became known as "gargoyles." The Demacians built several bustling cities due to their artisan culture, and decided to allot one of these cities to the singular task of recording history from then on; this town, Archive, later merged with a nearby city of iron-smelting to become the prototype of the city-state, Piltover, which became the Demacian nation's chief ally and trading partner.
However, conflict soon ensued after King Ironspear's ascension, when the Demacians found a Nexus - a natural, potent node of magic - in the center of Valoran. However, the Nexus was already contested by the numerous wandering native tribesmen, who used the Nexus as a site of war and peace talks. Having been refused access to the Nexus to harvest the enormous amount of mana contained within, the Demacians conspired to exterminate the tribesmen and take the Nexus by force. Seeing that the foreigners were planning to destroy them, the bands of tribesmen set aside their past grievances, and formed a united army to fight the Demacians. This marked the birth of the city-state of Noxus, with Highlord Cairos Nox as its first leader in Year 27. The war that soon ensued was a brutal one, with casualties on both sides; the Noxians, lacking the technology and magic of their enemies, resorted to overwhelming through sheer numbers, using the bodies of their fallen comrades as shields and even fuel for fire-based weaponry.
However, in spite of their ferocity, the Noxians were eventually pushed back towards the Nexus, where a final, bloody battle ensued for dominion over the land on the seventh day of summer in Year 32. It was also on this day and many long hours of fighting that the Nexus was abruptly destroyed, the massive crystal cracked by damage from battle-magic and corrupted by the rivers of blood that flowed from man and yordle alike. The resulting detonation obliterated both armies and burned the soil, turning the once peaceful center of the land into a twisted, barren canvas of death - this became the Crystal Scar, where the boomtown Kalamandra was born from scavengers who discovered remnants of the Nexus, which contained a small fraction of its once enormous power.
Having lost their common objective and many fighting men, the two armies ordered a ceasefire and returned to their homes, and thence after Demacia and Noxus became sworn enemies.
Demacia soon became an isolationist, hierarchal society that was distrustful of interaction with other city-states, particularly Noxus. On the other hand, Highlord Nox used the masses who gathered around him as a resource to construct a mighty Citadel to match the Crown Palace, from which the rest of the city of Noxus was built around. Upon finishing the construction of the Citadel, Highlord Nox gave a speech to commemorate the Noxians' sacrifice, whose conclusion became the motto of all Noxians: "Forever strong."
Having learned stoneworking and magic from the Demacians, and possessing a wild blood from centuries of infighting, the Noxians were set on the road to an empire; over the next two hundred years, military campaigns were launched upon the sands of Shurima, the frozen wastes of Freljord, and the green fields of Ionia, and for every land they conquered, the Noxians marched onward with a hungry bloodlust in their eyes.
Having set the stage, we can now enter the realm of modern history, and introduce the players. So, in Year 276, with the naming of Boram Darkwill and the coronation of Prince Jarvan Lightshield, do we begin our story...
