A modified version of the new Maokai lore...
Howdy - just posting this here on top of the Lore Forums and GD. I'm curious why the lore team doesn't release something more like this, rather than the published Maokai lore on S@20 which appears to be written for a younger audience.
Anyone have thoughts on why they write the way they do instead of a more literary fashion? I'm genuinely curious - not asking to be mean/insulting/rude.
The arrogance of humans borne the gnarled shadow of a once peaceful nature spirit dwelling in an idyllic forest. Maokai, twisted by dark magic and infused with corrupt power he never sought, defies the natural order of life and death, a vengeful force of nature sundering enemies with untamed wrath and power. Endowed with malignant sorcery and unyielding limbs, Maokai searches Valoran for the means to restore his home to its ancient majesty long since forgotten.
The islands for untold centuries teemed with untainted life and beauty, fortified by the purity and natural vitality of the sacred forest, the isles’ core and spirit. The paradise of thriving trees and innumerable species, both animal and spirit alike, withered into a land of decay and malevolence when the king of the now-forsaken Shadow Isles and his depraved sorcerers breached the barrier segregating life from death. The rift became a wellspring of power from which the magi deeply drank.
Their necromancy corrupted the cycle of life and unleashed a darkness they could not contain, nor could their magic conjure a light pure enough to dispel it. Vitality seeped from every living thing in the Shadow Isles: magnificent trees withered into knotted husks, the human citizenry warped into twisted shades, and forest spirits wilted into hollow wisps. In horror Maokai, the oldest and strongest of the spirits of the sacred forest, witnessed the corroding rot that extinguished all life around him. He fought to mend the wound in the world but could not halt the destruction wrought by the human impetuousness. As the ghastly energies sought to overwhelm the heroic spirit, he miraculously accomplished one final, desperate attempt to preserve the life of his home; he married his essence with that of an ancient unnamed oak, the heart of the forest’s spiritual power. Within the monolith he gathered the essence of the isles into the trees as the corruption of undeath clawed hungrily at anything its foul tendrils could reach. Fortified by boundless magic, Maokai could not be consumed entirely, though the nightmare left scars upon him that would never heal.
Maokai, now saturated with the essences of both life and death, is forever fused with the ancient oak, and together they are contorted into an abomination. For ages, with pain, grief despair his only companions, the hideous treant bowed under the weight of his own limbs; wept at the desolation of everything he had known and loved, and his roots tore free of the life-giving earth as he raged at the recklessness of the sorcerers whose necromancy annihilated his home. But all was not lost as Maokai had preserved the last vital spark remaining in the Shadow Isles, and with it, the hope of returning life to the forests.
Like moths to a flame, the living essence within Maokai drew the tormented shades of the Shadow Isles to him. The disfigured treant guarded the seed of life from the relentless undead, but Maokai recognized the futility, that he could not repel the onslaught of the harbingers of death forever. He needed to escape, as he knew the land of death could no longer be his home, so he cast himself into the sea and trusted in nature to guide him towards a living land. There he hoped to attain the means to dispel the darkness and death and return the Shadow Isles to their forgotten vibrancy.
"To defy the natural order has consequences." - Maokai
