((champion concept)) Edelle, the Wordsmith

Hey guys! I've noticed there hasn't been an Independently aligned champ in a couple years, so here's an idea I thought of that could be built on. Let's start with their name and looks:

Their name is Edelle Smithers. She stands at about 5'5" tall(but people always expect her to be taller), and is a bit on the thin side. She has long wavy dark hair kept back in a loose ponytail with bangs framing her face; there is a shock of white hair running just behind one of her bangs. Normally quite pale, her skin has a moderate tan, and freckles across the bridge of her nose. She has dimples and strong cheekbones, and deep chocolate brown eyes.

Edelle wears a flowing green hooded robe open over khaki trousers and a long-sleeved white button up blouse; her boots are of a dark leather, held shut with a few straps. Edelle wields a calligraphy brush the size of a staff as her tool/weapon; it is made of a dark hardwood with a gold collar and has runes engraved on it around the collar.

HER STORY: Edelle was born in Piltover to a couple that owned a book store. From her earliest days they encouraged her to read, often telling her bedtime stories full of magic and wonder. Picking up the skill much earlier than most, Edelle devoured all the fairy tales she could find and the histories recounted in textbooks. Whole new worlds to experience was something Edelle loved.

Still during her youth, technology was something that began to interest Edelle. The wirings and power supplies, coding- to her it seemed like another language stories could be told in. In addition to her school studies, Edelle began to pursue engineering and the emerging field of hextech. Her two great loves suddenly clicked and came together: the magic of reading and language producing countless stories. Edelle was becoming a bonafide hextech prodigy: she refined many of the early designs, and devised systems that soon became commonplace. During her teenage years, she became a bug tester of sorts, finding all the holes in coding and magic, patching things up, and increasing efficiency.

Then, before leaving for university, Edelle had a revelation: for quite a while, she had spent more time time working with the magic of hextech rather than the tech. The realization thrilled and scared Edelle. While she had never outgrown her love of magic, she had never thought she herself was magical. It was an unusually spur of the moment decision: Edelle sold everything she owned, and sailed off to Ionia to search for magic.

Though at first reluctant to reveal much, there was a master Edelle found soon after arriving in Ionia who taught her much of the history of magic. The wizened old man tried to be harsh, but Edelle's academic rigours had prepared her well and her cheer and zeal kept surprising him. The rest of the village came to adore Edelle simple and handy hextech devices- except for the elder she trained under- and as the months wore on, the villagers came to see her as one of their own.

After a handful of years had passed, the elder decided she was ready; Edelle's intelligence, intensity, and integrity were only rivaled by her generosity, and she had handled his attempts at too many responsibilities spectacularly. He entrusted her with an ancient scroll of magic from the time of the Rune Wars, a heavy burden he had carried in secret since the distant ages of his youth. Before he could instruct Edelle in its contents, however, Noxian troops sacked the village, only leaving the younger women alive. She was captured and taken with them, at first suffering abuse at their hands until her skill with hextech became known.

Very quickly, Edelle became the leading hextech engineer in the Noxian division. Though she wasn't comfortable with the uses of her devices, she admittedly did enjoy the creative freedom her position provided. She had never before worked with such expensive and rare materials. The repurposing of her inventions still weighed on her, and when she was pushed towards manufacturing chemical weapons, Edelle decided it was time to make an escape. Passing off the poison as the antidote to the weapon she was working on, the vials were distributed to each soldier in the division, and during the evening, she activated the cloaking device she'd secretly built, stole back her master's scroll, and pressed the detonator as she slipped out of camp.

Managing to stay a step ahead of her pursuers, after long weeks of travel Edelle arrived in Demacia. After settling in she opened up a shop there, and made a killing- hextech was surprisingly rare in the Demacian capital- and for a time she had an entire market almost all to herself. In her rare moments of rest from working, she studied her master's ancient scroll, and was shocked by the revelations within: a system of magic that was highly mutable, yet less individual and more reliable than any she'd ever seen. Demacia's ancient history was uncovered too, as a forest once vibrant with magic that had been petrified and frozen in time. With enough funds to ensure discretion, Edelle began to poke around in dusty and hidden corners of Demacia looking for the lost runes. Eventually, it became clear that the runes had long since left- but there was a single crumbling history book that gave an indication of where.

After hiring a number of workers, Edelle left behind her shop and set off for the Shuriman desert. It was a harsher journey than her trek to Demacia, but travelling with caravans made it bearable for the most part. She found the oral history of Shurima amazingly well preserved and over several weeks drew closer to her goal. At last, she found the first location she would check: ruins in the Sai Kaleek stretch of desert, a place long associated with curses and ancient magic. The ruins were quiet and dark, a few stray spiders the only animals Edelle encountered as she navigated the underground tunnels. She almost passed by the door, but her instincts told her to push it open and head in, and so she did, finding a skeleton slumped over against a wall and a chest that looked brand new and glowed with its own light. Carefully approaching the chest she could feel was booby trapped, she used her magical analysis device to figure out its inner workings. It had a complex design that reminded of her hextech schematics, but not quite- then it clicked, and Edelle realized she would need the magic from her scroll. Speaking the spells for the first time, the magic was cast and the chest safely unlocked, and within it was a shimmering and ethereal symbol. Its power and knowledge shocked her as they flooded into her system when she touched it, and she hastily stored it away. She could feel the earth shaking around her, and wondered if she had triggered a hidden trap by removing the rune as she raced back through the tunnels.

Arriving above ground, Edelle found herself in the midst of a titanic clash between a nightmarish monster and a lone man who held javelins of lightning in his hands. The rain was fierce and the thunder deafening. The man seemed to be holding his own, and though he was oddly dry, he slipped on a wet stone. The monster immediately screeched and leapt in, and the man stayed down and hurled a lightning javelin. Edelle felt time slowing down, and she could see the wear the battle had on the man. In an instant she invoked the rune she had discovered, and the world came to a halt. The monster and the man's lightning javelin were frozen in mid-air, the rain suspended completely motionless. Fearing for how long the effect would last, Edelle hauled the man away from the hideous beast. He remained stiff, but after feeling as if she had passed through a bubble, the world resumed violently. The lightning javelin scored a direct hit, and after quickly glancing her way, the man readied a javelin that had an almost bird-like chirp to its crackle. It struck the monster as it landed where he had been a moment ago, heavily wounding it. Reeling in pain and confusion, the monster scrambled off and then burrowed underground.

Edelle had a long conversation with the man after the storm passed. Though he only worked his magic in Shurima's deserts, he had heard of the type of magic Edelle used to assist him. The man said there were once many runes spread all over the world, but since the Rune Wars they had been disappearing one by one. Not wanting to see such an elegant and powerful style of magic vanish from the world, Edelle took the man's directions, and headed off to find the next rune.

From Urtistan to the Plague Jungles of Kumungu, to Bligewater and all the way to the Shadow Isles, Edelle travelled in search of ancient runes. She did manage to find a few, powerful things that manipulated the very fabric of reality. She also noticed that the disappearance of runes wasn't a natural occurrence: someone else was after them, and more often than not, they got to the runes before she did. Though still studying and experimenting, Edelle is ready to bring rune magic back to Valoran, confident that whatever force is trying to wipe out the magic won't be able to hold back a new era of wonder.

IN-GAME/PEDIA BIO: From a very early age Edelle was an avid reader, soaking up fairy tales and stories full of magic- and during her youth, the rising field of hextech seemed to be the greatest language of adventure. She became a prodigy of the craft, designing and refining many systems- untilshe very suddenly realized hextech was speaking to the magic that was already within her. Selling all her trinkets and gadgets, Edelle sailed off from her Piltover home to Ionia in search of magic.

She soon found a tutor, a curmudgeonly Ionian elder who tried and failed to push Edelle away with hard work. After years of faithful study and living with the villagers, he decided he was ready to pass on an ancient scroll of magical texts on to her- unfortunately, that very same day the village was taken over by a division of the Noxian army, and Edelle was captured. After months of ignoring her conscience as she crafted hextech for the Noxians, she finally managed to escape, and headed to Demacia: this was the beginning of her greatest adventure.

While in Demacia, Edelle at last had a chance to study the scroll passed on to her from her late master, and discovered the history and secrets of rune magic. She soon left for the Shuriman desert, where she found her first rune in the midst of a clash between Rek'Sai and a desert mystic who commanded the rain. The mysterious man told Edelle of how the great runes were disappearing, and pointed her on the way to the next nearest rune. Resolved to resurrect and perfect the lost art of rune magic, Edelle has been traveling Runeterra seeking out its lost magical building blocks, and looking to use them to usher in an era of knowledge and prosperity.

STATS: Health 461 – 1920 Attack damage 53 – 108 Health regen. 5.36 – 14.5 Attack speed [*] 0.645 (+ 0 – 27.4%) Mana: 368 -- 1347 Mana Regen: 8 -- 18.5 Armor 21.7 – 78.6 Magic resist. 30 – 38.5 Range 550 Move. speed 335

KIT: Passive: Rune Sculptor Enemies affected by Edelle's abilities take 15-90(+15% AP) bonus magic damage from the first basic attack by Edelle or her allies, stacking up to 4 times.

Q: Oubliette Edelle places a large rune that reveals the target area, silencing and near-sighting enemies inside it. ((Zone Radius: 250, Range: 750, Duration: 2/2.5/3/3.5/4 seconds, Mana Cost: 70/80/90/100/110, Cooldown: 15/14.25/13.5/12.75/12 seconds))

W: Rune Door Edelle leaves a rune on the ground that she can teleport to at a later time by channeling for 3/2.5/2/1.5/1 seconds, she can move while channeling but can't use her other abilities; enemies can destroy a rune by standing on it for a second, and are marked by Rune Sculptor while doing so. ((Rune Duration: 60/67.5/75/82.5/90 seconds, Max Rune Number: 3/3/4/4/5, Range/Teleport Range: 1000, Rune Radius: 75, Rune Cooldown: 1 second, Teleport Cooldown: 30/25/20/15/10 seconds, Mana Cost: 80. Edelle teleports to the nearest rune if one is not targeted.))

E: Time Repellant Edelle places a rune on the target champion that slows them and delays their attacks and abilities for 3 seconds. ((Range: 550, Slow Percentage: 20/22.5/25/27.5/30 +3% AP seconds, Attack & Ability Delay: 0.5/0.75/1/1.25/1.5 seconds, Mana Cost: 50/56.25/62.5/69.75/75, Cooldown: 10/9.5/9/8.5/8 seconds))

R: Masterscript Edelle draws a wall of runes in range, coming into contact has different effects based on the last ability she used. Oubliette: reveals and silences the target, Rune Door: target is Grounded, Time Repellant: target is knocked back 150 units and slowed 20%; if contact is made with another section of Masterscript during the knockback the target is instead stunned for 0.5 seconds. ((Range: 800, Rune Width: 25, Mana Cost: 75+ 50 per second, Effect Duration: 1/1.5/2 seconds, Cooldown: 8 seconds, Wall Duration: 6/7/8 seconds. Once activated, the wall is drawn by right clicking and dragging the cursor.))

QUOTES: Edelle has a low soprano voice that is warm and engaging.

Champion Select: Runes will reforge this world's future. Champion Ban: I thought words would never hurt you?

Aside from being an independent champ, the other main idea behind Edelle was a dedicated de-buff champion.