Shadow Isles Skin Line: Blessed Isles _________
INTRO
In my opinion, one of the coolest skin concepts is Pre-Void Kassadin. We have a champion whose entire lore and kit and everything about him revolves around him entering the void and surviving it. Having a skin that backtracks to show what he was like before entering the void is such a brilliant, cool, fresh concept. Now this skin is merely a 520 RP skin, and not too much effort was put into making this character skin cool. However, I feel like with good focus and effort, and if done correctly, a skin line like this could be one of the coolest ones League of Legends has. The cast of the Shadow Isles, especially the Ruination, is a perfect candidate.
For those of you who don't know, many of the Shadow Isles characters, such as Yorick, Hecarim, and Kalista, are built entirely around the event of the black mist, brought on by the Ruined King, when he unsuccessfully attempted to bring his dead wife back to life. Before this event took place, these islands were known as the Blessed Isles, and were a harbor of life, prosperity, and abundance. The Blessed Isles were a place of myth and legend, known for their healing waters. I think it would be awesome to flesh out the historical lore of these characters who are defined by the mist, or the Shadow Isles, and give insight into who these characters were before the mist tore their souls apart.
SKIN CONCEPTS:
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Blessed Isles Yorick, portrayed as a monk, wearing clean robes and weilding a beautiful, new shovel, with his ghouls appearing more as ghosts (just like his lore), and the Maiden appearing more like an undead queen (potentially linking that the maiden is, in fact, the Ruined King's undead wife) -
Blessed Isles Maokai, having "...the form of a treant, with his tall body covered in bark and long limbs resembling branches." looking much more like a young tree, filled with life, not covered with moss or age. -
Iron Order Hecarim, riding a horse, clad in his original Iron Order armor, with his ultimate appearing more like a literal onslaught of his followers in the Order, and less like ghostly horses. -
King's Guard Kalista, wielding an elegant, royal spear and wearing beautiful clothes and armor, fitting of the King's General. -
Blessed Isles Thresh, having him be a "member of an order devoted to gathering and protecting knowledge (in the Blessed Isles). The masters of this order tasked him with guarding a hidden underground vault filled with dangerous and corrupted magical artifacts." Souls could be reinterpreted for this skin as spell-like runes being collected for his own knowledge. This would be more fitting of his lore, as the dark spells he protected "preyed on his insecurities, taunting him with his deepest fears and feeding his bitterness."
Other Skins related to the Shadow Isles, but not directly tied to the Blessed Isles, are the following:
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Temple Mage Karthus, portraying him as a man who "tended to the sick in their final moments, watching as whatever death had laid its claim upon them took its due." This was his occupation, before he left Noxus for Bilgewater, to sail to the Shadow Isles. -
Blessed Isles Nocturne. The official Shadow Isles page on the League of Legends Wikia page says Nocturne is associated with the Shadow Isles, but his official lore doesn't exist. Perhaps he is a creature that came from the Mist, or maybe the nightmare incarnate was some forgotten demon who was accidentally unbound from the spells cast by the Ruined King in his anger. Perhaps this demon is an ancient prophetic spirit who lived in the Blessed Isles and became corrupted, needing to be sealed away in a dark vault, where darkness eventually overcame him and he because one with the darkness, and in that case a Blessed Isles Nocturne skin would make sense, but currently, I don't know. Regardless, as Riot have yet to flesh out his lore (perhaps pending a rework), I can't say how he would fit in. -
Valorian Warlord Mordekaiser is described as being a "brutal warlord-king who ruled the lands of eastern Valoran long before the rise of Demacia or Noxus." This skin would replicate that version of him, being before he was killed, recreated, and eventually ruler of the Shadow Isles. -
Elise, in my opinion, doesn't work in this skin line, simply due to her kit requiring her to transform into a spider, defeating the purpose of her being pre-shadow isles.
I think this skin line would be an awesome addition to the cast of league of legends, and it would be a great time and place to introduce much more detailed lore. On top of this, it would pair really well with a Halloween/October event. As it is March right now, that leaves over 7 months of time to develop this line, do some extra voicing (since most of these characters would need their voices to sound more human), and do a bit more work into fleshing out more lore. In fact, I think this event would be a great time to release a Nocturne Rework/VGU/Lore Update, as he currently has no lore.
