[Champion Concept] Wilhelm, the Cursed Seeker

It's been awhile.

Appearance: A grizzled gray-haired old man, with a rather long full beard. He wears a dark blue overcoat over leather armor, with a hood to keep the rain from drenching him. In one hand, he holds his rather thick spellbook - the focus of his power. In the other, he holds the reins for his black horse, also showing gray hairs.

Stats:

Health: 490 (+81) Health Regen: 6.7 (+0.66) Mana: 370 (+90) Mana Regen: 5.6 (+0.81) Attack Damage: 52 (+2.7) Attack Speed: 0.625 (+1.5%) Armor: 25 (+3) Magic Resistance: 30 (+0.5) Range: 550 Movement Speed: 340

Abilities:

Passive: Faithful - On champion takedown, Wilhelm gains +20% movement speed out of combat for the next 40-80 seconds (increasing with level).

Q: Dread Thunder - After a 0.25 second delay, strikes target area with lightning, dealing magic damage. Successive hits deal 150% damage. No cast time.

Magic Damage: 30/60/90/120/150 (+0.4 AP) Total Damage on Two Hits: 105/150/225/300/375 (+1.0 AP) Range: 775 Radius: 150 Timeout on Successive Hits: 1 second Mana Cost: 40/45/50/55/60 Maximum Charges: 2 Cooldown: 0.25 seconds Charge Cooldown: 8/7.5/7/6.5/6 seconds

W: Lightning Hound - Calls down three lines of lighting - one moving straight, two on opposite arcs - to intersect and explode at a target location. Being hit by a line deals damage and marks the victim, while being hit by the explosion adds three marks. Wilhelm's abilities consume marks to deal bonus damage. No cast time.

Line Magic Damage: 20/35/50/65/80 (+0.2 AP) Explosion Magic Damage: 60/105/150/195/240 (+0.6 AP) Mark Magic Damage: 10/20/30/40/50 (+0.1.5 AP) Range: 850 Duration: 4 seconds Mana Cost: 50/60/70/80/90 Cooldown: 12/11/10/9/8 seconds

E: Leap of Faith/Make Haste! - Leaps over target enemy champion while blasting them with a bolt of lightning, damaging and briefly slowing them. When out of combat for at least 8 seconds, doubles movement speed.

(It switches over to a different skill - they have separate cooldowns.)

Magic Damage: 50/90/130/170/210 (+0.4 AP) Slow: 80% for 0.5 seconds Leap of Faith Range: 450 Duration for Make Haste: 3 seconds Mana Cost: 50 Cooldown: 12/11.5/11/10.5/10 seconds in combat, 40/36/32/28/24 seconds out of combat

R: Infernal Bolt - Calls down an advancing wall of lightning perpendicular to Wilhelm, starting from one end and sweeping to the other over 1 second. Enemies hit take magic damage and are stunned for 1 second. No cast time.

(Think T-shape - Wilhelm is at the bottom, and the line at the top is the ult. If it helps, imagine it as a giant Viktor laser of lightning, stuns, and doom, and you won't be too far off.)

Magic Damage: 200/350/500 (+0.7 AP) Range: 850 Area: 175 wide, 500 long Mana Cost: 100 Cooldown: 90/80/70 seconds

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Short Lore:

He was an insatiable prodigy of a mage once. He delved into every book and every scroll and every tablet he could get his hands on in the search for more knowledge. Such was his desire to learn that he gleefully disregarded the curse on a spellbook that, in exchange for its knowledge, would doom all of his loved ones when he died. He had no loved ones beyond his own thirst for knowledge, what did it matter to him?

That was fifty-two years ago.

His body beginning to fail him, he left his wife and four children behind as Wilhelm rode out to find a way to undo the curse. With regret and his horse, Faithful, as his constant companions, he began a search of every significant area of magic in Runeterra and an audience with every possible mage.

That was two years ago.

Wilhelm is no closer to breaking the curse than when he began, but his fight against time continues all the same.

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Long Lore:

Born on the outskirts of Noxus, Wilhelm was fairly ordinary until he developed his affinity for magic in his early teens. Quickly figuring out that being drafted into Noxus's military would lead to his demise through horrible mismanagement, Wilhelm stole the family horse and left his town. There was nothing left for him there anyways, with their patriotic fervor clouding any other possibilities. From there, he set his sights on a town said to have a great library.

That began his long tour of the continent. Wilhelm made it a personal objective to visit anywhere with enough literature to have at least a few books on magic. He needed to learn, both for practical reasons in defending himself and for the love of knowledge and power. Modern literature soon began to fail him - they all hinted at theories that were previously discovered and no longer practiced. With only a horse as his companion, Wilhelm joined up with an archaeological crew to help uncover these samples of ancient literature.

Each year was an agonizing trial for the impatient Wilhelm. Every dig took what felt like an eternity, and only a handful yielded even a scratch of writing that was even useful for him. Once he found a tablet indicating the location of a powerful spellbook after many such uneventful digs, Wilhelm immediately abandoned the crew to go search for it himself. He would have enlisted their help, but they would have insisted it be put in a museum. That would have been useless for him.

The spellbook was located in the ruins of an ancient temple. As Wilhelm rode near the temple, he quickly discovered the reasons for both the spellbook's location and the numerous scattered human remains in the area - the plains around the temple began a constant, unstoppable storm as soon as he approached, with lightning streaking across the sky and ravaging the ground. It took all of Wilhelm's considerable prowess just to deflect the bolts only a few inches away from him. Were it not for his horse, it would have been an impossible endeavor. His strength failed him only at the last moment, where a bolt flashed too close to his horse, which bucked him off and was itself struck by a second bolt. Wilhelm shed a single tear before dashing inside, safe from the rain and the lightning.

Compared to the grueling trial outside, the temple's inner workings were very simple. A long walk led to the spellbook itself. As he reached for it, a voice rang out from the book itself.

"Seeker of knowledge...Are you prepared to sacrifice your loved ones for this power?"

Wilhelm could only scoff. "Magic is everything," he replied, snatching the book without a second thought. As he pored through the book, he could feel his knowledge of magic expanding to new horizons he would not have thought possible. When it came time to finally leave, it was a simple matter to stop the eternal storm.

But upon his return to civilization, Wilhelm was struck with something of an existential crisis. He obtained his goal and had knowledge of magic far surpassing what even he thought could have been done. What was to be done with it? With all the power of the storms at his command, Wilhelm realized he had nothing - or no one - to fight for. He most certainly was not going back to Noxus to establish himself as a threat and get assassinated at the soonest opportunity. What then was left?

He was struck with a rather dramatic sort of irony as he finally settled on running a stable in some unmapped town. He was the most powerful mage he knew, and all he could do with this power was put it to the side and run a stable in the memory of the only companion he ever had. Staying still so long was completely foreign to Wilhelm, who spent all his life constantly moving. It was relaxing. Peaceful.

And then he met Amelia.

And nothing was the same any more.

She came in needing a horse, but spent some time talking to Wilhelm. A lot of time. Enough that, after dinner, it was no longer viable for Amelia to leave that day. That began the start of a friendship - a concept unknown to Wilhelm. It completely consumed him just as magic had once done. Every day was spent looking forward to meeting with Amelia and talking about anything - or if not talking, then taking a ride somewhere. Where once he spent time looking for magical literature, he now spent time looking for picnic spots and scenic vistas. Before he knew it, he had made a bride out of Amelia.

And they lived happily.

Until fifty years later, when a seizing pain in his chest knocked Wilhelm off his horse during a ride with his family. As he slowly pulled himself to his feet, he could feel the spellbook itself echoing its words inside his head:

"Seeker of knowledge...Are you prepared to sacrifice your loved ones for this power?"

He looked back at his wife, two sons, and two daughters, fear and concern in their faces.

Wilhelm now realized his great error.

No longer in the health he was in so long ago, Wilhelm knew his time on this earth was limited. Unlocking the chest he kept his cursed spellbook in, a quick flip through its pages revealed his worst fears: when he perished, so would his loved ones. That was no longer an acceptable trade to him - he would happily trade everything for his family, instead of sacrificing it all for his own personal ambition.

But his vast knowledge had told him that every curse was able to be broken. There was still hope. Even if it meant abandoning his family and taking his own horse, Faithful, on a reprisal of his tour fifty years ago. His new objective was to hurry and find someone strong enough to break the curse so he could live the rest of his days with his family, knowing their own lives would not be cut short by his foolishness.

Two years later, Wilhelm had found nothing. The few mages he found were too weak, and Wilhelm had made several enemies in his efforts to find those mages. He missed his family. He missed his new life, now trapped in exactly the sort of thing he did in his youth. He missed not having to strike down wildlife and humans alike that got in his way.

There were, however, stories of a powerful magus in Shurima, strong enough that he ascended even human form. Seeing that as his only chance, Wilhelm departed for Shurima, in the hopes of finding this magus and breaking the curse.

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Wilhelm is an extremely aggressive, short-ranged mage that puts a heavy emphasis on in-combat mobility to quickly dispatch his foes, since he has no time for your nonsense. There was other text here, but it's no longer relevant.

The inspiration should be very, very obvious.

Comments, concerns, thoughts, etc. are welcome.