Caden - The Oathkeeper
For years, the voices that haunted Caden were nothing more than pained wails. An ever-present reminder of the day his platoon fell to Noxian battlemages. No longer able to bear this waking nightmare, Caden voyaged to the Shadow Isles in search of a way to end it-- even if death was the answer. But as he approached the shore, the ever-present wailing shades of his fallen comrades became something more. He watched in amazement as the charred bones and boiled sinew of the spirits regenerated. Not into flesh--- no, they were long past that-- but into a truer form of the men they once were. All at once the wailing stopped, and each man turned to Caden in silence. Over the next few hours, each man made his peace with the sole survivor, and Caden vowed to pay Noxus back one hundredfold.
Now, the spirits of his allies follow him into battle-- either to aid in his fight, or to drag him into the underworld should he fail.
I had actually started with a rough idea of a champion with a single, ever-present pet with its own abilities and scaling basic attacks. But after finding the perfect name for such a champion, I decided to scrap the abilities and just write out a short bio. The name Caden traces its origins to either the Arabic kadin meaning "friend" or "companion", and/or Welsh cadell meaning "spirit of battle". So the story actually stems from my search for a name similar sounding to Garen, though it was in line with my first thoughts on the abilities.
The basic idea was that you would get the pet at level 6, and then it would respawn after a cooldown if killed. The main champion would provide medium amounts of CC and little damage, with the abilities of the pet being delayed cast and damage-focused. The damage either took would be split between the two, but the pet would have lower defenses so it would die earlier. But I couldn't come up with good abilities.
