The siege of Noxus

TLDR- I think the time is right to make mordekaiser siege the immortal bastion as his lore mentions he intends to do- but beforehand he needs to get a proper VGU that takes a hard look at what makes mordekaiser mordekaiser at his core level. Also, if you want to skip the lore oriented part of this post, go to the reddit post instead, then come back for the gameplay part of the post

The siege of Noxus is really an event that we knew would happen for ages now. mordekaiser's lore says that mordekaiser has raised an undead army (that he built from his dead enemies) and is waiting for the right time to take back the Immortal bastion (Noxus). This- in my and other theorists opinion- is going to take place soon. When swain got his rework, he also got new special interactions, and although he doesn't have a specific quote towards mordekaiser that would hint at this war's arrival, he does have quotes hinting this with different champions:

To Hecarim: " A king remains in the mist, another marches..." - The latter obviously referencing Mordekaiser, and the king that remains in the mist is most likely the ruined king, since there are no others in the shadow isles that would qualify for those titles other than Mordekaiser and the Ruined king- and more importantly, swain says this to Hecarim because Hecarim was once the ruined king's guard, and perhaps Swain would like to flip Hecarim against Mordekaiser so that Mordekaiser would have to deal with a rebelion instead of marching to Noxus. Notice how Swain says "another marches" with regards to Mordekaiser. this means that according to Swain's intel- Mordekaiser has already started marching towards Noxus- intel that we can assume is pretty accurate since Elise and Swain are both champions of the black rose and would share such information with eachother. This would mean that whatever Mordekaiser is planning to do- Whether if it's to go straight to Noxus or perhaps take a detour like the next quote would suggest- it has already begun, and Swain probably can't stop it on his own.

To Talon: "The world may fall to darkness, but Noxus will remain."- This could be in reference that mordekaiser's plan isn't only to take Noxus, but all of the new kingdoms that have arisen since his downfall, but Swain seeks to reassure Talon that Noxus will defeat Mordekaiser and will not fall to his army darkness. Alright- from here on out these are kind of a stretch. I will link the original reddit post that I got these from and you can decide for yourself whether you chose to believe these or not.

To Kindred: " If you take me you will leave Noxus with something far worse..." - This could mean several different things depending on context. While it could reference an internal war waging between closed doors in Noxus's leadership, I believe swain means that without the black rose's full control over Noxus, Mordekaiser could use the opportunity to take over Noxus. His (Mordekaiser's) lore says that he has already assembled his army, and is waiting for the right moment to strike. Now patience probably isn't very difficult to have when you and your army are undead and really have nothing to lose, since he has waited for the right moment for centuries, if not over a millenium, and waiting really does him no harm. However, if we go by the first quote which is much more obvious than this one, that means that Mordekaiser is done waiting, which makes Swain in particular and the black rose in general much more essential to the existence of Noxus as it is.

When respawning: "I have already walked the halls of death, in the immortal bastion" - Swain rules from within the Immortal bastion- a bastion that Mordekaiser built in order to keep his bones, that are necessary for his revival ritual, safe from his enemies. This quote then, would reference Swain's knowledge of the bastion's history and of Mordekaiser's link to it, although other than a nice nod to the lore, this quote doesn't give us much.

First Movement: "The outcome was decided when they brought an army... and I brought a Demon" - Alright. I know what you're thinking- "how does this have anything to do with Mordekaiser?" well in truth- maybe it doesn't. I just felt like I should bring it up anyway. Right, so while this quote is overtly confident- meaning that Swain feels like he won even though the battle hasn't even started, we could try to relate this to Mordekaiser by saying that when Swain talks about an army- he refers to Mordekaiser's. This, however is somewhat unlikely, as swain doesn't show this same amount of confidence in the previous quotes regarding mordekaiser- at least not this blatantly. However, Swain might say this in order to reinforce what we learn from his interactions with Kindred and Talon- Firstly, He will keep noxus safe ( "but Noxus will remain") and secondly, Noxus is doomed without him. In truth, this all challenges what we have gathered from Swain's qoute to Hecarim, since if swain would try to lead the shadow isles into an interal war- he is probably not very confident in Noxus's ability to defend itself from Mordekaiser's undead army, then again- one could argue that the reason Swain is so confident in himself and his ability to defeat Mordekaiser also stems from his ability to manipulate and capitalize on opportunities.

So- To sum this part up in short- Mordekaiser is coming, Swain (and the black rose) knows he is coming and for now, Swain is more or less confident in his ability to defend Noxus from this threat.

Moving on we should tackle what causes riot to delay this event-

Firstly- it would be ridiculous to have an event rotate around a champion that practically no one plays. Mordekaiser has been in the bottom of the most played list for a while now, ranking in as the 6th least played champion in league of legends. Riot wants to make sure that before they move forward with an event this massive, every champion that is involved in the event is enjoyable and has a player base that would want to play them. This currently isn't the case, as riot intends to rework Mordekaiser, due to his lacking kit and generally not a fun experience while playing him. The problem is, We have been told Mordekaiser is on the VGU list for such a long time now. pretty much immediately after the failed rework he had in 2015 Riot already said that he's on the list for a VGU, since the last one seemed to only hurt his playerbase and playablility. This of course isn't solely to blame on whoever worked on his rework, because to be honest, it was more about the game that was changing around Mordekaiser that kicked him down to his knees- the removal of spell vamp, the addition of more mobile champions that take the same role as mordekaiser and have more crowd control than him, and the general meta leaning in favor of mages in the mid lane and tanks in the top lane as opposed to assassins in the mid lane and champions like lulu in the top lane.

So why delay his rework so much? if Mordekaiser is barely playable, why doesn't riot put him on the shortlist for the upcoming VGU's and get the event going? My guess- Riot has probably gone through at least 3 versions of a potential Mordekaiser rework, and none of them succeed at keeping Mordekaiser's core identity the same while fixing his issues. Probably like how they went through 3 versions of a potential Yorick rework over the span of many, many years trying to figure out how to rework Yorick without ruining his identity, they are trying to do the same with Mordekaiser but to no avail.

Honestly, What is Mordekaiser's true indentity? if he is truly a warlord that could kill thousands of enemies before dying (and then being brought back to life), why did Riot insist on trying to make him a support in the first place? (well in honesty, they meant for him to be an adc, but they knew that wasn't going to happen). I honestly think most people would agree that Mordekaiser's old core gameplay was his ability to shield up, heal with spell vamp and take down enemies with a burst combo, and then use their re-animation to take objectives/win teamfights. Today, Mordekaiser's core gameplay still revolves around his ability to shield and and his ultimate, which means he practically plays the same nieche role as he used to, but instead now he can't buy the items he used to, he misses out on extra xp by going mid or top, but going bot lane is not an option, and the general meta has shifted around him in a way that doesn't allow him to properly function.

Riot can't change the entire meta for just one champion, but I feel like if they wanted to make mordekaiser more like how his lore describes him, they would decrease his health scalings, maybe even give him a passive that causes him to recieve only half of the hp that a certain item gives, while giving him ap instead, buff his shield, and give him built in spell vamp in all of his abilities, maybe as a passive, or maybe as a subjective passive of each of his ability, to ensure relative balance. a good start would be to give him his old Q back, as the new one- especially after the nerfs, does nothing in terms of helping Mordekaiser in the longrun. Mordekaiser was known as the ultimate farmer back in the day because of his Q being able to hit multiple minions and having a short cooldown, W giving an AOE sunfire cape esque effect and E being the finisher- killing the minions after their hp was reduced. nowadays mordekaiser can't really do that, at least not how he used to be able to. Old Mordekaiser was in no way broken, in fact, if the items he would buy were back, and his old kit too- he would probably be doing fine, but not great. that's why Riot reworked him in the first place. However, he would be doing much better than today's Mordekaiser, and I would argue many more people would play him.

Giving Mordekaiser means to chase him target without items would be extremely beneficial to him in today's meta when everyone has escapes and long range abilities, maybe a slow on the E or a 3 hit system where if you hit a target with 3 (different) abilites in a short amount of time he would receive some sort of damage proc and root/ Nasus max W style slow.

If you've made it this far, Thank you for reading this. I've probably spent way too much time writing this, most likely for no one to see it either, so if you've come along to this point, I appreciate your time, and hope you enjoyed the read, and might even agree with some of the points I made. anyway, please let me know in the comments if you have any ideas regarding Mordekaiser's future and the Siege of Noxus, Thank you once again for reading, and have nice day/ good night.