Lore:
Terror incarnate part1
Fiddlesticks as we know him today, a basic executioner and powerful secret weapon in wars, is a mere shadow of the pure terrifying demon he once was. He was once called the mighty Formido, the spirit of fear, but how he became a scarecrow, few people know. My name is Ricó, and luckily for you, I know…
It was a beautiful night. The calm people who live on the small town of Palus out in the bubbling bog have just ended their daily businesses. There were farmers, blacksmiths, supply-runners and small markets. The people lived just near the Serpentine river, the largest river in all Valoran. This being a trade route, the townsfolk of Palus made use of the opportunity to set up a toll gate stretching across the river to bid as a large trading centre.
It was on this beautiful night that a terrible wind struck from the North-Western regions. Unlike any ordinary wind from the South or East, this was a cold wind…this was the type of wind that carried the Harrowing across the sea from the Shadow Isles. All the people rushed to their homes, closing doors, windows and any gap they saw. Some people took to the local sorcerer’s quarters to beg him to banish whatever darkness is to come, me being one of them, but the sorcerer hid deep within his hut, in a place nobody would find him. He was terrified, an emotion he had never shown before.
As the dark mist surrounded the town, I could hear a menacing laugh echo through the bog. This was not the Harrowing, it was the darkness that followed a powerful spirit and his minions. The spirit may be of origin within the Shadow Isles, but it was stronger than any spirit dealt with before. We hear the faint noise of an immense horde of crows swarming in the distance. It was getting louder and thus indicating that it was getting nearer and nearer. Suddenly crows burst from the darkness of the mist around the town. There were crows everywhere, ruining the food supplies, destroying houses in their wake and nearly killing everyone in the town. Within this storm of crows, Me and a few other people could see the faint green glimmer of the one causing this destruction. We named it Formido (which means Terror in Latin).
After the storm passed, Formido strode through the town, his body made of charcoaled bones surrounded by the green glow of the ectoplasmic fire of a demonic spirit from the Shadow Isles. He spoke with an echoing voice that was so loud that the people of Bilgewater could probably hear it, he said, “You all think you know fear! You think you’ve felt it! You think you can control it, overpower it! Well you are wrong, I am fear, I am terror, I am your nightmares come to life! No-one can overcome me, I am greater than any mage’s powers! Try, if you will, to stop me! Believe me, you won’t get far!”
All around Valoran, there was amazing commotion to work out what to do about this new terror. Even Targon panicked. In the end they decided to send their armies to evict the creature from our world, but to no avail. The armies never came back. The highest orders of Valoran, including Shurima, Demacia, Noxus, Zaun, Freljord, Piltover, Targon, Bilgewater and Ionia, all set aside their differences and collaborated to find a way to rid Valoran of this new threat. They decided to summon up all their most powerful mages, this idea suggested by a mysterious, blue skinned man in a cloak (you may know that this, ofcourse, was Ryze).
Whilst the capitals of Valoran were planning the eviction of Formido, we in the town of Palus were suffering. Formido had taken the town hall and turned it into a floating castle above the town. He had turned the remaining townsfolk into slaves, who did whatever he said or they were torn apart by crows. Ofcourse, like any overlord-situation, there was a rebellion forming. I was ofcourse a trained fighter with a chain and one of our town’s sorcerer’s best students, and now I was the leader of the rebellion. I observed Formido from a distance and tried to figure out his weakness, or (most ironically) his fear, but it was a dangerous job forming a functional rebellion and mine was no exception. We risked being caught every day. We would go to the docks of the trade centre and sneak a few people away from the town with the help of traders who ran through the river.
One day we tried to ask the help of a mysterious, blue skinned man in a cloak, apparently on his way from the South to Freljord, but when he stopped by the docks he got out of his boat and said in a rough voice, “Take the boat, I am staying, and I suggest as many of you as possible leave now. Where is the local mage?” he turned to me. “He perished in the first wave of Formido’s attack, sir,” I said hastily. “Well isn’t there an heir, a successor, an apprentice?” the man said, slowly growing angry. “That would be me, sir,” I said hesitantly. “Well then boy, you are the local mage. Come, we have work to cover,” he said and walks to the nearest hut.
The town was nearly empty that night, me and Ryze were still in the hut. He told me that in a few days, the strongest mages from all the corners of Valoran (Bandle city excluded) would arrive at the docks to combat Formido. I, ofcourse, felt that it was impossible to send this demon away without punishing him for his acts. I told Ryze of my training in imprisonment of spirits and controlling other creatures. So we settled at imprisoning Formido in our world. We made a scarecrow with cloth for body, head and hands with an internal structure of branches we cut to limit his movement.
When Formido was not looking we created a mystic funnel that connected to the scarecrow that we hung on a lamp pole. The other mages had arrived and asked how they can help, so we planned to lure Formido to hit the barrier and be sucked and bound to the scarecrow. The Northern mages took to the North- and North-Western sides of Palus, the mages of the South blocked the West to the South and the mages of the East joined me a Ryze by the binding totem in the East of Palus to help bind Formido to his prison.
So the events played out: Formido woke from his sleep to find his slaves were not present to serve him. He freaked out and burst his castle to pieces, crushing the buildings below with debris. He screeched and soared through the town to look for his slaves, only to find the mages. He got frightened at the pattern the mages made about the town. He was intoxicated with what I call his own medication. He got scared and tried to dash past the mages, but to no avail, he only hit the barrier they formed. He freaked and his body splintered into an immense horde of crows. He was trapped and weakened by his own power. I saw the opportunity and yelled to all the mages at the totem to start to pull his essence toward the suction of the imprisonment funnel Ryze and I had created. His body reformed and stretched out as he clawed and screeched as he was sucked into the scarecrow body. The scarecrow rattled as Formido was sucked into it and as the last of Formido disappears into the scarecrow, it detaches from the lamp pole and flops onto the floor. I use my spirit sensing abilities to locate Formido. He was in the prison we had made for him.
The mist about Palus disappeared to show the sunlight, something I had seen so long ago. It felt warm and welcoming. Within a few months, the town was repaired and all the people had come back. We had a funeral for all the people who had died in the reign of Formido and the town continued to exist…
Terror incarnate part2
Far off to the islands of Ionia, Formido was imprisoned in a tomb deep in the forests, where the Vastaya were asked to watch over the dark creature. Here Formido was held and for so long he showed no threat that eventually the world forgot about him, forgetting the danger he was back then when the North-Western wind carried him to Palus where he destroyed entire armies of men and tore villages apart. This was until the day the Vastaya opened the tomb in curiosity to find that Formido was missing.
In a far off land, near the mouth of the Serpentine river, a summoner in Kaladoun was messing with dark forces for he was seeking to summon the strongest champion to ever take part in the annual summoning battles. He sealed himself in the Eastern summoning chamber and, no matter what the other summoners said of using dark magic in summoning, he continued anyway.
Days passed and the other summoners grew weary of what darkness was happening within the chamber. They broke open the door to find the corpse of the summoner by the door with crows on top of him. In the distance of the dark unlit chamber they saw two glowing green eyes with the faint creaking sound, like wooden stilts being used in complete silence. Then they saw the metallic glimmer of a blade before being slashed down by this creature in the darkness. The summoners beyond the door heard the slashing of flesh and screaming of dying men, along with the screeching of crows. They ran to block the doorway up and called for help in securing it. They trapped the creature within the chamber and heard an ear shattering scream from within the chamber. They called it Fiddlesticks for the description that the surviving summoners gave. They were gravely wounded and traumatized by the sight of their friends being wounded by this monster.
The Institute of war heard of the incident and sent people to manage the situation. They turned the Eastern summoning chamber into an execution hall where criminals were thrown into through a hole in the roof of the chamber to be executed by Fiddlesticks.
Many summoners to this day try to tame the fire within Fiddlesticks to be able to use him, but to the point of losing their sanity by nightmares of crows and a dark creature with green eyes standing in the distance, watching them being torn apart by these possessed birds…
