Public poll to select the first playable faction in the next Factions arc
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Factions is a community-run League of Legends game mode and lore initiative. It was inspired by Riot’s original Noxus versus Ionia match, and is built around faction versus faction matchups, using faction-specific Champion rosters.
Factions is organized into arcs, also called “chapters” or “storylines”. Each arc lasts for about three months. For each arc, we select a set of factions, then come up with something they would be fighting about before the League. This could be a dispute over ownership of an artifact, for example. Or it might be a war: though the League publicly denounces all warfare, its mandate is specifically to prevent another Rune War, and it often finds itself able to do no more than keep fighting contained and time-limited, and to enforce basic rules of war, including a ban on the use of rune magic.
Once we have a dispute chosen, we write up some opening lore, and then the matches begin. Anyone can start a match. The results are submitted online, weighted based on the skill levels of the two teams, and scored. The outcomes of these matches, along with Summoner decisions in interactive lore events, shape the developing story, and ultimately a winner is chosen.
For example, in the previous arc, Lines in the Sand, Azir raised the Sun Disc and brought his ancient capital up from the sands, proclaiming a new Shuriman Empire and demanding entrance to the League. He declared that all of Shurima Desert, at the time a patchwork of protectorates and colonial holdings, was his to rule by right. The great powers of Valoran, generally quite displeased by this turn of events, selected Noxus and Piltover to represent their interests on the Fields of Justice. In the end, Shurima was recognized as a sovereign nation, but though it retook the key cities of Bel’zhun to the east and Dar’khos to the south, much of Shurima Desert fell under Noxian rule as Shurima’s internal tensions cast Azir’s court into chaos and the steely discipline of Noxian legions drove the god-emperor’s armies back.
The next arc, Arc VIII, will begin in April. This poll is the first of a series of polls which will determine the factions that will be involved. We plan to structure this arc as a “2v2”, with two factions allied on each side of the dispute. (Each pair of allied factions will also have a point of internal tension, and matches will happen between “allies”. It’s hard to get any two factions of Valoran to agree on anything, entirely.) Thus, we will open with this poll to select one faction, and then (by Factions tradition) give the Summoners who led Noxus to victory in the previous arc a private vote to select the first faction’s rival. We’ll then have a final public poll to pick an ally for each of these two factions.