I'm somewhat disappointed with Varus' new lore

Malicious Metal·11/22/2017, 9:48:21 PM·121 votes·27,246 views

Him being a father and a husband to a murdered family, leading him to do the unthinkable and release the thing that lurked in the pit of Pallas was extremely important to him as a character. it made him such a tragic champion who, seeking retribution, embraced a fate worse than death to avenge his fallen loved ones and destroy the Noxians responsible for the slaughter of his kin.

His new lore, kinda falls short. I like the Darkin part, but The human Varus is so much more interesting than a sentient demon weapon.

Just my two cents on the topic.

163 Comments

Ralanr11/22/2017, 9:52:27 PM41 votes

I agree. It may be a placeholder but honestly it ruins the aspects of Varus that made him tragic.

And it makes Rhaast calling him demon pants make no sense. At least to me as I assumed he called Varus that when talking to the person and not the Darkin.

RiotDyQuill11/23/2017, 4:13:51 AM33 votes

Hey all - I'm with the team behind this update to Varus, and this was a very accidental early release (PBE, d'oh). Totally get how jarring this is, and I promise there's major context coming. - as in, significantly more than just this bio.

We don't want to rush the actual release (our plan was to put the whole narrative out on 11/30, and the final preparations for that are happening now), so if it's cool with all of you I'd rather field some questions here that I can answer now, and you can get the full story for Varus when it launches.

EDIT: gonna call it on the questions for now, and disappearing for a few days with the family for Thanksgiving. Thanks for all the comments, and we'll be back soon

ModValeeva11/22/2017, 11:17:21 PM23 votes

I really dont agree with the changes here.

Varus has such tragic lore, a part of him that made him relatable in many aspects. He's one of only three parents within the game, something we really lack character wise and to take that from him is just making that group smaller and smaller.

Varus is a human and should always be a human. I feel rather disconnected to my main now and that sucks.

I really don't want to write a giant wall of text like I could, I got a headache and now I'm actually devastated at how butchered they made this.

Furor Nexis11/22/2017, 10:38:32 PM20 votes

Heavy breathing

Alrighty, this new lore direction on Varus.

To put it simply, I don't like this direction. Malicious Metal has already highlighted the points that I have considered important to who Varus was. I'd like to offer my own thoughts on those points. While it's been guessed for a long while that Varus' bow was hinted to be a Darkin weapon, the concept of Varus the Human struggling against his fate before he ran out of time is what made him an engaging character.

To sweep the Human off, throwing away a perfect tragedy to make room to just shove in the 'Darkin' quota feels cheap and wrong. Varus had focus. Emotion. An unstoppable drive to quench his vengeance before his being was burned away by the power of Darkin Bow. He had an amazing engagement as a character and hung on the precipice of one of the best story-driven characters in League.

The new 'Darkin' Varus has none of those. 'Darkin' Varus is a sadist who got mad over his imprisonment.

The direction as it is right now is poorly thought out. While these bios do represent an idea to see where the narrative team can go with updating champion lore, this, in my opinion is not the way to go about it. It completely destroys a character who had everything going for them and replaces them with a cheap, uninteractive knock off.

While talking to Ralanr he made a fantastic observations on the thematic of the Darkin we see.

Aatrox is the end result of a Darkin completely taking over it's host. Kayn & Rhaast represent the final struggle between Darkin / host Varus represented the beginning of change when bound with the host.

Had the direction been more along the lines of the Corruption of Pallas been retconned to the Darkin Bow, and Varus made a deal with the weapon after his distraught losses during his duties as a guardian of Pallas then a seamless interconnection between the Human Varus & The Darkin Bow could have been achieved.

I'm disappointed, and heavily infuriated that this was the direction chosen. Foundations & Narrative is much more capable than using this new flavor text basis as a form of new direction, and I feel it's sub-par to the Riot standard.

Quepha11/22/2017, 10:27:32 PM19 votes

Did Riot actually just kill off another character to have them taken over by a different entity again?

These rewrites are getting worse and worse.

Over Innsmouth11/22/2017, 11:47:02 PM15 votes

If Riot's going to make the demon pants themselves the character can we change the splash portrait ingame to a picture of his crotch?

LugiaPaladin11/22/2017, 11:02:21 PM14 votes

In all honestly I don't know why they couldn't just say "yeah that thing in the pit was a Darkin, official confirmation lets see where we can take his story from here" rather than rewrite his lore to put the main character focus on the bow and not the man wielding the bow.

6FlagsFunnelCake11/22/2017, 11:29:20 PM13 votes

It's most likely we might get some aspects of Old Varus's humanity in the mentioned hunters that were used to make Varus's physical form. But even still, I'm don't understand what it really means.

Who are these two hunters that are mentioned are why are there two of them? I thought a Darkin only needs to possess one body. And what do they mean when they say they "still resist every step of the way? And how is Varus able to possess two Ionian Hunters if he still only looks half human? AND WHATS WITH THE DEMON PANTS.

I don't know, as interesting as it is I was hoping it'll go something like this:

Old Varus lore, where he has a family that are slaughtered in front of him in the Noxian Invasion.
The name of the Darkin is PALLAS, who was imprisoned in the Pit of Pallas, which the Ionians are guarding
Varus is angered by the death of his family and willingly takes the bow, but Pallas is the strangest of his Darkin brothers and doesn't possess Varus as Aatrox or Kayn would, as he sees Varus as a worthy warrior and grants him power to seek vengeance and feed the Darkin's hunger.