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Some thoughts about Vladimir

SaltyToplaneGoat··10 votes·1,913 views

Don't get me wrong, current Vlad as we know him is one digusting guy to deal with, but reading his lore there is something that makes me think: in some kind of weird fucked up ritual his teacher goes into some kind of "blood-pool" form and Vlad absorbes him - and with that the knownldge of him and every other hemomancer before him.

But... is Vladimir a collective existence now? Or is he still an individual? Is he actually in control, or is he jst a puppet posessed by his old masters? Because if he didn't just take in their knowledge but also their personalities, it wouldn't be weird for them to surpress his original personality and use him as a vessel to reach their goals.

That would make him quite a tragic character: he's maybe just some dude with a blood-fetish, but he has voices in his head telling him to murder everything and drink their blood while following some kind of agenda - and those voices are not his imagination, but actual entities that have control over him.

39 Comments

Over Innsmouth2 votes

As far as Riot canon goes, he's an individual whose accumulated (likely) centuries worth of a Sith-like Rule-of-Two style of master-student teaching, making him the pinnacle of Blood Magic that's ever existed so far.

I do really like your idea though, but sadly it probably won't get reflected in the update, since that'd require a VO Update. He's only getting a gameplay update and associated visuals to match abilities (although I keep my fingers crossed for a Shen-level VU). Personally, I think that he and Swain should be sat down and swapped in terms of update priority. People know Swain and what he does, his identity and gameplay pattern are significantly healthier and need less tweaking. Vlad is a relic in terms of gameplay comparable to Xin Zhao in terms of binary-ism and his incredibly linear playstyle. Swain should be mid-year update, Vlad should be the big, Sion-level project that Riot's proposed.

Blood Magicks1 votes

Basically this. We get hints that Dmitri talks to him in his mind occasionally, but ingame and in his life (being the cunning politician he is) he is far too rational and collected for someone with split personality disorder.

IMO the very point of Haemomancers inheriting each other is research unconstrained by mortality. Each blood mage is aware of the precious knowledge they serve to store and seeks to expand and pass it onwards. Which means one day, when Vlad gets tired of life (because he probably can stop aging if he wants to) he will start looking for an apprentice.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

They really should make some VO-Updates. Miss Fortune's VO does in absolutely no way fit to her grim and dark personality... also, she still mentions summoners...

Over Innsmouth1 votes

I'd personally be happy with a year that had no new champs, just hard-focused on updates, VO's, VU's and everything in between.

As far as I'm concerned (and a lot of other fanfic writers) the LoL and the IoW are still canon, mostly since we don't have a substitute in the new lore yet. When written well, it makes for some fantastic stories, and I for one am never tired of the premise that Champions are like high schoolers in the halls of the IoW.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

As I'm a writer myself I feel you there ^^ Although I have not written in ages... feel free to check out "A Reaper Reborn" on ff.net. Although that is not really my best work as it is quite old by now... Anyways, it deals with exactly the topic this thread is about ^^

The IoW was the perfect excuse to mash all these characters together, but no matter how much we wish for it it is no longer canon. However, that doesn't mean you can't bring certain characters together.

Riot even offered the perfect excuse for this: Bard walking around leaving portals everywhere. A Freljordian suddenly ending up on Mt Targon? Why not, Bard makes it possible, sending people on magical journies because he's one massive troll...

Over Innsmouth1 votes

When Bard came out I kinda figured he'd be the connecting point of all the characters (like an actual bard telling stories that connects them), and he'd sort of...be Mrs. Frizzle to the Champions of the Magic School Bus.

Sadly, Riot never went anywhere with it. I'm cool with the stuff they're doing that focuses on individual stories with other Champions being present (Burning Tides, Shadow and Fortune and Jhins bio), but I'd like more of it.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

There should be a collection of short stories of champions who fall into Bard portals and totally have their day ruined by it.

Some are teleported only a small distance and they are like "wut?!"

And some wake up on the other and of the world like "WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!" and then they have to deal with that, need to find their way back home, meet other champs etc etc.

Yeah, champions need more interactions in lore. Because why shoudl a bunch of people that has never seen or heard of each other fight for no reason at all? Makes no sense. Not all champions need to be connected, but enough influencal ones to keep this story running...

Blood Magicks2 votes

Nice! We (TheUntitledKing and I) are doing a mutual effort in giving Vladimir a proper characterisation, although it's not done yet. It's called "Pawns:Square One" and it's also on ff.net.

Our Vladimir is different to yours though, we felt that the more complex, real and fucked up we made him the higher we scored on the board of literary success. Tbh he is a Noxian, after all.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

Well, tbh my story was supposed to be more of a comedy, so I left the dark angsty stuff at home for this one ^^ But I can see now your approach can work ofc ;)

TaoistMaster1 votes

At least she doesn't call you a fool like morde

Malicious Metal3 votes

Well he's got a point.-

SaltyToplaneGoat2 votes

Not really. That walking tin can doesn't even have a brain - or at least whatever he had has rotted already over the course of the last centuries ^^ I doubt he is in the position to call ANYONE a fool ^^

Malicious Metal2 votes

It didn't rot away, his corpse was charred to nothing more than blackened bone after they finally took him down and ended his reign of terror for the first time.

SaltyToplaneGoat2 votes

So his brain has been reduced to a pile of smoking ashes... not sure if that is making it any better ;)

Spizzle90001 votes

Personally I am most worried they'll make his Q a skillshot and take away the ability to build AP items and still get health. Like, thematically his Q makes zero sense as a skillshot, ya know?

Over Innsmouth1 votes

I just hope they don't do what they did with Zilean's Q and make it a horrible to use skillshot. If I were in charge of Vlad rework, passive and Q would stay, with passive scaling worse early and harder later, and Q having a hp cost that mitigates the gain, but actually reaps gains when an Aatrox-style resource bar is filled (granting %bonus on all healing rather than AS), amongst a tonne of other changes.

You'd have read this if you checked out me and Malicious's thread from a while back.

Spizzle90002 votes

You saying he's disgusting in game, or lore-wise? And yeah I agree with TheUntitledKing on that it's kinda like the Rule of Two.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

Ingame he's disgusting because of failed design.

In lore he's disgusting because he murders people without caring. "Oh hey let's show off a little" -> murders the palace guards for fun. Also, he's an arrogant little shit with a horrible sense of humor... but that's just my opinion ^^

Not sure if that Rule of two is a thing tho... I mean, Noxus has a Blood Cult by now...

Spizzle90001 votes

The Rule of Two thing is a Sith thing which means only two Sith lords can exist at once, and the older will take the other as an apprentice and pass on all of their knowledge. The apprentice must kill their master if they want to take on their own apprentice (Idk if it's somehow magically enforced or just to prevent warring factions within the Sith? Idk). Although Vladimir also gets the power acquired by previous Haemomancers because he carries their essence kinda, their magic.

Personally I like his design, but that's probably just cause I main him so I'm incredibly biased.

Well, it's Noxus. That's how you get further in Noxus: by proving your strength. He's definitely arrogant af, but wouldn't you be if you knew you could kill someone just by thinking about it? I know I would be, and would probably use that power frequently (don't worry, I'd join the military to get rid of terrible people like murderers and people in ISIS). I'd be ridiculously arrogant if I had Vladimir's powers, and I think anyone would be.

His sense of humor is absolutely awful and it's fantastic! :D

Does Noxus have a blood cult? I think it's just that so many of their kits have elements that involve blood because of how brutal Noxians are.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

It is mentioned in Gangplanks lore I think, a noxian warrior wih blood cult tattoos.

It would be more than weird of Vald had nothing to do with that...

James Stone2 votes

Nah, he's a dick. He absorbed the power and MAYBE the conscience of his former Master and trainer, but he's still himself, and "himself" is A HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE dick.

This ain't some Alucard shit, whom himself is also a giant dick, but smaller than Vlad, Vladimir is really just a pollock with a huge attitude problem. He's an individual and that individual is a massive tosser

Krizalid1 votes

He's individual posessing knowledge and powers of others.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

The question is: is it JUST the knownledge and powers or is there an army of old dead people in his head now controlling everything he does?

Blood Magicks1 votes

I think he has almost complete autonomy with the "army of old dead people" interfering only when he's in deep coma or sleep or there is significant danger to his life. Lore seems to state he had no purpose after he killed Dmitri, so there's no puppetmaster dragging him places.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

That depends if he's aware of this. I remember a quote going like "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely beliefe that they are free." Is he really free of any influence? We can't know for sure...

Blood Magicks1 votes

Oh he's definitely influenced by their memories, the same way we all are influenced by, say, our childhood experiences. He became more than human the moment he absorbed Dmitri. His personality sort of shifted from apprentice kid to blood mage. I just can't buy into the notion they actively interfere into his daily life and control him since they were probably just like him when they were alive.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

I that case he would have stopped to be a individual human being.

However, another theory is, that there is one super ancient hemomancer who always took over his pupil. Dmitri might have been a lot older than we think. Probably this is his way of achieving immortality: merging with a younger body of a blood mage every few decades, either surpressing the young personality or slowly re-programming them without them noticing until not a single trace of their original individuality is left.

Blood Magicks2 votes

This is too far into theory territory. Lore hints there were hemomancers before Dmitri anyway, and since a blood mage can live for as long as they please, there's really no point in tutoring a new human for years instead of just draining them. I imagine at some point they get tired of life and decide to pass their gifts (and responsibilities) onwards.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

"As long as they want" does not mean "without any condition". And, let's be honest here, "Eating a human every few decades to stay immortal" sounds like a classical immortaility trope to me.

Also, it does makes sense to tutor them first - probably that's the condition so the absorbtion can happen in the first place. Both can turn into blood -> Mash that together -> Reform as one individual being. That's not something a hemomancer could pull off with just some random dude he found in the streets.

Blood Magicks1 votes

Just because something is a trope does not mean we want it in our stories. It's not even the only immortality trope out there to be honest. If you can regenerate your arm hacked off through blood magic, then you can probably repair cell damage by draining someone else. Also, the absorption ritual does not happen by them being mashed together, Dmitri simply drains himself to give what he has to Vladdie. I understand it's a cool theory, but chances are it's not what happened.

morris11 votes

Reading Ahri's lore I also have a weird feeling that Ahri is a he. And that's weird.

Skelenth1 votes

You better delete that, or some weird sht is going to spill out of the dark corners of the web

morris11 votes

It's about time someone came here to debunk / confirm this.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

Dunno. Animals do not really have gender conceptions. However, Ahri looks and sounds feminine and as long there isn't a line in lore that say explicitly "MASSIVE DONG!" it can be said that she is female ^^

SchaakaKon1 votes

Those just arnt 9 tails flailing about O.O

Have all the Japanese girls run as fast as possible!

Fasmodey1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Moraru Maurice,realm=EUNE,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=41k078ba,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2016-02-09T16:27:52.019+0000)

Reading Ahri's lore I also have a weird feeling that Ahri is a he. And that's weird.

What did push you to suppose it?

option paralysis1 votes

How could you even think someone is controlling him and telling him to kill if this is in his lore: " the teenaged Vladimir had brutally murdered two boys of his age, for no better reason than to enjoy the intoxicating scarlet bloom that surged forth. He realized immediately that he would never be able to suppress his murderous desires." That was before he met the monk.

Just read the league judgements about him - http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Vladimir/Background

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

Well, that's still penuts compared to what he did after his initiation to hemomancy... also, I think we can blame that one incident on the classical noxian puberty setting in ;)

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