Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

Wait... is Zaun potentially cursed?

SaltyToplaneGoat·9/5/2017, 6:56:20 PM·26 votes·1,650 views

So I just realized something when reading through the lore of some zaunite champions. In Blitzcrank's lore there is a family of sump dwellers, and countless others that appear to have died from "toxic chemical spill". The same thing however also has affected Orianna.

And now the weird part: even if you remove all infected body parts, and then give the body mechanical systems to prevent a new infection, the sickness/the symptoms return on another body part. That ain't no poisioning, a poisonous substance would be gone when the infected part is removed.

If anything, that sounds like a freaking curse to me.

But where should a curse come from in this area? Piltover and Zaun are not really "magical" places, right?

So one thing could be that one of the main substances they use in Zaun (and that spills way too much) has an magical origin. Not sure why anyone thought "Shadow Isles Glibber" was a good source material for ANYTHING, but this is Zaun and I can see even something as stupid as this happening.

That would be the substance based theory, the other would be area based:

Did a massive event happen that did disturb the magics in this place? After all Riot confirmed that leylines existed, and they are like magical streams of energy that run through the land. Now, but if something were to happen to a source of such powerful energy, wouldn't it be a gigantic disaster?

Why yes obviousy, and there is one in Zaun's history: when the creation of the great canal went awry and half of Zaun got suddenly changed into possible Marai territory. Now the question was: how the hell were they trying to make this canal? The simplest idea would be explosives, but you need a shitton of material for that and gunpowder is fairly new when you look at the development level of Bilgewater pistols. So you need a big bang. A big bang needs a lot of energy. So where do you take it from? And what if you knew you had this massive river of energy going right through where you want the canal. So if you just make all that energy go "BOOM" - ta-daa! Instant Canal.

But as we all know, something went terribly, terribly wrong, this this might be the aftereffect - and it might be worse the further down you go, because the disortion gets stronger.

That would also explain how the substance Zac is from came to be in the deepest levels of the swamp...

There is more to Zaun that meets the eye, something downright terrible might be buried just underneath...

12 Comments

HonestJohnTheCon9/5/2017, 7:22:59 PM20 votes

I think it was confirmed that the creation of artificial hextech crystals is a major factor to the Zaun Gray (the sickness). As we know, hextech crystals are magical artifacts that allow non-mages to create magical effects.

So while Zaun probably isn't CURSED (it might even be blessed, see Janna), magic certainly has a detrimental effect on its atmosphere.

A Superb Villain9/6/2017, 1:09:37 AM5 votes

Piltover is sitting on top of a massive waste dump comprised of various chemical byproducts and, more importantly, magical fallout. Zaun is literally in that dump. I think the situation isn't a deliberate curse, it's just a matter of course living in a place that is surrounded by the very volatile mixture of the most dangerous substances native to Runeterra.

Gentleman Gems9/5/2017, 6:58:29 PM3 votes

This defiantly sounds interesting, and has some good points. Good Job.

some degenerate9/6/2017, 9:38:07 AM1 votes

It's something I've noticed a long while ago, back when we got the Zaun and Piltover lore update at the beginning of the season...But, I think there are narrative clues suggesting that Piltover and Zaun's artificial hextech & chemtech industries have some very horrific and downright morally inhumane implications going for them. And I mean _ Extremely dark_ implications.

INC. text mountain ahead:

First of all, Camille's bio states that her family couldn't rely traditional hextech crystals to propagate their business forever, due to the fact that they were a limited natural resource from an endangered species that they were quickly driven to extinction thanks to their efforts. So they "utilized shadow investments in chemtech and runic alchemy to produce and market the less powerful, but easier to procure, synthetic hex-crystals" to maintain their power in the tech industry, as directly stated from her bio page on the Universe site. The same artificial hextech crystals that are responsible for the pollution that's slowly infecting & killing off so many of Zaun's inhabitants.

I mean really, "shadow investments in runic alchemy." If we know anything from reading Ryze's lore, then there's some seriously powerful dark magic evolved. Definitely not the kind of dark magic that mortals should be dabbling in, for sure. After all, the ancient Rune Wars nearly destroyed Runeterra and Ryze's home-city was practically nuked out of existence because of it.

It get's even more suspicious with the recent lore bits that Riot added into their in-game loading screen durations this season. Here's one that always stood out for me in particular:

"The Incognium Runeterra in Piltover was designed to locate anyone in Runeterra, yet its creator mysteriously died before revealing the formula that powers it, leaving it inoperable."

Apparently, there are people very, very high on both Piltover and Zaun's social ladder who_ do not_ want this secret formula getting out and will do anything to keep said secret from being exposed to the public. Including outright murder. So that alone indicates that whatever they're doing is downright illegal and morally wrong on a massive scale.

And when we look back at traditional hextech crystals - we already know that those contain the souls of the Brackern, Skarner's race. In fact, this is already already common knowledge to Runeterra's population at large; Camille's family house did set up their public mining operations in Shurima after all. It's just that nobody ever knew that the Brackern were fully sentient beings in a state hibernation - assuming they were mindless beasts instead. So the Brackern aren't the "big secret" here, as everyone else found it excusable to drive them into extinction thanks to the misunderstandings mentioned above.

BUT... if you took took human souls and forcibly bound them into artificial hextech crystals.. well, that's bound to create some serious moral strife, isn't it?

Even moreso if the primary source of faux-hextech manufacturing is Zaun's impoverished working class, which Piltover and Zaun's elite already treat as a disposable resource. It's genius when you think about it, really. Repress the bulk of their working class from climbing up the social ladder so that they're forced to live in and die young from the Zaun grey. Younger life spans = more deaths. More deaths = more souls to amass and harvest as faux-hextech crystals. More crystals = more global expansion and profit for Piltover and the Zaunite elites. It's an endless cycle that works in their favor, and gives more purpose for Piltover & the Chem Barons to retain that massive working class population under their complete control. After all, those worker-drones even have a use after death! It's Runeterra's own Soylent Green scenario.

But what would happen if the secret was finally exposed? Well there would be a massive Zaunite social uprising overnight, no doubt. Innocent & unknowing Piltovan civilians would be massacred in the streets by the thousands. And there would no longer a steady supply of faux-hextech crystals. It's enough to completely destroy both Piltover and Zaun's economies altogether; taking Runeterra's global economy with them since both cities are the mercantile powerhouses of their world.

Also, I would think that human souls don't exactly function like Brackern souls. It probably isn't natural for them to be incased in crystals, let alone crystals that were artificially created from malevolent & dark runic magic - hence the Zaun grey. Maybe it's a stretch - but I think you're right in that the Zaun grey could very well be a supernatural "curse" of sorts. My crackpot theory is that the Zaun Grey is actually mass of both human and Brackern souls that have taken on a gaseous form after breaking free from their expelled & used crystals, and are attempting to "possess" victims in an effort to regain a new living form.

Over time, those "gaseous" souls eventually take on a collective, liquefied form.

And that's where Zac and the sentient pool of ooze come in.

Also some things about Ionia and Warwick, but this post is getting to long so I'm just gonna end it for now and maybe finish the rest of it tomorrow. Call it a stretch if you want, but those are the theories and conclusions I've come to. Would be neat if they turned out to be true but I'm not holding my breath, lol.

Zero Drive9/6/2017, 7:10:02 PM1 votes

Piltover/Zaun are mining out a certain magical crystal ore Skarner. The crystals have immense magical and spiritual energy. They're the remains of deceased Brackern Skarner and hold the living thoughts and memories of their ancestors. They're also somewhat conscious because they call out to younger Brackern in order to pass on their wisdom and magical power. It's the only way the Brackern have survived as a species. Just as young Brackern who do not find a crystal to fuse with tend to die, I imagine the consciousness in the crystal may also die if it does not find an heir. This explains why bothJayce Ekko had access to the shuriman crystals in spite of neither ever going to Shurima. To take it a step further, in Jayce's lore the crystal sang to him. My belief is that the crystals are not limited to Brackern, but may also bond with other species who it deems worthy (humans in this case). It may also be why Ekko was able to use the crystal shard to turn back time. I imagine while not fully whole, the crystal retained enough of its sentience to know Ekko wouldn't use the power for ill. I may be reading too much into it, but it really fills in a lot of gaps for me about two of my favorite champions.

As for a curse, a side effect of not being able to pass on their wisdom may in fact be a loss of sentience or the magic in the crystals turning negative. Kind of like milk that expires after a certain date.

Edit: I believe the crystals fused with Jayce Hextech Capacitor and Ekko Z-Drive in lieu of not having a Brackern. In a way this would make both the Hextech Capacitor and the Z-Drive a bit similar to the Darkin (without the whole... being a evil weapon that takes over its host). In fact.. maybe the Darkin are just Brackern Crystals that expired, turned negative (evil), but still search for a host. Instead of passing on their power though, they take over the body. Huh.

ChuShoe9/7/2017, 9:09:36 PM1 votes

I was under the impression that hextech itself was just incredibly volatile, and unpredictable.

CytheGuy9/6/2017, 1:35:05 AM1 votes

Ryze forgot to collect a Rune and now that rune is being used to f*ck with Zaun

ZeichiVos9/6/2017, 6:11:35 AM1 votes

The thing is, the blight was in her lungs for, what, weeks while her dad developed replacement lungs? Who knows where the poison could have spread to in that time, particularly as the toxin was described as dissolving her lungs. The odder thing, to me at least, is that months passed between her lungs being replaced and the next organ showing signs of deterioration. We know that the cloud needs to be ingested to cause harm, as Zaunites are described making skin contact with the stuff without dying. We also know that it usually causes a slow, prolonged death as the toxins spread throughout the body and cause multiple organ failure. Thus, I propose this: At some point in the process of her lungs liquefying, trace amounts of the toxin got into her system, perhaps via bloodstream. This spread throughout her body, causing more and more of her to begin deteriorating, thus explaining the need to replace all those organs, without it spreading super quickly. As stated in the bio, her heart being unaffected is nothing short of miraculous. This matches what happened to her father Corin.

I'd not be inclined to believe that a curse can only affect those who ingest it. Maybe thats just me being uncreative, but magical curses usually don't need to spread through ingestion.