How Magic, The Cosmos and Spirits work. Maybe. Sod if I know.

http://i.imgur.com/nLXRvHF.jpg[/img]

So with the introduction of super powerful, almost god like entities within the League of Legends universe that actually exist in a universal sense, further questioning has opened up in the the nature of everything in said universe. But there’s one in particular I’m going to discuss today.

What the sod is magic?

This question was first posed by a Summoner called Rebonak, and I wanted to expand on some ideas and thoughts I had about the idea of what the sod magic is within the League setting.

Keep in mind though that what I’m about to talk about is based on very, very, VERY limited information, so bear with me if these seems very bare bones.

So first lets start with the Magical Friction and the Celestial Firmament.

For the very astute lore nerd, you may have heard about these. If you haven’t, then I don’t blame you. These things have been mentioned a combined total of...three or four times? The Friction hasn’t even been mentioned in the lore itself; only be Rioters. Aurelion Sol mentions the Firmament once. So what are they? Well let’s analyse:

> [{quoted}](name=Loping Cinder,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Ev3qQR4G,comment-id=00820001,timestamp=2015-03-06T23:14:21.371+0000) > > 1. The green ball that sits in Bard's horn is a harmonic key that splits layers of reality and taps directly into the magical friction that all worlds emit.

So that’s the Magical Friction and how it applies to Bard. Bet you didn’t know that one! Well some of you might’ve but that’s besides the point. Anyway what about the Firmament:

"Hope. Wonder. Insignificance. Imagine what they'll feel when I complete the stars." "I wouldn't navigate by the stars. They are a work in progress." "Nothing they build can endure like the celestial firmament."

So basically the Celestial Firmament is the official name of Aurelion Sol’s greatest work: the stars. Firmament basically means sky or heaven, so he’s essentially making a celestial paradise of sorts; something equatable to a heavenly realm a.k.a. the stars in the sky. He hasn’t finished it yet but he’s working on it. When he’s not doing Targon’s dirty work. Wankers.

Anyway, so we have these two concepts, but what the sod are they anyway, given how little we know about them?

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CX8iSobsKTY/maxresdefault.jpg

On the Friction, given the way that Bard uses it, it seems to be an underlying force of the universe, buried within layers of reality and an intrinsic part of worlds within the League universe. Friction as a name implies it’s something that comes from the blending of the layers together, and given that the Friction is accessible on all worlds, it’s likely a binding force between all of the worlds that exist in the universe. The friction is likely what makes any kind of portals work, considering that Bard’s portals are essentially just him tapping in to the friction to open gaps in the universe itself to traverse through.

My personal assumptions about the friction are that this is a force found beyond the physical realm that binds together all worlds together. I personally imagine the friction as being a literal friction, where worlds are sort of rubbing up against each other in a metaphysical sense. From the act of friction itself the energy here radiates through the walls of reality in to the physical realm, and then radiates worlds with that energy. I believe this could be where magic comes from in its entirety, where this radiated energy becomes distilled and less “pure” so to speak, and comes to permeates the land, causing magic to appear naturally in the world.

In this example, we have this distilled form original form of magic, having radiated down from the friction, then saturates the world in various areas, causing a wide variety of magical powers to appear. True Ice in the Freljord, the Brackern’s existence in Shurima, elemental beings like Anivia, Brand and Malphite could potentially originate from phenomenon like this.

In turn, I can imagine forms of magic being derived from directly tapping in to the Friction, particularly arcane, which seems to be one of, if not the purest form of magic that exists. I mean where the sod would arcane magic even come from? A lot of magic can be attributed to nature, and we see a great deal of elemental magic in Runeterra. We have so many people who can utilise ice magic, several users of air, fire and lightning magic, and other elements such as sand, earth, crystal and water. Hell maybe arcane is actually what you find in the friction, and all other magic is just distilled arcane.

However this is ALL speculation. Sod if I know where magic actually comes from, but these are my musings. Anyway on to the Firmament.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w9xvUIrJTug/VuHZQwr_P3I/AAAAAAAA4vo/xVYjsBEE_dE/s640/aurelion-sol-bio-banner.jpg

The firmament is much easier to nail down than the friction, mainly because it's a tangible thing; the stars in the sky, but it’s still incredibly important, considering the scope and capabilities of celestial power. That’s the power that forged the stars in the sky and transformed humans in to immensely powerful entities in the form of the Ascended, but how does that tie together?

Well it all comes back to Aurelion Sol and the entities like him, who are mighty Celestial beings. The thing to remember about these beings though is that they’re much different to Aurelion, and likely don’t function in the same way he does. Aurelion focuses on the stars, while these other beings may have different pursuits, powers and domains. Gravity, black holes, dark energy and the like, all of these fall in to this category for potential domains of celestial beings, and we’ve even seen a skin relating to this idea: Dark Star Thresh, who is basically Aurelion Sol’s polar opposite, but the kicker here is that this skin likely represents Thresh as a celestial who wields all the power of dark stars and consumes things like a black hole.

Going back to Aurelion Sol, he treats his stars with great care not just because they’re his art, but also because he imparts some of his own essence in to every star. As such every star is linked to Aurelion Sol, and thus every instance of celestial power ties back to him in some way. With this in mind the Celestial Firmament is kinda sorta a huge interweaving family tree of stars all connected to Aurelion Sol, so Aurelion Sol himself could be considered the heart of the firmament, especially considering it’s made by him, by his design, with his own essence as the fuel for the art.

This draws interesting questions for Bard and Soraka, considering they both utilise celestial power like Aurelion Sol does, but while Soraka’s power actually comes from Stars, Bard’s not like that as far as we know. His celestial powers are vastly different to those utilised by both Aurelion Sol and Soraka. This indicates that celestial power in its entirety is beyond both Bard and Aurelion Sol and they both only tap in to some of it. If we go back to the Dark Star Thresh example, we can look to that as an example as a potentially drastically different take on celestial power.

Looking at this then it’s possible that not only do specific powers fall under the umbrella of celestial power, but also the fundamental concepts they embody, such as the firmament and the friction. If we consider these things as essentially to the function of the universe then them all being intrinsically linked makes some sense as the universe doesn’t work in components; it works as one whole, and so these forces need to operate together, in synchronicity. The Friction and the Firmament drawing from different forces that tie together when you boil them down to their origins makes some kind of sense to me.

But then, is magic the same as celestial power? What I’d say yes and no. Yes because they originally draw from the same power and have the same origin. Maybe. No because they represent different forces in the universe, and as such while they’re tied together, are distinct.

So I reckon that magic is its own thing separate from the celestial power we see from Aurelion Sol and Soraka, but ties in to those things again as the “star power” and magic tie in to the overall idea of celestial power. The main thing I’m suggesting here is that the power we see from Aurelion Sol and stars in general is just one aspect of the whole concept of celestial power, and that it takes various forms, including what Runeterrans call magic.

Good god that was a very round about way of getting to that. Sorry for the rambling.

But of course I’m missing something here; I listed spirits in the title. So why am I talking about them? Well because the implications of Nagakabouros and Kindred are weird and cool.

http://news.cdn.leagueoflegends.com/public/images/pages/2015/agd/img/kindred-image2.png

Let’s start with Kindred because this just leads in to things neatly. They’re weird, ok? Very weird. Mainly because they break the laws of physics by being omnipresent, and are also a universal concept, meaning that the most powerful, god like entities in the lore such as Aurelion Sol and Bard fall under the rule of “you’re gonna die one day”. The being that forged the stars and the protector of the entire sodding universe are destined to die some day. I want to re-emphasize this: Kindred is universal. Everything dies, even beings like Aurelion Sol and Bard. But why does death have sway over beings like this? I feel like that’s very important.

Something that I’m wondering about right now is the nature of the spirit in the Runeterran universe. Given how everything dies, even things you wouldn’t consider to be alive, and will all meet Kindred some day, it implies that spirit is found in everything, and drawing back to what I was saying before, this seems to be another fundamental part of existence. Everything has a soul and that soul will eventually pass on and leave the physical realm. Back to where? Back to Nagakabouros of course!

And then we draw back to Nagakabouros and how she’s described as a god who encompasses everything. EVERYTHING. Given how she ties in with life energies and souls, I feel like I forgot that everything means everything, so I want to iterate this, especially when considering Aurelion Sol’s opinion on the matter:

“You do not understand your God, Illaoi.” “I’ve seen the main act. You're only a third rate cover band.”

I’ve always found this interesting because this isn’t Aurelion Sol calling out Illaoi for being stupid or worshipping a stupid God, this is about him calling her stupid for not comprehending Nagakabouros as she actually is, or simply not grasping the wider meaning of her. Illaoi’s a person very focused on souls and motion, but really, everything moves. Aurelion Sol says it himself, that the cosmos is ever shifting. But of course we know that whatever Nagakabouros actually is, Aurelion Sol doesn’t even compare to her. He’s a crab mocking the worm for not understanding how the river works, when he’s still a sodding crab.

So to get to the point, here’s what I think in relating this whole post to Nagakbouros. Ready? Ok here goes.

I think that all of the fundamental forces of the universe are encompassed by Nagakabouros, and that all things from magic to celestial energy to the very spirits of all things in the universe originate from her. She’s the literal Brahman of the Runeterran universe, and encompasses everything in an endless cycle.

Beings like Bard, Aurelion Sol and Kindred exist as arbiters of this cycle, and while they may have their own perceptions of how these things work, they don’t grasp the full picture. Personally I think that Aurelion Sol knows the least about Nagakabouros and Bard knows the most, with Kindred being closer to Bard’s knowledge than Aurelion Sol’s. These entities work to keep the universe’s structure intact and ensure the cycle keeps moving organically, but being a part of the cycle themselves they’re not exempt from it, and get caught up in the sway of things as anyone would.

The powers of the universe are all linked from the origin within Nagakabouros, but become more distinct the closer to reality you get. These things don’t exist as physical concepts; if anything their physical incarnations are beings like the Celestial entities, who embody and control that power in the physical world.

So what is magic? Nagakabouros. Well, a part of her at least.

http://i.imgur.com/nPwaP2O.jpg[/img]

Well that was probably super anticlimactic. Eh whatever, I said my peace. Now I can go back to playing video games and drawing and stuff.

Also I hope I explained this in some form of coherence, considering that, thinking back, I was muddling my words and thoughts a lot during the thinking and writing process here.

Also as a final note, I like to look at Bard, Kindred and Aurelion Sol as kinda being representative of the three main gods from Hinduism: Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma respectively, given their roles as beings focused on creation, existence and destruction. I know that it’s a poor parallel to draw but Nagakabouros essentially being space/spirit snake Brahman just gets me all excited about cosmic stuff.

Anyway those are my thoughts. What do you think? Am I just talking out of my arse or is there something to this? Did I not explain something well? If so ask and I shall try my best to re-iterate my meaning, though I’ll probably cock it up knowing me.

Ah well, hope you enjoyed the read regardless!

P.S. Don’t ask me how the sod demons work with spirits and this whole system. I haven’t got a sodding clue. Also I did use some varying images to spice up the post a bit. Don;t judge me.

TL;DR: Go pay tithe to Nagakabouros you ungrateful twat.