Where do black people like Lucian, Ekko, Pyke and Senna originate from on Runeterra?

Artificial Human·11/28/2019, 12:40:22 AM·21 votes·17,268 views

We have a fledged out world map and the newest faction was Ixtal with the poster child being Quiyana, in True Damage she is a latin star so clearly Ixtal is inspired by south america. Now we are set and the IP can be expanded throughout more games.

Runeterra World Map

The game exist since 2009 and the first black champion was the 115th released in 2013, out of 148 champions (including Aphelios) we have 4 black champions . They are all good champions although, all rather thin.

Why is there no fantasy Africa (Sub-Saharan), where are the roots of these four? We already know that Lucian and his father arent native Demacians and that Lucian and Senna brought something back to his homeland, so where is it?

I wouldnt mind a black chad Juggernaut for top lane either, 3 out of 4 are already bottom laners...

76 Comments

Whyte Lyon11/28/2019, 2:08:09 AM11 votes

Not a "lore" answer but I'd say that because the design for the game always had a philosophy of creating a totally unrestricted amount of weird and colourful champions, which caters to a world where anything is possible, that the devs have freedom to put any kind of character into any sort of placement without a care for the true logistics of doing so. In other words: characters evocative/representative of specific cultures, styles, archetypes could exist within any region even if unconventional if the devs truly desire to make it so.

The writer is required to explain the character's background but like their ancestral heritage isnt always relevant and so they could reside wherever or originate from wherever without too much concern. I'd say the same applies in a similar way for those specific characters OP is referring about.

Johnny El Rojo11/28/2019, 1:40:30 AM9 votes

Honestly, the whole racial make up of Runeterra is a mess. You have people like Kaisa being native Shurimans of the desert while being as pale as the moon, and a red head like Leona in a place like Targon where Pantheon brown skin and Persian/ancient Greece features I assume are the norm. And let's not forget Aphelios and his sister that have very obvious Asian features, even if the aren't of Ionia. And speaking of Ionia, what's with Irelia ? She looks like she could come from Demacia.

And let's not forget about the rest of the lore. We have black mageseekers if LoR cards are canon, even if in a very isolationist kingdom as Demacia immigration shouldn't be very common, aside from special cases like XinZhao . Or that black lady protagonizing the Noxus story on Kumungu. Granted, she could be from a noble family of the recently annexed lands of Shurima, but the implication seems to be that her family has been on the empire for centuries, so, how do people of her native region look like?

Jacksin11/28/2019, 12:47:39 AM8 votes

Well if the map is anything to go off of, we roughly only see 1/4 of Runeterra as a whole. Perhaps this is something that will be explored in the future.

Kalikko11/28/2019, 1:11:51 AM4 votes

You're forgetting about Karma. Karma

Jack Garrus11/28/2019, 10:18:38 AM4 votes

Race is just magic in Runeterra

Darius Strada11/28/2019, 10:25:49 PM4 votes

Don't think too hard on this. Riot wanted to make a world as diverse as possible. We also shouldn't apply concepts such as "asian" or "african", those places don't exist in Runeterra. Sure, they are inspired by them but they aren't a 100% representation of it.

TheMan29211/30/2019, 4:25:19 AM3 votes

not gonna lie. never thought about this before but super curious about it now.

and it reminds me of the day I realized Pyke was black and not green. I felt like a fucking idiot for that. really thought he was green

HonestJohnTheCon11/28/2019, 1:43:07 AM3 votes

As Demacia was formed by refugees fleeing the Rune Wars, ethnic Africans could very well be in Demacia at the beginning. Whether they are “native” to that region is another question.

Beyond that I have no idea.

mrmeddyman11/28/2019, 5:26:07 AM3 votes

All the brown people might originated from an uncharted continent to the east. The

great westward diaspora that gave rise to civilizations including the Buhru, magnificent Helia, and the ascetics of Targon—and it is likely they played a significant role in the creation of the first Ascended.

That's the only in-universe explanation I can come up with. The truth is, Riot just didn't think about it until recently. They just made what feels right or copied something from pop-culture and "Leagueified it". Ekko is black because he's a street kid and it just works better (Zaun is a melting pot anyways so any character can work there). Lucian is black because he's evocative of Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L Jackson characters, the vengeful black man unchained.

Senna is new, but they already depicted her as black when Lucian came out so trying to change her would have been jarring.

Not that it matters in the first place though.

ScubaVampire11/28/2019, 6:44:12 PM3 votes

Do your research and don't forget about Illaoi. She's definitely a woman of color and definitely not thin. Illaoi

I would love to see the make up of creatures to humans then the racial diversity numbers... Only 5-6 is way too little but hopefully Riot is working on it now.

YDy2ZkRq0211/28/2019, 10:41:11 PM3 votes

Champions are meant to be the exceptions and compared to the grander population of Runeterra they're a very small represetation of their respective nations, so only those champions being dark skinned doesnt mean their regions is the only place with dark skinned people. The place where they originate is most likely Shurima.

Something worth mentioning that I dont think anyone here said yet. The Darkin Wars could be a huge factor on ancient miscegenation. The Darkin armies at the start of the war were mainly made of Shurimans at the start, since that's the only place they could get soldiers, then later on they had soldiers from the nations they conquered, that probally means that at this time the races from those two continents mixed a lot and Noxus and Demacia are made up from the descendants of the remanents of those armies that survived the rebellion(and some other nations that were able to resist the Darkin, which would probally be the less miscegenated).

Also the lack of dark skinned people on Freljord could be because of the same reason, Freljord and Ionia are the lands furthest away from Shurima, so the Darkins would have to march a lot to get there and since Freljord is a very hard place to survive, conquering it wouldnt be as attractable as conquering the rest of Valoran.

Piltover/Zaun, a city originally Shuriman, could also be a factor, since it being a trade hub would means that many people from there could end up travelling to other regions.

Ebonmaw Dragon11/28/2019, 12:43:43 AM2 votes

If i remember correctly, the whole human race in Runeterra originates from Ixtal... but i could be wrong.

HalfTangible11/29/2019, 3:45:05 AM2 votes

This isn't very important, but if someone put a gun to my head and demanded I guess...

My guess would be the southern part of Shurima. Skin color came about in our world because of climate; darker skin colors came from closer to the equator (where the sun would be hottest and brightest during the summer).

We don't know exactly where the equator would be on Runeterra, but we know that Qiyana is part of a long-lived royal line in Ixtal, meaning she's the most likely to have a skin tone indicative of her homeland. Her skin tone is Arab/Indian, perhaps mesoamerican (in fact that's probably what she's meant to be given Ixtal's aesthetic). Meaning that she'd be near (but not quite AT) the center.

Go further south (I sincerely doubt that it's further north, where you go into mostly white territory before you hit the Freljord) and you get southern Shurima.

Mr Voidling11/29/2019, 7:13:54 PM2 votes

Would make sense for a company/person who is creating a world to follow simple rules found in biology such as northern climate = lighter skin tones, southern climate = darker skin tones, but I find that companies often overlook the simple things that really make a world/universe feel real/possible.

Example A - Diablo II: You have a desert area with people closely related to Persians/Egyptians, and you have a northern mountain area with very pale white people. The other middle climate areas are somewhat random. Example B - Diablo IV: So far the poster-child or baseline Barbarian is shown as being black(it sounds like alternative skins are a thing but that's not the point here), whereas we've already seen from D2 that Barbarians hail from the north and are obviously pale in skin. This makes a disconnect from the player to the world because it doesn't feel right. Hopefully they just say he is from a desert and not Mount Arreat but I doubt they'd do that.

But uh, yeah, if I were to take a jab at where darker toned persons mainly reside... I'd say not on the map at all. Farther south, some land not yet depicted. Anything else doesn't make a whole heap of sense with what Riot has given us. Maybe the darker toned peoples are more passive/peaceful? They just avoid contention by staying out of sight? That's my head-cannon for now, they are far south and stay separated from everyone else to remain in peace.

Darius Strada11/28/2019, 10:19:26 PM2 votes

But there is a "Africa", it's where Shurima a.k.a Egypt is