Hey! Morde's writer here. Appreciate you sharing your thoughts!
A couple thoughts to share back.
First, know that with any champion rework, we first seek to understand as deeply as possible what makes a champion great, what excites players about that champion, and what are the core essences that define who that champion is. From there, we set out to craft their place in wider Runeterra. Any change has the potential to be painful. Know that the folks on the team are all highly passionate players and story geeks to the Nth degree; no change was made lightly, and no expansion or shifted emphasis was done without heavy thought and robust discussion.
One of the things I most appreciate about being at Riot is the space and time we give projects to do things as right as possible. Do we miss the mark sometimes? Well, to be human is to err. (Unless you're Mordekaiser. Then you just cease being human. :P) But I am grateful to have teams who are super passionate and knowledgeable all working to craft something to share that excites us and, we hope, the players that love this content.
Onto some Morde specific thoughts:
- Mordekaiser is an extremely accomplished necromancer - a soul of iron will and arcane power, and a warlord of deep intellect.
Mordekaiser defied death by sheer force of will - a feat literally no other mortal on Runeterra had accomplished. The ghosts of the Shadow Isles are in the living realm because of a magical catastrophe; Mordekaiser refused to accept the reality around him. He gained necromantic powers in the death realm by listening to the maddening whispers of souls and deciphering an unspoken language over untold time, teaching himself Ochnun. (I barely learned some broken Spanish after 4 years of studying, so, uh, there's that.) Through those profane whispers, he also figured out how to speak across the veil of death and deceive mortals into thinking they could bring him back and bind him to their will - only to slaughter them all. Once returned, he didn't kill without a plan, despite what his enemies thought:
To his foes, it seemed he cared only for massacre and destruction. Entire generations perished under his relentless campaigns.
However, there was far more to Mordekaiser’s plan. He raised the Immortal Bastion at the center of his empire; while most assumed it was merely a seat of power, some came to know the secrets it held. Mordekaiser hungered for all the forbidden knowledge of spirits and death, and a true understanding of the realm… or realms… beyond.
Mordekaiser sought out more arcane knowledge about the dead and about spirits, growing his necromantic powers while doing what he did best in his first life - conquering - all to serve his bigger purpose. He also built an impossible physical monument to his power that has secrets yet untold.
And all of that empowered him to harvest souls, grow his necromantic power, and build an army of spirits bound to his will. It takes a necromancer of some power to exert such control.
Also, Mordekaiser's rebuke of death was so thorough that he learned how to forge his own afterlife and realm. He is a necromancer not bound to physical totems or phylacteries, but has managed to reject the very cycle of life and death that seemed his destiny.
- Mordekaiser is the warlord that inspired the entire Noxian empire.
Take a look at his quote: "Destiny. Domination. Deceit." You might find it maps to the Noxian / Trifarix principles of strength: "Vision, Might, Guile." Consciously or not, Mordekaiser's legacy spawned an entire culture that emulated his conquests and his philosophies. Yet to him, Noxians are a watered down imitation of his previous glory. At the same time, to every day Noxians, his legacy as a conqueror is of mythic proportions - legends so big, they are hard to believe as history. (A real world comparison is the Romulus and Remus mythos around the founding of Rome.)
- Mordekaiser is an unstoppable threat and a major force that looms over Runeterra.
His first return, when his necromantic powers were new, resulted in a massive period of tyrannical rule that took both betrayal from within and united enemies from without to stop him. Now, he has amassed an army of souls, collected powerful arcane knowledge, and has plans and machinations in place...
- There was a lot of discussion that led to Morde no longer being associated with the Shadow Isles.
It was not a decision we made lightly. In fact, I originally argued against it, but came to agree with our narrative lead and lead editor on why it is the stronger story choice.
Ultimately, we made the call due to a number of factors:
Death magic and necromancers exist beyond the Shadow Isles.
Runeterra is a big place, with a long history. The Shadow Isles was just one (albeit enormous) cataclysmic event that caused a specific area of Runeterra to become frozen in time, and to have a very specific form of undeath permeate the land. Ultimately, Mordekaiser's old connection to Shadow Isles felt primarily driven by a feeling that we had to shoehorn him into our "ghost faction". In our current storytelling efforts, we're interested in expanding our factions out beyond some of those wide (and as a result flat) characterizations that were made in years past. Another great example of this is how Demacia is more than just "the good guys" faction, as seen in how they deal with their relationship to magic, brought to the forefront with Sylas and Lux's story (shameless comic plug here - go read it!).
Questions of geography / narrative complexity
In terms of our geography, Shadow Isles is far flung from where the Immortal Bastion is. (Yay, Runeterra Map!) While I loved the idea that it took taking Morde's remains across the world to prevent him from returning, ultimately it felt honoring Morde's connections to the Immortal Bastion yielded more rich storytelling space. It also simplified a narrative beat in his backstory, allowing me to zero in on his arc and agency, rather than a moment of denied choice where outside forces moved him, and then an outside cataclysm happened to bring him back.
I wanted Mordekaiser to shed all mortal weakness.
A big guiding star for me was the question, "what makes Morde metal and terrifying and unique?" How do we take "necromantic warlord" and push him to an 11? One answer that excited us - rather than having a physical weakness of his mortal remains, what if he shed just about everything that made him remotely human? To me, his title, "The Iron Revenant," served a lot of inspiration in this regard, and further cemented the pivot away from his remains being a major weakness or vulnerability.
- For a character like Mordekaiser, who spans massive swaths of Runeterra's timeline and history, his story has large impacts on larger reaching histories and stories we are setting up to tell.
Clarifying and focusing Mordekaiser's story in allows us to help make greater sense of many other characters and champs. Some stories are just subtle hints right now, breadcrumbs that I can't wait to explore more fully in other outlets than just Mordekaiser's bio.
This leads to some more general thoughts in regards to writing for Riot and League:
- A huge challenge of being a narrative writer on League of Legends is the space in which we get to tell the story of a champion.
In game, the main narrative outlet is a champ's voiceover script - a very specific set of lines, with very tight gameplay constraints on length. It definitely has its strengths and weaknesses as a storytelling expression.
Out of game, we have a champ's biography and color story. A bio is, by its nature, more summary than story, more exposition told as evocatively as possible than scene-driven in depth storytelling. Our color stories are also a very specific length, and are crafted to give a very specific snapshot of the champion in action. With a champ that's larger than life like Mordekaiser, this means that there's much that remains untold in full, many details that must be summarized, and TONS of story space that is ripe for deeper exploration in future storytelling endeavors. And honestly, that's part of the joy as well - leaving tantalizing questions for players to ask, to explore, to theorize, and to discover.
For now, I have to leave Mordekaiser with his Bio, VO, and color story. But if players are excited to learn more about his history, I hope we'll have more opportunities to expand and explore as we continue to strive as a narrative team to help move Runeterra's events forward in time.
Whew, this got quite long - apologies! I hope these thoughts were interesting, and helped to answer a bit of the question "why did his lore have to change?" as well as address some of your feelings that he isn't the epic, metal champ he was! Thanks for reading and caring about Mordekaiser, this game, and our world and story as much as you do, and sharing that with us. :)
