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@Riot. The Skarner story was awesome! But...

Solideus·5/13/2016, 10:01:49 AM·4 votes·954 views

I really liked the read, high praise for the writing!

But...I couldn't help but feel the Brackern's history was very disconnected from the history of Valoran.. Are you confident that you can use them in stories in a way that makes them feel like they are part of and relevant to the world?

Seems to me they were distancing themselves or inactive for ALL of Valoran's relevant history. Like, they're more alien to the world and the setting than actual space-aliens would've been. Because.. they barely even interacted with any of it in any tangible way?

I feel like there were many other ways you could have used the Brackern race without compromising their core themes, like making them a dormant army from ancient-ancient-ancient Shuriman, or something. (After Azir's Shurima event I was pretty confident this would be the actual direction you'd go in, but was obviously wrong)

Why didn't you go for something more easily made relevant to the contemporary world of Valoran? I always felt Skarner's biggest problem was that he and his race always felt VERY out of place in a world-building sense; the new story didn't amend that, if anything it made them even more distant from the world around them.

7 Comments

Sharjo5/13/2016, 10:18:40 AM1 votes

I feel like that's the point; Skarner's people have always been highly isolated. They're elementals in a world of organic lifeforms, where the only other beings like them are colossal super powers in the magical sense. They're kinda like Coelacanths; been doing their own thing for 300 million years without issue and then humans found out they're still a thing.

It's not like the Brackern are the only one of League's fantasy races like this; the Marai are basically in the same boat but it's easier to swallow for some in their case because they're fully aquatic and living in the deep ocean, and an argument can be made for the Darkin too, as their only involvement in history that we've seen has been through Aatrox.

What I'm basically saying is that Skarner, Nami and Aatrox are prehistoric fish and that can work in the narrative.

GreenLore5/13/2016, 1:35:57 PM1 votes

I'm a bit sad that they specifically referred to the Brackern as scorpions.

Before it was unknown if all of them had the appearance of scorpions,which meant that Riot had the possibility to make another brackern champ who is based on something else,but now the chance to ever get another brackern champ are basically zero,since it would mean that they'd need to introduce another crystaline scorpion which they obviously won't do.