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How do people/champions in Runeterra cope with PTSD (or avoid it, entirely)?

IlyaK1986·6/17/2019, 2:36:30 AM·3 votes·5,249 views

So...essentially, lore consequences.

Given that if you look hard enough, there are stories about Iraq/Afghanistan veterans that find it hard to get back into civilian society due to injuries/PTSD/etc.--some commit suicide (quite a few, actually), and of those that do manage to live on that have seen some real stuff, a lot of them have PTSD.

Given the background for some champs in LoL, how are they, well, champs, and not sleep-deprived-by-way-of-nightmares mental trainwrecks?

Here are a couple of--but nowhere near an exhaustive collection of examples:

Riven: poster girl for this, seemingly comes closest to all the champs for actually not just shrugging off seeing all her friends (and foes) just gassed and being the sole survivor. In Confessions of a Broken Blade, she even developed amnesia because the events hit her that hard--but after that story? The Riven in-game is, what...6 years after that event? It seems she's the one that most heavily displays the consequences of it, though if her redeemed skin is any indication, she overcomes PTSD. How?

Irelia: family slaughtered at 14, spends the next 3 years fighting in a war, slaughters Swain's veterans and the guard of the general that killed her family, and said general himself--all at 17. The only consequences she displays is that she throws out a few more zingers here and there in her quotes. How is she not a complete mental train-wreck by this point?

Sejuani: considering she's always been raised in brutality, how is she still able to essentially be a female Genghis Khan, when she's led from the front for as long as she has, and then the run in with mutated Volibear, how have her faculties not slipped?

Is there some sort of special drug on Runeterra that keeps people that have seen a whole bunch of blood and horror from falling off the rails? How are some of these champs not just able to function, but fight with the best of them?

7 Comments

WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOO6/17/2019, 2:50:40 AM8 votes

Because trauma is relative. Runeterra is a much more chaotic/violent place than our world, and PTSD is the name of a specific condition that we still don’t really understand.

Also, some people just aren’t affected by things. Methinks the same sort of people who we call champions may also be made of sterner stuff.

mrmeddyman6/17/2019, 5:00:13 AM6 votes

Exactly, its' all relative. Today pretty much 80% of the world believes that the world would be a better place without war and hold some kind of altruistic idealogy based around the value of all life and the will to determine your own happiness. In the Middle Ages life was cheap, anyone who was an outsider was a savage or a heathen that was deemed sub-human deserving of death, dying for your King/God/Country was considered the highest honor one could possibly attain. In Viking culture, the whole point of your life was distinguish yourself in battle so you can earn a seat with the Gods in Valhalla, anything less and you would live with shame and be ostracized by all your peers. Mental Health issues weren't treated they were ignored this "PTSD" that we classify today would just be perceived as weakness or cowardice.

I guess the answer to your question is that people have collectively become more pussy lol. Of course it's a good thing we don't all need to be so hardcore anymore

Warlord Dienekes6/17/2019, 5:54:45 PM5 votes

Well because they’re the champions. PTSD is not a strict equation, put human + situation = PTSD. People in the exact same trench in WW1 ended up with wildly different mental outcomes. Many ended up suffering mental breakdowns, some had no mental problems at all. Then some who suffered what we now know as PTSD had it show up in wildly different ways. Some had their entire personality change, others just occasionally had bad dreams.

Though it should also be noted that the worst cases of PTSD tends to occur when a person is placed under prolonged mental strain (though again, not always). And ancient and medieval warfare mostly wasn’t fought that way. On the contrary, to use Sejuani, she likely went through a horror show fighting Volibear, then went back to her people and her tribe and went to a relatively normal life. It’s not the same as living in a trench for years, or in a country where all natives are potential hostiles.

Hell even in your own examples this should be clear. Go read Genghis Khan’s life he suffered worse and more frequent trauma than Sejuani has so far. And he didn’t turn into a quivering wreck. He turned himself into Genghis freaking Khan.

DuskDaUmbreon6/17/2019, 2:59:20 AM2 votes

It's entirely possible that some difference in Runeterran human biology and/or neurology makes them less susceptible to PTSD than us Earth-humans.

Riven in particular got hit harder than most. It wasn't just the blood and gore and betrayal, but the total shock of betrayal from having Singed melt her entire unit, and a crushing sense that the war was pointless because they were just killing civilians. That's all arguably going to be more traumatizing than "ordinary" warfare.

Culture and shit likely play a role as well in it.

And then there's the part where people with PTSD are less likely to become a champion. Seems to me something like that would actively drive them away from that. So we get the people who it's less likely to happen to as champions, and the lore doesn't focus as much on the regular soldiers and whatnot.

HalfTangible6/18/2019, 7:13:49 PM2 votes

Modern warfare is far more liable to produce PTSD than medieval warfare A catapult or trebuchet may cause massive damage, but it's simply not comparable to the sound and power of an artillery strike. You may try and compare artillery to magic, but such powerful abilities are very rare. Being able to almost instantly kill your opponent (firearms) is simply not comparable to swordfighting. (It was also the case during these periods that people were more likely to die of disease and sickness than in battle, although that doesn't really apply to your question and is also questionable for Runeterra in particular).

PTSD also has various grades and stages, and people react to it differently even in the same situation. You can be suffering from it so badly that you can never sleep a full night, or you might just jump at the occasional loud noise. It's also worth noting Runeterra is a fantasy universe; perhaps the humans here simply have more mental fortitude for such trauma than we do.

As to why they're not mental wrecks: they kinda are. Riven went from fighting a war to working a farm and even then was unable to escape her own lingering thoughts on all her dead friends. Irelia in her color story still can't wash the blood from her blades. Sejuani... well, you said it yourself, she's basically female Ghengis Khan :P

As to those who aren't: that's why they're champions. It's a fantasy concept as old as the genre itself; the people who go through hardship and come out the other side alive are the ones we remember as heroes. Heracles would not have been as interesting if the 12 labors drove him insane.