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Black Mist confusion

StormBlink··2 votes·1,195 views

I got curious since I want to know more about Bilgewater and hopefully get a new champ from there, But I went to look at the Black Mist and see it as Riot trying to destroy it or something. But then I look at the dates they put and I get confused.

I - 1 Year. The Battle of Knife Straits. An armada from Bilgewater, led by MissFortuneSquare.png Miss Fortune and GangplankSquare.png Captain Gangplank – sailing together under an uneasy truce – meets the Black Mist head on. Heavy casualties sustained. Fleet scattered.

II - 1 Year. The Drowned Anchor. One element of the Harrowing stalled. Reports of a NautilusSquare.png large figure encased in a rusted diving suit seen in the heart of the fighting.

III - 1 Year. The Reaping of Smuggler’s Cove. No survivors.

IV - 3 Years. The Battle of the Serpent. A Blue Flame leviathan is goaded to the surface by a serpent caller to face the Harrowing. The Black Mist is dispersed before it reaches Bilgewater, but the giant from the depths is slain in the process.

V - 9 Years. The Shadow Falls. The Black Mist overcomes the defenses of the Southern Beacon, and it sinks beneath the sea. Its guiding light is now lost to Bilgewater.

VI - 4 Years. The Wild Hunt. HecarimSquare.png Hecarim marshals a spectral host and lays waste to the port of Grey Harbor. Despite valiant resistance from the fishing fleet anchored there, all souls are lost. Grey Harbor remains uninhabited to this day.

VII - 21 Years. The Death of the Conqueror. The mighty galleon Conqueror is lost to the depths, along with 30 battleships. Some have claimed to have seen the Conqueror riding the Black Mist in subsequent Harrowings.

VIII - 32 years. The Battle of Port Mourn. The revenant MordekaiserSquare.png Mordekaiser leads the Harrowing on a night of slaughter, and Port Mourn falls to darkness. It is said that specters now haunt its empty streets.

IX - 17 years. The Crimson Armada. A Noxian war fleet is caught in the Black Mist. Over 30 vessels lost. No survivors.

X - 37 years. The Maelstrom. The frigate Light-Bringer’s Bane is swallowed by the sea while sailing to outrun the Black Mist.

XI - 49 years. The Shroud. Up until half a century ago, this was the furthest extent of any known Harrowing.

XII - 33 years. The Flower of Ionia. An Ionian fleet of unknown size lost to the Harrowing.

What do the years mean? It doesn't specify. Is it how long ago the attacks were? Why don't they go from descending order where we can see how far it is progressed? I looked at this first glance and was confused for a while thinking that the numbers meant when they first occurred and the years were how long it lasted or something. When I got it, I just continued to be confused since it would have been much easier to put in a natural order of events then a 'Hur Dur, Lets write about the champions and what they did and throw extra lore at the end?'

11 Comments

GreenLore1 votes

Icosahedron said that the years state how many years ago this stuff happened

So the events I-III all happened in the same year,while the earliest event is number XI.

I dunno why they aren't in decending order though,the first 8 are in order,but the others aren't. It is possible,that this is because the events IX-XII didn't affect Bilgewater itself,so they are simply sorted after how close they were to bilgewater.

Waffletimewarp1 votes

{quoted}

Icosahedron said that the years state how many years ago this stuff happened

So the events I-III all happened in the same year,while the earliest event is number XI.

I dunno why they aren't in decending order though,the first 8 are in order,but the others aren't. It is possible,that this is because the events IX-XII didn't affect Bilgewater itself,so they are simply sorted after how close they were to bilgewater.

Close, I think each year is the number of years before the newest event, thus that little anomaly of 17 years between 32 and 37.

So event 1 took place a year ago, event two a year before that, etc.

GreenLore1 votes

The problem I see with that are the events XI and XII

XI talks about the furthest extent of the harrowing,but the event XII talks about an ionian fleet that got captured by the harrowing despite being farther away from the SI,which would mean that either XI is telling us a lie,or they aren't in chronological order

Sharjo2 votes

Or that they're referring to how far it's influence spreads in to Bilgewater territory.

GreenLore1 votes

What about them saying that this was the stand "Up until half a century ago",which fits perfectly with this stand being 49 years away?

if they were in chronological order and the years say how far away these events happened,then it would have been over 100 years ago and not roughly half a century

Sharjo1 votes

Hm...actually you're right. Even though the last 4, if they were chronologically ordered, would take up an entire year, Morde's first rampage would be over a century old, way before the "half a century" thing.

I guess it's listed in order of severity then, with the years denoting how far off from the day it was made (last year's harrowing). The most disastrous Harrowings thus far were all in the So it looks something like this from a time line sense:

  • The map is being presented by whoever's presenting it after everything's calmed down.
  • In the year just gone by was the Battle of Knife Straits, the Reaping of Smuggler's Cove and the Drowned Anchor. Given that for the Nautilus bit it's said "an element of the Harrowing was stalled", we can assume that these events happened at the same time as part of a massive Harrowing that was fought on three fronts.
  • 3 Years ago the battle of the Serpent took place.
  • 9 Years ago the Southern Beacon was lost.
  • 14 years ago Hecarim led the Wild Hunt over the Grey Harbor.
  • 17 Years ago the Crimson Armada got wrecked super hard.
  • 21 Years ago was the death of the Conquerer, where the Galleon and 30 more ships were lost, along with everyone aboard.
  • 32 Years ago Morde came and conquered Port Mourn. This was where things started getting scary, as now the Harrowing was coming right to Bilgewater's door.
  • 33 Years ago the Ionia fleet got wrecked. No one knows the exact details because it was so far away from Bilgewater, and as such is counted as the most insignifcant of these recorded Harrowings.
  • 37 years ago Light-Bringer's Bane was trashed. One ship, but it's also the first time the Harrowing's breached further than "The Shroud."
  • 49 years ago was the furthest out any harrowing had come. Before then harrowings had been pretty close to the borders of the Shadow Isles. This could be considered "the first" as this one is where the Shadow Isles got more active. Before people would get harrowed along the shores of the Isles, but here, for the first time, it had extended beyond its normal borders and attacked people.

There are likely a tonne more instances of Harrowings from before the "first", but as I said, they would have been close to the shores of the Shadow Isle itself, and passed around as myth and legend, the kind of stuff you go in to a bar or inn and hear people talking about when they're passing along ghost stories and stuff.

EDIT

I've been mulling over this post, amending it and thinking for the last hour or so, and yeah, this explanation makes way more sense (to me at any rate) than the map being chronologically dated. As was even said on the page the map was posted on "As evidenced, the Harrowing has grown bolder over the last half century", so the map is essentially a history of the last 50 years of Harrowings. More happened before, but they were insignificant and limited to Shadow Isles waters.

Tesla Effect1 votes

Can we just get a proper timeline. Saying 30 years ago as oppose to 2015 AD, 256 BC, 13 AD does not help at all, due to the fact that we dont know what events are happening at the present time.

Sharjo1 votes

Was it ever explained what C. L. E. dating was? Because I never found out.

Tesla Effect2 votes

{quoted}

Was it ever explained what C. L. E. dating was? Because I never found out.

C.L.E. means "Current League Era". As you may have noticed, thats no longer the canon way of timelining things.

Sharjo1 votes

Ah ok, now that makes sense.

Sharjo1 votes

I assumed that the years mark the time between Harrowings, and these are numbered in order of most recent to furthest back. The Battle of Knife Straits was a year back from last year's harrowing, with the Drowned Anchor being a year before that. With that in mind the oldest Harrowing was when the Ionian Fleet was wrecked about 208 years ago, meaning that the Shadow Isle, in it's current state, is at least 208 years old.

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