🍷 Vladimir 🎂 Birthday 🎂 Thread 🍷
It's July 27 again!
#My beloved Crimson Circle, Vlad mains, Vlad lovers, admirers, Black Rose, Noxian nobility and practitioners of the sanguine crafts, it's our day to celebrate!
I want to, once again, thank all of you for being the amazing community of artists and writers you are, and also thank every Rioter who has taken a positive interest in this champ.
I think he is one of the most fascinating and original things in the game. His themes, I think, are simple and deep. He started out as a mortal slave to the natural order, and, in time, paid the ultimate price to learn to bend nature to his own will. The core - and awesomeness - of blood magic as an idea comes from the gruesome price of power, and the corrupting influence of the Craft once you master it.
I love how beautifully his gameplay resonates with this idea, aggressive, obscene, explosive, knife's edge, but holding great rewards for those who pay the price and put in the dedication. Thank you, Stashu, for expressing the idea of this champ so beautifully.
The bit that's missing (and on a more somber note) is in the visuals/quotes department. What's worse than Vlad just looking/sounding plain bad ingame is that the promised (but never coming) rework means the entire champ, with all his awesome ideas, sometimes gets treated like a placeholder.
And this is a pity. If anything the enduring loyalty of fans and the awesomeness of the Vlad community deserves something better than a placeholder.
So I endeavored to try. While what I am about to post is no more than fanart (and I have no doubt Riot can do much better), this is closer to the character I imagined when I wrote his bio than what we currently have ingame.
Vlad mains and related parties, happy birthday:
https://i.ibb.co/hY4ChLy/VladVU.jpg
(art by Ekaterina Belousova)
(thanking Reav3's feedback)
(I'm going for Romantic Goth JoJo)
Let me know what you think, and celebrate the birthday of our boy in the comments!
EDIT: Also, I know we don't really have a musical theme or a login screen, and while I couldn't hire animators and composers, I dream that Vlad's theme can have something of the lush sensuality of early Dimmu Borgir:
