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Can someone clarify this for me?

Zero Shingetsu·4/26/2018, 9:32:19 PM·2 votes·3,884 views

I'm making a lot of posts of late, but I have a lot of observations.

Noxus and Ionia went to war, right? What was the fallout from this war? I presume it lasted quite a while, so wouldn't it have drained resources on both sides? Particularly on the Noxian side, as they had to circumvent an entire kingdom and cross the ocean to funnel supplies to the front, where Ionia just had to harvest them and walk them to their strongholds.

I'd like to see some lore that tells us about champions who were shaped by the aftermath of the war. Not just the loss of life from the war, but also the poverty that followed. I'd like to see a Noxian character who was hardened under the lash of the taskmaster's whip, working overtime to help generate the resources Noxus needed to keep the war going. A character who grew up in a poverty-stricken Noxus saddled with war debt, who maybe turned to thievery to survive, only to be snapped up later as Swain's personal agent. Noxus has plenty of cold killers, but I can't think of a good utility character from Noxus since LeBlanc. Here's a good chance.

What about an Ionian who took in war orphans, and became strong by protecting them from brigands driven to crime after their homes and fields were burned to the ground by the invaders? How about an Ionian vigilante whose sense of balance is twisted by the war? Perhaps this person sees simply driving Noxus off as falling short of justice for those who've suffered under the heel of poverty and grief in the wake of the war. Perhaps to this person who has somewhat lost her way, "balance" means hunting Noxian generals in their own back yard and ending them for their hand in the atrocities, without the consent of Ionia's powers that be.

I think some post-war lore would be a great chance to show us a less one-dimensionally brutal side of Noxus, as well as a more grey area of Ionian balance, yet I don't recall hearing much at all about what happened after the war one way or the other. Am I missing the lore, or is it not out there?

5 Comments

Qiyana Hime4/27/2018, 1:17:05 AM2 votes

Personally, I don't find Noxus to be a one-note, brutal empire. Yes, its government has a clearly colonialist agenda, but it's still a meritocracy, where hard work is valued much more than ancestry (unlike in Demacia, if I'm not mistaken), and anyone who shows talent in a field (granted, the military especially) will be made to prosper in that field. Also, while the political sphere is very cutthroat, as far as I know, it doesn't impact the other strata of society.

On another note, Ionia's general fixation on balance has already brought about multiple different perspectives: Karma and the Kinkou think it's a flawless ideology, Zed thinks it's making their society stagnant, and the Vastayans seem mostly indifferent.

KaynsRightNipple4/27/2018, 3:40:37 PM1 votes

A bit of what you mentioned already exists in some champions.

Talon's backstory is quite literally "A character who grew up in a poverty-stricken Noxus saddled with war debt, who maybe turned to thievery to survive, only to be snapped up later as Swain's Marcus Du Couteau's personal agent"; minus the small detail of war debt; it'd be hard for a champion to have this kind of backstory without encroaching too much on his territory.

Kayn's voicelines and lore have quite a but of evidence of a person who "isn't just satisfied with driving off Noxus" but wants to see it full on punished/conquered(or at the very least wants the Trifarix dead) for its crimes. To the point where he doesn't even seem to identify as one of them and rejects his heritage/ethnicity(AMA states that he chose the name Shieda Kayn so it's likely not even his real name unless Klein was just fucking around on that answer). He seems to hate the empire quite specifically compared to his more lukewarm interactions towards Shen or the other Darkin.