NAUTILUS THREAD: Would he accept a pact from Kalista/Tammy? and misc. headcanon
I was just thinking about Naut and his admittedly anemic lore: "Guy gets betrayed on a boat, his fellow sailors leave him to drown in black goo, and he wakes up at the bottom of the ocean. He then walks a lot until he reaches the League of Legends, where he fights. P.S. Might have also fought the Black Mist one time when it was attacking Bilgewater." And thought I'd start up a little discussion thread here on our lovely Boards (beta).
is a champion all about revenge, right? It's his driving purpose in life/unlife. Just take a gander at these quotes:
"I will have vengeance."
"They will pay."
"Find the guilty."
So one very obvious way of expanding Naut's lore and integrating him into the post-retcon Runeterra is to make connections with a couple of other vengeance-themed champions... like Kalista, for instance, whose whole shtick is aiding the betrayed in seeking revenge against their betrayers. Sounds like a done deal, right? Kalista x Naut ship confirmed! But nope. Kal has nothing to say to Naut in-game, there's no connection via Friends/Rivals... there's nothing.
Another possible candidate is Tahm Kench, who doesn't deal specifically in retribution but presumably has the ability to lend Naut a hand (possibly even restore him to his normal sailor-y condition?). Nope, nothing here either.
The only connections Naut has to other champions and places in Runeterra are 1) Fizz and Nami being listed as his rivals, and 2) his defense(?) of Bilgewater against the Black Mist. Rito didn't give Kalista any voiced interactions with him, even though it seems obvious, and they didn't give Tahm any interactions with him either (less obvious, but still notable). And in case you were wondering, Fizz/Nami have nothing to say to the Titan either, despite each of them supposedly being a rival (note: Fizz was released before Nautilus, but the point here is that there's no source behind these "rivalries" other than rito saying so).
Hm.
So why is Nautilus being isolated like this? Three possibilities:
- It's a shameful, shameful oversight by Narrative.
- Narrative has future plans for Naut, possibly ones that involve curtailing his obsession with revenge and/or emphasizing his relationship with his fellow sea creatures (i.e. the two fish listed above).
3) Nautilus himself
just doesn't give a fuckis the cause of his isolation.
So that's the crux of this thread. If offered help by the likes of Kalista or Kench, would Nautilus really bite? The more I think about it, the more certain I am that Naut wouldn't even give them the time of day. He wouldn't give anyone the time of day. As his character stands now, he has zero reason to interact with any other character save for asking around for traitorous sailors -- and that assumes that he even remembers their names or faces.
This is getting into headcanon territory, but to me Nautilus comes across as the kind of guy who ignores shortcuts. And obviously not because of pride or anything; his tunnel vision has simply become so great that the possibility of a shortcut doesn't even occur to him. In fact I question whether places or people register with him at all. It's possible he woke up, found himself at the bottom of the ocean with nothing to do but start walking, and it's just been so goddamn long that he's become numb to literally everything, except for his betrayal and his ability to put one foot in front of the other.
Nautilus isn't really a "vengeance" champion. He is a perpetual motion machine. His friends, his family and his betrayers are all long dead, but the concept of revenge is the only thing keeping him sentient. Nature does its best to slowly erode his body and mind as he wanders the world, seeking the unobtainable... forever.
Ahem. You can argue the merits of having a character in your story who doesn't interact with anyone and simply wanders around, occasionally destroying something in the way (i.e. Black Mist), but I think it's pretty neat.
tl;dr naut is best champ gg ez
