The Targonians and the Darkin
DISCLAIMER: Figured I'd add this to avoid confusion: this is talking about the space Targonians like Pantheon, not the human ones like Leona, Diana and Atreus.
So with Aurelion Sol’s new lore we’ve learned a lot of things about the mighty Star Shaper’s encounter with the Targonians and their space faring empire, but very little about them as a people. However some of the finer details about the Targonians from not just Aurelion’s lore but Leona’s has given me a thought pertaining to one of the mysteries we always love to ask about: The Darkin, and to that end, I’d like to postulate a question.
Could the Targonians and the Darkin be one and the same?
Now that’s probably a bit of a stretch to just put out there right now, but I wouldn’t have concocted this line of thinking without reason, so let’s go over some of the details. Firstly, what do we know about the darkin?
- Pre human race
- Were reduced to five members, of which only three are known to history
- Are a winged people
...and that’s it. Not much to go on really, but let’s at least go off of the easiest point to talk about: physical similarities. You might be saying “but Sharjo we don’t know what the Targonians look like!” And you’re right, but there’s an instance of Targonian influence in a very physical way, in Leona’s lore. Remember the golden skinned boy? Back then, we assumed the golden skinned boy was Aurelion Sol, and I mean can you blame us? We didn’t have the context about his relation with the Targonians and given what we already knew things were easy to draw conclusions about: Dragons have been known to shapeshift in the lore before plus horns and bat like wings are common traits among dragons. Of course this turned out inaccurate, but let’s not forget who actually has similar traits:
Metallic horns, bat like wings, and a humanoid shape, which the boy also would’ve had to even be recognisable as a boy. Now of course the form could’ve just been done to make the Targonian appear enough of a human to draw Leona’s eye, while being inhuman enough to ensure she wasn’t mistaking them for a human, as part of the whole “Figuring out if she was the chosen one” deal, but I personally doubt that such a detail was a quickly done thing by Riot. I believe it was intentional and that the boy’s appearance was reminiscent of what Targonians look like or once looked like before they became wholly incomprehensible beings. All manner of strange creatures appear on Mount Targon, and yet the Targonian chose what appears to have been a completely unique appearance from all of them, given how Leona reacts. I feel that’s important.
Now let’s talk about the second...well I listed it first but it’s second here point: The darkin are a pre human race. Now it’s not been stated anywhere that the darkin actually had a civilisation comparable to modern humans or any other kind of people in the League of Legends universe, but I can’t be the only one who’s always assumed they at least had some kind of kingdom of their own. Either way that pre human thing is important because it ties in with the Targonians.
While we don’t have a direct timeline for the Targonian civilisation’s development we can infer from the fact they’re space colonists and are transcendant beings who’re not all that comprehensible to humans that they’ve been at it for a long time. By the time Aurelion Sol found them they had already begun the colonisation of other worlds, and his servitude allowed them to expand their reach even further, but even though Runeterra is the world they enslaved him on and one of the most likely places for the Targonian homeworld, they just up and abandoned it. There could be many reasons, but the main thing here is that given how long it takes for life to develop, it’s more likely than not that the Targonians were the first dominant sentient species on Runeterra, and that their departure led for human development a few thousand years down the line.
This is important because the darkin, being a pre-human species, would likely have ended up competing with the Targonians for resources and territory on Runeterra. Given the fact that the Targonians became a space faring civilisation alone it implies that either they decimated the darkin before this, which might be the reason for the darkin’s exceedingly low population, or that the Targonians and darkin were one and the same, which I find much more likely because of the physical similarities I discussed earlier.
These are the two main points that make me think that the darkin and Targonians were once the same thing, but the how is still a mystery. Was there a civil war? Was it before or after encountering Aurelion Sol? Did they make him decimate those who would then be known as the darkin? I dunno really. Also this is all speculative so it could all be bollocks for all I know.
Just had the thought running for a bit and wanted to share it. Any thoughts folks? Could there be any credence to this theory or am I off my sodding rocker with this one?
