Sion's potential - and why Valoran might be screwed.

SaltyToplaneGoat··9 votes·1,493 views

So well all know how Sion works. Blood and life essence goes in, powering a construct of black magics and necromancy, that goes out to actively seek out more blood and life essence. The main motivation for that is that Sion's mind is shattered, and only taking in lare amounts of essence and feeding the underlying blood-thrist allows him to think clear for a few minutes before it fades all again.

So this leads to the following: Blood (Fuel) -> Sion functioning. More Blood -> better functioning, more strenght, durability and intelligence.

Usually in a fight Sion would never gain enough of it to have a lasting effect. He would trample down countless foes for a few minutes of clarity, but then all this essence and power keeps leaking out again as he has abolutely no way to control it or keep it in.

However, what if at some point, Sion takes in so much blood that he achieves hemomantic control over the essence? This is possible, as there doesn't seem to be a limit in how strong Sion can get (endless HP stacking ingame ^^) - he might as well become the smartest being in existence. In theory that is. Also, he is actually capable of hemomancy. His shield is clearly him using the essence he has absorbed, even tho it appears to be a rather barbaric and primitive spell. The basic ability is there. He just needs to become aware of it.

A super-smart and strong being that can always absorb more power to become even stronger&smarter.

For all the Marvel-Comic fans out there, here is something you could compare it with: The Hulk. Usually all brawns but no brain, in some versions of the future in the marvel universe the Hulk gains intelligence, becoming "Maestro", a superhuman being that can singlehandly destroy planets while also posessing super-intelligence. In these alternative versions of the unvierse Maestro has taken over the world, singlehandedly destroyed every opposition in his path, be it heroes or villains.

And that's where I see the parralels to Sion, who could become Runeterra's Undead Overlord, even stronger than Mordekaiser was in his prime. As much as I want the poor guy to wake up and free himself from his mental chains, I fear for what this would mean for Runeterra...

28 Comments

IronwallJackson5 votes

You're making all kinds of logical leaps and attributing powers to sion that he simply does not have.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

Am I? Well, let's see:

Sion absorbing power from fallen foes and being mostly a hemomancy and necromancy based murder machine running on said power? Check.

Sion getting empowered by said power, resulting in better body and mind? Check.

Sion being able to use hemomancy, even if it is probably not conscious and very primitive? Check.

Sion gaining energy restoring and/or improving his mental capacities? Check.

I think I know enough to talk about my main, thx ;)

IronwallJackson4 votes

Sion has a sort of bioreactor inside of him, and yes, it uses his fallen enemies as fuel, in some regard. However, Sion's intelligence and use of magic aren't even vaguely implied to scale up like you suggest. The singular example we have of his hemoancy is his in-game shield and his lore states that combat grants him moments of lucidity and temporary access to his living faculties.

Even if Sion didn't clearly burn through his blood or whatever and he could accumulate more and more of it, becoming increasingly resilient over time, it's pretty weaksauce speculation to say that that might somehow grant him legit hemomantic powers. That's like saying that Yasuo could climb the highest peak in Ionia, meditate, and come down with Ao-Shin powers. Both are neat ideas but neither has any solid footing.

I get that you love Sion to bits and that Maestro Hulk is a cool place to draw parallels, but yo, Hulk shares brains pace with Bruce Banner, who is an actual genius. His physical strength has been explicitly stated to grow proportionally to his anger and possibly without an upper limit. Hulk can do those things because they're ingrained into the character. This vision on Sion that you have relies on dubious and wishful thinking rather than stated facts.

SaltyToplaneGoat2 votes

Well, ofc it wouldn't go like "POOF. YOU'RE A WIZARD, SION!", it would be still more of a stretched process with a triggering event at the start. However, even "normal smart" Sion with SOME crude blood powers would be extremly dangerous. In the comics there is a a short transistory phase between "The Hulk" and "Maestro", called "Doc Green". Not as powerful or as smart as the last, but truly superior to the "normal" Hulk. (And probably the reason you shouldn't play around with Extremis during brain surgeries <_<'). And even that guy was though as a nail.

As you brought up bruce banner... well living Sion was no one to scoff at either. He was not just a killing machine, but also an exeptional fighter and strategist. That's what made him live through so many battles. Dumb brutes might also kill a lot, but when armies clash it's usually the smart ones that come home alive. He also was a friend of Boram Darkwill, and I doubt that a Grand General would bother with seeking the company of a moron. It was only when the revival went totally wrong that Sion became the monster that he is now...

I think you keep forgetting something: Sion pretty much is living hemomancy. For him this kind of magic - should he ever be intelligent enough to truly grasp it - should be as natural as breathing. Right now it's working in a very primitive and straighforward way. This can have two reasons: Vladimir "programmed" him during the revival with this skill so Sion is conditioned to use this even tho he is a potato mentally, or it's pure instinct. Might even be a mix of both.

We might not know what requirements hemomancy has for one to study it, but Sion would be the ideal candidate...

Also, we have no clue what Yasuo's actual limits are. If he could control the wind just how Tal controls her stone then... yeah, creating an entire storm is not out of the question. But he's dedicated to the sword, not really striving for power and only using that to compliment his swordfighting. But send him up on a mountain for a few months, let him meditate and train a lot, and I'm sure he would come down considerably stronger than before.

Old-Man Yasuo, should he ever live that long, might be a super-powerful wind-wizard, who knows? ^^

IronwallJackson3 votes

I still think you're reading too much into this. I'll concede that Sion's experience and intellect are formidable insofar as warfare is concerned, and a truly lucid Sion would be very dangerous, but not remarkably more so than, say, Swain. Big deal? Yes, but let's avoid blowing things out of proportion. Part of reason they put Sion back under after first reviving him was that he was a disgraceful abomination who'd be reviled by the Noxians themselves. At best, he'd be a tactician instead of an on-the-ground commander.

The single biggest issue continues to be the subject of hemomancy. Maybe he can actually make a blood shield by way of hemomantic power. Alright, I'll buy it for the sake of the argument. Nothing else is remotely concrete though. He could possibly learn to exert control over it. He could just as easily be using a function built-in by the order of the black rose or whatever they're called. This is where we go headlong into unfounded speculation. The facts are simply not there so as to allow for extrapolation or even educated guessing.

Not gonna lie though, blood-mage-zombie-juggernaut-tactician sounds neat. It makes me think of this: http://66.media.tumblr.com/7cc3dc09616aa07143447a302f1b4356/tumblr_nvjnpmLc9o1t0ple2o1_500.jpg

EDIT: Wow, this post was an absolute mess in need of review and spellchecking.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

Well, they created a beast with quite some potential.

Sigh, I'm not that good with english, but I'm more refering to the kind of strategy guys that doesn't plan the battles on a big table over a big map, but one who runs out in the field, analyzing the situation and acting accodringly, giving orders, keeping the unit together, even when something totally unforseen (such an an ambush) happens. I have no clue what the exact word for that is. Considering that he was almost a living legend during his life, he must have been quite sucessfull at doing his job.

Also, his undeath-status is kind of unclear. For one he is a zombie. But then again he runs on a specific source of power, something zombies usually don't. Also, mage and juggernaut are not realy exclusive categories. Even a scrawny mage can go to the gym and get ripped, right? ^^

We really need more information on how exactly the magic system of Runeterra works. They should take a peek at Magi:Labyrinth of Magic. It takes like several hundert chapters, but they explain literally every kind of magic of their world, why it is like that and how it works and how it all makes sense. Compared to that Riot's writers appear like amateurs. "Whatever, it's secret magic stuff none understands". Not exactly the best point to start building an authentic world...

IronwallJackson6 votes

That is exactly what he couldn't do. You can't put sion at the head of an army and expect success. No Noxian army would willingly follow him post-zombification, so you'd end up with unwilling combatants with low morale and higher than average odds of insubordination. The issue is that the Noxian concept of glory and military might does not line up with what Sion has become. His current role, if I recall correctly, is that of a shock trooper. They send in their living weapon, he makes a mess, and his job is done.

Also, on the subject of magic and how it works, defining the exact mechanics takes away from the fantasy and turns it into pseudoscience. Riot's lore team not only have better things to do than explaining how magic works, but actually doing so would create restrictions on what sorts of content they could create. "It's magic; deal with it" is way more flexible than the alternative.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

Well, that would describe his current state. If he were EVER to regain sentinence, he might actually be able to do it. However, that requires him actually earning the respect of the soldiers. Noxus might be the only place where this might work, as Strenght = More important than everything else. Display enough strenght and leadership skills, and it doesn't matter if you are undead. However, that's impossible for the current Sion.

The problem is, you NEED to make it a little pseudo-science. Not explain everything 100%, as that would be indeed too restricting, but you must give the reader a feeling that stuff in your story makes sense and follows certain rules. It adds to the authencity of the world to have a consistent set of diegetic rules and that prevents the feeling of "pff the authors totally just pulled this out of their ass" occuring in the reader when something new happens that suddenly turns things around. If the new thing however was part of the established rules, then readers are usually more like "ah yes, that's logical! How smart of the authors!".

Of course you can also use this to break with the system at times, to make a character or a magic appear even more powerful than others. Just don't do that too often or the system becomes obsolete...

IronwallJackson2 votes

What you're describing is a need for consistent internal logic, not necessarily outlined mechanics. So far. Riot's creative staff haven't yet jumped the shark, so we're actually doing well in that regard. While we've never been given explicit examples of how things work, we've been told what they do, and "what they do" has been consistent whenever they aren't making new lore whole cloth.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

The thing is, you can't show off your internal logic if you don't have a framework for reference laid by some mechanics that are known.

For example: a simple definition to what is mana, how it behaves and how it differs from energy would be interesting. That way we suddenly would have a lot more insight to how magic actually works, putting every single spellcaster in the game into an overall context.

The same thing applies to Hextech. Just tell us how it works somehow in theory, show some examples of tech that is used currently and suddenly we can fit every new hextech thing that pops up into this framework.

But as long as everything is vague, you can't do that. Then it's just a big random pile of stuff without any structure.

GreenLore3 votes

I don't know how you come to the conclusion that sion also gets smarter the more blood he soaks up.

Your arguementation is like "he can become smart,because he can get stronger".

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

Have you read his lore? At the beginning of the fight he's just a beast, then as the fight continues he becomes more intelligent. At some point he can even think in complex sentences. At first he sees Swain and thinks its his old general, but then he starts noticing that SOMETHING must be off.

But before he can come to any conclusion, he runs out of "fuel" and reverts to being a simple beast thristing for blood again. So his mental capacity seems to be linked to his power-level.

Decrit7 votes

I think he becomes smarter in the sense he recovers his lost intelligence. Meaning that he "ripristinates" his old intelligence.

Maybe there are some unbound perks like perception and such, but the base idea is that his mind "goes back" from when he was living. Probably his living self was smart and aware enough to think that Swain is about something.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

His living self had no clue swain even existed. Sion died a long before Swain became the grand general judging from what I read in the lore. Swain had to do quite a lot of research to even find out about Sion's existence. However, that doesn't mean that Borman Darkwill didn't give Sion a warning of some sorts. A warning of ravens to be exact... one can only assume that they stand in connection with the Black Rose.

I doubt that his mind merely reverts. He gets strenght that goes beyond that of any living human. When he says he's "going to rip your head of your spine", he will be doing exactly that. With one hand. While not even looking. And just as his body, his brain is now also running 100% on life-essence (aka magical blood), so it wouldn't be weird for it to also become super-human if you pump enough essence in. It's just a matter of quanitity.However, it might be almost impossible to get that much blood without committing a genocide or something...

Another possibility would be overcharging him with some similiar energy. The Black Mist might work. Or a Shuriman Ascension Ritual.

It just needs to be enough for him to become aware of his hemomantic powers and actively stop or slow the leaking-out of the essence at the end of his rampage. Because, as I said, he already has the magic, he doesn't need to learn it from zero.

Decrit3 votes

...well, it' s not like an intelligent person needs to know Swain firsthand to guess that it' s being manipulated. Maybe by doing so Sion asks himself questions about this "Swain" bit he is unable to answer them.

About muscles oh come on, do you really want to compare muscle mass enhanced magically with enhanced intelligence? It' s like steam pressure to him, if you pump that on muscles you are stronger and if you pump that to the brain it explodes, most probably.

Also i doubt shuriman magic works on corpses.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

Well, he's not a normal corpse, no? ^^

Well, the magical blood enchanced the function and durability of his body. And it HAS influence on his mind, that's what we can read in his lore. The question is just how high the limit is, or if there even is a limit (technically, the ultimate limit would be the amount of aviable blood).

Even without him being truly "limitless", a "smart" Sion with basic hemomantic control sounds like a terrfying opponent to me...

Also, I have an interesting theory to what happens when you use Ascension (or something similiar) on someone dead or half-dead... Amumu

Skelenth1 votes

What's with Sivir and Azir? They were most likely dead/close to death when they got their share of the shuriman magic

Decrit1 votes

i was referring the ascension.

Azir was resurrected by another thing, Sivir never died ( only close, that is the point) and the magic you are talking about was about healing alone. Also add to that Nasus, who was on the brink of death when his ascension happened: the ascension gave him a stronger body, but he was still alive when that happened.

GreenLore3 votes

He doesn't become smarter because he kills others,he merely calms down after the fighting is over,which causes him to slightly return to his old self.

And this actually reflected ingame where he gets more agressive quotes during a fight and goes back to "calmer"(at least compared to the rest of his VO)ones when he's out of combat.

Vistha Kai2 votes

Too much of baseless theory-crafting here.

Fighting allows him to regain his old mental capabilities if only for a moment.

That's about it.

Stars Shaper1 votes

Mordekaiser says "Hi"

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

I wonder if they would get along.

Or what would happen if they teamed up... <_<'

Stars Shaper1 votes

Sion is an undead bound to a meat+hextech body. If he is somehow susceptible to the Black Mist Mordekaiser got a nice frontliner to get back his good old fortress with.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

I'm not sure the Soul Furnance counts as Hextech. It looks more like an echanted tool to me that has been fused with his body.

There is also the possibility that he might be immune to the mist, simply because of the sheer amounts of life energy going through him.

Also, if you are undead before the mist gets you, you seem to be immune to it. At least that's how it appears with Mordekaiser (or he is just so badass). Every other undead character only died after the mist got them...

The Last Ballad1 votes

I think it was the necromantic prowess that Mord had before the mist rose that allowed him to be unaffected. If you go back into his lore, his undead lich servants were called to the island after the "explosion"

Demopyro21 votes

I can imagine 3 champions allying to stop Sion's rampage, if it became canon. Khazix Jhin Kindred Kindred is the incarnation of death, and will try to stop this abomination, and put Sion back to rest. Kha'zix would be interested in evolution, with durability, strength, and intelligence, and potentially some blood magic, so he would try to devour Sion. If you remember, Ionia was attacked by Noxus, so if Sion went back there, the Ionian government might send Jhin, the greatest assassin they have, to kill him. Jhin sees beauty in art, and is probably disgusted with Sion ruining the beauty, and will try to make Sion die perfectly.

HellsTrueKing1 votes

First off, Sion is by far and away my favorite champion League of Legends has to offer. I absolutely love everything about him...his look, his voice, and especially his backstory. His story, along with what was said at his memorial, describes Sion as the greatest warrior Noxus had ever known..."a man who would never be denied victory, even by death."

Even when Demacia attacked Noxus and clearly had them outnumbered, he refused to give in.

     "I remember clearly the day he died. Our hated enemy had marched on us in force. They stood at our walls, ten soldiers fielded for every one of our         own, their craven king hiding behind his army to witness us scoured from the face of Valoran with his own eyes. While others counseled me to bar the gates and force our foes to fight for every inch of Noxian soil, this man demanded we march out and face them. He would not cower behind the city walls while Noxus's enemies still drew breath. With our warriors at his back, he strode as a giant through the Demacian rabble with one clear purpose: to cut their army's head from its body."

Sion encapsulates what a warrior should be; and I love him for it. That being said...You have put much more thought into my favorite character that i ever have.

I commend you sir.

SaltyToplaneGoat1 votes

Sion was a living legend during his lifetime. It was no surprise they wanted to get him back. However, did the ritual truly fail, or did they create something even bigger in the long run? Only time will tell...

More from Story, Art, & Sound

More by SaltyToplaneGoat