Is there a TL;DR of all the lore.

• Runeterra is a magical world divided into several regions and shaped by the Rune Wars, which came about when a bunch of wizards found some magic "World Runes" and were like "lmao let's just use these", which Ryze is pissed off about.

• Anyway you got your Demacia, a medieval-style kingdom ruled by Jarvan III. They don't like magic, in fact, they hate magic so much that they built a giant golem who eats magic just so people would STOP USING MAGIC C'MON SERIOUSLY.

• The empire of Noxus is an expansionist state led by Swain, who keep trying to take over territories and assimilate them into their empire. They tried it with Ionia, but it hasn't worked yet, since they've got like a million ninjas there. Swain is a shady guy, doing stuff like necromancy and probably murdering the previous leader, but he's probably being backed by LeBlanc, who is even shadier.

• The Freljord is a frozen tundra where two major factions, the Avarosans lead by Ashe, and the Winter's Claw lead by Sejuani, are fighting over territory. Ashe is all about diplomacy and harmony and Sejuani likes to punch rocks and get tough and fight. There's a third faction called the Frostguard, lead by Lissandra, who is definitely, most certainly NOT the Ice Witch, and is definitely NOT trying some long con to resurrect her dark masters from the depths of the Howling Abyss. That would be silly.

• Ionia is an island nation that's basically a hodge-podge of Asian cultures. They've got your ninjas, your samurai, and this one weirdo with a mask. They're dealing with a lot of internal conflict right now, because the Vastayans, animal people, are rebelling, and Zed is leading a group called "The Order of Shadow" to presumably do some bad stuff, they're called "The Order Of Shadow", like, c'mon.

• Piltover and Zaun are in the same spot, but they're two different cities, technically. Piltover is a technocratic society where everyone is really into robots and all that. Zaun is like that but dirtier, since it's in a slum. Zaun is ruled loosely by a bunch of mob boss types called the "Chem Barons", although Urgot's killing them off because that's his thing now.

• Bilgewater is an island that used to be under the control of the (not literal) iron fist of the Pirate King, Gangplank. Unfortunately for him, he got tricked into standing on a ship full of bombs, and now he has a literal iron fist, and has been deposed by Miss Fortune, who hates Gangplank and his pirate goons and is now slaughtering them, so she might not be that much better than him after all. Their biggest problem, aside from all the pirates killing eachother, is "the Harrowing", an event where a bunch of spooky ghosts from the Shadow Isles cross over to try and kill them all.

• SPEAKING OF, the Shadow Isles used to be the Blessed Isles, but a big idiot King being duped by this jerk named Hecarim accidentally cursed them to be a horrible necromantic spawning ground. Whoopsie. You probably don't want to go there.

• Shurima is an ancient desert kingdom that is now less important, but used to be a major empire, ruled by a line of emperors ending in Azir. However, after a ritual to make Azir into a demi-god failed because his right-hand slave, Xerath, decided to mess with it, the whole thing pretty much just exploded. Now, though, Azir is risen from the dead, and trying to reunite the kingdom under his rule. Unfortunately, Xerath is ALSO back, and with the crazed Renekton by his side, and he wants to do that, but cooler. The citizens don't know what the heck is going on.

• Lastly, there's Mt. Targon, which hosts the Rakkor, a warrior tribe, and the Solari, a group of sun-worshippers who maybe might have genocided the moon worshippers, but they don't like to talk about that. They're connected to a space-faring empire called the Targonians who enslaved a Space Dragon once, and now he's mad. To make things worse, they're dealing with The Void.

• The Void is some kind of extra dimensional nonsense filled with horrible monsters who would like very much to devour all of existence. We don't know much about it, other than that it's purple, it's bad, and Malzahar would probably tell you he loves the place.

Obviously I'm not being entirely serious here, but that's a basic overview. If you want to learn more, Sharjo's stickied topics are great, as is the League Universe page.

Look at Sharjo's stickied posts at the top of Story, Art, and Sound!