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On Darkin: Why Shurima?

GildaTheGryphon·6/27/2018, 9:31:03 PM·22 votes·11,564 views

With the rework of the Darkin lore, I can't help but feel betrayed as a fan of the original archetype. Absolutely nothing about the Darkin looks Shuriman. Darkin were malevolent, evil, and as far from humanity as one could get. They were their own people, a race, entirely not human. Turning them into 'bad ascended' I feel has drastically taken away from that fantasy. I'm no longer playing a demonic, hellbent soldier, looking to continue his duty in conquering a new world, but instead what is essentially just an angry human abusing his powers. There was an archetypical role they filled that League did not have very prominently, which was to say, demon-like characters, not just in appearance, but in character and in mission. Now that role is once again left vacant, and fans of it like me are left in the darkin.

Shurima's lore already had similar characters with similar motives, what need was there to add more? The 'bad ascended' role had already been claimed by the Baccai. Adding the Darkin to this equation makes it feel very convoluted, with now 4 different types of ascended (regular, Darkin, Baccai, and whatever the hell Xerath is), apparently separated only by personality. Not only do I feel this is a betrayal of people who enjoyed the original archetype of demonic creatures that the Darkin were, but perhaps also to fans of the Baccai, as now they almost inevitably have to be pushed aside for this bigger, seemingly badder threat that is the new Darkin.

I think the cherry on top is that Riot very recently released an article talking about how they had screwed up another champion's lore, Nautilus, by taking away from a certain fantasy his players had about him. What was done to the Darkin makes me feel the same way I imagine Nautilus players felt when he was made into a Leviathan-god serving puppet.

Obviously I can't speak for anyone but myself here, and hell maybe I'm completely alone in the matter, but that doesn't mean I don't feel any less let down by the Darkin's new Shuriman backstory.

67 Comments

Blood Magicks6/27/2018, 9:59:45 PM18 votes

The Darkin are even more demonic than before now.

What are Christian demons if not the corrupted gods of dead civilizations? Flip through any text on European demonology and you will see names of Egyptian, Greek, Phoenician, Assyrian and etc deities and mythological beings. Sort of the region Shurima seems to represent.

Take Ashtaroth for example, known in Mesopotamia and Egypt as Astarte/Ishtar, a benevolent goddess of love and brothels. In Christian demonology the same entity is a Great Duke of Hell.

Or Amun, a major Egyptian god who again appears in Christian demonology.

Both of the above are Goetic demons, known to have been imprisoned by King Solomon in a brass vessel, according to one of the major Renaissance texts on demonology, the Ars Goetia.

The Ars Goetia is of course a guide to magic you can perform by summoning and drawing power from the imprisoned demons.

As you can imagine, it's not the nice kind of magic.

Sound familiar?

GreenLore6/27/2018, 11:04:59 PM13 votes

Uhm it was never implied that the baccai are "evil ascended",just that they failed the ritual and were misshapen as a result. But malformed =/= evil.(though fiction does like to combine these 2).

Anyway while I also would have preferred it if the darkin stayed as otherworldly invaders I do think that there are several possible reasons for why riot has done this:

1.They needed a reason for the disappearance fo the ascended I mean with Shurima being such a big nation and having access to magic that turned soldiers into almost unkillable superweapons,it would make sense that they had dozens of ascended,but so far we didn't know what happened to them and why none of them succeeded in taking control over Shurima,but this lore piece actually explains what happened with the other ascended after the fall of Shurima.

2.It is actually kinda fitting thematically Like Blood Magicks explained,the idea of foreign gods as basis for demons is actually rooted in our demonic mythology. Not to mention that a rioter explained that the forms of the ascended are deeply rooted in their culture,so based on Aatroxs new lines it is likely that Kayle and Morgana are scended too,they just weren't shurimans originally and thus look different. In which case the darkins wouldn't just be perversions of other gods,but also the counterpart to the angels,which fits pretty well with the actual mythology.

3.They likely didn't want to have to introduce a second world Riot has their hands full establishing a single world(and I'm pretty sure that we haven't even seen all the continents of runeterra),so adding another one on top of that would be rather hard to do.So they likely wanted to ground the darkin somewhere in runeterra.And Shurima merely happened to be the faction that was best suited for that.

So all in all I would have preferred it if Riot had established some sort of "outer realm" instead of retconning the darkin into corrupted ascended,but I understand that they likely had their reasons for doing so.

DarkSoul19946/28/2018, 12:54:41 AM9 votes

The new lore:

Does a good job of explaining why they all look different.
Embeds them in the world of Runeterra - they now have links to Icathia (The Void), Mt Targon (Celestials), and Shurima (Ascended) in addition to the other Darkin.
Players now have empathy for the Darkin. It was very hard to relate to the Darkin simply because they were too inhuman. Now they're tragic heroes turned lost souls. If the Darkin kept their shit together for a few hundred years longer, they would have seen Shurima rise from the sands.

Infernape6/27/2018, 11:06:12 PM6 votes

Riot got Azir to write their lore.

Jaspers6/27/2018, 10:23:55 PM5 votes

One upvote for the pun at the end of the first paragraph alone.

The classic retcon problem. The problem is bigger in comics, which I used to read a lot, things change as it's an ongoing plot. Riot are trying to form a world that is connected instead of just parts, fitting separate characters together in that world. Where characters like Nami and Rengar were retconned to be a new species but kept their identity, Darkin lost all of that. They are nothing but bad Ascended's now, they aren't their own race, own purpose.

The origins of the Darkin shouldn't matter, no one cares how the X-men came to be, just that they are and they are trying to survive in a world that hates and fears them. In reality the 'Darkin' we have in game are horrors, men who were once god like, now monsters driven by vengeance and bloodlust because they were 'wronged' by a world they betrayed in the first place. This is what they should focus on, not the formation of what the Darkin were but what they are now.

Of couse I agree, their identity has been lost. They aren't a last few remaining of a near immortal race out for vengeance against those who defeated them, they are a bunch of warring gods who went too far and are now crying about it.