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Rek'Sai is a terrifying, unstoppable beast!

Rebonack·12/3/2014, 5:31:46 PM·14 votes·5,304 views

What exactly would stop the folks from Shurima hiring Zaun or Piltover from coming in with a couple airships, dropping a seismic thumper on the ground, and then blowing Rek into a steaming heap of gibblets as soon as she surfaces?

She's a big (megalodon sized if the video is to be believed) scary animal. Neat.

Large predators aren't a threat to any sufficiently technologically advanced civilization. There's a reason why most of them around the world are extinct or endangered. It's because tools and intelligence trump bestial ferocity pretty handily. Now, if Rek were Godzilla sized like a few of the nasty folks from the Cthulhu Mythos I can understand this not working. If she utterly defied conventional physical laws, yeah, that would make problems. But the route Riot seems to be taking with the Void now is that it's just a spooky purple universe and Rek happens to be a (large) example of the wildlife from there.

So that leaves me wondering, why is this critter a champion, exactly? Why is she a threat to anyone other than some poor losers who don't have so much as a pointy stick to defend themselves?

56 Comments

GreenLore12/3/2014, 5:59:02 PM19 votes

why would zaun/piltover even bother to do that?seriously,she has a large desert terrain as her territory,they would need to bomb the shit out of a lot of nothing just so that they MAY be able to lure her out and its not even known if it would lure her really out,or if she would simply retreat even deeper into the underground or travel to a different location,I mean its not like they could imprison her with a fence.

You are basically requesting a large scale attack(something that is probably waaaaay too expensive for the citizens of shurima,if it is possible at all,I mean Piltover and Zaun have their limits too) on her territory just to get her down and it could easily fail anyway.

I don't even understand why you say "oh she is nothing special you could kill her if you bomb her and her home",which would apply to most other champs too.

The big problem with rek'sai is,that she comes from beneath the sand,it is hard to defend against something that suddenly bursts out directly beneath you,especially since she seems to be pretty fast. She also seems tohave a tough shell,so weaker weapons won't do much harm to her and I bet her territory is large enough to make it hard for humans to actively find her.

I am THE Darius12/3/2014, 11:01:16 PM8 votes

According to lore Piltover is single handedly being destroyed by Jinx . If they don't have the resources to handle one person I doubt they have enough to send an expedition to a desert which is like 1/4 the entire continent (if accounting Urtisan and Fyrone Flats). Also creatures that are underground that have a large network of tunnels are hard as hell to locate and find. A good example of this is when the US tries to find terrorists located in mountain caves, they use satellite imaging and constant drone monitoring and it still takes them years to find the terrorists and Im pretty sure that Piltover doesn't have satellites or drones to monitor such a vast area so it would take them even longer than that to get a reasonable finding let alone kill Rek'Sai.

Waffletimewarp12/3/2014, 6:27:37 PM8 votes

I'm sure all 4 inhabitants Shurima are real worried about her.

Also, as if Azir would call for help.

Rebonack12/3/2014, 6:15:24 PM7 votes

You are basically requesting a large scale attack(something that is probably waaaaay too expensive for the citizens of shurima,if it is possible at all,I mean Piltover and Zaun have their limits too) on her territory just to get her down and it could easily fail anyway.

Large scale?

Nah. An airship or two with some of Singed's melty bombs would probably do the trick.

There's nothing in Rek's kit or lore that suggests that she's super-durable (as opposed to, say, Cho). Nor would she be smart enough to recognize a trap and avoid getting asploded.

And as far as funding it goes, I'm sure Azir and his heaps of ancient treasures could probably work something out.

I don't even understand why you say "oh she is nothing special you could kill her if you bomb her and her home",which would apply to most other champs too.

See, difference here is that none of the other monster-y champions are making a threat of themselves the same way Rek is. They're all intelligent enough to know that painting a target on their head is dumb. Rek'Sai is the only one who is doing a Jaws impression, so she's the only one who needs to get a compressed air tank shoved down her throat and blown up.

Hell. Just put out some poisoned bait for heavens sake. If she's material (and she certainly seems to be, hyper-dimensional beings wouldn't bother with something as pedestrian as burrowing) and if she's eating stuff (implying that she's metabolizing it) then it's just a matter of finding something that would be toxic to her. Sounds like a job for Singed!

Honestly, I think she would have been better off as just a sand shark from Shurima instead of watering down the Void.

cilice1312/3/2014, 11:03:59 PM6 votes

If your argument is that she shouldn't be a champion because she could be killed by an internationally organized military carpet bombing, then you should probably consider that a carpet bombing would kill just about every other champion in league too. There's not much inherent to say, Warwick or Teemo, that would make them immune to napalm.

LankPants12/4/2014, 4:33:17 AM5 votes

She's protected by the IoW!!!, oh wait.

Rebonack12/4/2014, 4:41:36 AM5 votes

According to the Riot Q&A on her, Rek'sai is to Vel'koz as a grizzly bear or shark is to a human. She is a highly intelligent predator that is intimidating to even other voidborn.

She isn't another Voidborn, though. At least not a Voidborn as they're described in Cho'Gath's lore. She would be more akin to the legions of awful things the Voidborn toss at material folks and then giggle while they die horrible. Unless, of course, the definition of what a Voidborn is has been changed from 'this is an incomprehensible elder god manifesting in a material form while in the material universe' to 'any spooky purple monster from the spooky purple parallel universe.'

And honestly?

I can not fathom Rek'Sai being any degree of threat to Vel'koz outside of League's apparently totally fictitious battles. Rek's only projectile weapon is a torpedo. Vel can fly, he's frightfully intelligent and analytical, and he has lethal learning lasers.

I dunno. If they hadn't been so cagey with practically every lore related question in the Q&A maybe some of this stuff would have been answered. But right now it's just me really scratching my head in puzzlement.

Rebonack12/3/2014, 9:49:54 PM4 votes

Are the other Xer'Sai on Runeterra, though? Or are they restricted to the Void?

Y'know, I'm starting to wonder if Rek'Sai and her kin might fall under the category of 'armies of horrors' lead by the Voidborn rather than being a Voidborn herself. She doesn't strike me as 'an ancient creature of malice, violence, and maligned alien intelligence'. She doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would lead armies. She seems like the sort of thing that you point in the general direction of something you want Rek'd and then watch the fireworks.

Hmmm... That might be it. Rek'Sai isn't a Voidborn. She's on the higher end of the Voidborn's living weapons.

Rebonack12/3/2014, 11:15:39 PM3 votes

If your argument is that she shouldn't be a champion because she could be killed by an internationally organized military carpet bombing,

That... isn't what I'm saying?

Mostly I'm just wondering aloud what the chances of the Xer'Sai in Runeterra surviving are if someone decided they need to get stomped. Frankly, there's a lot of stuff like that now that the Institute of War isn't a thing. Is Brand just running around burninating the country side? Is Koggy snacking on everything with wild abandon? What the heck is up with Cho?

As far as the champion end of things go, I'm mostly just puzzled why random spooky wildlife is being included in the character roster. If she were one of the Voidborn, one of those unfathomable horrors that commands legions of smaller but no less unfathomable horrors like Cho apparently does I would get that. But she's just a Neutral Hungry critter.

MrSc0tty12/4/2014, 5:12:46 PM3 votes

Yeah, and Garen is a dude with a sword and talent that would make any prima ballerina turn as Green as emerald Taric.

When the vast majority of your champs are "schmuck with weapon" then a big monster is pretty terrifying.

Why doesn't anyone kill champion Y?

Because then champion Y wouldn't be in the video game that is the entire point of this whole freaking discussion.

And that's it. Done.

Ebonmaw Dragon12/11/2014, 2:15:39 PM2 votes

{quoted} What exactly would stop the folks from Shurima hiring Zaun or Piltover from coming in with a couple airships, dropping a seismic thumper on the ground, and then blowing Rek into a steaming heap of gibblets as soon as she surfaces?

Money... The people of Shurima is poor

Rebonack12/4/2014, 4:32:57 PM2 votes

Well, let's see - considering she's going to be mixing it up with everyone on Summoner's Rift, I'm gonna assume she can take multiple shots from pretty much everything Runeterra and beyond could throw at her, including gunfire, rockets, lasers, etc.

Keep in mind that the fights that take place in Summoner's Rift are totally fictitious even in-universe akin to Smash Brothers. Most champions would have exactly zero chance of taking Corki in a fight due to his gyro-copter. While skilled, most League champions are still quite human and one shot from something like Graves' hand-cannon would kill them (see: a New Dawn).

Anywho, whether the effort is worth it or not mostly comes down to how important the trade routes she's disrupting are. If she can just be ignored then she isn't a problem. If she's disrupting the supply lines for some rare alchemical reagent that folks in Zaun want you can bet they'll eventually do something about it.

Rebonack12/8/2014, 5:52:14 PM2 votes

Can someone really look forward to be a growling and clicking burrower for hours?

Aaaaand this is what puzzles me about her. Okay, yeah, she's supposed to be the biggest, most powerful member of her race. Maybe if we had some kind of buildup regarding her race that would be relevant. Maybe if she were actually huge on Rift that would be true. But as it stands she honestly isn't that gigantic or horrifying In Game. But she is the only one we've seen. We have nothing to compare her to. All we have to go on is a video that displays some unarmed nomads getting Rek'd.

Neon Robot12/4/2014, 10:49:43 AM2 votes

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Sneak Dog12/4/2014, 2:15:24 AM2 votes

Piltover and Zaun don't care one bit about her having her little piece of a huge desert. They wouldn't bother and have their own problems to deal with (or will, seeing where the current lore seems to be headed).

Bandle City however is having it's land-based trading route terrorized. They ought to send Rumble, Heimerdinger or Ziggs at her to maintain healthy trading relationships. Any one of those three would probably outwit her tremorsense and then just launch a large enough weapon at her.

If it isn't the land-based trading route with Bandle CIty, then I have no clue why Rek'Sai is even terrorizing caravans enough for them to have dedicated look-outs for her specifically.

Peridition3/20/2015, 9:38:12 PM1 votes

Shurima seems like a pretty ravaged and impoverished place. I doubt anyone outside of Azir has the gold to attract Zaun's interest.

But better yet is probably the fact that most Shurimians don't care about the area that Rek'Sai inhabits. Its nothing more than endless desert. They only reason people go there at all is to for trade routes.

junglerboy1612/4/2014, 3:32:07 AM1 votes

According to the Riot Q&A on her, Rek'sai is to Vel'koz as a grizzly bear or shark is to a human. She is a highly intelligent predator that is intimidating to even other voidborn. As far as we know (what with that darned retcon screwing over the lore) the void is not just an emptiness with a few random beings in it, it is more akin to a parallel universe; It has multiple species and type of creatures, but just because they all originate from the same universe doesn't mean they share any innate allegiance to each other, just like I don't automatically befriend every wild grizzly bear I will ever see.

As to why they don't just blow her up, there could be limitless reasons: ecological preservation, collateral damage, unknown success, bad side effects (as in Rek'sai absorbs the explosion energy and mutates into a supernaturally powerful entity that wreaks havoc on all of Valoran, or other similarly unexpected results).

It is easy to say that Large predators are not a threat to technologically advanced civilizations, except you fail to consider the fact that super predators like Megalodon, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Mososaurs, and other, similarly large and powerful beasties all went extinct long before mankind gained any form of technological advancement that could be used against them. You also assume that technology is even remotely relevant to runeterran political and/or ecological power. Right now, Demacia and Noxus, the two largest and most powerful factions currently active have medieval technology and culture, and Zaun and piltover are stand out exceptions in a land of magic and beasts.

As to why she is a Champion, that is probably just because her identity as a magical land shark feels really cool and satisfying, even without her being truly sentient. Sometimes, your just want to play a monster that is a monster, not a monster that could also talk to you about stuff, just a raw, natural monster that would make you lose your lunch if you saw it in real life.

Gorgannan12/4/2014, 5:48:07 AM1 votes

AP scaling implies it's magic. :P

oooooh, mf, the girl with some guns.

Athenes Lulu12/4/2014, 6:56:34 AM1 votes

The thing is, she can even burrow to civilizations and destroy them FROM BELOW, if she wishes to do so.

That's how dangerous she could be.

Gray Fanchon12/4/2014, 10:06:59 AM1 votes

Well, let's see - considering she's going to be mixing it up with everyone on Summoner's Rift, I'm gonna assume she can take multiple shots from pretty much everything Runeterra and beyond could throw at her, including gunfire, rockets, lasers, etc.

So assuming that, killing her is going to be a pain. Catching her is going to be hard - you have to find a creature used to comfortably and quickly moving through a vast desert.

And if you do manage to catch her, and have sufficient force to bring her down, she can simply Void Rush somewhere else. Maybe if there was a massive effort to kill her, she could be slain eventually. But I think if you're gonna throw an army or a huge amount of force at any individual champion, you'll probably manage to kill them. :P Albeit at a pretty massive cost, potentially.

Tsukuy0m112/4/2014, 5:35:10 PM1 votes

why is her name similar to void creatures if she is not from the void?

Matezoide12/9/2014, 1:34:00 AM1 votes

Because Shurima is poor as hell, so they wouldnt be able to afford anyone's services.

And nobody gives a damn about Shurima in the lore (Seriously, if Runeterra had an asshole, that asshole would be called Shurima), so nobody ever bothers to go kill Rek.

DWT1234512/10/2014, 9:12:15 PM1 votes

shurima is the least populated place in valoran, so neither city would really bother. Besides, if they could do that, why havent they taken down the other void creatures? If anything this sounds like a job for Kassadin.

disregardable12/3/2014, 5:34:32 PM1 votes

I'm pretty sure she's a sentient creature. Just a really aggressive, hostile one.