Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

Alright, so I really like Pantheon's new lore but I feel like we really need clarification on Targon

Naalith·7/29/2019, 11:39:08 PM·3 votes·3,199 views

Ever since the Taric rework/Aurelion Sol back to back releases when Targon was brought into the new canon, one of the first new regions to be written, there has been a giant question mark in regards to Targons. I've made a list of things that have always struck me as odd or required some clarification. If there is a Twitter response from a Rioter somewhere or if you guys have your own questions you should add them. These aren't in any particular order of importance.

  1. What is the overall objective of Targon? Are they humble curators trying to keep Runeterra's life intact? Are they after the World Runes? Are they the original creators of the planet? It seems like they want to preserve Runeterra and Taric in particular is very benevolent to this effect, but I can't tell if they just want to stop the Void and everything else like the Darkin and undead that have happened in the meantime are a complication to the plan or what. Soraka's lore states they want mortals to go forth with predetermined destinies, why does it matter if some dude farms crops his whole life to an empire of gods who stretch across the universe?

  2. Why do we never hear Targonians on VO's? It feels like when Targon was rewritten Riot didn't want Diana, Leona, and Pantheon to have to be rewritten so they kind of just made the Aspects feelings clear to the person they inhabited. However, Pantheon took matters into his own hands and obviously has fairly linear thoughts while Zoe repeats phrases like "do not look into the eyes of a god" as if she has actually been told verbally what to do. I'm just not sure why for Taric and Zoe, we don't have a few VO lines from Aspects.

  3. Why do Aspects need to merge with a human in the first place? We know from Soraka's story that physical bodies are greatly stretched by their power and results in a huge amount of pain. However, we also know from Twilight of the Gods that the Darkin (when they were Ascended in good standing with Targon) physically went to Targon and rode space dragons around and had a big frat party. This means that in some sense, Targon is still a physical place as opposed to something like the spirit realm even if it is a very trippy space empire. It was also discussed that the Ascended believed they could've stormed the city of Targon and destroyed it if they had wanted to, and now that Aatrox has killed Pantheon I actually believe it. All that being said, even if Targon bodies are massive and cosmic in nature, it would make more sense to fight as those than in the body of some human right?

  4. Is Aurelion free now that Pantheon is dead? Is he just controlled by Targon? Do him and Atreus have some sort of amicable agreement? This question has only cropped up today but it still seems like a bit of an oversight that the most powerful weapon the Targonians have wasn't even mentioned in the new bio. I'm assuming he's just controlled by another Targonian now, but who knows.

It feels odd. Targon was the first faction to have all of their characters ported over to the new canon, yet the most defining feature of the region (a giant space empire of gods through a portal on the peak of the mountain) is so blurry no one actually knows what is going on. Because Pantheon is now Atreus, I unfortunately don't think his upcoming short story will answer any questions outside of the realm of man. This means Riot will either have to write some sort of big short story like Twilight of the Gods, the Eye in the Abyss, or The Dreaming Pool that covers the origins of the Targonians and their objectives, or we will have to wait yet again for another new Targonian character release. I just wish things were more clear is all.

3 Comments

mrmeddyman7/30/2019, 12:27:49 AM5 votes

Holy shit this was long as fuck. My bad.

1.) It seems that their primary objective is to destroy the Void. The problem is they do so from the position of uncaring godlike entities and a lot of their efforts cause a lot of collateral damage to Runeterra and they are willing to use drastic measures. The Darkin are one such measure, so is the enslavement of Aurelion Sol, and perhaps they are even responsible for the Rune War if these are the same transdimensional beings that created the Runes that were later used to create our reality. Without them though, The Void would have probably swallowed the whole planet after Icathia so the Aspects for now may be a necessary evil. Also worth noting that the Targonian Aspects and the other Celestial beings are not one and the same, so Soraka doesn't speak for Targon. She may be closer in affiliation with Bard and Aurelion Sol than with someone like Pantheon. In short, me thinks they want to kill the Void and the Watchers simply because they are diametrically opposed in every way, but this is a war so vast it must be fought on all fronts. Including Runeterra, maybe a war that can ONLY be fought in Runeterra as it exists in the middle of both realms.

2.) For the sake of maintaining some of the mystery behind the Aspects themselves Riot won't allow us to interact directly with them. That's why Leona and Diana experience only fragmented memories when they merged with their Aspects. To obscure the framework of the Targon story. It's why Taric is largely autonomous, probably the only Aspect acting of his own free will and maintaining his personality. Kayle and Morgana aren't true Aspects, but descended from Mihila and imbued with her powers. Zoe is a wildcard and an unreliable narrator so we can't trust what she says. And now Pantheon is dead and Atreus has returned. Why? Out of necessity, I predicted this would happen because putting Pantheon in the game would ruin Targons' overarching story by destroying the mystery. We know a bit more about the Aspects with Aatrox, Kayle and Morgana and through Reddit AMAs so Riot is slowly peeling back the layers of mystery, but they won't be ready to deep dive on what's going on in the Celestial Realm for some time. Probably not until Kayle comes back and has to tell the reader/viewer what's going on up there, because at that point Riot can't get away with obfuscating the truth with unreliable narrators, convenient memory loss, absentee characters or in this more recent case: literal Deicide.

3.) I'd assume for the same reason that the Watchers cannot come to Runeterra and had to create the Voidborn to further their agenda for them. Because they simply can't... The barriers between the realms do not work that way. Based on my theory that there are four realms of reality in the lore Physical/Spiritual/Celestial/The Void. I'd argue that the Spirit Realms and Physical are the closest to one another as in the barrier is the thinnest. People like Shen, Yordles and Mordekaiser can regularly traverse both realms and both realms have a constant recognizable effect on the other. The Celestial Realm and the Void are much different beasts. The Celestial may as well just be conceptual thought given endless form. It's probably a very abstract place like a stereotypical quantum mathematics realm that is represented in media by a giant white space with complex equations floating around. Something you aren't even capable of fathoming. Much like to us the Void must feel like closing our eyes if you wanted a simple explanation, but in reality humans cannot experience true nothingness. Not just blackness, but the absence of heat, no sense of time, so much nothing that you don't even know you're experiencing nothing. It's the reason all humans fear death and why every culture since the dawn of time has tried to explain what will happen after life.

Like you said Soraka had to forfeit her immortality, create a vessel to inhabit that is wracked with constant pain; all to make a small difference in peoples lives because she is so benevolent. This is so outside of the Aspects M.O, they aren't willing to sacrifice so much for us because we are ants to them. Completely inconsequential, besides as hosts for them to do battle with their mortal enemy, the Void. Runeterra is just a place between two points where the Celestials and Void Realms converge, so this is will have to be their battleground.

4.) Without a sense of timeline its hard to say. But perhaps the event that Aurelion references as him gaining some of his freedom at the end of his bio

Then, he felt it–a weakening in his unwilling pact. The voices from the crown grew sporadic, clashing, arguing with each other while some fell ominously silent. An unknown catastrophe he could not fathom had thrown off the balance of those who bound him.

Could this be the Aspect of Wars death?

The problem with the region is it actually depends on mystery to work, it's most closely related to the overarching conflict in League of Legends that will eventually have to come to a head, the conflict between celestials and The Void. Once the curtain is lifted on this everything else will become very trite and small by comparison. Who cares about class-related conflict in Piltover and Zaun when reality as we know it is being threatened by Lovecraftian monstrosities and uncaring space gods? All Riot can do is tease it and give us hints. This is why I'm actually hoping for some more mundane Targon lore. Rakkor, Solari, Lunari conflicts, Religious fanaticism with that spicy Warhammer 40k flavor, the cruelty inflicted by people that misinterpret the will of Aspects. Maybe just close the Nami or Leona searching for Diana story arc and set up the next part which will get closer to the more celestial aspects of the lore. Who knows?

UomoAfide7/30/2019, 12:17:38 AM2 votes

Ok, that's a lot of questions. Let's see if we can answer at least some of them using what we know about the lore.

  1. Targon's objective is still unknown, they don't seem exactly the benevolent kind of beings but they don't really want to see Runeterra die as well. It's enitrely possible that Aspects are actually linked to the planet or more simply they just don't like the idea of seeing their home being consumed by an interdimensional force of nothingness.
  2. Imo, design decision about not wanting to put too much on a single character and risk detracting from the champion itself. Diana, Leona and Pantheon weren't slated for an update back then and updating a VO is no easy task so i guess they kept this same reasoning for Taric and Zoe, trying to avoid having both of them feeling too different from the already existing Targon champions.
  3. Unclear, perhaps they are not completely physical and are partially or completely beings from the spirit realm. So in order to operate in the material realm they might need some sort of focus to concentrate their powers, in this case a human body.
  4. I might remember wrong but i think the leash on Aurelion's Crown is not held by a singular aspect and that more than one keep command on it, though this may be rewritten in the future. Regarding a possible agreement between Atreus and Aurelion... it's hard to say; i'm pretty sure Sol wouldn't be sad knowing that Pantheon died, he despises Targonians with all his being but i don't know what he might think of this new Human Pantheon. He might be wary but not necessarily hostile. Again, it's hard to say.
Phieldworker7/30/2019, 1:16:58 AM1 votes

This has a little bit of an explanation https://youtu.be/X4gKkYZ7rIA