Cho'Gath Lore Directions (1 of 2)
Greetings, boards population! Happy belated 10th anniversary. After a 2+ month absence due to the resumption of my education (and very related cessation of my creative impulses) I have returned to say more… stuff. Above is a VU concept for Cho'Gath I spent some time on during the summer that I realized I forgot to post here.
I decided to split this post into two parts because it was getting REALLY long.
Stuff starts here.
#Putting the Terror back into the Terror of the Void Updating Cho’Gath’s lore demands a few things in order to be truly effective and to ensure he is no longer just a “monster of the week.” He was often played for laughs in the original lore and when the Great Retcon swept across the land he was left in limbo, becoming more of an allegory for a Void that is no longer canon than anything else.
- He needs to be a tangible, existential threat to Runeterra. This was where he sat in the earliest lore. BUT, readers can’t be expected to just take Riot’s word for it. A frightful reputation was all the old Cho’Gath had. With the current breadth and depth of the universe of Runeterra as well as the increased scale of the conflict, promises of “it’ll be bad when he gets out/shows up!” simply will not cut the mustard. Those promises are already what we have for the Watchers (who have taken up much of the space that Cho’Gath originally did, but on a cosmic scale).
- Tying into this first point, Cho’Gath’s lore presence and threat level should not be downgraded. Thus far, every VGU (with the exception of Ezreal which was probably a neutral power change?) has been a sizeable buff to the lore power level of the champion. Downgrading Cho’Gath is a no-go (and would be ironic, given how his actual kit works ingame). He was a world-ending threat on release, supposedly. Not him as a part of the Void. Him.
- He can’t just be a servant of the Watchers, or a slave to his instincts. Securing his freedom has been one of the few themes his players have had to latch on to. He needs personal goals beyond what the Watchers have intended, perhaps he even resents the Watchers. His personality will obviously change from his current… demonspawn-like self, but his mind should be keen and cruel and provide ample justification for infinite growth.
But how can this be achieved? How can we give feats to a threat whose presence is supposed to be world-ending? How can we justify a Voidborn acting above its station with their current status as subservient to the Watchers at best and mindless, ravening, suicidal beasts at worst? An excellent question, my young rhetorical entity of indeterminate gender! This is a conundrum that we have the technology (and precedents!!) to solve!
No Downgrades: I can’t repeat this enough. Cho’Gath, in and of himself, is a world-ending threat or beyond. Now, due to his in-game theme as a monster who increases in size and crushes his foes, we get the benefit of not needing to have him be at his full power presently in the lore. But his potential should be up there with the strongest champions on the lore power charts. The only question is how far we are willing to go.
First order of business: Powerset!
Cho’Gath running, crushing, impaling, and devouring things is pretty par for the course, but it doesn’t necessarily establish him as an actual world-destroying threat all by its lonesome. Big, stompy, crushy guy is obviously crucial, but in my opinion there’s gotta be some tasty buttercream icing on this cake.
Enter his W, Feral Scream, to offer us a path to world destruction! This part may be self-indulgent, since I love Feral Scream and think it needs to stay no matter what.
His silence is iconic. It’s a huge part of why he feels so special to play. Your enemies approach you, chests puffed, eager to punish the fat immobile tank with their many new tools and diverse kits. And then they watch as you rip those kits away from them and they have nothing to stop your true damage ult from punching right through their health bar. In that sweet, brief moment you watch the champions who specialize in stomping so hard that their lane opponent can't play the game feel completely helpless. But I digress.
From a lore standpoint, in a world as magic-reliant as Runeterra, a silence is TERRIFYING. Galio may “eat” magic, but Cho’Gath ruins it. Make him a walking reactor, constantly contaminating magic around himself and seeking out its sources in order to grow. Like the classic Godzilla, he contaminates the land where he walks, the sea where he swims. He marks it and claims it as his. His voice is simply a projection of this, vibrations of the vile energy inside of him that harm all who hear it even as he speaks softly. His words erode the body and soul, and his roars scar Runeterra both physically and spiritually. His antithetical relationship with magic means he’s a World Eater that doesn’t stop with the world. Like most World Eaters in myth, even the gods are on the menu. A possible champion title for him? The Voice of the Void. Alliteration and it sounds badass as hell, what’s not to love?
#The Special Voidborn Question: How can we lock Cho’Gath down as a world eater? How can you show something from the Void to be a threat of scale when they work tirelessly to destroy? What excuse can there be for his inactivity?
**We need to be careful not to have him overlap too much with the Watchers. ** They have become the de facto leaders of the Voidborn, wrenching the title from Cho'Gath's poor, neglected claws. They're the big threats who are already here, who are already trapped to prevent the destruction of the world. Cho'Gath already differs from them in meaningful ways (origin, personality, motivation, etc.) even if the end result of a victory by him or the Watchers is not meaningfully different for the residents of Runeterra.
That said, there’s a couple of origin answers that potentially also answer why he might behave differently than the other Voidborn. They give a reason why Cho'Gath, out of the legions of gnashing teeth and rolling eyes and gaping maws, is something special. These ideas keep him true to his Voidborn roots, and show him as the apex of his kind. They also don't require too much in terms of shattering continuity or delving into arcane knowledge about the creation of Runeterra and its interactions with the Void.
#Multiversal Cho’Gath:
Once again, we reach the question of “how far are we willing to go?” Perhaps Runeterra was not the ONLY world to exist. Thus it was not the only target for the Watchers. Cho’Gath is the last remaining Voidborn from a fallen world. As the Voidborn on that world consumed all magic and matter, all that remained for them to consume was one another. In this cannibalistic scramble, this feeding frenzy of epic proportions, Cho’Gath is the sole survivor of a world he extinguished.
As the Watchers turned their attention away from that husk, Cho’Gath’s own ambitions soared. Pumped with the energy of an entire dying world, he turned to the sky and projected it upward to tear a hole into the Celestial realm and crush the very stars in his jaws. But the celestials were more than a match for him. Ejected from the heavens in the scuffle, a smaller, severely injured Cho’Gath fell to Runeterra.
This may run into many, many bumps depending on how Runeterra is structured. It’s a wild idea that relies upon knowledge we just don’t have right now. I'm also still waiting for my copy of Realms of Runeterra which may destroy this entire idea instantly (it arrives tomorrow so I'm making sure to post this now before I find out and need to toss all my writing out the window :P )
#ZILEAN. Zilean has seen the end of Runeterra. He has been to a future where it is nothingness. Where the Watchers have won. Each time he returns there he hopes his meddling (and the meddling of others) has managed to change something.
Perhaps, one day, it does. He returns to a future where Runeterra still exists, where the Watchers were never unleashed… but it is changed. The magic is warped and pulled towards a point far in the distance, and the world is silent save for the roar of the wind. There, in the distance, he sees the accumulated magic projected upward in a stream of un-light that splits the sky in two and ruptures the fabric that separates Runeterra from the Celestial realm. A massive shape hauls itself up and into the gap, a beast wearing the very crust of the world like armor over sinew made from the combined mass of everything that once lived. And then the stars start to go out. Think Brethren Moon from Dead Space.
#Justifications and Conclusion
Both of these ideas touch on similar themes, largely due to my own preferences. I love the idea of Cho'Gath turning his gaze beyond Runeterra, seeing it as a stepping stone on the way to devouring the stars themselves. I love the idea that his voice unmakes things, and when strong enough can be used to shatter the boundaries between worlds and consume all reality until all that remains is HIM. The image of a titanic Cho'Gath looking towards the sky and roaring a beam of pure Void un-light into the heavens to silence them permanently pushes all the right buttons.
Voidborn anomalies already exist. Kai’Sa is the golden example. The Void’s interactions with the chaotic and unfinished world that is Runeterra have become anything but predictable. Out of the legions of mindless creatures, history could be changed as one is born that will grow into something… monstrous. Or perhaps it has already been born and the changing timeline gave it the ability to consume the world itself before The Watchers had the chance to wipe it out. He’s unassuming at present, but will not remain that way for long. Regardless of his origin, a glance to a dead world (be it alternate reality or a possible future) can show exactly what Cho’Gath has the potential to become and make the threat he poses more than mere hearsay.
##There are a lot of hoops we need to jump through to get a Voidborn to live up to what Cho'Gath has traditionally promised... but what if there was another way? Keep an eye out for my next post: _Dodging the Voidborn Question Entirely: World Eaters and You. _
Thanks to Notarobot1006 and Taco for proofreading and helping me to brainstorm!
