tl;dr the Monolith was a flying fortress superweapon made by Ne'Zuk; an Ixtali mage who was a part of the Ascended Host. The fortress eventually crashed, and Malphite was born of a shard of the wreckage.
For more context, read on!
So, is Malphite as big as a mountain? Monolith was as big as a city but Wells has a population of 10,000 and is a city. So Malphite as a shard of the monolith could be no bigger than a house. :P
Also, more Ascended and more dieing too. So much for a special rite.
So did Ne'Zuk basically create life with the Monolith? Have we seen Ascended able to do that before? I guess we have Azir with his soldier revival, but that's revival, not actual life creation. Makes me wonder what other beings of similar power can create life. Unless Malphite actually coming to life was done by more of the people's spiritual belief and faith in the Monolith to protect them? There are a lot of questions with this, but the nice thing is, because this has so many connections to currently-growing stories, they could actually be answered.
Can I just say that its finally been confirmed Malphite isn't explicitly the size of a mountain. Which I'd suspected had been a community-wide misconception, since it never truly been implied within the lore that he was so literally a mountain.
Is it the first time we hear about Ne'Zuk? His name sounds familiar
Wait wait wait.... there are Ascended (aka "god-warriors") in Ixtal?
