Possible Directions for Cho’Gath in the Lore.
#Because, you know, he should be somewhere It's me, a gigantic Cho'Gath fan who occasionally submits unnecessarily long posts to the boards, back again to do the thing I just said that I do. All art here is mine.
Before we start, keep in mind any of the traits you like from ANY of these examples can be mixed and matched freely and would likely still create an interesting backstory. Cho’Gath could be anywhere, have many different origins, and behave in many different ways. He's got literally nothing in the lore other than he's Voidborn so we can do anything we want with him. I tend to streamline him towards a giant, intelligent, world-eater, but feel free to elaborate upon your own ideas and opinions in the comments!
I’m still picking away at my own fan VGU, and I’ll be using info from this post to inform the lore portion! So without further ado, here's some example stories!
#1: ##Shurima/Targon - The Crimson Devil https://imgur.com/a/J7bXrpR
Born from the death of an aspect, Cho’Gath is a living prison for the gods. With an insatiable appetite and a penchant for wanton cruelty, he is an entity with singular purpose: devour the world. Those he consumes do not die. Not even their soul is able to escape. Their bodies are unmade as their very essence is trapped inside of him to be eroded into the purple energy that keeps him alive over thousands of years. He was the Watcher’s answer to Targonian interference, a living well of corrupting energy containing every aspect who has fallen to him in battle. He was intended to break the spirit of Targon and the humans they supported in order to weaken them for the invasion to come.
His death would result in contamination of an unprecedented scale, and the destruction of those aspects that he has consumed.
He predated the Ionian Incursion, appearing in ancient Shuriman mythologies as a devil known as “the fallen star,” a being whose vile appetites resulted in its banishment from the heavens. They learned the truth behind the legends when he made an appearance during the incursion. Flanked by a legion of slavering, fresh Voidborn, the battle of the Crimson Devil would be one of the most costly of the conflict. He was defeated by collapsing a temple on him and sealing it with the magic of the gods.But as the influence of Shurima has waned, so too has the magic keeping him sealed…
This Cho’Gath speaks in a dialect of Ancient Shuriman, but is far from wordy. He speaks only to taunt or manipulate, and delights in demoralizing his foes. He specializes in brute force: smashing and crushing his victims before devouring their broken bodies, if he deems them suitable.
#2: ##Shurima/Freljord - The Great Maw
No one knows where this colossal voidborn first emerged, or what form he took. All that is clear is that at some point it became self aware and set goals for itself beyond simply consuming whatever was in front of it.
It roamed the seas, wiping coastal societies off the map like some great tsunami, feasting upon matter and magic alike. People only came to understand the source of the vanishing towns when it was routed at Kalamada and came to rest on the island across the strait, devouring passersby.
It wasn’t until the age of the Darkin, when a great Ascended conqueror sought to earn the loyalty of Kalamda, that Cho’Gath was finally forced to roam once more. He attacked the ships from beneath, splintering the timber. But in a show of quick thinking, the powder kegs in the ships he attacked were detonated, damaging the creature enough that their subsequent attacks forced it out from the strait and into the open sea. To this day, Kalamada remembers the Serpent of the Strait as a legend told to frighten children.
For many years Cho’Gath vanished, before emerging far to the north in the Freljord, where his advance was met by the titanic spirit god Volibear. Their battle cracked the earth and levelled the forest at the heart of what is now Ursine territory. Cho’Gath has not been seen since, but his vile presence can still be felt by any seers who venture too far north. Something smothered just beneath the overriding will of the bear. A frenzied, ravenous maw that seeks to destroy the world which wouldn’t belong to it.
#3
##Eastern Valoran: The Despoiler. THE ART FOR THIS ONE NEVER WAS FINISHED ALL I HAVE ARE CONCEPT SKETCHES https://imgur.com/a/gE96wgY
Millenia ago, Cho’Gath was a voidborn much like any other. His will was not his own, his mind undeveloped, his hunger ruled him. What set him apart was his ability to regenerate and redistribute the matter that composed his body, which he often used to launch spikes of his own carapace at fleeing victims. Indiscriminate and at times self-destructive, he would pursue whatever was in front of him as his next meal, seeking to sate the constant pull of emptiness in his Heart.
During his unending hunt he stumbled upon a frail, wounded human. His bloodied feet indicated he could not run, and his life was fading quickly. He held a tightly bound bundle of cloth protectively in his arms. An easy meal. The object fell from its protective bindings as Cho’Gath feasted, and emitted a magic that illuminated the world. Its energies were seemingly boundless, enough to fuel his heart for an eternity. As his carapace was bathed in the searing warmth of the magic his primal existence made a choice that would change his nature for all time: he devoured the object.
Cho’Gath’s body swelled and split. Putting the rune into his heart was like dropping a lit match into a vat of gasoline. He frantically devoured everything around him, constantly shifting his mass to fill in the new cracks and replace his old, crumbling body. Wave after wave of corrupting energy burst from him, sucking the magic and life from wherever he stepped and he devoured everything in sight, ballooning to greater and greater sizes.
When the dust settled, Cho’Gath towered over the skeletal trees, his body constantly pulling magic in from around him and dispersing waves of corruption. His once blackened shell had turned a dark rust-red, his overworked heart constantly burning holes and forcing him to reshape and thicken it.
He rested as he attempted to forcefully adapt his body to its new overwhelming power. He would only be disturbed once, during the Rune Wars, where he was magically directed towards a city in order to siege it. By that point his mind had budded enough that he was aware of the manipulation, but the feast before him was far too splendid to ignore. He razed it, and then devoured every invader, savouring their flesh, fear, and magic. He still could not remain active for long, and as the wars escalated and the earth was reshaped, he entombed himself in the skeleton of the fallen city and worked to complete his metamorphosis.
Now, to the south-east of Noxus, the ground has started to rumble. The infertile ground has begun to sprout strange growths, outcrops of vile grey matter that devour the bodies of living and dead alike. The people there once spoke of a terrible monster, The Despoiler, sleeping beneath the ground. Such rumors are growing more popular now as something terrible readies itself to emerge from its chrysalis.
#4
Icathia/Ixtal: The Cannibal/The Apex
The caverns beneath Icathia are home to a starving legion. Thousands of voidborn fester and die, feasting upon any outsiders foolish enough to enter in a desperate attempt to stave off hibernation and keep their magic flowing. In the caverns near the heart of the infestation, magic is plentiful, carried through twisting veins of tainted matter to be freely tapped into as needed. But in the far reaches, and the isolated caverns, this is not the case. From here a behaviour unique to the caverns emerges: cannibalism.
In these isolated places, the dark caves are like a poison jar. Voidborn feast upon one another and steal one another’s hearts, growing stronger. These stronger voidborn shift and evolve rapidly, consuming one another until there is one apex voidborn remaining. For the caverns beneath Icathia, Cho’Gath is that apex.
Even at the time of the Icathian conflict, he was a known entity. In the earliest days of what would become shurima he was known for devouring whole nomadic villages who were careless, and making entire herds of livestock vanish overnight. He was known as Gath’Sai, the terror of the desert.
He eventually became a menace to Ixtal, threatening the ecosystem in the plague arbor. His presence was announced by the retreat of drakes from the area, and the discovery of increasingly mauled corpses. Gath’Sai, known to the Ixtali people as Cho Naga (Eater of Dragons), was no fool. Attempts to enter the bustling Archologies of Ixtal would only result in his death. But he was infinitely patient. He watched and hated and devoured.
His presence in the southeastern corner of Shurima made him a figure of local legends, as the Shuriman empire reached further eastward his Ixtal and Shuriman names were combined crudely to become Cho’Gath, the Devouring Terror.
When Ixtal sealed itself against the Icathian incursion, Cho’Gath was pushed to the south by a combination of soldiers and territorial drakes uniting to force him out of their territory. It was a continuous, bloody battle, but he was routed.. He would wait in the growing caverns until the conflict died down, unwilling to rush in and die as eagerly as the younger voidborn. As time went by, desperate hunger drove him to consume his own kind, and he discovered that by absorbing their hearts he increased in strength more than he had when consuming matter on the outside. As others with the potential to develop self-awareness emerged, or those with unique traits he desired appeared, he would consume and absorb them.
He was kept beneath Icathia for millennia, feeding in the poison jar, trapped in the ever shifting caverns. But movement has increased in the heart of the infestation. Food is growing scarce for him as Voidborn are being moved somewhere else en-masse. Now he seeks to return to the jungle, swollen with the hearts of countless other Voidborn, and eager to wreak his terrible vengeance on those who sought to destroy him.
That's them! Feel free to share thoughts, opinions, and your own ideas down below. I'm always happy to read them and I know for a fact many other people on the boards are too. I'll try to reply to everybody as soon as I get the chance! **(Also, don't be afraid to give this thread an upvote so others can see it too! Cho'Gath needs lore so lore discussion on him needs visibility!) **
. Loved the idea of him being something that aspects fear and can't escape of, not even in their spiritual forms. I kinda imagined Cho opening up eyes with constellations as pupils representing each aspect he has devoured (although that might be more fitting of Dark Star Cho).
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