UDKAO

ILLAOI
THE KRAKEN PRIESTESS
Illaoi’s powerful phy sique is dwarfed only by her indomitable faith. As the prophet of the Great Kraken, she us es a huge, golden idol to rip her foes’ spirits from their bodies and shatter their perception of reality. All who challenge the “Truth Bearer of Nagakabouros” soon discover Illaoi never battles alone - the god of the Serpent Isles fights by her side.

All who encounter Illaoi are struck by her presence. An intense woman, the priestess is fully committed to the experience of living. She takes what she wants, destroys what she hates, and revels in everything she loves.

However, to truly know Illaoi you must understand the religion she has devoted her life to. Nagakabouros, the deity of her faith, is usually depicted as an enormous serpent head with tentacles spiraling around it in endless motion, with no beginning and no end. Also called The Mother Serpent, The Great Kraken, or even The Bearded Lady, Nagakabouros is the Serpent Isles’ god of life, ocean storms, and motion. (The literal translation of its name is “the unending monster that drives the sea and sky.”) Central to the religion’s theology are three tenets: every spirit was born to serve the universe; desire was built into every living being by the universe; the universe only moves towa rd its destiny when living creatures chase their desires.

Lesser priestesses are tasked with maintaining tem ples, calling holy serpents, and teaching people the ways of Nagakabouros. As the religion’s Truth Bearer, Illaoi’s role is to serve the god directly by unblocking the flow of the universe. To this end, she has two sacred responsibilities.

The first duty of a Truth Bearer is to be the spearhead in the war against undeath. Having fallen outside of the normal flow of the universe, the undead are considered an abomination against Nagakabouros. While it is the responsibility of every priestess of the Kraken to protect the indigenous population from the Harrowing, a Truth Bearer directly engages its most powerful spirits and drives the Black Mist back.

Second, Illaoi is tasked with seeking out individuals of great potential and challenging them with the Test of Nagakabouros. This task is the burden Illaoi’s title reflects. With her massive, holy relic, The Eye of God, the Truth Bearer strips the subject’s spirit from their body then forces them to stand against her to prove their worth. She does this knowing those who fail will be completely annihilated, for the great Kraken has no tolerance for cowardice, doubt, or restraint. But destruction is never the goal. Survivors of the ordeal are forever changed and often find the will to pursue their true destiny.

Though Illaoi is the most powerful and resp ected Truth Bearer in a hundred generations, it is where she has broken the traditions of her faith that speaks the most about her. Having completed her training as a Truth Bearer, and at the height of her power, Illaoi left the golden temples of Buhru for the squalor of nearby Bilgewater.

The pirate city is the only place foreigners are permitted on the Serpent Isles, viewed as a fetid gutter by Illaoi’s people. Previous Truth Bearers ignored the city and viewed the arriving foreigners as little better than untouchables. Illaoi broke with tradition when she chose to protect residents of Bilgewater from the Harrowing, or even more controversially when she decided that some of its residents had souls worthy of the great test. Despite this, only a handful of temples have been opened in the city, and very few paylangi (islander slang for residents of mainlander descent) have ever been permitted inside. Regardless, it is Illaoi who has brought the widespread awareness of the Mother Serpent to Bilgewater, and it is her indomitable spirit that has brought her religion into favor there.

Rumors persist that Bilgewater’s most bloodthirsty and infamous pirate had his heart broken by the towering priestess. To anyone who has ever met her, this is no surprise. Illaoi’s rough manner belies subtle intelligence, strength, and a magnetic confidence.

Many seek Illaoi’s favor and welc ome her to Bilgewater... yet everyone fears being tested by the Kraken’s Prophet.

“There can be no rest. We are the motion.”

—From The Twenty Wisdoms of Nagakabouros

HECARIM
THE SHADOW OF WAR
Born into an empire long since gone to dust and forgotten, Hecarim was a lieutenant of the Iron Order—a brotherhood sworn to defend their king’s lands.

As Hecarim won victory after victory from the back of his mighty warhorse, the commander of the Iron Order saw in him a potential successor… but also a growing darkness. His obsessive hunger for glory was eroding his honor, and over time the knight-commander came to realize this young lieutenant must never lead them.

When he was told this, Hecarim was furious. Even so, he bit back his anger, and continued in his duties.

When they next rode to war, the commander found himself surrounded by enemies, and cut off from his fellow knights. Hecarim, seeing his chance, turned away and left him to die. At battle’s end, the Iron Order, oblivious to what Hecarim had done, knelt on the bloody ground and swore alleg iance to him.

Hecarim rode to the capital to take his formal oaths, and met with Kalista, the king’s most trusted general. She recognized his prowess and leadership, and when the queen was wounded by an assassin’s poisoned blade, Kalista was comforted to know the Iron Order would remain with the king while she sought a cure.

Gripped by paranoia, and seeing new threats in every shadow, the king raged at those he believed were trying to separate him from his dying wife, and dispatched Hecarim to quell dissent throughout the kingdom. The Iron Order earned a dreadful reputation as ruthless enforcers of the king’s will. Towns and villages burned. Hundreds were put to the sword.

With grim inevitability, when the queen died, Hecarim chose to sour the king’s grief into hatred, seeking sanction to lead the Iron Order into foreign lands. He would avenge her death, while earning yet more dark renown for himself.

But before they could ride out, Kalista returned. She had found what she sought upon the distant Blessed Isles—and yet it was now too late. The king would not believe this, and had Kalista imprisoned as a traitor. Intrigued by what he had heard, Hecarim visited her cell, and they spoke of the pale mists that protected the islands from all invaders… and also of the inhabit ants’ immense wealth, including the legendary Waters of Life.

Knowing only Kalista could lead them there, Hecarim eventually persuaded her to guide the king’s fleet through the veil that concealed the Blessed Isles from mortal sight.

They landed at the city of Helia with the queen’s body in solemn procession. The Iron Order led the way, only to be met by the city’s masters, who now refused to help. Enraged, the king ordered Kalista to kill them, but she refused, and Hecarim smiled as he made the decision that would damn him for eternity. He drove a spear through Kalista’s back, and ordered his knights to ransack the city, looting its vaults of arcane treasures.

Amid the chaos, a lowly custodian agreed to grant the king access to the Waters of Life—but not even this could distract Hecarim from the revelry of bloodshed, and so it was that the Ruination of the Blessed Isles would take him almost completely by surprise.

A blastwave of magical force tore across Helia, shattering every last building and leaving the fragments suspended in searing un-light. In its wake came the Black Mist, a billowing hurricane that dragged every living creature it touched into its shrieking, roiling embrace. Hecarim tried to rally the Iron Order, hoping to make it back to their ships, but the mist claimed them one by one as they fled.

Alone, and defiant to the end, the knight-commander was taken by the shadows. He and his mighty steed were fused into a monstrous, spectral abomination that reflected the darkn ess in Hecarim’s heart—a brazen creature of fury and spite, at one with the Black Mist and yet utterly enslaved by it.

Bound forever more to these Shadow Isles, Hecarim has spent centuries in a sinister mockery of his former life, cursed to patrol the nightmarish lands he once intended to conquer. Whenever the Black Mist reaches out beyond their shores, he and the otherworldly host of the Iron Order ride out to slaughter the living, in memory of glories long passed.

GRAVES
THE OUTLAW
Raised in the wharf alleys of Bilgewater, Malcolm Graves quickly learned how to fight and how to steal, skills that would serve him very well in all the years ahead. He could always find work hauling contraband up from the smugglers’ skiffs that came into the bay each night—with a tidy side-gig as hired muscle for various other unsavory local characters, as they went about their business in the port.

But the alleys were small-time, and he craved more excitement than they could offer. Still little more than a youth, Graves stole a blunderbuss and smuggled himself aboard a ship headed out of Bilgewater to the Shuriman mainland, where he stole, lied, and gambled his way from place to place along the coast.

Across the table of a high-stakes—and highly illegal—card game in Mudtown, Graves met a man who would change the course of his life, and his career: the trickster now known to many as Twisted Fate.

Each immediately saw in the other the same reckless passion for danger and adventure, and together they formed a most lucrative partnership. Between Graves’ raw brawn and Twisted Fate’s ability to talk his way out of (and occasionally back into) almost any situation, they were an unusually effective team from the outset. Their mutual sense of roguish honor grew into genuine trust, and together they stole from the rich, swindled the foolish, handpicked skilled crews for specific jobs, and sold out their rivals whenever they could.

Though at times Twisted Fate would blow all the ir shares and leave them with nothing to show for it, Graves knew that the thrill of some new escapade was always just around the corner…

On the southern borderlands of Valoran, they set two renowned noble houses of Noxus at each other’s throats as cover for the rescue of a kidnapped heir. That they pocketed the reward money, only to ransom the vile young man to the highest bidder, should really have come as no surprise to their original employer. In Piltover, they still hold the distinction of being the only thieves ever to crack the supposedly impenetrable Clockwork Vault. Not only did the pair empty the vault of all its treasures, they also tricked the guards into loading the loot onto their hijacked schooner, for a quick getaway through the Sun Gates.

In almost every case, only once they and their accomplices were safely over the horizon were their crimes even discovered—usually along with one of Twisted Fate’s trademark calling cards left where it would be easily found.

But, eventually, their luck ran out.

During a heist that rapidly turned from complex to completely botched, Graves was taken by the local enforcers, while Twisted Fate merely turned tail and abandoned him.

Thrown into the infamous prison known as the Locker, Graves endured years of torture and solitary confinement, during which time he nursed his bitter anger toward his old partner. A lesser man would surely have been broken by all this, but not Malcolm Graves. He was determined to have his reve nge.

When he finally clawed his w ay to freedom, with the prison warden’s brand new shotgun slung over his shoulder, Graves began his long-overdue pursuit of Twisted Fate.

The search led him back home to Bilgewater, where he found that the wily old cardsharp had acquired a few new bounties on his head—and Graves would be only too happy to claim them. However, just as he got Twisted Fate in his sights, they were forced to put aside their differences in order to escape almost certain death in the ongoing conflict between the reaver king Gangplank and his rival ship captains.

Once again, Graves found himself escaping his hometown… only this time, he had his old friend in tow. While both of them might have liked to pick up their partnership where they left off all those years ago, such resent ment couldn't simply be forgotten overnight, and it would be a wh ile before Graves could bring himself to trust Twisted Fate again.

Still, he feels Bilgewater calling to him once more. Maybe this time around, the pair of them will find their stride and be able to pull off the ultimate heist…

GRAGAS
THE RABBLE ROUSER
The only thing more important to Gr agas than fighting is drinking. His unquenchable thirst for stronger ale has led him in search of the most potent and unconventional ingre dients to toss in his still. Impulsive and unpredictable, this rowdy carouser loves cracking kegs as much as cracking heads. Thanks to his strange brews and temperamental nature, drinking with Gragas is always a risky proposition.

Gragas has an eternal love of good drink, but his massive constitution prevented him from reaching a divine state of intoxication. One night, when he had drained all the kegs and was left wanting, Gragas was struck by a thought rather than the usual barstool: why couldn't he brew himself something that would finally get him truly drunk? It was then that he vowed to create the ultimate ale.

Gragas' quest eventually brought him to the Freljord, where the promise of acquiring the purest arctic water for his recipe led him into uncharted glacial wastes. While lost in an unyielding blizzard, Gragas stumbled upon a great howli ng abyss. There he found it: a flawless shard of ice unlike anyth ing he had ever seen. Not only did this unmelting shard imbue his lager with incredible properties, but it also had a handy side effect - it kept the mixture chilled at the perfect serving temperature.

Under the spell of his new concoction, Gragas headed for civilization, eager to share the fermented fruits of his labor. As fate would have it, the first gathering to catch Gragas' bleary eyes would shape the future of the Freljord. He blundered into a deteriorating negotiation between two tribes discussing an alliance with Ashe. Though Ashe welcomed a break in the tension, the other warriors bristled at the intrusion and hurled insults at the drunken oaf. True to his nature, Gragas replied with a diplomatic headbutt, setting off a brawl matched only in the le gends of the Freljord.

When the fallen from th at great melee finally awoke, Ashe proposed a friendly drink as an alternative to fighting. With their tempers doused in suds, the two tribes, formerly on the brink of war, bonded over a common love of Gragas' brew. Although strife was averted and Gragas hailed a hero, he still had not achieved his dream of drunken blissfulness. So once more, he set off to wander the tundra in search of ingredients for Runeterra's perfect pint.

GNAR
THE MISSING LINK
Before the ice had given the Freljord its name, there existed a land brimming with wonder—that is, if one could see the world through the eyes of Gnar.

A young yordle with boundless energy, Gnar and others like him lived openly among the hardy tribes of the northlands. Though barely big enough to leave footprints in the snow, his temper rivaled that of beasts ten times his size, and he would erupt with a babble of curses the moment anything went amiss. For this reason, he felt more kinship with the greater and wiser creatures, who kept their distance from mortals. To Gnar, they looked like overgrown, white-furred yordles… and that was good enough for him.

While the tribes foraged across the tundra, gathering wild berries and tasty moss, Gnar collected more essential items, like rocks, pebbles, and the muddy remains of dead birds. His greatest treasure was the jawbone of a drüvask. When he tugged it from the cold earth, he squealed with glee and flung it as far as he could.

It landed two hops away.

Thrilled by this early success, Gnar car ried his “boomerang” wherever he went. The world would try its best to offer him new delights—shiny lint, sweet nectar, rou nd things—but none could match the pure joy he felt in throwing and catching his cherished weapon. He now considered himself a hunter, and trailed herds of wild beasts that paid him no mind.

But even he could sense change coming to the land. The sky seemed darker. The winds felt colder. The mortal tribes who had once foraged together, now appeared to hunt each other…

The big white yordles would know what to do. Gnar would go to them.

Using all of his hunting skill, he tracked them into the snow-capped peaks of a vast mountain range, much farther than he had ever wandered before. As he approached unseen, he also saw more mortals than he could count. This was exciting, but no one else seemed too happy about it.

Then the ground shook, and split apart. For the first time in Gnar’s life, it seemed as though everyone else was throwing tantrums. The mortals yelled. The big yordles roared.

But the monster’s arrival silenced them all.

Heaving itself up from the newly ope ned abyss, it bore huge horns, whipping tentacles, and a single eye, burning with strange light that made the fur on Gnar’s back cra wl. While some mortals fled at the sight, he began to feel an odd pain in his chest—it was like the thought of losing his boomerang, or never being hugged again. This horrible thing wanted to hurt his new friends.

And this made him angry. In that moment, Gnar truly raged.

All he could see was the monster. In a flash, he was in the air, leaping toward it. In one paw, he grasped a snowball… or so he thought. In fact, it was a boulder plucked from the mountainside, for Gnar had grown as large as the big white yordles. He would send this monster back where it came from, by walloping its face!

But the blow never landed. Gnar felt a chill colder than any winter, one that seemed to turn the air itself into ice—truly, this elemental magic froze him in place, biting through his shaggy fur. Everything, including the monster, became quiet. The yordle’s strength and anger melted away. A deep tiredness crept into his limbs, and he fell softly asleep.

Gnar napped for a long time. When he finally awoke, he shook the frost from his shoulders, breathing heavily. Everyone else was gone. With no monsters to fight and no friends to protect, he felt very small and alone ag ain.

The la nd was very different, too. There was snow everywhere, blanketing everything as far as his wide eyes could see. Still, he let out a happy yelp when he saw his beloved boomerang lying beside him, and scurried away to find something to hunt.

Even now, Gnar has no grasp of what took place that fateful day, nor how he escaped. He simply marvels at the world before him, with so many oddities to collect and places to explore.

GANGPLANK
THE SALTWATER SCOURGE
As unpredictable as he is brutal, the dethroned reaver king known as Gangplank is feared far and wide. Where he goes, death and ruin follow, and such is his infamy and reputation that the merest sight of his black sails on the horizon causes panic among even the hardiest crew.

Having grown rich preying upon the trade routes of the Twelve Seas, Gangplank has made himself many powerful enemies. In Ionia, he incurred the wrath of the deadly Order of Shadow after ransacking the Temple of the Jagged Knife, and it is said that the Grand General of Noxus himself has sworn to see Gangplank torn asunder after the pirate stole the Leviathan, Swain’s personal warship and the pride of the Noxian fleet.

While Gangplank has incurred the wra th of many, none have yet been able to bring him to justice, despite assassins, bounty hunters, and entire armadas being sent after him. He takes grim pleasure in the ever-increasing rewards posted for his head, and makes sure to nail them to the Bounty Board in Bilgew ater for all to see whenever he returns to port, his ships heavy with lo ot.

In recent times, Gangplank has been brought down by the machinations of the bounty hunter Miss Fortune. His ship was destroyed with all of Bilgewater watching, killing his crew and shattering his aura of invincibility. Now that they have seen he is vulnerable, the gangs of Bilgewater have risen up, fighting amongst themselves to claim domin ion over the port city.

Despite receiving horrific inj uries in the explosion, Gangplank survived. Sporting a multitude of fresh scars, and with a newly crafted metal arm to replace his amputated limb, he is now determined to rebuild his st rength, reclaim what he sees as rightfully his – and to ruthlessly punish all those who turned against him.

FIZZ
THE TIDAL TRICKSTER
In ages past, the oceans of Runeterra were home to civilizations far older than those of the land. In the depths of what is now the Guardian’s Sea, a great city once stood—it was here that the yordle Fizz made his home. He lived alongside the artisans and warriors of that proud, noble race. Even though he was not one of them, they treated him as an equal, and his playful nature and tall tales of adventures in the open sea made him welcome at any gathering.

But the world was changing. The oceans were growing warmer, emboldening fierce predators to rise up from the deepest trenches. Other settlements had fallen silent, but the rulers of the great city could still not agree on how to deal with the threat. Fizz pledged to roam the seas in search of survivors, or anyone who knew what had happened.

Then, one dark day, the gigalodons came.

These huge dragon-sharks stunned their prey with fell shrieking, and the avenues of the great c ity we re soon clouded red. Thousands died in a matter of hours, the immense bulk of their killers crushing towers and temples in a monstrous feeding frenzy. Scenting blood in the water, Fizz raced back, determined to join the fight and save the city.

He was too late. There was nothing left of the city to save. When the debris finally settled, not a single living creature remained, nor any stone upon another, and the ravenous shoal had moved on. Alone in the cold depths, Fizz sank into mournful despair. As his yordle magic began to fade, he let himself be carried by the currents, drifting in a catatonic torpor, dreaming away the millennia…

It was only chance that reawake ned him. A handful of copper coins fell from above, scattered to the seabed in th e wake of a huge, wooden fish that swam upon the surface. This was no gigalodon, but Fizz was alarmed nonetheless—he knew little of the world overhead, but surely no fish could survive up there? He ventured up and peered into the salty air for the first time.

There were people, people who lived outside of the water and sailed in wooden fish of all sizes. Fizz found the thought both frightening and exciting, but the curious gifts they cast into the water made it clear that they wanted to be his friends. In time, following their movements to and fro across the oceans, he came to the port city of Bilgewater.

To the inhabitants of that lawless place, this strange and slippery creature quickly became something of a legend—the Tidal Trickster, a spirit of the ocean itself. It is said that he can summon great beasts to do his bidding, hole a ship’s hull with his stone trident, and breathe air or water as it suits him. Many a misbehaving child has been warned on a moonless night: “Go quickly to sleep, or the Trickster will come and feed you to the fishes…”

Fizz is good-natured, but mischievous even for a yordle, and delights in confounding the people of Bilgewater. The most seasoned fishermen know, just as the ocean may rise and fall, the Tidal Trickster is as likely to lead them into windless doldrums as to an easy catch that would fill their nets. Even so, Fizz does not take kindly to the greedy or sel fish, and more than one haughty sea captain hoping to make a qu ick pile of silver has found that her mysterious guide has led her crew not to safety, but to shipwreck.

FIDDLESTICKS
THE ANCIENT FEAR
Long, long ago, in a tower by the edge of the sea, a foolish young mage summoned something into the world that he was not prepared to control. What stepped before the boy was something older than recorded history. Something dar ker than a yawning, starless night. Something the world had des perately tried to forget—and in an instant, the mage, the creature, and the tower itself were lost to all of time.

At least, that’s what the stories say.

In the Freljord, children frighten each other around the fire with tales of a monster that raises itself from untended graves in the ice, its body a shambling mass of helmets, bucklers, furs, and wood. In Bilgewater, drunken sailors trade accounts of something standing alone on a tiny, distant atoll from which no one has ever returned. An old Targonian legend speaks of how a child of twilight stole the only joy from a ragged, whispering horror, while veteran Noxian soldiers prefer the fable of a lonely farmhand who was blamed for a poor harvest and fed to the crows, later retu rning to the world as a demon.

Demacia. Ixtal. Piltover. Ionia. Shurima. In every corner of Runeterra, these myths persist—reshaped, respun, and passed down by countless generations of storytellers. Stories of a thing that looks almost human and stalks places thick with fear.

But these are simply fables to frighten young children. No one would ever be afraid of a silly old monster called Fiddlesticks…

Until now.

Something has awoken in the Demacian hinterlands, drawn by the climate of rising fear and paranoia. Rural protectorates, separated from the capital by hundreds of miles of farmland, are emptying in mere days. Travelers vanish from the old footpaths. Guard patrols fail to report back from the edges of the kingdom. And wild-eyed survivors claw at their faces from the safety of roadside taverns, wailing of crows that aren’t crows, sounds that aren’t sounds, and a lopsided horror in the shape of a scarecrow that croaks in the stolen voices of the dead.

Most blame rogue mages. Such accusat ions are common in these days of rebellion.

Yet the truth is far worse. Something has ret urned, just as it had in the fictitious tale of the young mage in his seaside tower. An evil gone from the world for numberless centuries—long enough that the warnings of a nascent humanity passed into rumor, then myth, then legend… until all that remained were simple fables. An entity so utterly alien that it defies almost all contemporary knowledge of magic. So impossibly ancient that it has always been. So universally feared that even animals grow nervous when someone speaks its name.

In the wake of this revi val, another tale, nearly lost to memory, has seen a resurg ence throughout the hinterlands. A legend of a great evil that has no form, no thoughts, and no understanding of the world it inhabits, instead building itself into the crude shape of those that fear it. The terror of all living things, given life in that first terrible scream of creation. A demon before demons were known.

At least, that’s what the stories say.

But Fiddlesticks is real.

EZREAL
THE PRODIGAL EXPLORER
Born and raised in a wealthy neighborhood of Piltover, Ezreal was always a curious child. His parents were renowned archaeologists, so he became used to their long absences from the family home, often fantasizing about joining them on their travels. He loved hearing tales of high adventure, and shared their desire to fill in the blank spaces on every map.

He was often left in the care of his uncle, the esteemed Professor Lymere. The professor did not enjoy having to wrangle such a rash and unruly child, and assigned the strictest tutors to teach him subjects including advanced cartography, hextech mechanics, and the ancient histories of Runeterra. But the boy had a knack for simply absorbing information, and found studying a waste of time. He passed assessments easily, with little or no preparation, infuriating his uncle and giving himself more time to roam the university grounds. Ezreal took great pleasure in evading the campus wardens, navigating the tunnels beneath the lecture halls as easily as the library rooftops. He even practiced lockpicking, sneaking into his teachers’ offi ces and rearranging their belongings for his own amusement.

Whenever Ezreal’s parents returned to Piltover, his father in particular would tell him all they had seen, and their plans for future expeditions—none more ambitious and secretive than the search for the lost tomb of Ne’Zuk, a Shuriman tyrant who was said to be able to jump instantly from one place to another. If Ezreal’s father could learn whatever sorcery Ne’Zuk had possessed, he joked that wherever he was traveling, he would simply drop into Piltover for dinner with his son each night.

As the boy grew older, the time between his parents’ visits grew longer until, one year, they did not return at all. Professor Lymere tearfully admitted that they had m ost likely perished, somewhere out in the desert.

But Ezreal could not accept that. They had been too careful in their preparations. They must still be out there, somewhere…

Abandoning his reluctant studies, the budding explorer would strike out on his own. He knew, if he was ever to find his mother and father, he had to start with the final resting place of Ne’Zuk. He spent weeks secretly gathering supplies from the university—celestial diagrams, translations of runic sigils, guides on the burial rites of Shurima, and a pair of protective goggles. Leaving a note of farewell for his uncle, he snuck onto a supply ship bound for Nashramae.

Following his mother’s meticulous field notes, he crossed the Great Sai with merchant caravans head ing south. For many months, he delved into cavernous ruins beneath the shifting sands, relishing the freedom of the unknown, fa cing unspeakable horrors that guarded hidden chambers. With each step, Ezreal imagined himself following his parents’ path, drawing ever closer to solving the mystery of their disappearance.

Finally, he managed what they evidently had not. Beneath the newer mausoleum of some unnamed emperor, he uncovered the tomb of Ne’Zuk.

The great sarcophagus lay empty, save for a gleaming bronze gauntlet, with a bright, crystalline matrix at its center. As soon as Ezreal laid his hands upon it, the tomb itself seemed to turn upon him, with cunningly wrought traps and wards laid down thousands of years ago. With scarcely a thought, he donned the gauntlet and blasted his way through, even teleporting the last hundred yards back to the hidden entrance before the whole structure collapsed in a plume of sand and masonry dust.

Breathing hard, Ezreal loo ked down at the gauntlet as it hummed along with his heartbeat. He could feel it siphoning and amplifying his own essence. This, he realized, was a fearsome weapon of a previous age. A wea pon fit for a god-warrior of Shurima, and the perfect tool for an explorer.

Soon after returning to Piltover, Ezreal found himself bounding from adventure to adventure. From lost cities to mystical temples, his nose for treasure-seeking led him to places most university professors could only read about on maps, and his reputation began to grow. Naturally, to Ezreal’s mind, these tales rarely conveyed the true scope and scale of his exploits… but they did give him an idea. If he could make a name for himself as the greatest adve nturer in the world, then his parents would surely return, and seek him out in person.

From the unta med borders of Noxus and Demacia, to the seedy depths of Zaun, and the frozen wilderness of the Freljord—Ezreal chases fame and glory, uncovering long-lost artifacts and solving the riddles of history. While some may dispute the details of his anecdotes, or call his methods into question, he never answers his critics.

After all, they’re clearly just jealous.