#icathia

Reader, with their ass back in Icathia:

Role: Principal Narrative Writer

Twitter - Full List of Writing Credits

In light of Riot Games laying off 11% of their staff globally, I want to make a series of posts highlighting the portfolios of those affected, so that we can appreciate their contributions to the world of Runeterra and continue to support them. You can find a full list of those known to be affected here.

"Where Icathia Once Stood" (source)

"Monstrous" (source)

"Shadow and Fortune" (source)

"City of Iron and Glass" (source)

"The Whispering Doodad" (source)

"The Faceless God" (source)

"Dead of Winter" (source)

The most important change to Zaun in Arcane is the addition of Shimmer which has not only become the crux of Zaun's origin, but the element of Arcane that has actually managed to tie Zaun closer to its Shuriman history and the Void's influence in the region.

To understand Zaun, it helps to know about Icathia, the city-state of free people and magic. Icathia was once a free society that had been subjugated into a vassal kingdom of Shurima, the powerful slave-owning expansionist empire for which the entire region remained named after. Shurima was notorious for how it would enslave the populaces of its defeated territories. Desperate to free themselves from Shurima's rule, the Icathian mages sought to use the Void against the Shurimans in their rebellion. But the power of the Void was too much and instead destroyed their civilization.

The similarities don't stop there. Icathia and Zaun both seem to have encountered the Void by similar means. Icathia first encountered the Void because a large earthquake exposed a Void rift to the surface in a coastal province. Zaun itself is a massive fissure broken into the Earth from Piltover's expoitative mining industry. In Runeterra, the creatures of the Void lie dormant beneath the earth, so to encounter them would require great force whether by nature, or man-made.

In some ways, Zaun is almost a divergent history for Icathia, because while Icathia was quickly overwhelmed by the Void's power, Zaun still exists. Silco and Singed managed to apply a more passive means to integrate the Void into Zaun's power structure through Shimmer.

The success of Shimmer's proliferation within Zaun has inadvertently promoted the worship of the Void. In League, the one known prophet of the Void, Malzahar, is depicted with a corrupted third eye. The eye is meant to represent the physical connection between him and the Void, even the Void Empress Bel'veth wears it. Now, in Zaun, the figure that embraces and spreads the benefits of the Void to the people has made that product, Shimmer, synonymous with his own corrupted eye that persists thanks to the Void.

Crowds are now seen offering real eyes to a giant vastayan turtle with eye tattoos, and we as the audience aren't sure if their worshipping their prophet Silco, or the Void. All we can be sure of is that the crowd of worshippers and the turtle vastaya recognize the eye as a source of reverance and believe it's physical presence is necessary for worship.

With the next season we're likely to see the two remaining elements that were a part of Icathia's story that were teased to soon exist in Zaun. Those two elements being the installation of the mage king and the time mage.

Icathia used to be ruled by mage kings but that institution was destroyed once Shurima conquered them. In Icathia's last stand for independence, a committee of mages, academics, and philosophers elected a new mage king, one who carried a starmetal staff, to lead the charge. But the mage king failed once the Void grew uncontrollable. I think the story of the mage king might best be embodied by Viktor. Not only is he one of the few characters that is actively studying the Void, but his future presence in Zaun is associated with royal imagery. In the card scene, his tarot, the Magician, wears a mask that doubles as a horned crown, something that's never existed in any of his alternate iterations. In the post-timeskip montage of Zaun there's a well-guarded cultivar, a public park for Zaun, with a sign that calls it "The Herald's Palace".

Then there's the time mage, also known as Zilean. Arcane seems to have made both Zilean and Ekko's stories more closely parallel echother. Zilean was one of the few to reject the idea to use the Void against the Shurimans, while Ekko seeks to destroy Silco's Shimmer supply that he uses to combat Piltover. Knowing that the Void was dangerous, Zilean creates a space outside of time to save as many people as he can before the Void destroys everything. Ekko does something similar with Firelights, where he creates a small hideaway for few to hide from the influence of Shimmer in Zaun. Once the fighting intensifies and the Void's power becomes more intense and Ekko builds the Z-Drive will he try to save as many as he can by hiding like Zilean? Or will he fight the Void on his own side?

Tldr: Arcane has gone out of it's way to make Zaun's story mirror the story of Icathia, a civilization long swallowed by the Void. A lot of things are similar yet different that it offers new possibilities in the way the characters of Zaun will change next season.

Sidenote: If the story of Icathia survived into the setting of Arcane and was retained in the public conscious, it would likely serve as a cautionary tale against the "warmongering of mages" for Piltovans. They'd completely sidestep the part about how the desperation of a subjugated people will force them to do monstrous things.

All the other supports don't give a f*ck about me

No one plays with me, no rioter wants to be my main they think I'm too boring

They see me going worlds to worlds commiting the best plays with my 2009 kit, and as I get better WR% every season, they care about me less and less

I am a victim of my own success

"Zilean" I don't even get a real name, just a reference to a developer

The concept of a time mage is capable of so much more and yet no one sees it