User blog:ND999/Champion Bios - a bit of fanon fun

Greeting and salutations everyone, I'm an irregular lurker on this wikia, but every once in a while I get an idea that I'd like to share, so I make a blog post in this fashion.

Introductions aside, I'd like to discuss a lore-aspect of League, namely that a lot of Champion Bios feel incomplete, as they have only one or two paragraphs of text to them, whereas the new standard includes a more thorough elabroation on a Champion's backstory. Examples include, , , and more, a few of which even have but a single blurb, being the main offender.

So, as a lover of lore, and an aspiring writer, I decided to start this blog post, so that any of you interested might discuss and post ideas for what the properly expanded bios of these Champions would look like. Just a bit of harmless fun, to be sure, so I might as well start with my own suggestion, that being .

Now, you might be wondering to yourselves "Hey, wait a minute, Thresh has a proper length Bio already, why are you choosing to rewrite him?" and for that I have a couple of reasons. Firstly, Thresh is my "main", and has been for a while, I love his look, his feel, his playstyle, his voicelines, everything...except his bio. To be perfectly honest, it's kinda lacking. To summarize "Thresh was a monk on the Blessed Isles who kept cursed magical items in a vault, and over the years it made him go crazy and evil, so he started kidnapping and torturing his fellow monks for fun. Then the Ruined King came along, whom he led to a ritual site, where the Ruination started. Thresh became a ghost, and he was perfectly fine with it, as he just continued capturing and torturing more people, except now it's forever". The crux of this is "Thresh was turned evil by magic, and so he became a sadist who loves to torture people, then he became Undead and now he loves torturing people even more". His role in the overall story of LoL is to be a second-rate antagonist, as he has no drive, no ambitions, no motivation besides "being evil for evil's sake". He's like a Saturday morning cartoon villain, except edgy. The only striking feature of his present Bio is that one throwaway mention of some Warlock who got enchanted so he kept regenerating and could not die. You would think that such an event would be a big deal and that some people would be attempting to replicate the results somewhere in the world, but nah, dude only exists so he can be Thresh's chew toy. It's kind of out there and not really necessary for the plot (unless we find out that the random regenerating Warlock was actually  or something).

My main goal would be to give Thresh a bit more character development, more connections to existing Champions and events, and also to sort of elaborate on how he became what he is today, instead of just hand-waving it by saying "magic did it". So, without further ado, let's get cracking.

THRESH, THE CHAIN WARDEN
Sadistic and cunning, Thresh is a restless spirit who prides himself on tormenting mortals and breaking them with slow, excruciating inventiveness. His victims suffer far beyond the point of death, for Thresh wreaks agony upon their souls, imprisoning them in his lantern to torture for all eternity.

Some of the old tales tell of a nation, ruled by a benevolent King, who reigned rightfully even in times of peril. His realm had been subjected to a long and bloody war, in which numerous outlying villages and towns had been razed to the ground. Thousands of refugees flocked to the capital, seeking shelter from the invaders. But not even the capital was safe, for an assassin made his way to the throne room and lunged at the King, only to be stopped by , the King's most trusted general.

Alas, when Kalista deflected the assailant's blade, it cut a gash in the Queen's arm instead, injecting her with a deadly dose of venom. None of the kingdom's healers were able to cure their Queen, so Kalista set out on a journey to find a solution. In her absence,, the knight-leader of the Iron Order, took her place as the King's aide. Furious, the King demanded justice, and arrested a great number of people whom he suspected were accomplices in the crime.

The following day, hundreds had gathered before the gallows, observing as a dozen men and women were brought forth in chains. But that was when a problem arose, for the executioner was among the accused as well, and thus there was nobody to carry out the sentencing. The King looked upon the crowd and selected a lone beggar boy, most likely a refugee, beckoning him to approach the gallows. Knowing that being an executioner was a disgraceful profession which would leave the individual ostracized from the rest of society, the King promised the beggar boy that he would be fed, clothed, and given a roof over his head, so long as he performed the deed.

Impoverished and malnourished, the beggar boy realized that he was given a once in a lifetime opportunity, one which he could not allow to slip through his fingers. So, the beggar boy decided to pull the lever, and in the next instant, a dozen men and women were hanged. The beggar boy decided to sacrifice the lives of others in order to save his own, and in doing so sealed his fate.

The King held true to his promise and brought the beggar boy into his abode, giving him food, water, clothes, and a bed to lie on. It was everything the young boy ever wanted, and more. In that moment, the boy knelt down before the King and vowed to serve him to the best of his ability for the remainder of his life. Accepting the youth's pledge, the King returned to the Queen's chambers, to keep her company in her time of need.

Years passed, and the young boy grew of age, got educated, and became the court Warden. Beneath the royal abode lied the Threshing Dungeons, a series of halls, cells, and interrogation chambers. The former Wardens boasted about how they could separate the guilty from the innocent in the same manner one would separate the grain from the crop, hence their name. The Dungeons became the Warden's new home, and he bore his sickle, the symbol of his office, with pride.

In that time, Hecarim waged one conflict after another against the neighboring realms, his Iron Order trampling over all opposition. After each conquest, Hecarim would return, bringing with him scores of prisoners, before entrusting them to the Warden's care, telling him that they were all part of the assassination plot that wounded the Queen. The Warden would oftentimes pay visits to his King, and every time he would find him grieving for his beloved. Upon remembering how much his liege had suffered, the Warden felt a need to punish the offending wretches.

With peerless skill, the Warden would utilize his sickle to flay skin, pluck eyes, sever ears, and sever tendons with surgical precision. He tortured his charges until they were inches away from death's door, only to cease and allow them to recoup, so he could start the process anew. At first, he did not enjoy his work, he merely did it out of a sense of duty to his King, but over time he grew jaded. He became all too accustomed to screams of agony and pleas for mercy. Afterwords, he started to draw a form of catharsis from his work, and after that, he started to relish it.

He would punish the deplorable fiends who would dare bring harm to his liege and his household, for they deserved nothing less. In the Warden's mind, his actions were not only justified, they were a necessity, and a show of his devotion to the King. As the years went by, the Warden spent less and less time out of the Dungeons, his skin became pale, his eyes sunken, and his form gaunt, giving him an almost ghostly visage. Aware of this, the Warden decided to approach his craft from a different angle.

The Warden had all lights in the Threshing Dungeons extinguished, save for one, the dim light of a single lantern that he always carried by his side. Those who were sentenced to the Dungeons would spend days, weeks, perhaps even months in absolute darkness, before seeing a single spark of light, whose din would herald excruciating torment. Many would break down and confess to whatever crime they were accused off before the Warden could so much as lay a finger on them. Few were those whose courage did not fail in the overbearing darkness, and for them, the Warden had special plans in store.

Taking painstaking effort to find the most efficient way to break his prisoners, the Warden fell deeper and deeper into depravity, thinking up crueler ways to doll out punishment, and more creative ways with which to strike fear. At one point, the Warden decided to decorate his vestments with the bones and skulls of those whose crimes he deemed most heinous. The Warden's behavior went unchecked, for the King had long since locked himself in his tower with the Queen, who had long since perished and whose carcass began to fester. It seemed as if there would be no end to the madness and the misery, until one fateful day.

Kalista returned, and was greeted with great fanfare, but the celebration was brief, for while she found a place that could cure all ailments, she also claimed that it could not bring back the dead. Outraged by her statement, the King had Kalista thrown into the Dungeons, but before the Warden could start his work on her, he was stopped by Hecarim, who wished to speak with Kalista alone. By the end of their conversation, Kalista had agreed to guide the King to the so called Blessed Isles.

As the King set out with a flotilla, he also brought with him an entourage of those he trusted the most, which included Hecarim, the knights of the Iron Order, and even the Warden. Upon their arrival, they were greeted by the stern masters of the city of Helia, who would not allow them to pass. They insisted that resurrecting the dead was impossible, and that doing so would break the natural order of the world.

In a fit of rage, the King ordered Kalista to slay any who stood in his way, but she refused. For her refusal, Hecarim and a dozen of his knights ran their spears through her back and left her for dead. The Warden felt no sympathy for her, for he had no pity to spare for those who would disobey the King. While the Iron Order went off to loot and pillage, the King turned to the Warden and ordered him to extract the information he wanted out of the city's residents.

Exercising the skill he had honed over the years, the Warden pried out the whereabouts of the Waters of Life from the sobbing wrecks who used to be the masters who denied them entry just minutes prior. The Warden, delighted to be off service to his liege, led him to the legendary healing pools before going off to find new victims.

Yet, before he realized what happened, a shockwave of searing magic tore through Helia, and bathed the Blessed Isles in a dark haze. It was then that the bones strapped to his robes called for the souls of those who suffered and died by the Warden's hands. The furious spirits descended upon the Warden and hung him with his own chains. But his will was too strong, his malice too powerful, he accepted the Black Mist and was reborn as a hateful wraith.

His hands gnarled and bony, his head coated with billowing green flames, and his sickle infused with deathly magic, the Warden laughed and cut through the souls of the damned with ease, before their essence was trapped within his ghostly lantern. It was then that the Warden learned of the Mist's true nature, that it was composed out of the condensed hatred, fear, anguish, and misery of all the souls that got consumed by it. The stronger these emotions are in a soul, the brighter their light will shine through the Black Mist.

So, he set out, to find souls to torment, to pick them apart, and then finally to sentence them to the confines of his lantern. He needs the light in order to find his King, who is now lost in the Mist. The Warden's one true desire is to return to his lord's side, so that he may fulfill his pledge and continue to serve him, forevermore.

As centuries passed, and the Shadow Isles's influence grew, the Warden slowly forgot bits and pieces of his mortal life, save for the memory of the one place he considered home, the Threshing Dungeons. Thus, he became known by one name, and one name only - .

Well, hope you guys don't mind the long read, just had a couple of ideas floating around my head, so I wanted to dump them all out on one place.

Looking forward to hearing your feedback.