User blog comment:ND999/Lore of LoL - Blast from the past: Doran/@comment-5588011-20151226162024/@comment-3110123-20151226180349

My idea was to follow along the concept of "spirit of nature" which similar champions and entities possess. Whilst Nagakabouros is supposed to represent motion, cycles and all things dynamic, I wanted to make Doran the opposite, of all things still, static and set in stone. The reason for why I opted to make him into a "god of smiths" is because of the example you've given. I don't want to make Doran into someone with a hammer, that role is already taken by Poppy, Taric and Jayce, however despite there being 3 champions who share the "hammer theme" they are all very different from one another. That is why I wanted to make Doran into something that differs from the 3 mentioned above and opted for the "spirit that etches out works of art from the stone".

I planned to make Doran into a "more powerful in lore than he is in gameplay" type of character, like the other spirits. Take Kindred for example, in the universe they are absolute, you cannot escape from them, you cannot evade them, you cannot defy them, you can't even defeat them, they will always find  you and they will always take you, regardless if you want to go or not. In the game they are toned down by quite a few notches, for the purpose of gameplay balance, but you get the idea. What I am trying to turn Doran into isn't "the grand creator", but rather "the grand decorator" if you will. He is a spirit, like we've seen before, except he likes to go around and build stuff (although the term "stuff" is fairly loose). In order to create these art peaces he makes his own specialized tools, hence the blacksmithing theme.

If you have a better idea where to take Doran's lore towards, feel free to share your opinion.