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▶️   "The Black Rose shall bloom once more."
LeBlanc LeBlanc
Separator

Solid Rose Clasic Faction Colors Black Rose is a secret organization primarily stationed in Noxus.

Lore[]

Black Rose

The Black Rose is a secretive cabal led by the Noxian aristocracy. Many of their opulent designs feature masks so that they can partially conceal their identities, even from each other. Trust no one.[1]

Remnants of an order that has existed far longer than Noxus itself, initiates of the Black Rose have schemed from the shadows for centuries, guiding the throne of Noxus for more than a thousand years, orchestrating many of the empire's most ambitious campaigns. Though they do not often learn the origins of their matron matron, many have uncovered legends of a pale sorceress who aided the broken Noxii barbarian tribes, in their struggle against the infamous Iron Revenant Iron Revenant.

The Black Rose exists now to further the clandestine interests of those who can wield the magic hidden within the Immortal Bastion—with its rank-and-file composed of mundane nobles, drawn to rumors of miracles, kept in thrall and ruthlessly exploited. Even the most powerful military commander could only ever serve the cult's true masters, as they fight one another for influence in games of intrigue and conquest, both in the Noxian capital and beyond its borders.

Champions of The Black Rose[]

Other Related Champions[]

  • Ambessa Ambessa attempted to take revenge on the organisation for killing her son, leading Amara Amara to be tasked with killing her whilst in Piltover Crest icon Piltover.
  • Briar Briar was created by the Black Rose to be a living weapon.
  • Darius Darius had dealings with its members in the past. Part of the Trifarix.
  • Ezreal Ezreal was noticed by Black Rose members when he was in Noxus.
  • Ekko Ekko fought members of the Black Rose, which were Lord Milat Milat and Lady Auvray Auvray.
  • Katarina Katarina is Cassiopeia's Cassiopeia's sister.
  • Mordekaiser Mordekaiser was betrayed by LeBlanc LeBlanc.
  • Pyke Pyke murdered the crew from a Black Rose's shipment.
  • Riven's Riven's blade was enchanted by LeBlanc LeBlanc.
  • Rek'Sai Rek'Sai interfered a Black Rose's shipment.
  • Rell Rell was experimented on by the Black Rose and escaped their academy. Her mother is a member of the Black Rose.
  • Renekton Renekton was accidentally freed by Cassiopeia Cassiopeia during her mission in Shurima Crest icon Shurima.
  • Sion Sion was resurrected by the help of the Black Rose and its members.
  • Sivir Sivir was hired and then later backstabbed by Cassiopeia Cassiopeia.
  • Swain Swain obtained Sion Sion from the Black Rose. Currently planning on taking down the organization.
  • Samira Samira's handler, Captain Indari Indari, is working for the Black Rose and tasked her with tracking down Rell Rell.
  • Veigar Veigar was inside Mordekaiser's Mordekaiser's inner circle alongside LeBlanc LeBlanc and knew about her.
  • Xerath Xerath was accidentally freed by Cassiopeia Cassiopeia during her mission in Shurima Crest icon Shurima.

History[]

Establishment[]

At the height of Mordekaiser's Mordekaiser's dark reign, it was said that a mythic and bloodthirsty fiend a mythic and bloodthirsty fiend haunted the coastal cliffs of eastern Valoran, demanding young lives and savage worship from the local tribes. Few were welcome in his lair, until the day a pale sorceress pale sorceress from the inner circle of the Iron Revenant approached this barbarian god with an offer. The two feasted together as equals, weaving magic so dark that the wine at their table soured, and the roses withered, vibrant red turning to black.

Thus began the pact between Vladimir and LeBlanc, rife with disputes, and games of politics and war.

Later, LeBlanc would aid the broken barbarian tribes, in their struggle against Mordekaiser. The sorceress pledged to neutralize the source of his power, the Immortal Bastion, cutting him off from the well of death that fueled his nightmarish empire. Yet, even as the barbarians built an empire of their own in the bastion’s shadow, they failed to realize that the arcane secrets it held had not completely been locked away. The pale sorceress had always been gifted at illusion, and her greatest trick was to make Noxus forget the dark power roiling in its own heart

Over the centuries, others joined them—powerful nobles, exalted masters of magic, and beings darker still. This cabal grew into the hidden power that would guide the throne of Noxus for more than a thousand years, orchestrating many of the empire's most ambitious campaigns.

Rune war[]

Records of LeBlanc, the Matron of the organization, are lost to history around this time. The only thing that persists is the legends of the pale sorceress that helped the barbarians defeat Mordekaiser.

Sacrifice for the Spiders[]

After the arranged marriage with Berholdt Zaavan, Elise Elise Kythera dominated him so completely, and while he remained the face of his house, it was clear who was in charge. As time passed, his resentment grew. One evening, Berholdt poisoned Elise, and demanded Elise withdraw from society and allow him to take up the reins of power. Knowing he would have the antidote about his person, Elise played the role of a remorseful wife, weeping and begging her husband’s forgiveness. Just as it seemed he might be convinced, she snatched up a knife and plunged it into his heart.

Even with the antidote, Elise was bedridden for weeks… and it was then that the Pale Woman Pale Woman approached her. The enigmatic mistress of the organization spoke of a secret society where hidden knowledge and sorcery were shared among those who could be trusted, and kept from those who could not. In truth, the Pale Woman did not care who controlled each of the noble houses, as long as they were sworn to her. Since Elise had killed the thrall Berholdt, she would have to prove her own value, or a more suitable replacement would be found.

Seeing a path to greater power, Elise took to the cabal like few before her. She met often with the most prominent members, trading influence and thwarting her rivals in a complex web of tangled schemes. With the wealth of two houses, there were not many who could oppose her, and she became even more adept at persuading others to do her bidding.

Eventually, she learned of an object that held great significance for the Black Rose—the skull of an ancient warlord known as Sahn-Uzal Sahn-Uzal, rumored to have been hidden long ago in the Shadow Isles Crest icon Shadow Isles. Keen to gain the Pale Woman’s favor, Elise found a desperate, debt-ridden captain willing to bear her and a handful of devotees to the cursed city of Helia. They came ashore on a beach of ashen sand, and were tormented by spiteful wraiths as they searched in vain for the lost vault.

But Elise found something she had not anticipated.

A creature of the long-forgotten past had made its home in the lightless depths beneath the city. This bloated, chitinous monster was the spider-god Vilemaw Vilemaw, and it erupted from the darkness to devour the intruders, before sinking its fangs into Elise’s shoulder. She fell, howling and convulsing as the venom wrought terrible changes upon her body. Her spine rippled with undulant motion, and arachnoid legs pushed out from her flesh.

Finally, breathless with the agony of transformation, Elise turned to find her new master looming above her. An unspoken understanding passed between them in that moment, and she scuttled back to the beach, untroubled by the Isles’ spirits as she weaved in and out of the twisted treeline.

Some weeks later, when her ship arrived back at the Noxian capital in the dead of night, Elise had regained her human form… though she was the only living thing left aboard.

Though no evidence was ever found of the warlord’s skull, the Pale Woman saw Elise’s dangerous new gift for what it was—a means to come and go safely between Noxus and the Shadow Isles. An accord was struck, wherein the Black Rose would provide Elise with endless unwitting sacrifices to offer up to the spider-god, and in return she would recover any artifacts of power she could from those benighted, forbidding shores.

Though centuries have passed, whenever Elise feels the summons of her god, she returns to the land of the Black Mist with a hapless suitor in tow, or some other easily swayed soul.

Modern day[]

Darkwill's scheme[]

Though the Black Rose had aided his bid for the throne, Boram Darkwill Boram Darkwill refused the counsel of their hand-picked advisors, requiring LeBlanc to take drastic measures. Manipulating a young nobleman named Jericho Swain Jericho Swain into revealing the cult's plots against Darkwill. Swain personally executed the most prominent conspirators. Among them were his own parents, whose whispers of a "pale woman" first alerted him of the danger to Noxus, which he valued more than house or kin.

However, LeBlanc execution had been an illusion, part of her greater plan, In time, she reached out to Darkwill herself, and found an increasingly paranoid ruler, fearful of his own mortality. After promising him the secrets to extend his life, LeBlanc slowly poisoned Darkwill's mind, even as she empowered him. Under his rule, the Noxian reverence of strength became something far more sinister. As Noxus fought wars on too many fronts, lusting over magical relics, the aging Darkwill was clearly growing unhinged.

Noxian dominance had waned in the years since the death of the famous brutal warlord brutal warlord, and Boram Darkwill was willing to pay almost any price to restore its lost glory. The Black Rose reanimated the long-dead hero using forbidden magics, and presented him to the Grand General. He could not refuse this gift, and so Sion returned to life, driven by unnatural bloodlust and utterly inured to pain. He hurled himself like a living battering ram against the enemies of Noxus, destroying all he faced. More so than before his death, the victories Sion brought were costly. He was uncontrollable, killing friend and foe without remorse, and those forced to fight alongside him began to desert. Finally, Darkwill ordered Sion reinterred.

When Noxus invaded Ionia Crest icon Ionia, Darkwill began to move even more brazenly, retasking entire warbands to scour the land for anything rumored to extend a mortal lifespan. That way, LeBlanc and Darkwill ensured Swain's legend would end in disgrace on the Battle of the Placidium.

But as he lay on the verge of death after having his hand cut off by Ionian blades Ionian blades, a raven approached to feed, and Swain felt an old, familiar darkness press upon him again. But he would not let it take him. He could not. Staring into the bird's eye, he saw reflections of the cult thought he ended. A black rose. The pale woman... and her puppet emperor. Swain realized that he had not defeated the hidden cabal, and they had betrayed him to what should have been his death, after seducing Darkwill, the man they failed to overthrow.

All this was glimpsed, not in the mind of a raven, but something more. An ancient demon, preying upon the dying and consuming their secrets.

Cast out of the military for his "failure", considered nothing more than a cripple, Swain set about uncovering the darkness that lay within the Immortal Bastion. Staring into that darkness, he saw what even it could not: a way to wield it.

The Black Rose Academy[]

Born the daughter of a Noxian footsoldier and the heir to a fallen noble house, Rell Rell enjoyed neither the trappings of wealth nor the gilded upbringing common to children of the lower aristocracy. Nevertheless, her parents had grand plans to mold her into someone who could shatter through Noxus’ dense political landscape. As Rell’s mother always said, “Excellence is measured in sacrifice.”

Rell’s unhappiness grew with time, sparking something unique within her—a magic unlike anything seen in centuries: the ability to manipulate metal. To Rell’s parents, this was something to be exploited—for Rell’s own sake, of course!—and they tried unsuccessfully to apprentice her with many powerful mages who might whisk their daughter into the political or military elite.

Seeing in Rell a weapon who could one day face Noxus’ most hated, ancient foe foe, a certain pale woman pale woman visited the family with a dark bargain. Rell soon found herself the star pupil of a very special academy, hidden far from the capital and away from the council’s prying eyes. And though they rarely made appearances in her new boarding school, her mother and father never seemed more proud or more hopeful of their daughter’s future.

The New Grand General[]

Though his meticulous preparations took three years, Swain and his remaining allies (among them Draven Draven and General Du Couteau General Du Couteau) seized control of Noxus in a single night. Physically restored by the demon, he crushed Darkwill in full view of his followers, leaving the throne shattered and empty. This new Grand General was not interested in his own legacy, but the glory of the empire—and such a man could not so easily be corrupted. After countless centuries, LeBlanc wondered, had she finally found a worthy nemesis?

Swain's vision for the future of Noxus is one of strength through unity. He embraces any who will pledge themselves to the empire—even the Black Rose, though he knows, in secret, they still plot against him.

The Escape of Rell[]

Rell was first forced into combat with another student when she was eight, and, afterward, a kind of magic sigil was painfully grafted into her arm, amplifying her powers so that she could become even stronger. Yet while this had been framed as a training exercise, Rell never saw the boy again. She never saw any of her opponents again.

Every day, she grew more powerful, honing her magic for martial combat. Her body became covered with sigils that amplified her magical abilities to impossible heights. In time, she could rip a vein of raw ore from deep out of the ground, twist the walls into deadly weapons, and superheat an opponent’s armor until it collapsed and crushed them. But her instructors desired even more from her—all in the hopes that Rell would be the most powerful soldier the empire had ever known.

On her sixteenth birthday, after a particularly barbaric duel, she’d finally had enough. Casting her instructors aside, Rell tore past the guards and ripped open the doors of a forbidden wing of the academy, discovering the true nature of her school: Every opponent she’d defeated had been Nullified—their magic forcibly extracted from them and placed into the very sigils covering Rell’s body—and left as emotionless puppets devoid of memories. This was the price of her power, and she could never give it back.

Worst of all was the headmistress who oversaw the procedures herself: Rell’s own mother. All of this had been for Rell, she said. After all... excellence is measured in sacrifice. Rell raged.

To the small handful of faculty who survived her escape from the academy, it was like the earth had been torn open into a twisting whirlwind of razor-sharp slag. The building ripped itself apart, forming an impenetrable suit of black armor around Rell as she crushed those who stood before her, flattening seasoned soldiers with a lance heavier than a mountain. Bursting through the front gate on a steed made of rippling iron, she led as many of her classmates as she could to freedom—leaving the Rose scrambling to recover the Null and erase any trace of what their organization had done.

But it was far too late. Soon enough, the surviving faculty members began to die in increasingly public ways, and the Null could no longer be kept secret, and Rell is labelled a threat to Noxus.

To take Rell back, LeBlanc LeBlanc has used a number of methods, including manipulating the famous mercenary Samira Samira through her instructor Indari Indari.

The Takeover of Nockmirch[]

Tianna Tianna Crownguard sent Garen Garen on a mission outside Demacia; to check in on his grand-uncle Hargold, who is serving as an ambassador to the Nockmirch - one of Demacia Crest icon Demacia's allied states. Garen set out with three scores of Dauntless Vanguardand along with way are joined by Quinn Quinn, who was ordered to join by Tianna's orders as well. After several days they arrive at the city of Alderburg, only to find an immense bridge of dark stone connecting it to the neighbouring nation of Rijenland. This causes immediate suspicions among the Demacians, despite the welcoming nature of the citizens. Quinn goes off to scout the area, finding an entire Noxian warhost nearby of hundreds warriors. She dispatches several of them alongside Valor as they make their way back to Alderburg and warn Garen, who was already being suspicious of his uncle. The truth is revealed, as his uncle was actually an illussion created by an unidentified sorceress an unidentified sorceress, and Noxus was very much in control.

The Vanguard tries to escape, but end up trapped on the same bridge they entered in. Quinn is critically wounded after trying to get everyone out, but Valor gets a message to Demacia proper. After a basilisk is loosed on them, killing several of their soldiers, Garen launches a desperate offensive in to the city, killing the Noxian commander present. In the nick of time Valor returns, with a host of Silverwings in tow, who charge through the Noxians, killing them in scores even as a few similarly meet their own end.

In the aftermath Garen confronts Lord Eldwyn of Nockmirch, who explains he felt pressured in to siding with Noxus due to a lack of communication with Demacia, which Garen notes was likely the cause of the mage impersonating his great-uncle. After getting a second opinion from the new recruit Cithria, Garen has Lord Eldwyn to cede his lordship and hands it to his daughter: Lady Odelyn, despite it being against the law of the land for a woman to rule. The minotaur Kriel stays behind to work as an ambassador while an official one is chosen.

Leadership[]

The Black Rose's headquarter is based in Noxus Crest icon Noxus, more specifically The Immortal Bastion. Agents of the Black Rose have always kept a close watch over Noxian politics. Secret doors, hidden passages, and unseen windows lurk within its government buildings.[2]

The Black Rose controls a network of catacombs whose tunnels delve deep beneath Noxus and snake throughout the capital and into Immortal Bastion itself at the center of the political district.[3]

As of now, the Black Rose is having deep network of spies working across Runeterra.[4]

Members[]

Notable order members
Lady Aelana Aelana Member of the order. A female Minotaur noble also known as the "Thorn of the Rose".
Lady Amara Amara Member of the order. A female assassin and a merchant.
Lady Auvray Auvray Member of the order. A female noble and a spy.
Lady Cassiopeia Du Couteau Cassiopeia Du Couteau Member of the order. Originally dispatched to obtain godlike powers from the Shuriman Capital, was horribly disfigured by a tomb curse.
Lady Elise Kythera Zaavan Elise Kythera Zaavan Member of the order. Dispatched to obtain artifacts from the Shadow Isles, was mutated by the powers of Vilemaw Vilemaw.
Lady LeBlanc LeBlanc Matron and original the founder of the order.
Lady Soreana Du Couteau Soreana Du Couteau Member of the order. Originally dispatched to spread the influence of the order in Shurima, married into the Du Couteau family to do it.
Lord Vladimir Vladimir Patron and one of the original founders of the order.
Lord Milat Milat Member of the order. A male noble and strategist.


Trivia[]

  • The Black Rose is older than Noxus itself, being the reason why Mordekaiser Mordekaiser lost his initial empire.
  • While being a founder member of the organization, Vladimir Vladimir has become a more public figure in recent years, even against the wishes of the Black Rose's more cautious members. In doing this, he has founded a cult following of his own in the Crimson Circle and could potentially be planning on leaving the Black Rose entirely.
  • Cassiopeia Cassiopeia was initiated into the order by her mother Soreana. One of her missions tasked by her mother was to retrieve godlike powers that had been the key to Shurima Crest icon Shurima's supremacy in ancient times.

Media[]

Related Music

See Also[]


References