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A prodigy from the rough streets of Zaun, manipulates to twist any situation to his advantage. Using his own invention, the , he explores the branching possibilities of reality to craft the perfect moment. Though he revels in this freedom, when there’s a threat to his friends, he’ll do anything to defend them. To outsiders, Ekko seems to achieve the impossible the first time, every time.
"My devices work best when they don’t work as intended… which is most of the time." — Ekko | |
Background[]
Early life[]
Born with genius-level intellect, Ekko constructed simple machines before he could crawl. His parents, Zaun, with all its pollution and crime, would only stifle Ekko, whom they felt deserved the wealth and opportunities of Piltover. Throughout his youth he watched his parents age beyond their years, toiling for too many hours under dangerous conditions in suffocating factories. They earned meager wages while greedy factory owners, and sneering Piltovan buyers, profited immensely from their labor.
and , vowed to provide a good future for their son—It would all be worth it, they reasoned, if it meant their son could one day rise to the city above.
Ekko saw things differently. Beyond Zaun’s flaws, he saw a dynamic place overflowing with energy and potential. Zaunites’ industry, resourcefulness, and resilience stirred a hotbed of pure innovation. They had built a thriving culture from catastrophe, and flourished where others would have perished. That spirit captivated Ekko, and spurred him to a youth of wild invention and innovation.
He wasn’t alone. He befriended scrappy orphans, inquisitive runaways, and eager upstarts. Zaunites tended to eschew formal education in favor of apprenticeships, but these “Lost Children of Zaun” looked to the labyrinthine streets to be their mentor. They wasted time in glorious, youthful fashion—foot races through the border markets, or daring climbs from the Sump to the Promenade. They ran wild and free, answering to no one.
One night, on a solo trek into the rubble of a recently demolished laboratory, Ekko made an astonishing find: a shard of blue-green crystal that glittered with magical energy. Every child of Zaun heard tales of hextech, said to power weapons and heroes alike. Such a thing had the potential to change the world, and now he held a broken one. He scrambled to find more pieces, but the crunching footfalls of teched-up enforcers told him he wasn’t the only one looking. Ekko barely escaped, and returned to his home.
He experimented madly with the crystal. During one less-than-scientific attempt, the gem exploded into a vortex of shimmering dust, triggering eddies of temporal distortion. Ekko opened his eyes to see several splintered realities—and several “echo” versions of himself—staring back in sheer panic amid the fractured continua.
He’d really done it this time.
After some tense coordination between Ekko and his paradoxes, they managed to contain and repair the hole he had torn in the fabric of reality. Eventually, he harnessed the shattered crystal’s temporal powers into a device that would allow him to manipulate small increments of time… at least in theory.
On his name day, his friends badgered him into climbing the ancient clocktower known as Old Hungry, so Ekko brought the untested device along with him.
The Lost Children climbed, stopping occasionally to paint an obscene caricature or two of prominent Pilties. They were near the top when a handhold gave way, sending one of Ekko’s friends tumbling to certain doom. Instinctively—as if he’d done it a thousand times before—Ekko activated his device. The world shattered around him, and he was wrenched backward through swirling particles of time.
Then Ekko was back, watching his friend reach again for the same rotting plank. The plank broke, the boy fell… but Ekko was ready this time, diving to the edge and grabbing him by the shirt. Ekko tried to swing him to safety, but his friend became caught in the tower’s clockwork gears, and—
Stop. Rewind.
Several attempts later, Ekko finally saved his friend’s life. But to his crew, Ekko’s supernatural reflexes had saved their friend before anyone even realized the danger. He told them about the crystal and made them swear to secrecy. Instead, they dared each other to new heights of foolishness, knowing Ekko had the means to pluck them out of danger.
With each trial, and so much error, the time-warping device—which Ekko dubbed the Zero Drive—grew more and more stable. The only limit was how many do-overs his body could take before exhaustion set in.
Ekko’s time-bending antics have made him a person of interest to some of Zaun and Piltover’s most inventive, most powerful, and most dangerous individuals. But his only interest is in his friends, his family, and his city. He dreams of the day when his hometown rises up to dwarf the so-called City of Progress, when Piltover’s golden veneer will be overshadowed by the towering ingenuity and relentless spunk of a Zaun born not from generations of privilege, but from sheer daring. He may not have a plan yet, but he’s got all the time in the world.
After all, if Ekko’s Z-Drive can change the past, how hard can it be to change the future?
Convergence[]
(TBA)
Potential Future[]
In a possible future, Ekko becomes more enraptured in his technology, neglecting his loved ones. He would use his Zero Drive to rewind situations with his friends and family to get the optimal outcome. He eventually drifts away from all his friends and seldom returns home to see his parents. The Poingdestre Chembaron family would greatly increase their Syntixi manufacturing, much to the ire of Clan Ferros, causing Piltover to increase their chemical dumpings into Zaun. The increased pollution would strengthen the noxious Zaun Grey, causing a city-wide quarantine to be put in place. In retaliation, the Poingdestres would launch attacks against Piltover. Ekko would do his best to save lives on both sides, but to little success. With the cities on the brink of civil war and the pollution forcing his parents to leave Zaun, Ekko resolved to improve his technology to allow to travel further back in time to stop the war.
After numerous failed attempts, Ekko is able to turn his Zero Drive into the Chronoport, but at the expense of his last Zero Drive. With his last chance, he travels back to stop Clan Ferros from hiring the Poingdestres to manufacture artificial Hextech, but arrives too late. Despite Syntixi being discovered, Future Ekko decides to round it all up before the Poingdestres amass to much power and recruits his younger self to aid him. After the two Ekkos gather all the Syntixi, Future Ekko plans to create a Syntixi bomb and detonate it at the half way point between Piltover and Zaun, not only to destroy the Syntixi but also Clan Ferros' Hextech vault, rendering both cities powerless and averting civil war. His past self is horrified that his future self would sacrifice so many innocent lives to stop the war, but Future Ekko disregards him.
His past self would team up with Camille to stop him from detonating the bomb. After beating him, present Ekko manages to talk him down, but the bomb is already armed. However, Future Ekko decides to take the bomb and hurl it through a rift in time and destroy the Syntixi at the cost of his own life. As he hurdles through time and space, Ekko sees the multiverse. In one timeline, he sees his parents have decided to stay in Zaun and steps through, hoping his past self forgives him.
Apperance[]
Ekko is a short, thin, brown-skinned young man with hazelnut brown eyes. He has white hair fashioned into a mohawk. While originally designed with straight hair, Ekko is sometimes portrayed with textured hair. Typically, his forehead and nose are painted white with the shape of an hourglass.
He usually wears a baggy builder's overalls, with a red scarf with protective glasses on his neck, semi-sewn baggy green pants and black boots.
Personality[]
He had a ingenious mind, even when he was a baby, he could invent simple machines. He is also very determined to save his allies, as he was willing to go back in time to save a friend of his life.
Abilities[]
- Agility: He is shown to have agility to get around the streets of Zaun.
- Time-Rewind: He can rewind time to the point before he gained any injuries.
Relations[]
& []
Ekko's parents work overtime in one of Zaun's many factories, so they're rarely home.[2]
& []
The graffiti Ekko often visits has paintings of girls with blue (
) and pink ( ) hair. Ekko and were childhood friends and often played together. He had a crush on her before she started talking to and .The Lost Children of Zaun[]
Ekko and friends belong to a gang called the Lost Children of Zaun, a group of orphans and teenagers drawn together by their mutual interests and desire for community. Members of the Lost Children include:
- 4 Ajuna Lem, a scavenger whose death ways heavily on Ekko.
- , the older brother of and an archivist of Zaun, highly knowledgable about its people, history, feuds, and secrets.
- , an inventor who thinks Ekko relies too much on his Zero-Drive to fix his mistakes.
- , a former apprentice costume designer at the Fenlox theater, she now has her own boutique clothing store in Entresol.
- 3 Kay, a talented inventor focused on cloning research.
- , the younger brother of and a bright inventor with a fondness for animals. He looked up to and adopted his surname and donned his goggles in his memory.
- 1 Shomi, a highly proficient hoverboarder.
- , a teenager who enjoys headbutting people.
- , one of Ekko's oldest friends and always trying something to new to find her passion in life.
- , the toughest member of the Lost Children and a skilled fighter.
Piltovans[]
Ekko dislikes Pilties like , , and , as he sees them as arrogant and self-important, as well as to promote Zaunite nationalism. He is convinced Piltover is not the only progressive city in Valoran and is proud to be Zaunite. Seeing his former friends leave for the City of Progress gave him a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Not to mention his 12-year-old friend 4 Ajuna was killed by a Piltie.[3]
However little by little Ekko began to stop judging the Piltovians, beginning to establish certain relationships or even to become familiar with them, like Camille and Seraphine.
[]
He finds [4]
a poser.& []
To him, [5]
and are the opposite extremes of the same decadent spectrum, and hopes he doesn't turn out like either of them.Zaunites[]
Ekko also dislikes Zaunites like , , and , as they embody everything that is wrong with the city. Ekko once saved his friend from by rewinding time; however, Mundo remains aware of the changed timeline.
Ekko appreciates [6]
for what he has done for Zaun. Ekko remarks that he would poke at Zac to learn about the composition of his chemical body.He likes [7]
for unknown reasons and fights alongside him in The Climb.[]
The only Yordle Ekko has met is . The two of them shared stories with each other while Heimerdinger visited Ekko's hideout in Zaun. He hasn't met any other Yordles (at least not without glamour) and has only heard tales of them.[8] He respects as an inventor despite him residing in and working for Piltover.[9]
[]
Ekko and his friends have been shown to attend
performance. They are likely her fans despite her strong ties to Piltover And he respects Seraphine's desire to unite the two cities through music.[]
Ekko met Zeri after she freed a group of hostages, including Ekko's parents, from a warehouse owned by Renata Glasc. It's implied in CONV/RGENCE that they and their families keep in touch with each other.
Read More
Biography
Starring Champion
Mentioned Champion
Alternate Universes
Trivia[]
- His canon appearances in chronological order: Enemy, Arcane, True Genius, Lullaby, Chronobreak, Seconds, A Perfect Life, CONV/RGENCE, The Unexpected Spark.
- During his release, it was stated that Ekko was a 16-17-year-old teenager.
- As of 997 AN, Ekko is 18 years old.
- Like [10] and , 'Ekko' is not his actual name but rather what his friends call him.
- Ekko is basically a gifted, unrefined genius that tends to take on more than he can initially handle. He managed to create the [11] and the simply through trial and error, and as a result splits the timeline to fuel his perfectionism
- Ekko mainly uses the Z-Drive to undo his mistakes and find key points to exploit, such as taking down a Vigilnaut (the techmaturgically augmented goon he fought in Seconds).[12]
- Despite being able to undo physical effects on his body, Ekko retains some residual effects over the rewind, including physical pain and mental fatigue. His cognitive age does not change over the course of rewinding.[13][14]
- Ekko's facepaint and [15]
- He displays the same Zaunite street fashion and do (with Ekko's neckpiece being identical to the hextech bolts on her gauntlets)
are both shaped after an hourglass, an expression of his personality as well as the symbol he adopted for himself. - Ekko's 'bat' is a clock second-hand he stole from a Piltover clocktower (as evidenced by the Roman 'XII' at its base)[16]
- Ekko believes in and cares for Zaun and its future despite not fully understanding the bigger picture.
- As evidenced by his joke, the
- It being the product of makeshift hextech powered by a shattered crystal of undocumented properties might have something to do with it.
- The shattered crystal is implied to be part of the one that and fought over in their biographies.
- And that also implies the current isn't the first of many broken before.
- As evidenced in CONV/RGENCE, the Zero-Drive can create time rifts capable of tearing different timelines even in different universes.
sometimes functions unexpectedly.
- It being the product of makeshift hextech powered by a shattered crystal of undocumented properties might have something to do with it.
- The
- Ekko had at first another function for it in mind (likely a smoke/flash grenade) but several successive malfunctions prompted its current incarnation.
is powered by the .
- Using the
- While in-game, an afterimage can be seen throwing his The Climb and Ekko's Arrival the device thrown is shown to be an unique one also shaped like a hourglass.
- This device temporarly stops the flow of time in an area .
to activate , in - In the non-canon The Path of Champions Adventure, one of Ekko's afterimage named Ozzi starts acting on its own and desires to not be reset and remain as an individual. It's unknown if afterimages from Runeterra Prime are also capable of this.
, Ekko is able to create afterimages of himself.
- While in-game, an afterimage can be seen throwing his The Climb and Ekko's Arrival the device thrown is shown to be an unique one also shaped like a hourglass.
- [17] and may be concerned by Ekko fracturing the timeline.
Change log[]
Character blurb | |
---|---|
5 Nov 2019 (During V9.22) | Added. |
References[]
- ↑ Official Riot Forge Twitter
- ↑ Ekko's parents
- ↑ Ekko hating Piltover
- ↑ Ekko and Ezreal
- ↑ Ekko and Jayce, and Viktor
- ↑ Ekko and Zac
- ↑ The Climb
- ↑ Ekko and Yordles
- ↑ Ekko and Heimerdinger
- ↑ Ekko's name
- ↑ Z-Drive experimentation
- ↑ Ekko and Urgot-looking goon
- ↑ Ekko aging
- ↑ Ekko injury
- ↑ Ekko's face paint
- ↑ Ekko's bat clarified by lead writer
- ↑ Ekko no no with time