Champion Reveal: Kindred, the Eternal Hunters[]
Kindred prowls through camps, 
marking enemy champions for death and permanently growing in strength if they're able to carry out the promised sentence. But just as Kindred brings death, so can they delay it. Should their allies meet deadly force, Lamb - one of Kindred's two spirits - can create a large 
blessed zone that, for a few valuable seconds, denies the ever-creeping and inevitable clutches of death.[1]- Abilities
- Mark of the Kindred
- Dance of Arrows
- Wolf's Frenzy
- Passive: Kindred builds stacks of Hunter's Vigor as they move around. Once fully stacked, Kindred's next basic attack steals a flat amount of health.
- Active: Wolf temporarily splits from Lamb, creating a large spirit zone around him and attacking whoever Lamb attacks, or his closest enemy. Lamb can cast
Dance of Arrows with a greatly reduced cooldown while inside Wolf's Frenzy.
- Mounting Dread
slows a targeted enemy. If they're then able to attack their crippled target three times in quick succession, the target suffers a burst of percent max health damage.
- Lamb's Respite
- Jungle
Kindred makes short work of most jungle camps thanks to 
Wolf's Frenzy, which gives the twin spirits plenty of supporting damage as they chip away with their basic attacks. Crucially, by greatly reducing 
Dance of Arrows' cooldown, Wolf's Frenzy allows Lamb to constantly dart around the camp all while it whittles down multiple targets. Their movement isn't just for show, though - repeated leaps with Dance of Arrows quickly builds up Wolf's Frenzy's passive, which, in turn, tops up their health as they head from camp to camp. Kindred might be a fragile champion, but by keeping on the move and attacking whenever their passive is ready, they'll stay healthy enough to continue their hunt. Larger monsters prove the biggest challenge, and that's where Kindred can turn to 
Mounting Dread. The ability is too mana-hungry to use on small monsters, but by applying it to hard-hitting and tanky beasts, Kindred can kite its targets a little easier and deal a chunk of percent max health damage once the ability hits max stacks. And once Kindred has purged their jungle, they'll be ready to start hunting bigger prey.
- Ganking
Mark of the Kindred is a powerful tool, and not just for the buff it grants Kindred when they butcher a marked target. It has immense psychological value, too: knowing that they've been marked for death may force an enemy to play more passively, pulling back from their pushed lane for fear of an approaching gank. But marking prey doesn't force Kindred to their lane; the mark's global range means they can mark the enemy team's mid for death before ganking top, for example. They won't get a permanent boost, sure, but Kindred's time is sometimes better spent helping allies than scrambling to kill targets who know they're being hunted.
But when Kindred sets it sights on a target, how does it actually hunt? Mounting Dread provides a solid start, slowing their enemy as they close in to create a well-positioned Wolf's Frenzy. Once the lair's live, Kindred's all set to whittle their prey down with Dance of Arrows and basic attacks. But while 
Lamb and 
Wolf hit hard, they lack traditional hard crowd control effects, making them most effective when they gank wounded targets or attack alongside allies who can keep the enemy locked down.
Kindred should always keep an eye on the enemy team's jungle, too, because while the twin beasts choose the champions they apply Mark of the Kindred to, the enemy jungle camps that suffer the same mark are picked at random. Kindred doesn't gain vision of marked targets, but they do know that, by being marked, the camp at least lives. This is where Kindred uses their smarts: knowledge of live camps tell it where the enemy jungler is not, or at least where they may be headed, giving them the chance to plan their ganks or jungle routes accordingly. The mark's also visible to the enemy jungler, too, who suddenly has to decide between killing off the marked camp to deny Kindred passive stats, or ganking. This isn't an easy choice: choosing the latter, particularly in a lane well away from the marked camp, pretty much provides Kindred with a free invitation for extra stats. Otherwise, the enemy jungler can simply ward the marked buff and stay close enough to turn the tables on Kindred should they decide to kill the camp. As nimble and powerful as they are, Kindred still struggles against a number of strong dueling junglers.
- Skirmishing
Lamb's Respite, when timed or used correctly, is an absolutely momentous ability. It can stall epic monster kills - even bait out the enemy team's 
Smite - and, when Kindred's team is on the wrong end of a beating, prolong their lives as they bring the enemy team to the same brink. The ability makes for a perfect tower-diving tool, too, only safeguarding the lives of the living, so offering no protection to the game's towers. Even against unfavourable odds, Kindred's team can often claim objectives by casting Lamb's Respite before pummelling the enemy team's structures down. The ability's heal gives them options, too: keeping them on the offensive if the enemy team dares a base race, or propping them up for long enough to finish off any enemy stragglers who attempted to save their doomed defenses.
- Teamfights
In full-scale fights, Kindred fights best behind their team's frontline, pouncing around inside Wolf's Frenzy with as many Dance of Arrows attacks as possible, while throwing Mounting Dread on frontline enemies who manage to break through to their team's delicate innards. If their team's winning the fight, Kindred is best off saving Lamb's Respite to make sure their team's heaviest damage dealers survive incoming damage. If they're losing, on the other hand, Kindred can use Lamb's Respite to safeguard their entire team. The precious few seconds of immortality will help balance the playing field, leaving both teams' key players teetering on the precipice. And once the ult ends, the heal granted by Lamb's Respite will soon give way under the brutal few seconds that inevitably follow.
- Synergy
| Works well with: | Struggles against: |
|---|---|
 Aside from even more solid peel, Gragas provides plenty of |
 Lee Sin, one of League's strongest counter-junglers, has all the tools he needs to make Kindred's life difficult. His dueling power will dissuade all but the strongest Kindred players from venturing into his jungle to clear |
 Kindred may jive with the jungle, but they're still troubled by the same squishiness that perturbs traditional marksmen and need suitably beefy and peely allies to keep them safe. Enter Alistar. The big blue cow's a perfect yin to Kindred's yang, |
 In teamfights, Kindred plays the role of a backline squishy, and as such relies on their team's frontline to keep them safe from approaching fighters and tanks. Irelia presents a unique challenge, though: with her inherent |
 Utility is the name of the game when Ashe and Kindred take to the rift on the same team. With oodles of crowd control, the two can cover up for each other's mistakes, misplays, and bad positioning. |
 Cass copes well against Kindred simply because she deals devastating amounts of both sustained and burst damage. This is, of course, most apparent during |
Champion Insights: Kindred[]
By Conor 'fizzNchips' Sheehy[2]
The guys and gals in champion ideation start off with a simple enough goal: create something that League hasn't seen before within the parameters of a pre-existing role. In Kindred's case, they were tasked with making a new marksman-style damage dealer who could go toe-to-toe in the jungle. Here's how they went from blank page to the twin prowling specters of death about to stalk the Fields of Justice.
- Game design notes
- by Jordan Anton aka RiotWrekz
Designing a marksman who could head into the jungle came with a bunch of unique challenges, but not because it was a completely new concept. Truth is, we'd seen players crowbar other ranged champs into the jungle before, and by paying attention to where they struggled, we ended up with a pretty good idea of what Kindred needed in order to succeed.
- Macgyvering Jungle Marksmen
The ranged champs we've seen appear in the jungle - most recently 
Twisted Fate and 
Twitch - have been really gimmicky, and either dominate a game or do absolutely nothing. Their early ganks are often devastating (not many can survive 
invisible 
red buff ganks or TF's guaranteed 
stun) but they're pretty much useless if they fall behind, and absolutely need kill or assist money to keep up. What's more, anyone familiar with either of their super predictable jungle paths will know where they need to be to kill or maim them, and because they were designed for life in lane, there's very little they can do against strong counter-junglers like 
Lee Sin or 
Rek'Sai. These were all issues we had in mind when we started working on Kindred, and issues we hoped to address while creating the champ.
- Enter Kindred
First off, we knew that we wanted Kindred to offer their team reasonable ganks - attacks that, if timed and coordinated well, could result in a kill, but weren't guaranteed successes. By reducing the power of their ganks - specifically compared to Twitch or Twisted Fate - we were able to add power to areas where they both struggle. We made Kindred less reliant on money, so while they obviously benefit from items as the game progresses, they aren't anything like as useless as the Plague Rat when he falls the wrong side of the feast/famine divide. Mark of the Kindred, for example, is a really snazzy ability, not just from the bonuses it gives Kindred, but because it adds a psychological element to a game of League that's largely indifferent to Kindred's strength. Whether you've been marked by a Kindred that's racked up a 10/0 or a 0/10 score, you're going to play differently. Maybe you're about to get ganked, or maybe Kindred just wanted to apply a smidge of suggested pressure - you don't know, and, unless you've warded supremely well, you won't know until they appear somewhere on the map.
Speaking of ganks, while Kindred's aren't as brutal as Twitch's or TF's, they're still plenty powerful, and will often relieve pressure even if they don't secure a kill. The percent max health burst damage from a fully triggered Mounting Dread means Kindred's ganks sting even against tanks, and the W / Q combo helps Kindred stick to their target as they make their escape. Kindred definitely lacks the hard crowd control that a lot of junglers bring to a fight, but the extra damage they bring in lieu of the CC means they thrive especially when they gank lanes that do have the means to keep their target from fleeing. So while junglers like 
Sejuani and Rek'Sai bring the knock-ups and slows the gank needs, but often lack the damage to kill the target, Kindred offers the inverse to that.
- Mixing the meta
Kindred's introduction brings the possibility of fancy new team comps built around a second jungling marksman. With two marksmen, the rest of the team might look for peel-heavy champions who can keep enemy assassins and fighters at bay, or pick up items like 
The Black Cleaver to help both marksmen deal decent damage. Maybe they'll focus instead on tanky frontline characters who pack a decent amount of magic damage - champs like 
Malphite or 
Amumu - to mix up their team's damage output. The point is that a ranged marksmen jungler hasn't really been reliably seen before, and we're super excited to see the kinds of teams you guys build around one.
Finally, I can't talk about Kindred without mentioning their ultimate. Lamb's Respite is another ability that is effective regardless of Kindred's level of success in the game, and again encourages teams to think outside the box in regards to their composition. Its death-defying zone gives sustained damage comps resistance to burst, which reinforces double AD comps and specifically rewards teams which pack in multiple marksmen. But even if Kindred's taken into a more traditional team comp, they should still be able to offer their team plenty of unique tools along with those coveted ranged attacks.
- Narrative notes
- by Matthew 'FauxSchizzle' Dunn
We had a hook for the kit pretty early in ideation: a jungle marksman with the ability to 'mark' enemy players for death and reap rewards for each successful kill or assist on that target. This led the team to explore several ways of expressing the champion's growing power, and we landed on a relationship between two equals. This is where Kindred took shape.
It was ultimately one of Chris' sketches - a glowing ethereal lamb firing a shadowy wolf from its bow - that piqued our interest. In fact, it haunted us. There was something darkly whimsical about this duo, so we decided to dig deeper. This is typically when the Narrative writers dream up a few story sketches to figure out who the champ is within Runeterra, what their powers look like, and how they behave. The first lines I wrote for this concept were a variation on their 'choose me' line, with Wolf saying "Tell me again, little Lamb, which things are mine to take?" and Lamb replying bluntly, "All things, dear Wolf."
Based on lots of discussions in the room, we realized that Kindred could be Runeterra's first mythological representation of life and death. We dreamt up scenarios from ancient barrows featuring rough engravings of the Kindred masks to mark the sites as places of the dead, to a Mardi Gras meets Groundhog Day-style celebration in Bilgewater. Kindred's stories were designed to build up the mythological foundation of Runeterra; the stuff of fables and nursery rhymes that children sang, blissfully unaware of the works' dark origins.
These two animals: the stalwart Lamb with her ornate bow, and the shadowy Wolf with his tongue lolling out of his mouth, felt both quirky and ominous. I started researching the anthropomorphism of death throughout numerous cultures and found that many of humanity's first known myths were centered around gravesites. The team agreed that Kindred was a unique grim reaper, spoken about in whispered tones by those who narrowly avoided death, and seen by all in life's last moments. To help clarify what made the characters distinct, we took a look at what a Lamb's death looks like in comparison to a Wolf's. To accept Lamb is to rejoice in life and depart in serenity. To run from Wolf means a violent and terrifying end.
The masks proved pivotal to the champ. By having Lamb wear Wolf's mask - and vice versa - we tapped into a yin-yang dynamic, which helped us crack their personalities. We gave in spades to one what the other lacked. In this case, Lamb knew much about the world, but felt very little, whereas Wolf felt everything, but lacked in the knowledge department. We loved the idea that these two never fought over kills, or were ever at odds, because, in the end, the Lamb and the Wolf are two parts of one whole.
- Art notes
- by Edmundo Sanchez aka Mundo and Chris Campbell aka Skeeziks
After identifying the type of champion we wanted to make (in this case, a dual character jungling marksman) we entered open ideation, and started noodling on what these characters would actually look like. But, turns out dual characters are hard. We tried out a couple of ideas, but they trod on existing champions a little too hard and failed to get much support internally. Other ideas came and went until we found ourselves spinning our wheels two weeks into our four week ideation window. Chris, looking for a change of environment, headed out to a coffee shop for a while to continue sketching. A few hours later, he turned back up, and opened up his sketchbook to show us this:
Something clicked with the concept instantly. These characters - the fierce wolf and the gentle lamb - neatly juxtaposed with each other while still functioning and appearing as a single entity. Meanwhile, Jordan and Matt had made decent headway on a death theme, which was an easy fit with the characters: Wolf represented death, and Lamb, at least initially, represented life. And though it was never defined as the goal of 2015's champions, 
Bard and 
Tahm Kench both had plenty of folkloric qualities about them that complemented Kindred's burgeoning theme and look. Progress, at least internally! Then we brought the concept to stakeholders, and though they were super supportive, we ran into some tough feedback from other Rioters.
- "You guys are going to put a fucking lamb in the game?"
When we challenge ourselves with things that are new, that often unsettles people. And that's a good thing. We ran into a ton of feedback as we started expanding our feedback sessions. Lamb and Wolf were super polarizing champions, and we had to fight tooth and nail throughout the process to get them pushed through. Though we were comfortable with the champion being contentious, we still wanted to refine and focus on the characters of Lamb and Wolf. We refocused them so both represented death, then gave them masks - masks of each other, actually - to highlight the duality of the two characters. Lamb wasn't all good and noble, and Wolf wasn't purely brutal, but they had aspects of each other that turned them from black and white characters to various shades of gray. We started treating them as yin and yang - two halves of a complete whole that couldn't exist without each other. Next we turned to their animations, and again deliberately countered how people would expect Kindred to move. Lamb, instead of skipping around, became stoic in its movement, while Wolf became the more playful of the two.
Ultimately, we wanted Kindred to become a cultural archetype for League - creatures that truly embody the world of Runeterra and highlight how unique the world is. And here's the kicker: we don't even see Kindred as physical characters in the world. So far as anyone in Valoran knows, Kindred is just a fairytale, a way for some Runeterran cultures to rationalize or personify the mystery of life and death. As for whether they're actually real? Well, that's for the dead to know.
Trivia[]
- Lamb is voiced by Marcella Lentz-Pope in League of Legends and Legends of Runeterra.
- Lamb's Japanese voice actor is Mamiko Noto.[3]
- Wolf is voiced by Matthew Mercer in League of Legends and Legends of Runeterra.
- Gangplank, Captain Gangplank, and 5Gangplank are also voiced by the same voice actor.
- During development, they were called Jmarks.[4]
- Kindred had been in production since 2013 (their final incarnation was conceived during Jhin's development).
- Before their release, Mark of the Kindred's symbol appeared randomly over champions' heads, with the symbol being dubbed 'They are Coming'.
- Before their release,
- Inspiration sources for Kindred include:
- Aesop's fable The Wolf and the Lamb;
- Yin and yang;
- Various myths/legends/stories from all over the world.
- Other literatures such as Death in Neil Gaiman's "Sandman", "Pretty Deadly" by Kelly Sue DeConnick.
- One of the ideas pitched during their development was having skins based on different regions.[9]
- Lamb and Wolf are chosen as the duo sides of Kindred as they are such polar opposites. It also let their designers play with their personalities (flipping the masks) more to challenge the expectations of what a Lamb or Wolf would normally be in that pairing.
- A lot of their relationship is based on Matthew 'FauxSchizzle' Dunn and his wife with FauxSchizzle being like Wolf and his wife being like Lamb.
Media[]
- Related Music
| Kindred's Theme |
- Related Videos
| Listen to their Tale |
- Main article: Summoner icon
References[]
- ↑ Champion Reveal: Kindred, the Eternal Hunters
- ↑ Champion Insights: Kindred
- ↑ Almost all Japanese League of Legends voice actors
- ↑ Ask Riot
- ↑ https://indo-european.info/pokorny-etymological-dictionary/index.htm#mer-4_mer%c9%99.htm
- ↑ https://indo-european.info/pokorny-etymological-dictionary/index.htm#mer-5_mer%c9%99.htm
- ↑ http://www.palaeolexicon.com/Word/Show/28805/
- ↑ Lincoln, B. Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology & Practice, p. 96
- ↑ FauxSchizzle on Regional Kindred Skins