| Basic | |
|---|---|
| Advanced | |
| Craftable Emblem | |
| Uncraftable Emblem | |
| Radiant | |
| Artifact | |
| Support | |
| Consumable | |
| Removed | |
| Disabled |
Brackern[]
Surrounded around the Shuriman Continent are several clans of Brackern, including clans in the Shuriman desert.
Dormun[]
The Dormun are gigantic, slow-moving creatures protected with large chitinous plates covering their body. In the harsh conditions of Shurima they have evolved to survive the perpetual drought by utilizing an unknown sense to locate hidden reservoirs of water. Incidentally, certain nomadic tribes have built themselves a permanent home upon the backs of these beasts where they clean the creature and hunt any airborne pests who venture near.
Eka'Sul[]
Desert goats that travel in herds.
Mwatis[]
Mwatis are goatlike creatures with large plated casques on their heads. Mwati wool and plate are prised for felting and insulation.
Kmiros[]
Gigantic scarabs that roam in swarms, looking for unfortunate travelers to feed on. They seem to be common prey for 
Rammus.
Outerbeasts[]
- Main article: Voidborn
Beside the Xer'Sai, other creatures from the Void, referred to as 'outerbeasts', can be found in the desert.
- Xer'Sai: Creatures from the Void that plague the southern deserts. They are the size of big dogs on average, but can be smaller or much bigger.
Rek'Sai, as the queen, is by far the largest and most dangerous of her species. Xer'sai burst from their small burrows and ravage anything nearby, to the detriment of desert caravans. Once dead, the Xer'sai decompose at an abnormally rapid rate and become inedible.
Ralsiji[]
Large and aggressive minotaur-like creatures. They are humpbacked quadrupeds with long limbs and thick horns.
Shuriman Camel[]
A breed of camels native to the deserts of Shurima and are used by caravans as well as common folk as primary mode of transportation. Despite being well-suited for lengthy travels in the desert landscape, they are still prey to a many predator such as the Xer'Sai.
Sandswimmers[]
Sandswimmers
Sandswimmers are massive quadrupedal creatures that traverse the Shuriman desert in cyclical patterns. They got their name due to their preferred method of travel. Their narrow bodies and webbed feet are perfectly design for swimming under the sand. They feed on bugs and other small creatures most desert beasts ignore. Scavengers will often memorize the predictable paths these creatures take, and jump onto their backs to ride as far as they wish.
Skallashi[]
The Skallashi are large quadrupedal herbivores. These hardy beasts of burden are common across Shurima, ideally suited to the harsh desert environment. Their key body feature is their long legs. Notoriously bad-tempered, they are nevertheless treated with great reverence. Their brown hides are often painted with sacred symbols of protection, and their horns hung with totems and charms. While these creatures are mostly used for travel and carrying heavy loads, on some larger skallashi people are able to built miniature rooms for more comfortable travel. To own one is often considered a sign of considerable prosperity.
Champion Reveal: Taliyah, the Stoneweaver[]
Taliyah's earth-shattering powers have always set her apart from the crowd. She's a control mage who weaves the ground beneath her into a deadly weapon; when she sets her sights on a destination, the world itself shifts to get her there.[1]
- Abilities
- Rock Surfing
- Threaded Volley
- Passive: Taliyah gains increased movement speed when traversing worked ground.
- Active: Taliyah rips up the ground around her, firing a volley of five stone shards in a target direction while moving freely. Casting Threaded Volley converts the area into worked ground for a few minutes. Additional Threaded Volley casts over worked ground will yield just one rock projectile.
- Seismic Shove
knocking up and damaging all enemies caught in the blast zone. Taliyah can recast 
Seismic Shove before it erupts to throw the victims in any targeted direction - even over walls.
- Unraveled Earth
- Weaver's Wall
Weaver's Wall while channeling to ride atop the wall as it emerges. Taking damage or inputting a move command in any direction will cut her ride short.
- Laning
Taliyah is all about control - she dictates when and where she fights by setting up a gauntlet of traps for her lane opponent to navigate. To win trades, she can close off a section of a lane with 
Unraveled Earth and knock her opponent into the trap with a well-placed 
Seismic Shove. With her opponent exposed, a quick 
Threaded Volley will melt their health.
Spamming Taliyah's abilities in lane will slowly diminish her dueling power, however, since ground which has been worked by 
Threaded Volley won't produce enough missiles to effectively stave off fast-approaching attackers. Experienced Taliyah players will work around this by carefully working strips of ground in a trail leading to their tower. She can use the exhausted pathways as an escape route when thirsty enemy junglers come barreling into her lane.
If she's winning trades and dodging ganks, Taliyah excels at pushing waves into towers with her area of effect attacks. Once she's pushed her wave, her 
passive lets her bust out her rock-board and surf over to a friendly lane with tremor-inducing speed. She'll cruise alongside the map's walls, constantly gaining movement speed before blasting into a buddy's lane. Building an item like 
Luden's Echo gives Shurima's greatest (and only) surfer the means to dart around even faster, making her roams especially deadly.
- Skirmishing
If you thought Taliyah's ganks were cataclysmic because of her passive, just wait til she hits level six. 
Weaver's Wall lets her roam to other lanes with ease, and the wall she rides in on can block off escape routes for the poor soul(s) she chooses to gank.
Clever Taliyah players will use her ult to instantly apply pressure to far-flung objectives on the map. The enemy team's taking 
Dragon? Excellent: just cruise over there and fill up the pit with Unraveled Earth, then blast the enemy jungler out of the fight using Seismic Shove. They're fighting 
Baron but taking lots of damage? Sweet: simply line up your ult to wall off the Baron pit with them in it, sealing the squishies in the oven to prepare a delicious feast for your teammates.
Taliyah's strongest items allow her even greater control over her opponents' movement. When she dings a fleeing enemy with Threaded Volley while wielding 
Rylai's Crystal Scepter, the item's slow effect will make it that much easier for her to land her signature knockup-into- Unraveled Earth combo. Items that boost her low in-combat movement speed help the Stoneweaver quickly maneuver herself into the best spot to control any battle.
- Teamfights
In teamfights, Taliyah's area of effect abilities give her masterful power over her enemies' positioning. She might use Seismic Shove to hurl incoming juggernauts away from the fight, then slow the enemy team's exposed backline with carefully-planted Unraveled Earth. Taliyah's damage-less ult means that she won't bring major burst power to fights, but she can unearth her Weaver's Wall to split their team in half, giving Taliyah and her team the chance to gang up on exposed opponents before moving onto those left behind.
Once a teamfight has ended, Taliyah is able to press her advantage with speed and grace. Her passive lets her rapidly cruise alongside jungle walls, catching up to escaping enemies or making her way to a far-flung tower. Once late-game hits and she drops a third point into her ultimate, its range increases enormously - she can steal an enemy 
blue buff after a fight, then Weaver's Wall to double-time it all the way to the enemy's 
Brambleback camp for the 
double-buff.
- Synergy
| Works well with: | Struggles against: |
|---|---|
  Enemy frontliners will find themselves eating a relentless volley of |
  Taliyah is safe from nimble opponents so long as she's got earth between her and them, but she struggles against baddies who can dodge her rock barrage and slip past her defenses. She'll want to stay well out of the Master of Shadows' |
  Lee Sin's powerful ganks combined with Taliyah's deadly roams make the mid-game very scary for their opponents, but they jive especially well in teamfights. When Lee uses |
  The Stoneweaver works best at the edges of teamfights, but Malphite has a way of bringing the battle straight to his targets. The Shard of Monolith's hard CC and engage are anathema to Taliyah - it's hard to weave stone when a living boulder |
  Taliyah ganks are extra devastating when the Keeper of the Hammer uses her |
  If Taliyah can't catch a champ with her |
Champion Insights: Taliyah[]
By Ryan 'Cactopus' Rigney[2]
When was the last time we released a traditional mage?
If you ask champion designer Daniel 'ZenonTheStoic' Klein, he'll argue that every recent AP champ has had some odd, non-magey twist: 
Aurelion Sol feels untraditional because of his orbiting 
stars, 
Ekko is more of a Diver or Skirmisher, and 
Azir has 
Marksman-like qualities. 
Vel'Koz is totally an artillery mage, but many players took him bot lane to play Support. You've got to go all the way back to 
Lissandra to find a champ that really fits the 'traditional mage' label, and she was released in April, 2013.
We wanted a champ that felt like an old-school League of Legends mage. "Then it hit us", says ZenonTheStoic. "What about an earth mage from Shurima? The idea seemed like fertile ground."
- A girl leaves the desert
The Shuriman Desert isn't the easiest place to grow up. After Shurima fell, the people of the empire were scattered to the winds, eventually forming nomadic tribes. We imagined a young nomadic girl who was born with a strange and rare power. Magic is a rare thing in Valoran, so no one in the tribe could teach the girl how to control or manage her abilities.
Taliyah's gift is her ability to manipulate rock, but she was raised by nomads - people unlikely to have much knowledge about making things out of stones. Rock structures are too heavy, too permanent. Taliyah grew up surrounded by shepherds, textile artists, and weavers, so in order to understand the power within her, she began to think of it as being like weaving cloth. Others see rock as a hard, immutable material, but to Taliyah, the earth teems with strands of sediment just waiting to be looped and sewn together into a new tapestry. The problem is, stoneweaving tends to make more of a mess than weaving garments. If Taliyah isn't careful with her powers, she could accidentally hurt the people around her.
"Taliyah's need to understand and gain more control over her chaotic power is a major part of her story", says narrative writer Ariel 'Thermal Kitten' Lawrence. To achieve that control, Taliyah would ultimately have to leave her tribe, embarking on a journey to find a teacher that could help her harness her potential.
In some early concepts, we considered making Taliyah a 'spite' mage, a cruel sorceress who slings curses and hexes (and otherwise bad vibes) at opponents. Curses on you, your children, your couch, etc. Some Rioters are pretty amused by the idea of a permanently-salty champion, but we'll have to revisit it at a later date.
- Weaving a beat
One design goal for Taliyah was to capture the chaotic potential of her powers on the Rift, as if her powers are barely-contained. We achieved that by making her ult - her most powerful ability - feel crazy strong. "In fact, we specifically tuned it to feel almost too fast", says ZenonTheStoic. "It's like she's not totally in control."
Because Taliyah strives for self-control, using her basic abilities shouldn't feel like you're wildly ripping apart the earth or smashing big boulders together. Taliyah wants her stoneweaving to feel elegant, structured, even rhythmic.
When she hurls her Threaded Volley at you, the rocks fly in a measured thump, thump, thumpthumpthump pattern. Her other spells are similarly composed of lots of smaller rhythmic effects. When someone gets thrown through a field of Taliyah's Unraveled Earth, it doesn't blow up all at once. They pop one-by-one in the order they were touched, like a deadly piano glissando.
The weaving metaphor also manifests in the way Taliyah uses her ultimate ability to construct a map-spanning wall. There are many ways to build a wall - she might have done it with piles of layered stone - but instead, she laces threads of rock together in a line that looks a lot like stitching in a piece of cloth. She's reshaping the Rift, not destroying it.
In early playtests of Taliyah, we toyed with the idea of giving her some big, destructive abilities. One was an alternate ultimate that allowed her destroy any chunk of map terrain on the Rift. She could knock out entire base walls, chunks of the jungle, even the back side of the Baron pit. There were obviously concerns from the art team about how to make this not look stupid in game, but the bigger problem was that this power didn't seem like a Disruptor spell. It was primarily a way for her to open up paths for her allies, which made it feel a lot like a support ability. We killed the ability early in development - it just didn't fit our original vision for a classic, self-sufficient mage.
On a surface-level, Taliyah's insistence on weaving rock elegantly might lead you to think that she's similar to 
Jhin; after all, they're both destruction artists. The difference is in their intentions: Jhin uses the tools at his disposal to create art. For him, art is very much the purpose, the end-goal. Taliyah does what she does because she has to in order to protect her people. Artistry is just the only way she knows how to express it.
- Silly hats and wizard cats
So, she's a traditional earth mage. But how do you make a someone look like they've got rock powers?
There are a few easy tropes designers can use to make characters look magical. "You can put a wizard hat on almost anything and it'll look like a sorcerer", says concept artist Hing 'Hdot' Chui. "Put a wizard hat on a cat and boom, it becomes a wizard cat. You'd look at that cat and think 'he probably knows some spells'." Unfortunately, it just wouldn't make sense to throw a wizard hat onto a nomadic desert girl.
One of the key aspects of a mage is the idea that their power is an innate ability. This could manifest as pulses of arcane energy emanating from their skin or burning electrical currents coursing through their veins. The trouble with these elemental effects is that they tend to be very glowy. Earth isn't glowy at all.
The artists working on Taliyah also had to keep the Stoneweaver's appearance consistent with her kit. Before we were sure what her spell lineup would look like in-game, we explored giving Taliyah a sort of stone 'spool' accessory she would use to gather rocks before unleashing them on enemies. The issue here was that Taliyah would only realistically use such a weapon up for charge-up abilities, and she has none.
In the end, the solution was to actively downplay her power. Many of League's champions are in their prime - they're kings, warriors, or gods. Taliyah is just a sixteen-year-old girl with a power she doesn't yet fully understand. She's rough around the edges, so we gave her messy, wind-swept hair, and the color palette of her costume is drawn from the redstone flats of Shurima. We also dug the idea that she used her powers to craft the rock mantle she wears around her shoulders. This reinforces the idea that, to her, rocks don't weigh anything.
"Taliyah is still powerful, but she's got room to grow", says artist Evan 'Somnicidal' Monteiro. "And, in the end, isn't it more fitting for an earth mage to feel down-to-earth?"
Inside Taliyah Dev with the Designers[]
This week, designer Daniel 'ZenonTheStoic' Klein, writer Ariel 'Thermal Kitten' Lawrence, and character artist Willem 'Tokkelossie' van der Schyf share the behind-the-scenes story on creating the Stoneweaver.
Trivia[]
- Erica Lindbeck voices Taliyah in League of Legends. She also provided vocals for Taliyah's login theme.[3]
- Morgana, Coven Morgana, Zoe in both League of Legends and Legends of Runeterra, and 6 The Golden Sister are also voiced by Erica Lindbeck.
- The Russian localization is voiced and sung by Yulia Churakova,[4] following the same idea.
- Zehra Fazal voices Taliyah in Legends of Runeterra, and also voices Kayle, Aether Wing Kayle and 2 Brightsteel Protector. While Erica Lindbeck could have been commissioned, the decision to recast Taliyah was made to "remain as authentic to her character and heritage as possible".[5]
- Taliyah's design hook including making her a 'traditional' mage, particularly a disruptor.[6][7]
- Taliyah was originally a kind of spunky teen "Rosie the Riveter" with a huge, oversized hammer and chisel.[8]
- Taliyah's designers considered including her identity as a transgender woman during development, but this detail did not make it to her release.[9] It was thought to have been scrapped entirely, but Neeko was released with a quote toward Taliyah, implying that the idea is still alive: ▶️ "Hmm… Neeko not the only one who changes!"
- In Star Guardian Taliyah and Pool Party Taliyah ( Chromas: Rose Quartz), there is a wink that she is implicitly transgender woman.[10]
- In
- Threaded Volley was combined from a "terrain mage" kit and Lucian's The Culling, and the worked ground was initially designed as a placeholder mechanic for playtest.[6]
- Rock Surfing is an import from a "terrain boots" enchantment prototype back in Preseason 2015.
- Her basic attacks used to be trails of rocks ripped up from the ground.[6]
- They were changed to the current ones due to raising visual clarity concerns when weighed against her abilities.[11]
- Seismic Shove was the most production-intensive of her abilities (animation-wise).[12]
Chromas:
Media[]
| Taliyah's Theme |
- Related Music
- Related Videos
- Main article: Summoner icon
- Main article: Emotes
References[]
- ↑ Champion Reveal: Taliyah, the Stoneweaver
- ↑ Champion Insights: Taliyah
- ↑ Taliyah's LoL Voice Actress
- ↑ Taliyah Russian Theme
- ↑ Taliyah's LoR voice actress
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Inside Taliyah Dev
- ↑ Taliyah Q&A
- ↑ Taliyah's original story pitch
- ↑ Taliyah's gender development
- ↑ Star Guardian Taliyah and the creator's intent - Reddit
- ↑ Taliyah Q&A
- ↑ Taliyah Q&A