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Warwick OriginalCentered
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Zaun Crest icon

Biography

The Uncaged Wrath of Zaun

By David Slagle

Biography[]

Though many think of Warwick Warwick as no more than a beast, buried beneath the fury lies the mind of a man - a gangster who put down his blade and took up a new name to live a better life. But no matter how hard he tried to move on, he could never escape the sins of his past.

Memories of that time come to Warwick in flashes before they're inevitably lost, replaced by searing echoes of the days he spent strapped to a table in Singed's Singed's lab, the mad chemist's face looming above him.

His world a haze of pain, Warwick could not recall how he fell into Singed's grasp... and even struggled to remember a time before the suffering began. The scientist patiently carved into him, installing pumps and hoses to inject chemicals into his veins, seeking what an alchemist always seeks: transmutation.

Singed would reveal his subject's true nature - the deadly beast hidden within a 'good man'.

The chemicals pumped into Warwick's veins boosted his healing, allowing Singed to gradually and painfully reshape the man. When his hand was severed in the course of the experiment, Singed was able to reattach it, augmenting it with powerful, pneumatic claws claws, and bringing Warwick ever closer to his true potential.

A chemical chamber chamber was installed on Warwick's back and integrated with his nervous system. Whenever he felt rage, or hate, or fear, it would drive liquid fury deeper into his veins, fully awakening the beast within.

He was forced to endure it all, every cut of the mad chemist's scalpel. Pain, Singed assured his subject, was necessary; it would prove to be the 'great catalyst' of his transformation. Though the chemicals enabled Warwick's body to heal through most of the physical damage, his mind was shattered by the unending agony.

Warwick struggled to recall a single memory from his past... all he could see was blood. But then he heard a little girl screaming. Screaming something he couldn't understand. It sounded like a name.

He'd already forgotten his. He sensed that was for the best.

Pain soon overwhelmed all other thoughts. Blood was the only thing left.

Though his body and mind were broken after weeks on the slab, Warwick stubbornly resisted the chemicals transmuting him. Toxins leaked from his eyes in place of tears. He coughed up gobs of caustic phlegm that sizzled against his chest, before burning shallow holes in the floor of the lab. Restrained against the cold steel of the table, Warwick writhed in agony for hours on end, until his body finally gave out.

With the untimely death of his subject, Singed disposed of the corpse in a charnel pit deep in Zaun's Sump, before turning his mind to the next experiment.

But death proved to be the true catalyst needed for Warwick's transformation. As he lay cooling atop the pile of corpses, the chemicals could finally complete their work. The chamber on his back began to pump.

His body contorted unnaturally, bones bending and snapping, teeth growing, sinews tearing and then healing with a faint alchemical glow, dead flesh replaced by something new and powerful. By the time his heart started beating once again, the man Warwick had been and the lives he'd lived were gone.

He awoke to hunger. Everything hurt. Only one thing mattered.

He needed blood.

First, it was the blood of a nearby sump-scrapper, rooting through the charnel pile. And then a priestess of the Glorious Evolved Glorious Evolved, seeking a member of her flock. Then a Piltover Crest icon Piltovan apprenta taking a shortcut, and a philter-faced merchant avoiding a gang, and a dram-dealer, and a tallyman, and a chem punk...

He set up a den not far from a place that itched at the back of his now-animal mind. There, he continued the slaughter, not caring who fell to his claws. So long as blood dripped from gnashing teeth, he would feel nothing but a smear of red on his conscience, the hunger in his gut overwhelming any concern for his random victims.

Yet, even as he surrendered to the beast, glimpses of his past began to haunt him. He saw a bearded man reflected in the eyes of a beggar as he tore out his throat. The other man looked somber, somehow familiar; there were scars on his arms. Sometimes, as he fed in dark alleys on stray gangers, the flash of knives would remind him of an old blade covered in blood. Blood passing from the blade to his hands. From his hands, to everything he touched. Sometimes, he remembered the girl again.

And still there was blood.

It had always been there, he realized, his entire life, and nothing he did could wash it off. He'd left so many scars that even if he didn't remember his past, the city would. When he peered into the eyes of Zaun's criminals - the gang bosses, murderers, and thieves - he saw himself. The chamber on his back would fill his body with hate. His claws tore out of his fingers.

He hunted.

No longer content to kill indiscriminately, Warwick now pursues those already covered in the stench of blood. Just as he was the day he was dragged to Singed's door.

He still wonders if he'd truly wanted this. He can't remember details, but he remembers enough. Enough to know Singed had been right all along - the good man had been a lie, before disaster had burned it away, revealing the truth.

He is Warwick. He is a killer.

And there are so many killers to hunt.

Change log[]

The Uncaged Wrath of Zaun
Enemy Missing pingMISSINGEnemy Missing ping Updated to the current version.
Enemy Missing pingMISSINGEnemy Missing ping Updated to remove references to the Institute of War.
Warwick Render old3
"Eventually the beast catches up with all of us."

Warwick was once a man revered for his ability to track down human specimens for the darkest types of scientific research. When his ambitions exceeded his physical limits, he drank a dangerous elixir to transform himself into an unstoppable manhunter. His newfound strength bore a heavy price.

Before his transformation, Warwick found his calling in Zaun as a 'procurer' of human test subjects. Known for his crafty methods and ruthless determination, people regarded him with a cautious mixture of fear and respect. As his reputation grew, so did the demands placed upon him. His clients wanted more rare and dangerous specimens, and they wanted them sooner. To meet their demands, Warwick needed strength that transcended his limited human form.

His longtime friend, Singed Singed, devised a powerful formula. The recipe called for three critical components: silver from the Shadow Isles, the fang of a Balefire dire wolf, and the heart of a celestial being. Warwick tracked down the first two in short order, but the third proved a much greater challenge. He traveled to Ionia to trap Soraka Soraka, a creature believed to be a child of the stars, but she discovered his ploy and drove him away with powerful magic. Unable to tolerate his failure, Warwick returned to Singed disfigured and furious. He demanded the chemist's incomplete potion, but Singed warned him that the results would be unpredictable. Ignoring his friend's warning, Warwick drank the concoction.

The brew transformed him into a creature both man and wolf, infusing him with raw strength and heightened senses senses. Exhilarated, he immediately began testing his newfound power. Each day his instincts became sharper, but his human half slipped further away. He could feel himself losing control: though he always got his prey, he often failed to bring them back alive. Now he seeks the heart of Soraka to stabilize his transformation before his mind gives way to the feral urges of the beast.
Enemy Missing pingMISSINGEnemy Missing ping Third version.
Warwick Render old2
"The rage of the beast now complements his predatory spirit." - Singed Singed, the Mad Chemist, upon witnessing his master's transformation

Warwick Warwick counted himself amongst the most powerful and revered men in his home city-state of Zaun. Over the course of his infamous career as an alchemist, Warwick won many honors for his craft, not the least of which was a lucrative offer for service in the Noxian military during their campaigns against Ionia.

Sequestered in his labs far from the front lines, Warwick and his apprentice Singed toiled relentlessly to manufacture all manner of appalling concoctions for the Noxian army. So potent was his art that even the greatest of Ionia's healers - under the leadership of the Starchild Soraka Soraka - struggled to combat the poisons and chemical weapons generated by his despicable mind.

Warwick's reign of terror grew so horrific that his very name became a curse in the eyes of his Ionian foes, and they began referring to him only as 'the Deathmaker'. But even one under the protection of the Noxian High Command is not wholly beyond the reach of retribution. For as Soraka strode across the myriad of death and destruction left in the wake of one of Warwick's chemical attacks, her heart finally gave way. She called down the wrath of the cosmos on Warwick, wishing that his form should mirror the cruelty in his heart - a curse that would come at the price of her aspiring divinity divinity.

Within his laboratory, a terrible thirst took hold over Warwick. As his apprentice looked on in horror, Warwick threw open the doors to his bastion and sprinted off towards parts unknown, a bloodcurdling howling marking his passage. He had become a werewolf; a wild, murderous beast. Today, the Blood Hunter fights for Noxus within the League of Legends... thankful of the curse that his now-mortal enemy bestowed upon him.
V1.0.0.32 (October 23rd, 2009) Second version.
Warwick Render old2
"Though Warwick has been physically transformed, his nature has not; he is still a predator." Once a man, Warwick was trained by the Alchemists of Zaun and later hired as a mercenary by the Noxian Army for their war against Ionia. An alchemical genius, he became known to the Ionians as the Deathmaker for the terror and destruction his creations sowed. Sequestered in his labs, he felt no responsibility for the death tolls these creations wrought. Eventually Soraka, an Ionian with the power of gods in her blood, had seen enough of the alchemist's predations. Something in her snapped, and she sacrificed her divinity to curse Warwick. She wanted him to feel revulsion at what he was, for him to dip his fingers in the blood he so often shed. Soraka cursed him to be a werewolf, a wild murderous beast.
Alpha Week 6 (March 25th, 2009) Original version.
Warwick Render old
Warwick was once a brutal mercenary, trained as a chemical weapons engineer by the Alchemists of Zaun. He barely escaped with his life after his unit was wiped out while defending an Ionian citadel. Outnumbered a hundred to one, he holed up in an abandoned mine, and set to work concocting a chemical potion that would give him the strength and power to beat the odds. Knowing he didn't have much time, Warwick frantically finished his elixir, but he had no way to test it before using it. Swallowing the unguent in giant gulps, Warwick howled in pain as his body contorted. His arms grew huge and strong. His fingers sprouted massive claws, his head horns, and his skin became dark as coal. And inside a hunger grew, a thirst for blood that had never before existed. Needless to say, it was not he who lost his life that day. Upon return, Warwick's transformation allowed him to excel as a mercenary, and his infamy spread near and far. He is now desir...


References

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