SUMMONER. YOUR KIND ONCE KNEW WAR. TODAY YOU SHALL KNOW IT AGAIN.
Matches begin at 12:30 Pacific today, 6 December, 24 CLE. They will be streamed at twitch.tv/LeagueFactions.
The full schedule is posted here.
Come watch! We may also have need for last-minute fill-ins in case someone drops their Summoner sphere.
I’ve added an interim update to the Krocylea page. Here’s an extremely condensed version. (Updated after a recount on the Freljord’s vote.)
Long story short: the Shadow Isles summoned Aatrox and attacked the Freljord on Krocylea. Both sides resorted to forbidden Rune Wars magic in an attempt to gain an advantage. Both invocations did severe damage to the island and the local ethereal foundations, but the Freljord’s spell was much more destructive, tearing open a Void rift and flooding the island with extradimensional energy. All four factions joined forces to destroy the Void threat and close the portal.
There was a bone dragon. There was a skeleton army led by Mordekaiser wielding the cursed iron gauntlet of the millennium-tyrant Kaius, whom Elise slew in single combat on Neritum. There was Rune Wars magic. Mordekaiser was struck down by some kind of insane nexus-breaking death-lightning. Aatrox seized the gauntlet from the fallen Murder-King and took command of the undead legions and seriously, is nobody writing this down for the lyrics to a power metal song? There was cosmic horror. There were zombies. There were two mirror kingdoms that had slaughtered one another for a thousand years. It was metal.
The Void monsters didn’t even stand a chance. The Valoranians destroyed them and closed the rift. They didn’t even have to endure a bunch of pop culture references spontaneously manifesting transdimensional symmetries to do it, this time.
The Shadow Isles then turned on the Krocyleans, intent on slaughtering them all in order to raise them again as their undead thralls. Bilgewater’s Champions fell back to their ships, unwilling to face this horrific corpse-army on an open battlefield. The Shadow Isles made no attempt to pursue them.
Ionia, led by Soraka, valiantly formed a battle line with the Krocyleans as the Starchild declared them under her protection. Aatrox, holding Mordekaiser’s Neritian gauntlet high, sneered at this “deformed runt” of a half-celestial and ordered the attack. Bilgewater’s navy opened fire on the Isles as they charged, while Soraka and the Ionians stood together with the Krocyleans. Facing nearly certain death, they declared that they would hold true to Karma’s vow: they would do all in their power to protect the Nyrothians from the scourge of Valoranian avarice that had twice ravaged Ionia.
After the Void rift was closed, the Shadow Isles had instantly turned on the Freljord. Ashe had led her troops in a tactical withdrawal, with most of them escaping alive. (It seemed that the Isles showed the Freljord considerably more animosity than they showed Bilgewater.) However, just as the Isles charged forth into the Ionian formation, the Freljord redeployed its army in a flanking maneuver, joining on Ionia’s side.
…and that’s where we are right now.
Associated Matches
We’re converting Saturday’s Featured Matches into “battle-matches” between Ionia (and the Freljord) and the Shadow Isles. The victor will gain a significant bonus to their fighting strength on Krocylea. Although the Shadow Isles has Ionia considerably outnumbered, if Ionia prevails in these matches, it might just stand a chance. The Krocyleans will live or die here: the warped thaumic matrix of the mainland is lethally toxic to Nyrothians, and there are in any event nowhere near enough ships to ferry even most of them to safety.
Matches begin at 12:30 Pacific (1:30 Mountain, 2:30 Central, 3:30 Eastern). They will be streamed at twitch.tv/LeagueFactions.
Ionia will have access to Ashe for this match, since she’s on the battlefield. Freljordian Summoners will also be allowed to fill in for Ionian Summoners as needed.
Health PSA: Avoid High Sodium
Based on past experience in Shon-Xan and Hextech Revolution, it seems that faction versus faction battles, while exciting and memorable, also sometimes bring out a lot of salt. Please remember that there’s a difference between in-character/in-universe (IC) animosity and out-of-character/out-of-universe (OOC) animosity. The former is fine, and even fun. The latter is highly toxic. Call each other “Ionian scoundrels” or “undead monstrosities” all you like, but recognize that at the end of the day you’re both here to have fun, and you might well end up on the same side next arc.
Rules Issues Thread
I’ve created a thread to ask Naggarok, who as World Systems lead will be handling this battle, any questions you have—and you obviously have some. Again, keep it civil. Understand that he’s going to have to make some calls that will make one side or the other unhappy. Raise issues, but again, don’t make it personal.
—CupcakeTrap
Caitlyn, you monster.
FACTIONS 
Welp, we decided to open fire. Great, that won’t come back to cut our heads off later.
And everybody involves themselves in a conflict they should have stayed the hell away from. There are things in life you don’t interfere with. One of those things is an undead legion lead by an avatar of war buffed by an ancient gauntlet of immense power currently raising more troops as you speak when you only have a token force to stop them. You don’t jump in an antagonize the scary zombie army who can wipe you off the face of the map. You casually sail away, and when asked, say the Isles valiant fought against the void, but they could not defeat its minions before the Krocylean population had been massacred. So much nicer than this next stupid conflict…
People need to learn that being the good guys is all well and nice, but there are situations where need to just back off. You can’t save everything.
Hey CT? Can you check the Freljord voting results and whether that this story should be edited? I don’t think the majority vote was to stand on the sidelines.
Curious. That seems to be the case: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1lvANlSZT2V5WJdRTzVGlUieOlc5lG8QlslS3n4iWWnE/viewanalytics
I’ll email Naggarok and ask. My hunch is that those last two “yes” votes may have come in after Naggarok started rolling. (I think he just didn’t formally close the polls.) That said, the balance seems to have tipped before the results were posted. I’ll ask him if he’d consider letting those votes count.
I’m pretty sure I remember the voting thing saying “almost illegal” magic, as in not yet Rune Wars scale, and if not for the summoner invoking it early I’d call complete BS.
hm yea i tought it wont be rune wars scale
Here is the relevant section:
Poor wording on my part, but as the complete sentence indicates: “a very-nearly-illegal spell that’s about as close to Rune Wars magic as you can get without being thrown out of the League.” The spells were capable of being used “safely”, but there was a high risk of damage. There was in fact some chance (I think it was on a 7+ on the d10 roll) of not being sanctioned at all, if it worked “according to plan”.
For flavor purposes, I had Aatrox give them a book of Rune Wars spells, because it was more dramatic. That was just a matter of flavor. It’s not “being from the Rune Wars” that triggers sanctions; it’s what the spell does, and even more importantly, what actually happens when invoked. Here, the SI spell did some serious damage, while the Freljord’s went completely out of control.
Alright, that’s fair then. I do remember the Freljord rolling a 1 after all (come on guys, wtf. I thought we were better than that.)
where are our undead voidlings? XD
Actually, CCT, since this is technically a THIRD battle, have the SI raised any undead from the fallen in the previous two battles at all? I know we can’t have undead voidlings, but there are a crap ton of dead people around us. Have we not had the time to bolster our armies at all?
this is actually a really true point
Naggarok is the one actually handling the battle; I’d check with him.
i hope everyone realizes that even with the navy support shadow isles is like on steroids right now (including undead voidlings….)
We actually decided that Voidlings couldn’t be raised. They’re like undead units in that they’re auto-lost, and thematically, they just don’t have enough (Runeterran) “life force” to resurrect. They’re too alien. (See, e.g., how you can’t really kill any of the Void Champions: they just dematerialize and come back later.)
That said, yes. This battle is heavily slanted toward SI. Ionia standing alone probably can’t stop them, but if it wins all three matches, it might have a shot.
im sure we could have raised something from the void horde :( you guys just dont want to get si strong
It was long ago agreed that SI couldn’t raise undead-type units, and for system purposes, Voidlings are in that same category.