Lines in the Sand Loresplosion

The opening lore for Lines in the Sand, unfortunately delayed due to technical problems because of life being life, has been posted up.

• Prologue
• Opener—Lines in the Sand
  • Tie-in scene: Rank and File
  • Tie-in scene: For the Taking
  • Tie-in scene: Shurima Returns
• Update 1—Sand Hotter Than Blood
• Update 2—Everyone Has Their Price
• Update 3—The Sun Rises for Dar’khos

More to come, but I hope these first installments will entertain you, add some excitement to matches, and provoke more ideas from the community.

As for the updates linked above, I do plan to take some time to tidy these up in the near-ish future, so let me know if you have any suggestions as to style or content. Expect more lore in the near future. For the moment, however, I’m going to turn my attention to World Systems and see what I can do to help get that process moving.

Beyond the Battlefield

I would also like to take this opportunity to showcase A Pirate’s Life For Me, the latest submission to Beyond the Battlefield. Beyond the Battlefield, or BtB, is a catch-all category for community-submitted lore that does not necessarily tie in closely with a particular arc, but either touches upon it tangentially or runs entirely in parallel. Part of the goal of Factions is to serve as a community lore initiative, by creating a cohesive continuity in the context of which all these stories can link together. We do our best to incorporate Beyond the Battlefield material into the general Factions canon.

(Metaphor about grains of sand and teamwork and friends)

That heading is what happens when I try to write by myself.

Many, many thanks to staff and community members for their comments and suggestions on these lore pieces. It may not be clear just how many people have put an immense amount of work into getting us to this point. What I’ve written is based not only on Riot lore—and for all my “THE ANCIENT WEAPON IS A KEEEEEY” snark, I do greatly respect what Riot has created—but also on community ideas and a ton of community work.

I sense you may not believe me. Allow me to show you some behind-the-scenes material, so to speak:

• Opener draft doc—Filled with comments from other staff members who really helped shape this story.
• Agenda thread—There’s quite a lot of creative input from the community here, as well, interspersed with me mumbling about how my new plan to get the opener done is to write six openers and also a prologue and then maybe tie it together with a meta-opener and eventually create an arc whose lore consists entirely of openers.
• NPC pitches—Lots of great character ideas from the community, some of which we’ll use directly, others of which have inspired and will inspire this shared setting of ours.
• Arc bible draft—This is perhaps the most dramatic (and certainly the most voluminous) illustration of all the collaboration that went into getting this arc together.

It truly is a situation where I hesitate to name any names because I know I will be omitting others, which is why I’m just linking the above and letting you see the collaboration directly. Still, a few names in particular I’d like to mention:

• ShadowKnight1224 and TheMushroomWizar, lorestaff members extraordinaires
• LordHippoman (“I had fun once, Talon. It was terrible.”)
• AbiwonKenabi (great input on Azir’s mindset)
• …and okay, I’m proving my own point to myself. I can’t even try to list everyone without feeling tremendous guilt over the inevitable omissions.

These aren’t set in stone, more like, drawn in, you know, crushed stone, or some kind of fine powder, or dust, or, man, someone help me with this metaphor

I can understand the value of keeping stories secret until they’re ready to be deployed in perfect finished condition, but to me, those advantages of presentation will always pale in comparison to the vibrance that emerges from a back-and-forth discussion process that involves the community from which these stories ultimately arise.

I’ve linked discussion threads on these pages. You’re strongly encouraged to share your thoughts and ideas. And I think I speak for all of us when I say that, even if your only input is, “eh, not bad, I liked it”, those little posts do mean a lot.

Welcome to Shurima, Summoner

I hope you enjoy these stories. Comments about what you liked and disliked are, as always, much appreciated, and will be most useful once I wake up and do some revision on these. And, in closing,

If we shadows have offended,
think but this, and all is mended:
That you have but slumbered here,
whilst these visions did appear
And this weak and idle theme,
no more yielding but a dream.

Huh. Sleep. Good idea.

—CupcakeTrap

About CupcakeTrap

Caitlyn, you monster.