The second tournament of the Divinity arc was held during Weeks 16 and 17, on the weekends of September 10–11 and 17–18.

The Rune of Purity

The First Rune War ended circa 2,600 BLE. It had been waged between the Magelords and the Protectorate, and had enveloped virtually all of Valoran. Only Shurima had maintained its separate sovereignty, using a variant of rune magic that, rather than rupturing the local leylines, reinforced them with cosmic and elemental energy. These reinforced leylines in turn buttressed the Empire’s great defensive walls, such that even Summoners wielding rune magic could not break them.

It had been a long war, and a bloody one. (Or, at least, it had been a long war in which many had died—much more figurative than literal blood was spilled, and the languages of Valoran did not quite manage to develop a set phrase like “much blood was instantly evaporated along with its abruptly annihilated owners.”) Very likely the Magelords and the Protectorate would have fought to the last cinder if they had been left entirely on their own. But the Rune of Freedom’s impact on the divine pantheon, and the damage wrought to the arcanosphere by the ensuing war, had filled Valoran with monsters and demons. Some came from the Void, through tears in the dimensional fabric, while others were the twisted remnants of gods and spirits from the Age of Divinity. The Magelords and the Protectorate came to a pragmatic truce when each side realized that neither of them would get to savor a victory over the other for long before these monsters devoured them. Their greatest strength was their rune magic, but its very use made the fiends against which it was directed stronger and more numerous. They needed something new.

Together, the best minds of the two great alliances devised a remarkable new rune attuned with mortal life, and thereby antithetical to the sorts of supernatural and extradimensional monsters that threatened humanity. This Rune of Purity was invoked atop a central nexus, and shifted Valoran’s arcanosphere so as to become toxic to these monsters. It should surprise no one that there were side effects.

The Rune of Purity saved mortals from the demons that the Rune of Freedom had created. The first and most noticeable casualty was, in fact, Shurima. The Magi had reinforced their defenses using a rigid constellation of elemental forces, with solar magic as the dominant “keystone” element. The Rune of Purity warped the foundations of Valoran’s natural balance underneath Shurima, and the enchantments lost cohesion. The stabilizing lattice of complementary elements broke away around the solar keystone enchantments, and solar magic amplified out of control until the others were almost completely burned away. The defensive structures held, but Shurima was scorched into a desert.

A subtler effect took hold on the rest of humanity. The drive toward purity, toward focus on a single ideology or a single way of life, permeated the psychic landscape. The First Rune War had been a matter of pragmatism and simple ambition. Terrible though these forces could be, they were at least self-limiting to some extent. It’s never good power politics to annihilate yourself, after all. The kind of person who would cast the spell to destroy their rival and the world with it was not a pragmatist, but an extremist: someone who could honestly think, better neither of us, than Them.

The Second Rune War began 2,400 years before the founding of the League. It ended, somewhat perversely, when within the scorched Shuriman desert an ambitious Emperor named Azir, perhaps driven to megalomania by the imperious solar magic under which he and his ancestors had been raised, attempted an Ascension that shattered the Empire’s impregnable defenses from within. The Magelords and the Protectorate called a truce, finding it easier (and safer) to pillage the helpless Shurimans than to brawl with one another.

There was a further strange consequence of the Rune of Purity. Extremism and ideology fed into a sort of patriotism, leading to sharper divisions among nation-states within the Magelords and the Protectorate. But it also led to something like…faith. Banished gods, along with spirits who had managed to survive hidden away in one corner or another, began to sense this stream of magical energy, bound up with the ideologies and beliefs of mortals. To be a Demacian or a Noxian began to seem almost an act of worship. These supernatural beings could not readily manifest on the corporeal plane, but they could watch, and listen. And every so often, they could be heard.

The Tournament

The appearance of the Guardian’s Sea nexus made it possible to access the residual imprint of the Rune of Purity. A tense agreement between Demacia and Noxus allowed the League to establish a tournament to determine which of the four parties-disputant to the Divinity conflict would be empowered to oversee the investigation.

Outcome

Bilgewater took first place in the tournament, with its ally the Freljord following in second place. While the imprint remained accessible, their priests and clerics gleaned much from its ancient echoes.

Bilgewater confirmed the theory that the abyssal monsters that beset the Marai and Atlanteans were gods and spirits warped by the Rune Wars. They were able to use this knowledge to communicate with some of these “monsters”, and restore them to some semblance of sanity.

The Freljord had an unexpected success: Trundle’s motley assortment of clerics and shamans, after getting in a few brawls that had to be swiftly broken up before they triggered an arcane explosion, were able to identify a litany of half-forgotten troll gods and patron spirits. The troll tribes began to rally around these revelations, and acquired a greater sense of that “patriotic” zeal that typified the larger nation-states.

The World Systems impact of the second tournament will be the same as for the first.

Bilgewater will receive an Epilogue buff comparable to an omega-complete (Step III) Quest.

The Freljord will receive an Epilogue buff comparable to an alpha-complete (Step II) Quest.

Original Post

It’s time for the final tournament folks. We’re going to send the arc off right: with a grand tournament for the ages. As per usual we are not finalized in the stakes and lore, but I want to give plenty of advance notice so everyone has time to prepare.

Preliminaries

The preliminaries are the first week of the tournament, featuring lower tier player slots. Generally, this means Silver and Bronze ranked players; however, depending on sign ups I might allow no more than one Gold ranked slot in each game, for practicality’s sake. So, gold players, as well as the usual Silver and Bronze players, should try to be available to play during the preliminaries.

During the preliminaries, allied factions are allowed to freely use each other’s summoners, so long as they are not playing against each other. They are scheduled for the September 10-11 weekend and are organized like Featured Matches with sign ups and a schedule created by staff.

Every faction will play against every other champion one time in a round robin style match up. The faction that comes out in first place of the preliminaries wins a spot in the finals. The second place faction is awarded with automatically winning any ties they are in as part of the semi-finals. Any ties in the preliminaries at the end of the weekend will be decided by their records against each other in the preliminaries; however, a tie involving more than just 2 factions could have no clear winner in their records against each other (for example, factions a, b, and c are tied where a won against b, b won against c, and c won against a). In such a case, the tie will be decided by BoP.

Being scheduled on September 10-11, there is a good amount of time to prepare for the preliminaries beforehand. Sign ups for them will be posted on Monday, September 4. Factions should start trying to set aside time to play that weekend, practice together before then, and recruit players to participate in the tournament. Even if you can’t play, you can have a big impact on how your faction performs by helping them prepare.

Results

Alright, the preliminaries played out as follows

• Bandle City: 0-3
• Bilgewater: 2-1
• the Freljord: 2-1
• Icathia: 2-1

This left Bilgewater, the Freljord, and Icathia in a 3 way tie, to be settled by BoP since there is no way to find a clear winner from just the preliminaries’ matches. After making sure to have an accurate and updated BoP, Bilgewater came in first, Icathia second, and the Freljord in third.

So, this means as the winner Bilgewater will get a bye and go straight into the finals. Congratulations Bilgewater! Icathia, who came in second place, will win any ties it is involved in as part of the semifinals.

Semifinals

The semi-finals will take place on September 17. The 3 factions that did not win the preliminaries will face off here for the last remaining spot in the finals. Every faction will play against every other faction in the semi-finals on time. The faction that wins the semi-finals gets to advance to the finals. Since there will only be 3 factions competing in the semi-finals, the only possible form of a tie would be a 3-way tie between all the factions involved. In such an event, the faction that got 2nd place in the preliminaries is declared the winner of the semi-finals.

The Semi-Finals use player organized, pre-made teams featuring High tier and Gold rank slots. More precisely the rank match ups for each team is 2 High tier slots, and 3 gold tier slots, or a HHGGG line up. These teams need to be made up from summoners declared for their respective faction; allied factions can not use each other’s summoners.

Match reps from each faction will be asked to organize the team for their faction. If they do not organize a team by September 12, team creation will open up to the other members of the faction (match reps will still, of course, be eligible to organize a team at that point). If multiple teams are submitted for the faction, Match rep teams take priority (going with the ranking of match reps when comparing multiple teams submitted by different match reps). If non of the teams are submitted by match reps, it comes down to a faction vote to decide teams (so long as there is at least 24 hours before the deadline to submit, if not the first compliant team submitted is chosen). If a compliant team is not submitted for a faction by the day before the semi-finals, Friday, September 16, 12:00 pm PDT, the faction is ineligible to participate and disqualified from the tournament. The faction that won the preliminaries and skips the semi-finals submits their team on the same schedule as the other factions and follows the same rules.

The Teams

For Bilgewater: PONCHO’s Plebs

• Captain: PONCHOGRANDE            Co-Captain: Sodaman64
• High Tiers: HeavyWeapons Guy, PONCHOGRANDE
• Gold Tiers: Bludknight1, Rowena Ravenclaw, Sexy Soraka

For the Freljord: Ice Ice Yorlde

• Captain: Endgame1125                Co-Captain: RustSka
• High Tiers: SonOfTill, RustSka
• Gold Tiers: Animorpherv1, LethalOrange, CrazedPorcupine

For Bandle City: Wardles

• Captain:Worst Orianna NA              Co-Captain: Silencer Mage
• High Tiers: JDmage, Silencer Mage
• Gold Tiers: Worst Orianna NA, Soneji, TheInGameVirus

For Icathia: Disqualified – Failure to submite

Due to Icathia’s failure to submit a team and subsequent disqualification, the semifinals shall be a best of 3 matchup between the Ice Ice Yordle and Wardles. The winner will face PONCHO’s Plebs in the finals. Best of luck to you all.

Finals

The finals will take place on Sunday, September 18 (the last day of the arc), between the factions that won the preliminaries and the semi-finals. It is set up with the same teams as the semi-finals, and both factions need to have their teams submitted as the same deadline as the semi-finals.

The format is a faction vs faction, first to win 3 games matchup. This leaves the possibility of up to 5 games for the finals. As a result the finals will begin an hour earlier than normal, 11:30 am PDT, to compensate for the possibility of an extra long day. The winner, once again this is the first faction to win 3 games in the finals, is declared the victor of the tournament and takes first place and the main prize. The loser of the finals takes 2nd place in the tournament.