November 23 Megapoll (Bilgewater)

This is Bilgewater’s list of options for the November 23 “mega-poll”. To discuss these options and cast your votes, visit this thread on Bilgewater’s private forum. (If you aren’t registered for the forum, do so, and post in the “Join Your Faction’s Subforum” thread to get access to Bilgewater’s subforum.)

Leadership

Bilgewater has an opportunity to select a new leader.

Under Nami’s leadership so far, Bilgewater has broadened its horizons and gained greater presence on the world stage. They have used Nyroth’s lost magic to forge a new moonstone and rebuild the Lunari Order, drawing Diana to their cause. They have liberated the islands of Avalon and Emain Ablach, and have earned a genuinely heroic reputation among the Nyrothians. She vows to lead Bilgewater to victory in Nyroth and prove that it is more than a “den of thieves”. (Primary asset: Research. Secondary asset: Politics.)

The sharpest contrast would be Gangplank, who finds Nami’s idealism absurd and sees a prime opportunity to double-cross Nyroth and loot the place. He is not the most charismatic leader, but he is a naval mastermind and Bilgewater’s strongest military leader. If the Nyroth situation turns violent, having him at the wheel could significantly improve Bilgewater’s odds of victory. (Primary asset: Military. Secondary asset: Espionage.)

Miss Fortune is a balanced option. She’s no slouch in a fight, and knows how to work a situation to her advantage. She’s more experienced than Nami, and significantly more principled than Gangplank. She’s less interested in Nami’s grand schemes than she is in making some practical steps toward establishing a lucrative trade route, but she does have some connections with the other nations of Valoran, and has been working with Nami to make her dream of a greater Bilgewater a reality. (Primary asset: Commerce. Secondary asset: Espionage.)

Recruitment

Bilgewater has become Valoran’s emissary pro tempore to Nyroth. Its appointment, and the show of strength on the Fields that preceded it, has drawn the attention of several potential allies. It may now select one to join its cause, like Merricurry or Therese Buvelle from Hextech Revolution. To address two common questions: each would have about the same overall power level, and no, none of them are going to betray Bilgewater. They’ve got their own agendas, but part of selecting them as an NPC is that they’ll end up on your side.

• Desmeya, Enchantress of Aeaea. Everyone on Aeaea thinks she’s just awesome. They can’t all be wrong! It’s said she’s the most powerful living enchantress in all of Nyroth. While unfamiliar with Valoran’s hextech, she practices a particular version of techmaturgic science adapted to the thaumic matrix that blankets the strange continent and its islands, making wonders such as the automata possible. (Research/automata focus.)
• Ushi, Prince of the Marai. This adventurous Marai warrior has been leading the fight against the sea-monsters for years. With the moonstone in place, he could be convinced to join Nami on Nyroth. Bilgewater already has a unit of Marai warriors on the island; he would take command of this unit and augment it with his personal retinue of veteran soldiers. (Military focus.)
• Awaoi-01, First Sentinel of Padonia. While most of the automata from Avalon readily agreed to join Bilgewater on the Nyrothian mainland, Awaoi-01 tersely declined, indicating that he had unfinished business. The Padonian automata are not nearly so chatty as their Aeaean kin, but the others did say that Awaoi-01 was one of the first automata created to defend Avalon, and he has been its protector since several centuries before the cataclysm. He convinced the others to mount a desperate defense of the holdout human settlements when the factory automata went berserk, and without him it’s likely that no human population would still exist on Avalon. (Military focus.)
• Attur von Markbiz, the Shopkeep-Adventurer. You most likely know Attur from the shop on Summoner’s Rift. He is of Zaunite extraction, and spent many years plying Valoran’s trade networks (and braving some of its most dangerous sites) in the pursuit of gold. He does a brisk trade in arcane artifacts and enchanted weaponry, having earned the lucrative contract for outfitting the Institute’s own guards, and is just as comfortable with the latest techmaturgic gadgets as he is with ancient weapons that pre-date most of the League’s current member-states. (Commerce focus.)

Island Selection

Bilgewater won the tournament, and gets dibs on its choice of island.

The Island of Kibu

Unexplored.

It’s readily apparent to anyone with some degree of magical sensitivity that Kibu is overcharged with wild magic, perhaps representing a sort of break in the network of nexuses and leylines that generates the veil and protects Nyroth from the ether-storms. It sounds like Kibu was fairly chaotic and unstable even before the cataclysm. Summoners report sensing extradimensional energies escaping from Kibu, but they do not detect the telltale signs of the Void.

The Island of Krocylea

Unexplored.

The ancient Nyrothian’s scribbling was the source of much confusion, until the Valoranians consulted maps in the possession of the modern-day Nyrothians. It is sometimes the case that a piece of land will become flooded or erode away over time. Krocylea seems to have undergone the opposite change: the part scribbled out by the Nyrothian does not appear on older maps. It seems as though the cataclysm altered Krocyclea into a mirror-image of Argyre. Given that the magical energies of the nexuses are believed to have created Nyroth in the first place, this is perhaps not surprising, but why it should mirror Krocyclea in particular is unclear. Ancient records describe Krocylea as an independent kingdom with a fairly isolationist policy.

The Island of Scheria

Unexplored.

Scheria is associated often with Yanti, and likewise seems to have been home to uncommon religious fervor. It is hard to glean much from the few scraps of records that remain, but the dominant religion seems to have been particular focused on balance and duality, such as between the sun and the moon. Many geometric and mathematical texts had origins in Scheria.

Champion Selection

As a prize from the tournament, Bilgewater can upgrade one of the following Tertiary Champions to Secondary status.

• Sivir is a mercenary par excellence. Katarina has her number from when she worked for Noxus.
• Talon is a Noxian assassin affiliated with House DuCouteau. Basically, it’s canon that Katarina can order him to get her coffee anytime she wants.
• Twitch was once rescued from a watery demise by a passing ship flying the flag of Bilgewater, which saved him from his sinking ship. (Hey, if Riot gets to make lore based on bad puns and the like, then so do we.)
• Maokai believes that the strangely resilient plant life that Bilgewater discovered on Emain Ablach could hold the key to restoring part of the Shadow Isles.

Bilgewater has selected Maokai, who has been moved to the Secondary category.

New Champion Pickup System

As discussed earlier, I’d like to propose that we remove Champion addition from the Politics system and implement a “flat” system that doesn’t rely so much on random chance. The system would work as follows:

• This week: each faction gets a Secondary or Core Champion. They can instead select a Tertiary, but that will also consume next week’s pickup opportunity.
• Next week: each faction gets a Secondary or Core Champion.
• The week after that: each faction may select any Champion on its list. (Core, Secondary, or Tertiary.)

In other words, we’d replace the die rolls with guaranteed Champion pickups. Since this would be a significant change, we wouldn’t implement it mid-arc unless all four factions agree. So, what do you think?

Special Tournament

This weekend, the usual Featured Matches will be replaced with a special tournament that will tie up some loose ends from Hextech Revolution. Each of the Nyroth factions will get a vote as to which side it will support in this tournament.

With the tournament done, we’re fresh out of Champions, so we decided to try something a bit different for this weekend, November 29–30. The previous arc, Hextech Revolution, began as an arc about research and scientific innovation, catalyzed by the discovery of a Void-touched hextech energy source, the “pyrikhos” or “dark sand”, in Shurima. The situation spiraled out of control in the final weeks of the dispute, ending with an all-out battle between Demacia, Piltover, and Bandle City on one side and Noxus and Zaun on the other.

There is some unfinished business from Hextech Revolution, and we’d like to tie that up in true Factions style, on the Fields of Justice. There are a few objectives here:

• Take a quick break before we launch into the Nyroth finale
• Add some breadth to the narrative universe, and allow Nyroth’s factions to take part in a dispute back in Valoran
• Preview some other factions in anticipation of the vote for next arc’s playable factions
• Resolve a lingering story point in an interactive war
• Allow the Nyroth factions to further define themselves

And, of course, it’ll also just be a lot of fun.

Stakes: Noxus versus Demacia

With the help of Zaun’s mechanized HexKorps, the Noxian legions under Swain’s command broke the might of the Demacian military. Many of Demacia’s finest leaders were messily decapitated on the sands of Shurima, with the rest taken captive. The League had ordered that they be treated as prisoners of war until the Council has issued a ruling on Demacia’s attack on Zaun’s pyrikhos mines, but the Council is in deadlock despite the forceful arguments of both sides.

Noxus declares that these prisoners are war criminals who violated an active League peace edict to launch a sneak attack, in which many Zaunites (and Noxians) were killed. They reject as false Demacia’s claim that they had no choice. With nothing more substantial than an ocean spirit’s crazed ramblings to go on, Demacia had no right to take such drastic action. Jarvan III could have sought a cooperative solution with Zaun, or gone to the League. Instead, they unquestioningly accepted Ceruleana’s word not only that the Void energy in Zaun’s mines would open a Void rift and trigger an apocalypse, but that it would happen so quickly that there was no time for anything other than a brutal sneak attack. In response to the argument that Demacia has already been quite harshly punished, they add that Demacia’s military elite is also responsible for the destruction of the Noxian fleet in Shon-Xan, during which many Noxian civilians were killed. As with the attack on the mines, Demacia made no serious effort to call for a surrender beforehand—arrogantly certain of the righteousness of its actions, it launched straight into a murderous assault on their enemies and anyone caught in the crossfire. The Noxian representative pointedly added that these prisoners, unlike the men, women, and children on those ships, will receive proper notice from the High Command before they are put to death.

Demacia first counters that Noxus left it with no real choice when it filled its ships with both refugees and soldiers, then armed those ships with devastating weaponry that would have blasted the Ionian coastal cities to cinders. The Demacian representative objects that it is insulting to the dignity of the Council for Noxus to feign concern over civilian casualties, given the atrocities it committed in the first and second invasions of Ionia. As for the Battle of Shurima, an attempt at peaceful resolution was made, but Zaun opened fire on the messenger (Quinn) sent to deliver the ultimatum, and although she did in fact (at great personal risk) get it into Zaunite hands, Jinx “forgot” to deliver it. Once Zaun was tipped off, reinforcements were surely en route, and Demacia could not afford any further delay. As for a diplomatic solution, there simply was no time: Zaun’s greedy corporate bureaucracy would stall while it scurried about hiding its profits and crafting a cover-story to avoid blame, and Runeterra would be destroyed while they argued in a committee or a law court.

After months of circuitous legal argumentation and bureaucratic deadlock, the League has submitted the matter for adjudication upon the Fields.

If Demacia wins, the prisoners are to be released to their custody. This will bolster the strength of the Demacian military and significantly improve morale—with its king still imprisoned at the Institute, and its nation publicly shamed by League sanctions, Demacian spirits have been brought quite low. Frustration with the League is rising, as Demacians feel they are being punished for saving the world from annihilation, and suffering victor’s justice.

If Noxus wins, the prisoners will be interrogated by Zaunite PsiKorps operatives. They will then be tried by the High Command and sentenced appropriately. Most will be imprisoned for life, some will be publicly executed, and for a select few the High Command will split the difference by condemning them to the arena for howsoever long they may survive—more of a chance than the children on those transports got.

Stakes: Piltover versus Zaun

Zaun was victorious in the Shuriman dispute, and has gained control of most of the pyrikhos in Shurima. League surveyors have recently discovered new seams of dark sand, triggering rival claims by Piltover and Zaun. Whichever side wins will gain control of a valuable source of energy for the many remarkable inventions created during the Hextech Revolution.

How it will work

These factions will hit the Fields with their full rosters: perhaps 15+ Champions on each side.

The Nyroth factions will not directly participate, but will be allowed to signal their support for either side by vote. Their support will translate into bonuses for their favored factions, such as giving that faction a real ban. (To avoid an awkward ADCless situation, we’ll likely let the factions “protect” a couple Champions each.) If your favored faction wins, there will be some kind of kickback from the victorious faction.

Signups will be handled in Featured Match style, with teams made up of Summoners randomly selected from those who sign up. Summoners will be free to fight for any faction they choose to fight for—your oath only binds you with regard to Nyroth, not these other disputes. Regardless of whom your faction ends up supporting, you’re free to fight for whichever side you select.