Black Rose

The Black Rose is an ancient secret society that predates the Noxian Empire, ruled by the ageless sorceress LeBlanc, known to her victims as the Pale Woman. Legends trace her to a pale sorceress who served in the inner circle of the Iron Revenant, Mordekaiser, before betraying him and severing him from the Immortal Bastion that fueled his empire. Her greatest deception was to make Noxus forget the dark power roiling in its own heart, and she was burned from history around the time of the Rune Wars. The cabal's rank and file are mundane nobles kept in thrall while its true masters scheme against one another for influence. LeBlanc has long posed as an advisor to foreign dignitaries in many nations at once. Her fellow masters are formidable: Vladimir, whose ancient pact with her turned red roses black and whose hemomancy took root in the Noxian military, and initiates such as Elise and Cassiopeia, who carried its reach into the Shadow Isles and Shurima. Together they have guided the throne of Noxus for more than a thousand years. The Black Rose helped Boram Darkwill seize the throne, but when he refused their counsel LeBlanc poisoned his mind and promised him longer life. When the noble Jericho Swain uncovered the cabal, he executed its conspirators, among them his own parents, only to be betrayed and left for dead in Ionia. Swain returned to drag Darkwill from the throne and seize Noxus, establishing the Trifarix council, and he now tolerates the Black Rose in public while knowing it still plots against him. Its hemomancers once forged living weapons fueled by blood, among them Briar, and its agents hunted the mother of Mel Medarda for years. As the darkest magic spreads across Runeterra once more, the Black Rose has grown bold enough to reach Ionia, where LeBlanc dismisses even the greatest heroes as pawns in a game already decided. By her reckoning, the order has yet to truly bloom.