Order of Shadow

The Order of Shadow was founded by Zed, the Master of Shadows, a renegade ninja who broke from the pacifist Kinkou Order during the Noxian invasion of Ionia. When Zed demanded that the Kinkou strike back at the invaders, Great Master Kusho refused, and Zed turned his back on the order that had raised him. He gathered a following of warriors and embraced forbidden shadow magic, then returned to the temple, cut down the Kinkou who resisted, and claimed their sanctuary as his own. From that temple Zed trains his acolytes in the ways of darkness. They etch their flesh with shadowy tattoos and learn to fight alongside shrouded reflections of themselves, and any soul who threatens Ionia or stands idle in its defense is marked for death, including vastaya who waver. Known to some as the Yanlei and loosely tied to the Navori Brotherhood, the order seizes temples and spares the local people only to keep villages from revolting while it harvests foul shadow magic. Zed's chosen heir is Kayn, a Noxian child soldier he found clutching a farmer's sickle amid the massacre near the Epool River, and took as his personal student. Kayn mastered every weapon and cloaked himself in shadow, until his final test sent him to claim the Darkin scythe Rhaast. Rather than destroy the living weapon, Kayn took it for himself, and the two are now locked in a struggle for his body as he returns to Ionia certain Zed will name him the order's next leader. Zed never reconciled with Shen and the surviving Kinkou, now scattered across the provinces, and the two orders hold only an uneasy accord since the war. The vastaya rebels Xayah and Rakan number the hated Order of Shadow among their foes, and outsiders like Gangplank have earned its wrath. The balance of the First Lands may be broken forever, but for Zed spiritual harmony holds little weight; he will do whatever must be done to see Ionia triumph.