Reckoners

The Reckoners are the gladiators of Noxus, warriors who fight one another in vicious arenas across the empire to entertain ravenous crowds. For centuries their bouts served a practical purpose as much as a spectacle, a public means of punishing criminals and settling disputes between the noble houses, staged in pits scattered through Noxian cities and in the great arenas of the capital itself. Combatants were known by grand titles and cheered for skill and showmanship as often as for blood, and the empire's children, among them a young Ambessa Medarda, learned their first lessons in death by watching Reckoners risk their lives for glory. Fame in the pits was rarely freedom. Most Reckoners belonged to sponsors who profited from their victories, and the celebrated fighter Viscero, once a captive named Xin Zhao taken from an Ionian fishing boat, learned that his life meant little beyond the gold he earned. When rebellion flared along the frontier, the regime of Boram Darkwill bought out Reckoners, prisoners, and mercenaries alike to fill its warhosts, and Xin Zhao was shipped west to the fortress of Kalstead to face King Jarvan III of Demacia. War proved nothing like an arena duel. Many Reckoners deserted, but Xin Zhao held his ground, and when the king spared him he forsook Noxus to become a Demacian. By the time Draven took a contract in the Reckoning pits, long wars on many fronts had dulled the crowds' appetite, and the once-glorious spectacle was fading. Draven's fortunes turned only after the general Jericho Swain recruited him into the coup that deposed Darkwill. When condemned nobles were sentenced to die in the arena, Draven leapt from a balcony to cut down a man fleeing execution, and the crowd's roar made him the Glorious Executioner. Seizing on his showmanship, a promoter reinvented the whole institution. Reckoners became entertainers as much as combatants, each armed with a constructed backstory, fighting style, and flamboyant persona. The fights stayed bloody, this was still Noxus, but far fewer ended in death, and the rivalries and trash-talk between the great names became legend, none more celebrated than Draven himself.