The Darkin

The Darkin were once the Ascended, the god-warriors of ancient Shurima who towered over mortal soldiers and wielded blade and magic with equal ease. Legend calls them thrice-cursed: once by the ancient enemy they faced, again by the fall of their glorious empire, and finally by the betrayal that damned them for eternity. When the rebels of Icathia unleashed the Void, it was the Ascended who led Shurima's defense and, at terrible cost, prevailed. Those who survived that horror were never quite the same again. The empire's collapse finished what the war had begun. Though seemingly immortal, the Ascended had been born human, and with the loss of Azir and the ruin of Shurima they were left adrift across the centuries. Slowly they curdled into something monstrous, turning on the mortal world and on one another in wars of devastating cruelty. To end the carnage, the Aspects of Targon and mortal mages sealed each corrupted god-warrior within their own weapon, trapping the Darkin in blades and bows of their own making. Imprisonment did not break them. A Darkin now seeks to corrupt and dominate whoever takes up its weapon, bending the wielder toward its will and, given time, wearing their body as its own. Each surviving Darkin acts alone, answering to no leader. Aatrox, the World Ender, is the most powerful, having broken free to cobble a body together from the flesh of those who lift his sword. Rhaast struggles for control of the assassin Kayn, and Varus is a composite of two Ionian hunters and the ancient archer trapped alongside them, three wills warring within a single frame. All of them strain toward the same end: to shed their prisons and return to the terrible power they once held.