Basilich

Basilich is a coastal city to the east of the Great Barrier mountains, one of many territories absorbed into Noxus through military expansion. Once an independent city-state and working port, it was seized by the warhosts of the expanding empire and, in the years that followed, largely neglected by its conquerors. Its citizens have since integrated into Noxian society, though some still harbor resentment, and the city now serves as a regional hub for Noxian administration and military operations. The conquest was prepared by diplomacy as much as force. Before moving on Basilich, the empire sent the matriarch of House Tewain to the minotaur clans of the Great Barrier mountains, pledging that Noxus would not take the coastal city without their support and calling for parley on neutral ground. The parley was a trap: the larger clans had already sworn themselves to Noxus, and when the warrior Alistar arrived to reject the alliance, the truce was broken. Alistar crushed Lady Tewain's skull with his bare hands, but he and his surviving warriors were bound in chains and sent to the distant Noxian capital, accused of inciting rebellion. Basilich itself soon fell. The city's most famous sons rose from its gutters. The brothers Darius and Draven grew up as orphans on Basilich's streets, where Darius fought gangs of older urchins and even the city guard to protect his little brother, earning more scars by his twelfth summer than some soldiers gather in a lifetime. When Basilich fell, Draven made an ill-considered attempt on the life of the victorious commander Cyrus, who was impressed enough by the brothers' fighting spirit to take them both into his warhost. From that beginning, Darius rose to become the Hand of Noxus and leader of the Trifarian Legion, while Draven found fame as a duelist and celebrity of the Reckoning pits. Basilich has not stayed quiet under the empire. Fighting flared in the city again in later years, drawing Noxian warbands that included Draven himself before he returned to the capital's arena, and travelers in the Noxian countryside still trade tales of the city's drunken krug-whisperers.