Celestial Realm

The Celestial Realm is the vast cosmic dimension beyond the peak of Mount Targon, existing outside of normal space and time. It is the home of the celestial Aspects and other beings of unfathomable power, a firmament of infinite starscapes. Most of its inhabitants are said to perceive their home as a wondrous and vivid tapestry woven from prismatic threads of purest starlight, though for the wandering troubadour Bard, that same firmament is heard rather than seen, a symphony of mystic music that began with the forging of the first stars. Aurelion Sol was already ancient before the rise of Runeterra's mortal races. Born in the first breath of creation, he roamed the pristine celestial realm, filling its emptiness with stars, and found few equals there; the eternal Aspects struck him as dispassionate and incurious. When he discovered Runeterra, a world he had not made, the Aspects implored him closer, and the mortals of Targon presented him with a splendorous crown etched with the patterns of the celestial realm. The crown shackled him, hurled him back into the heavens, and let the Aspects channel his power through the Sun Disc to raise immortal god-warriors. The Rakkor hold that the Aspects are not gods. When the first Rakkor climbed the Great Mountain, they found otherworldly beings waiting at the summit, powers that had descended from the firmament of the celestial realm yet could not cross into Runeterra unaided, and who would bargain dearly for mortal vessels. Their choices remain inscrutable: the Aspect of Twilight passed over heroes and pilgrims to choose Zoe, an ordinary Rakkor girl. The bond can also be severed, as Atreus learned after his Aspect was slain and the power connecting him to the celestial realm was gone, leaving him only a man. Not all celestials remain above. Soraka, alarmed like others of her kind by the chaos of Runeterra's fledgling races, descended and took on a form of flesh and blood to heal the mortals below. Bard traced a growing dissonance in the cosmic song to Runeterra itself and crossed into the material realm in Ionia, where he now works as a caretaker, retrieving objects of wild power that disrupt the natural cosmic order, all while a great conflict approaches that will be fought not in any single realm, but in all.