Placidium of Navori

The Placidium of Navori is a sacred site at the heart of the Ionian mainland, in the region of Navori, and is counted among the most sacred places in all of Ionia. Travelers journey there to study at its renowned schools or to meditate in its wild, magical gardens, and merchants who pass through call it a sanctuary. Its craftspeople are celebrated in their own right; the swordsmith Laka, famous at the Placidium, forges blades that cost a fortune. Before war came to the First Lands, the Placidium was above all a place of learning and art. The young Xan Irelia left her village to study Ionia's traditional silk dances there under some of the land's most respected performers, and it was at the Placidium that rumors of foreign invaders sighted off the coast first began to unsettle the people. The same schools and gardens that made it a center of Ionian culture made it a tempting target for the invading armies of Noxus. When the invasion came, the Placidium became the site of a great and bloody battle, and it was there that the people of Ionia finally took up arms against their Noxian enemies. The Ionian victory rippled across the First Lands. Mayym, the Kinkou's Fist of Shadow, argued that it could mark a tipping point in the war against Noxus, while word of the great stand taken at the Placidium inspired villages across Ionia to send their able-bodied to the fight, among them the students of the sword school where Yasuo trained. The cost of that day was immense. Noxus answered its disastrous defeat at the Placidium by reformulating the invasion into a protracted war of attrition, one that exploited Ionian compassion through conscripted child soldiers such as Shieda Kayn. Among Ionians, some still question whether fighting back was the right decision, fearing the harmonious balance of their homeland may have been lost forever. The Placidium endures, its history entwined with figures as different as Irelia and Swain.