World Runes

The World Runes are fragments of the primordial power used to shape Runeterra from nothingness, the raw magic from which the world was made and the source of all its magic. A single Rune can shatter continents, and gathered together they could unmake reality entirely. This power raised wonders of life from bare stone, carved mountains, drained oceans, and burned skies, and it has never faded, only grown stronger. Knowledge of the Runes was once guarded by an ancient order dedicated to gathering Runeterra's most dangerous artifacts, among them the sorcerer Tyrus of Helia. As word spread, the peoples of Valoran came to see the Runes as weapons to turn against their rivals. The first cataclysmic blow fell in the Noxii territories after a failed parley at the village of Khom, opening the conflict remembered as the Rune Wars. Whole armies and the land beneath them were erased, and open warfare spread until the greatest civilizations had all but destroyed one another. Even Tyrus proved unequal to the temptation. He secretly acquired two Runes and resolved to use them himself, certain that lesser mortals could not be trusted with such power. His apprentice Ryze was forced to strike him down, inheriting a lonely burden: so long as any Rune remained unsecured, Runeterra was doomed. Ever since, Ryze has scoured the world for the last of them, binding them in secret vaults far from greedy eyes, his own life abnormally prolonged by the magic he carries. The Runes destroy nearly all who claim them. Kegan Rodhe, a Freljordian whom Ryze had taken as a student, seized a tracked-down fragment against his master's warnings and was burned away, his soul consumed and reborn as the living fire Brand. Ryze cannot rest, for rumors of the World Runes have begun to surface again, and the peoples of Runeterra seem to have forgotten the price of wielding them.