"Rek'Sai: Scourge of the Desert" bodes well for League of Legends lore

So lately the popular opinion of League's lore is that it is either low quality or non-existent, both because of what fans have dubbed "The Great Ret-con", when Riot's lore department removed the Institute of War from the official narrative.  The decision met with severe backlash (case in point: you'll have to click "show" to see that actual quote since the comment is below the forum's rating threshold).


With the story piece released yesterday, I think that the lore department's stated goals of expanding the world are actually beginning to show some results for the narrative as a whole.  It's ironic that they would be brought about with the introduction of League's first "true beast", who would be expected to have a fairly small story element (eat caravans, terrorize cities, burrow, repeat).

The city of Bel'zhun.

A map engraved on a stone tablet.

The first few pages set up a classic story from both fiction and history - a young man sent to make his fortune on the "uncivilized" edges of the empire so that he may raise his standing in his extremely status conscious and stratified society.  This was fairly standard in colonial-era Europe - essentially any son who wasn't the first would have to look elsewhere for his money, since he couldn't hope to get much of an inheritance.  The situation of taking work abroad from a wealthy uncle, the superior attitude towards the natives, even the type of language, all fit with this time period.  If you replace Shurima and the Bel'Zhun with Egypt and Cairo respectively, the first two pages could be the letters of a young man from Victorian England instead of Noxus.  It's Runeterra, but it could be our Terra, and that's what makes for good world-building.  Similarities give context, and  anyone who has tried to create a fantasy world knows that one of the best ways to tell a reader about it is by drawing clear parallels to our own.

A dead Xer'Sai.

 That's when you make the reader they should be thankful that, despite some similarities, it isn't our world.

"Scourge" also debuted Rek'Sai's much speculated about subjects, the Xer'Sai.  As the only actual "void species" that we know of, I was especially curious about these carapaced critters and what they looked like.  Riot has gone out of their way to make it clear that Rek'Sai is exponentially more badass than the standard Xer'Sai, so it stands to reason that they wouldn't simply be a scaled down version of her.  With the men's feet in the picture giving a size comparison, Rek'Sai is definitely in a league of her own (see what I did there?).  Rioter Jareden had also added that being smaller didn't mean harmless.  While these guys won't be swallowing camels whole, according to the entries it was enough to do in a herd of goats (who can be mean bastards in their own right, I'm here to tell you).

Presumably a burial cairn.

The next few pages surprised me.  The narrator started becoming less of an ethnocentric jerk, in his travels seeming to have caught a mild case of character development.  The desert, with how harsh life is out here and its stark contrast to everything he knows, is changing him.  This is brought to a head when he actually sees someone die in a Xer'Sai attack.

When we're confronted with death for the first time (I'm assuming that was the case here), it forces us to re-evaluate what is important to us.  There's a definite change in our narrator, instead of looking down on the locals for not being rich, Noxian or both, he's grown to respect them for surviving out here.  He seems less interested now in getting rich off his uncle than he is in simply being with Merina.  He questions the point of arena fighting, which if pre-retcon lore still holds, is a big deal among the Noxian upper-class (see Xin Zhao and Alistair's lores).

Being in close quarters with his Shuriman guides, he naturally starts feeling closer to his traveling companions than the ideals of Noxus.  To continue the colonialism allegory, he's "going native" - a derogatory term for becoming too familiar with the local people and supposedly losing touch with one's home country, usually referring to a European who not only took up residence in a foreign country but dared treat the natives as equals. *gasp*

A burrow of Rek'Sai.

The story's climax comes when the expedition finds a burrow of Rek'Sai (right).  The Queen of the Xer'Sai herself doesn't exactly make an appearance, but she leaves quite an impression on Aelon (the narrator).  I can see what the writers were going for here - instead of simply describing the trappers getting devoured, they described Aelon's reaction to seeing it.  The idea being that the reader's imagination would fill in something proportionately horrifying to match the trauma from witnessing such a thing.  All aboard the Hype Train.

So affected by what he's seen and experienced in Shurima, Aelon is disillusioned with Noxus, or at least life in the capital, and cannot return there.  So he rides off into the sunset.  Preferably far, far away from any deserts.

So what makes this relevant to us as fans of League's lore?  It's doubtful that Aelon is going to be a new champion, so why should we care about the growth of a character we may never hear about again?  Aside from it being a nice read, what makes the supposedly superfluous parts of this piece important is that the writers didn't need to do it.  They could have just had a standard Deckard Cain type character traveling Shurima and hearing tales of the dreaded Rek'Sai.  Or, as Cupcake Trap said on the League forums, gone the standard route of killing the narrator at the end, leaving a torn page and blood stains.  Instead, they have an actual character who undergoes a change of perspective.

Hell, he even lives.  We just might be hearing from Aelon again.

The point is - this should serve to dispute those who continue to say that Riot doesn't care about lore, or that they fired their narrative team, or any of the other various assertions floating around the Story and Art Boards.

Lastly, yes, this technically doesn't preclude the existence of summoners or the Institute of War, but in that narrative, the backstory for anything like Rek'Sai would always be relegated to being captured and battling in the League like giant, vicious Pokemon.  That would, and in fact did, get old, leading to fewer true monster champs like Cho'Gath, Kog'Maw, Nocturne, etc.

And nobody wants that.