The Void War was an ancient war in which the Ascended of both Shurima and Ixtal fought against Icathia and the Void Rift that came to be there after its fall.

Lore[]

These snippets are from the Noxian Calendar from Realms of Runeterra. However, they may be incorrect or biased due to the Noxian point of view or the old age.

2500 BN — Icathia rebels against Shurima

In a desperate bid to secede from the tyranny of the empire, Icathia unleashed the Void in battle. Their own capital city was instantly destroyed, the land tainted and corrupted beyond all recognition. Even the mighty Ascended Host could do little to combat this horror, and Shurima was forced to abandon Icathia for good. ^[1]

History[]

2500 BN

After an earthquake in Saabera unearthed a Void Rift, Saijax was entrusted to guard the Icathian mages who discovered it during the journey to the Icathian capital. These mages sought to utilize this discovery in Icathia's push for independence, voting to weaponize it against their oppressors. The Council of Icathia, as a message of independence from the Shuriman empire, crowned a new Mage King and reestablished the Kohari order, the Mage King's personal guards, with Saijax as a founding member. Zilean, however, opposed these decisions after returning from his diplomatic mission to gain allies in the other Shuriman vassal states.

Loyal citizens and soldiers of Shurima are either killed or banished from Icathia in their push for independence, as Icathian citizens loot and pillaged Shuriman homes and settlements within the Icathian territories. Varus' home is attacked, but he stays and defends his post regardless. The city Bai-Zhek was eventually liberated by Saijax and other Kohari, as Saijax had slain an Ascended. In celebration of their victory, the fallen Ascended's head is paraded on the streets of Bai-Zhek.

In response to the uprising, a group of Shuriman Ascended, possibly led by Setaka herself, charged against Icathia with massive armies in the hundreds. In an attempt to use the Void against their adversaries, the Council of Icathia accidentally opened a giant Void Rift, causing countless Voidborn to seep into the physical realm and ultimately tainting the land itself. A massive battle between the Voidborn and Ascended ensued, with many Ascended, such as Aatrox, experiencing unspeakable horrors. Some of these Ascended would even die in battle, such as Setaka.

In desperation, Zilean urged as many Icathian citizens as he could to take refuge in his tower and soon after removed the entire structure from time. Every person he saved inside the tower remains in temporal stasis, while Zilean continued existing beyond time, searching for a way to save his homeland.

2500 BN - 2000 BN

Ne'Zuk, a God-Warrior of Ixtal and an elemental mage of colossal power, went before the emperor pledging to create a weapon powerful enough to fight the Void in Icathia and eradicate it at the source of its original eruption. After months of inhuman labor, Ne'Zuk revealed the Monolith, a floating fortress of living stone maintained by the greatest elemental mages and manned by his fellow Ixtali God-Warriors.

Ne'Zuk and his superweapon arrived in Icathia to combat the Void, which dragged into weeks. The Void gouged deep wounds into the living stone of the Monolith, whose surfaces became pocked and seared with mineral-like scars and unnatural malphite, stones stained by the Void and directly translating into "bad rock" by the Ixtali. The fortress was pushed to the very limits of its design, struggling to self-repair and reknit its weakened superstructure. As Ne'Zuk fought to rally his Ascended brethren for one last charge, the Monolith crashed down to earth, cleaving through the bedrock of Icathia and opening the Void beneath to the skies.

Much of the fortress was lost within that gaping maw, vanishing into the silent nothingness below. The rest rained down as great ruins, littering the battlefield. Only Ne'Zuk survived, hauling himself from the wreckage, and fled for his life. Numerous shards of the Monolith are eventually destroyed by the energies of the Void, with only a single isolated shard surviving to the modern times, which would later build itself into an elemental Golem known as Malphite.

As a desperate solution against the Void, the  Nether Blade is created and wielded by Horok, an Ascended warrior who delved deep into underground Void tunnels, attacking the rifts at it's roots with his forbidden weapon, turning the tide of the war. Shabaka and Shabake, Ascended twins with the heads of ravens, would eventually help seal the Great Rift at Icathia, ultimately halting the spread of the Void.

Aftermath[]

• The Sai Kahleek desert becomes a place of Void infestation, with Voidborn like the Xer'Sai.
• The surviving Ascended that fought in the Void War entitled themselves "Sunborn".

Trivia[]

2500 BN - 2000 BN

• Saijax was able to escape the battlefield, and would roam Shurima for millennia, at some point changing his name to Jax.

References