THE ASCENDED CREATION
Published on: July 16, 2025
Darkins
The darkin are thrice-cursed—once by the ancient enemy they faced (the void), again by the fall of their glorious empire,
and finally by the betrayal that has damned them for all eternity. When the rebels of Icathia foolishly unleashed the Void in battle, Shurima's defense was led,
as ever, by the legendary Ascended. Imbued with the power of the Sun Disc, these “god-warriors” towered over mortal soldiers, wielding magic and blades with
equal ease, and eventually they were victorious. Even so, the horrors of the war took a heavy toll, and those who lived to remember it were perhaps never
quite as they once were.
Centuries later, with the loss of mighty Azir at the very moment of his own Ascension, Shurima fell. Although apparently immortal, the god-warriors
had been born human—gradually, with no emperor to lead them, many of the surviving Ascended began to falter on purpose as their older, petty ambitions resurfaced.
They taught themselves forbidden sorceries, and came to view themselves as the rightful inheritors of the world. The scattered mortal people named these new tyrants
darkin, a whispered curse translating roughly in the old tongue as “the fallen.”
But even the darkin could not escape the sickness of soul that had come from fighting against the Void for so long. After centuries of uneasy alliance,
they inevitably turned against one another—and so began the Great Darkin War. This conflict spread from Shurima to Valoran, and beyond. The renegade god-warriors and
the armies they raised were unstoppable, and entire nations were crushed between them. It seemed as though this would be the end of all things… until, unexpectedly,
the mages of Runeterra learned how to contain the remaining darkin. Through secrecy and cunning artifice, the physical forms of the Ascended could be merged with the
celestial power in their hearts, and all of it bound within the weapons they bore. With their leaders imprisoned forever, the rampaging hordes were broken and slain.
These darkin weapons were hidden, many of them carefully guarded by the mortal civilizations that grew in the aftermath—for it was clear that such power
could be locked away, but never destroyed. And, should such power fall into the wrong hands, the darkin will surely rise once more. The Darkin began their story as
revered human warriors of Ancient Shurima, Ascended into serving against the threat from the threshold. After finally halting the Void's perverse incursion, the surviving
Ascended entitled themselves as "Sunborn", the first witnesses of a dawn of peace they brought to a now safe world. Centuries after an age of war with the Void,
despite their divine makeup, their minds remained as fragile as the mortals they once were. When the light of Shurima finally left the world, many of the immortal
Ascended found themselves lost. With no emperor to lead them, these “darkin” eventually fell to warring among their own kind—and the peoples of Runeterra were caught
in the middle. The ceaseless warring and the horrors they witnessed slowly took their toll, leading them to fight over who was worthy of taking over the world that forgot them.
This started the War of the Sunborn, known better to the world as the Darkin War.
The laws of mortal life held little meaning for the darkin. Over the centuries, they mastered many forbidden forms of primal magic, crafting their own flesh
and armor with equal ease, until they were completely unrecognizable as the noble warriors they had once been. During the Darkin War depictions of the self-corrupted Sunborn,
now known as Darkin, as already having a demonic appearance—the result of using blood magic, fueled with each mortal and Darkin life they took, to reshape their own
bodies and armor and meld them as one. Toward the end of the Darkin War, the Darkin were imprisoned within their own weapons and wielded against their brethren until
all who remained were likewise trapped. Those who wielded a Darkin weapon would gain a portion of their power, but through a host was also the only avenue through
which a Darkin could gain a mockery of freedom. Even when able to wrest absolute control of a body, the power of a Darkin is too much for any mortal body to contain -
condemning the Darkin to a fate of constantly harvesting life force, eventually completely depleting the mortal's energy and being forced to seek another host, lest
they be rendered inanimate once more.
To date, a golden-armored warrior queen is the only being known to have held a Darkin and not succumbed to its will. That said, her final act after
dispatching all other Darkin was to trap herself and the Darkin Bow within a well in Pallas, condemning herself but denying the Darkin freedom as well. When an Ascended
is created, a celestial concept merges with a mortal host body and grants them ascended power. When a Darkin is sealed, that concept is trapped or deleted. The ideal
that they represented ceases to exist and it becomes indistinguishable what the Darkin was once the avatar of. From the moment a darkin weapon chooses a host, that
mortal will find themselves compelled by a power they can scarcely hope to master—no matter what seductive whispers they might hear in their mind. That power will soon
take root in flesh and bone, reshaping them into a new, monstrous amalgam. At the early stages of a darkin infestation, the corruption can be reverted with minimal
contact with the weapon, but the darkin will try to entice their host to wield them.
The weapon's wielder and any Darkin trapped within seem to enter a symbiotic relationship, the wielder gaining a portion of the Darkin's
power and the Darkin in turn gaining some agency and a venue of freedom. However, the Darkin can parasitically dominate their wielder, thereby annihilating the wielder's
personality while in turn freely affirming their agency; similarly, the wielder can extirpate the Darkin's persona to gain full access to the weapon's power.
In both cases, the dominated other is described as "dying".
Though the darkin's hunger for vengeance is inhuman and eternal, they must overcome the limitations of their new form if they are ever to sate it.
Memories of who they once were, what they aspired to be, and what they have become, all now blur together in their flawed, mortal minds. Aatrox usurped his wielder long ago.
Rhaast actively seeks to gain control over Kayn's body. Varus has yet to fully take control of both Valmar and Kai in their tri-symbiotic existence. Kayn asserts that Rhaast will
die if Kayn "lets go" of the scythe, while it is implied the Darkin's power is lost if they are killed in this fashion. However, Kayn's statement may simply imply that Rhaast
will suffer, much like other known Darkin, complete immobility and sensory deprivation until another takes up the scythe. According to Aatrox, this is a fate far worse than death,
for the Darkin remains conscious for the full length of their imprisonment.
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