Runeterra
Champion Lore

Aatrox

the Darkin Blade

Once honored defenders of Shurima against the Void, Aatrox and his brethren would eventually become an even greater threat to Runeterra, and were defeated only by cunning mortal sorcery. But after centuries of imprisonment, Aatrox was the first to find freedom once more, corrupting and transforming those foolish enough to try and wield the magical weapon that contained his essence. Now, with stolen flesh, he walks Runeterra in a brutal approximation of his previous form, seeking an apocalyptic and long overdue vengeance.

Aatrox splash art
Aatrox splash art
Origin & Background

The Story of Aatrox

Aatrox is the oldest of the Darkin — the god-warriors of Shurima who were corrupted by the weapons they wielded and imprisoned within them after the Targonians decided they had become too dangerous to live. He was the first to fall, which means he has been imprisoned the longest, which means the centuries of his imprisonment accumulated into the specific kind of rage that has no target large enough to satisfy it. He hates everything, in an order of priority that starts with the Targonians who imprisoned him, the Aspects who oversaw it, and everything else that has had the misfortune of existing within reach since.

When a mortal takes up his sword, he consumes them from within — using their body as a vessel while draining their will and eventually their existence. He has had many hosts across the centuries. None of them persisted. He views this as he views most things: inevitable, appropriate, a small expression of a power that was always going to claim what it needed. He does not pretend otherwise. Aatrox is honest about what he is in the way that only something ancient enough to have stopped caring about pretense can be.

He wants to die. This is the secret beneath the rage: the true death, the ending that his imprisonment denied him, the silence that he has been unable to reach because the sword keeps him alive regardless of how thoroughly the body he inhabits is destroyed. He destroys because destruction brings him closer to the ending he seeks. He fights because fighting is the language he was made to speak. He is the World Ender, and what he most wants to end is himself.

Key Connections

Relationships

Naafiri
Fellow Darkin
One of the younger Darkin whose ambitions Aatrox regards with the weary contempt of something that has been doing this far longer.
Pantheon
Recurring Enemy
The Aspect-host whose confrontation with Aatrox resulted in the Aspect departing — leaving the mortal Atreus behind.