The Story of Illaoi
Illaoi is the High Priestess of the Kraken God Nagakabouros — the Serpent's Embrace, the Mother Serpent, the god of motion and life and the relentless forward force that the universe expresses through all living things. Nagakabouros does not believe in stagnation, does not believe in the comfortable choice, does not believe that staying still is survival. Illaoi has taken this theology into herself completely and expresses it through everything she does, including how she fights.
Her idol — the massive serpentine vessel of Nagakabouros that she carries and uses as a weapon — can reach into a person and pull out their spirit, holding it before them as a physical thing to be tested. Nagakabouros tests everything: the spirit either proves it has the strength to persist or it doesn't. Illaoi administers these tests without mercy and without cruelty, in the specific way of someone who genuinely believes that the testing is the kindness, that revealing weakness now is better than meeting it unprepared later.
She loved Gangplank once — or something close enough to love that the distinction is academic. She does not hate him now. She found him insufficient. When the test came, he failed it in ways that Nagakabouros does not forgive, and Illaoi moved on in the way her god requires: forward, always forward, without looking back at what demonstrated it was not strong enough to keep up.