Noxus
Champion Lore

Vladimir

the Crimson Reaper

A fiend with a thirst for mortal blood, Vladimir has influenced the affairs of Noxus since the empire's earliest days. In addition to unnaturally extending his life, his mastery of hemomancy allows him to control the minds and bodies of others as easily as his own. In the flamboyant salons of the Noxian aristocracy, this has enabled him to build a fanatical cult of personality around himself—while in the lowest back alleys, it allows him to bleed his enemies dry.

Vladimir splash art
Vladimir splash art
Origin & Background

The Story of Vladimir

Vladimir is a hemomancer — a Noxian blood mage who has spent centuries studying and practicing the use of blood as both magical medium and sustaining substance. He is old. Significantly older than he looks, because one of hemomancy's gifts is the extension of life through blood consumed from others. He has been doing this long enough that "Vladimir" may not be the name he was born with but simply the name he uses now, which is a distinction he does not clarify.

He is not a vampire in the folkloric sense — he doesn't operate from any principle of necessity, doesn't fear sunlight or garlic, doesn't have a compulsion he's fighting. He drinks blood because it sustains his power and because he finds the practice interesting. He approaches his own immortality the way a hobbyist approaches a long project: with genuine enthusiasm for the technical challenges and periodic satisfaction at the results. He is one of the most powerful mages in Noxus. He uses this power for his own amusement and occasionally for Noxian objectives when they align.

His relationship to mortality — his own maintained, everyone else's progressing normally — has produced the specific kind of person you get when genuine intelligence is combined with extensive life and the removal of most consequences. He is sophisticated and cultured and utterly self-interested, in ways that are charming right up until they're not. He has watched enough people die to find it aesthetically interesting rather than sad. This is either wisdom or damage, and he would say they're the same thing.

Key Connections

Relationships

Noxus
Adopted Empire
The nation whose philosophy of power Vladimir finds congenial — not from loyalty but from aesthetic alignment with its celebration of strength.