Shurima
Champion Lore

Zilean

the Chronokeeper

Once a powerful Icathian mage, Zilean became obsessed with the passage of time after witnessing his homeland's destruction by the Void. Unable to spare even a minute to grieve the catastrophic loss, he called upon ancient temporal magic to divine all possible outcomes. Having become functionally immortal, Zilean now drifts through the past, present, and future, bending and warping the flow of time around him, always searching for that elusive moment that will turn back the clock and undo Icathia's destruction.

Zilean splash art
Zilean splash art
Origin & Background

The Story of Zilean

Zilean has a paradox problem. He is a mage from Icathia — the city that opened the Void rift that eventually destroyed it, that produced the catastrophe that remade the world's relationship with the Void — who found a way to move through time in an attempt to prevent the Icathian catastrophe. He failed to prevent it. He is still moving through time. The failure has not stopped him from trying, but the trying has made his relationship to linear time genuinely non-functional.

He exists in multiple points in time simultaneously, in ways that he can no longer fully separate. He knows things that haven't happened yet. He remembers things from timelines that didn't persist. He is recognizably ancient and recognizably brilliant and recognizably not entirely present in any given moment because some of him is in another moment. The sand in his hourglasses is time itself, which he can accelerate or rewind around him, aged or restoring people at will.

He is still trying to fix Icathia. This is the thing he has never stopped. Every other engagement, every other use of his abilities, is conducted in parallel with the project of untangling the historical knot that destroyed his home. He knows more about the Void's origins than anyone alive, and he is using that knowledge toward a goal that may be impossible, in a manner that has made him impossible to have a normal conversation with. He is kind, in the specific way of someone who has seen many ends. He is also very busy, in many times at once.

Key Connections

Relationships

Icathia
Destroyed Homeland
The city whose catastrophic decision Zilean has spent his existence trying to prevent — the wound that sent him spiraling through time.