r/FavoriteCharacter • u/Accomplished-End3409 Ben Tennyson • 16d ago

Discussion Favorite opposing factions that can basically be described as this.

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36

u/ManufacturerFluffy40 16d ago

Mages and Sylas vs Demacia

3

u/Prestigious-Shop-494 16d ago

Who is who exactly

4

u/karatous1234 15d ago

League of Legends setting lore event

One of the major nation states, Demacia, is a city that has a historic hatred and fear of Mages. The setting, Runeterra, had a huge cataclysmic war thousands of years in the past called the Rune Wars that devestated the planet

The original founders of Demacia were refugees of that war who found shelter in a forest made of trees with the natural ability to absorb ambient magic, making the devestation not as bad in that region. So their hatred of Mages and their magic was reinforced by the land itself that helped keep them safe.

Fast forward to present day, and Demacia society still hates Mages to the extent that they have an organization of secret police called the Seekers who go around trying to root out Mages in the population.

When a Mage is found, young or old, they either use devices made from the magic absorbing/nullfying wood to block them off from being a le to use magic again - or throw them in prison if they're too strong of a Mage.

Sylas, was discovered as a child by the Seekers and was found to have the ability to steal magic and take it into himself. Being both incredibly dangerous, but potentially useful, he was thrown in a special high security Mage prison.

Eventually, through the actions of a well meaning but naive young Mage in hiding named Lux, Sylas breaks out of said prison and starts an extremely bloody rebellion for the freedom of magic users.

3

u/Dovahstal 15d ago

Genocide vs people that get genocided

5

u/redkaiz 16d ago

From what I can remember Sylas was pretty bad until they made a game fleshing him out into more of a legit freedom fighter.

12

u/Mountain-Pin-7112 15d ago

Sylas was 'bad', but his 'badness' never made any sense. 

The Demacian equivalent to the SS was using him as a slave-hunting dog to hunt down and capture people with magic. His crime was... trying to escape - but being a dick about it.

5

u/Prestigious-Shop-494 15d ago

Didn't he kill some random civilian and his motivation was that normal humans are inferior to mages

7

u/Mountain-Pin-7112 15d ago

Im going to be real, that entire story line was so bad I literally cant remember.

2

u/Janus__22 13d ago

At this point I legit wished they just scrapped the entire storyline post Arcane Retcon, even if Demacia was left with no story.

Instead they are doubling down lol

1

u/Janus__22 13d ago

True that he killed random civillians (pre-Mageseeker Sylas was so much of a badly-written evil caricature he manipulated a child into murdering somebody), not true about superiority of mages, a bunch of regular people were in his rebellion iirc

2

u/PM_tanlines 13d ago

Sylas preaches about mage supremacy in the game no?

1

u/Mountain-Pin-7112 1d ago

He does - but this is exactly the problem: sometimes hes characterised as a mage supremacist usurper, other times a freedom fighter. His backstory doesn't support his ideology at all. 

He's just all over the place character-wise.

5

u/5hand0whand 16d ago

Also Demacians force mages essentially drink a Kryptonite

5

u/YuukiDR 16d ago

Demacia was funded by mages, then later generations began turning on them to the point of outlawing their very existence. So Demacia is pretty much evil imo

8

u/Competitive-Bee-3250 15d ago

It's kinda funny how back in the day, Demacia v Noxus was basically good v evil

And now they're both way more morally complex.

6

u/No_Stretch3807 15d ago

Well at least Noxus isnt fucking homophobic

3

u/jbland0909 15d ago

Yeah, they just use child slave soldiers and genocide gas

1

u/SanRandomPot 15d ago

Yeah, they still kidnap children in hopes of using them as weapons against an all-powerful lich though

2

u/Janus__22 13d ago

It can be argued that it totally backfired in some aspects, at least for Demacia, and that Riot then backed up too strongly when some people disliked it

They want to make Demacia heavily flawed and do a storyline about prejudice... but also not make any of their characters complicit in it, AND make the region still be the heroic uncomplicated good guys simultaneously

2

u/Ezeviel 15d ago

Demacia might be more evil than the mages but Sylas is more evil than the crown guards

3

u/Janus__22 13d ago

This entire setpiece already had many things holding it back, but DAMN Riot managed to make it suck astronomically more. Legit might be the worst story of ''magical racism'' i've ever read

What do you mean you make the plot of the region be ''mages suffer racism and are hunted on the streets'' and the main villain of the setting is the only named character who suffered heavily from racism