League of Legends kicks off a new season set in Demacia

The world of League of Legends is made up of several regions, and one of the most prominent and well-established of those is Demacia. Demacia is an ancient kingdom, founded during the apocalyptic Rune Wars. Survivors flocked to forests made of Petricite, a magic dampening wood that allowed them to build a prosperous kingdom. Demacia has seen its fair share of troubles, from a fascist order of magic-hunting secret police to a primordial demon consuming the fear of villagers.

Now, Demacia is the site of the current overarching meta-plot, which began in the Netflix series Arcane, and has since worked its way through Noxus politics and an Ionian shrine. Now, the main storyline has come to Demacia, and Riot has celebrated the occasion with a new cinematic.

Yunara is one of the champions featured in the cinematic, but otherwise, this is less of a lore dump and more of an opportunity for Riot to hype up the Demacian roster. It's nice to see champions like Quinn show up in a cinematic after years of being sadly neglected by League of Legends lore, and we also get to see Shyvana's stunning rework. Her kit and visuals have been totally overhauled, which make her into more of the fearsome dragon she was always meant to be.

Demacia, canonically, has been through the assassination of King Jarvan the Third, the dismantling of the Mageseeker order, and the Seneschal Xin Zhao is now presumed dead in Ionia. These events played out over previous seasons and the Riot Forge game Mageseeker, and those plot points have yet to be fully resolved. We'll be getting an in-client game called Demacia Rising in this season, and that will likely explore some of the political upheaval and the "new normal" for the citizens of Demacia. There's a lot of juicy politics to explore, and I'm interested to see how all of that conflicts with LeBlanc's cunning master plan.