The New League Of Legends Champion Is Seriously Creepy

Last week, Riot unveiled “Kindred,” the newest champion for its wildly popular online game League of Legends. It’s far too early to say much of anything about Kindred’s gameplay qualities, but one thing is already clear: the champ’s production values are amazing.

Kindred is relatively rare in League of Legends for not actually being a single character. Rather, it’s a pair of ghostly fighters — Lamb and Wolf:

Lamb is the ethereal white archer, while Wolf is the fanged purple wraith that circles around her and lunges towards enemies at his comrade’s command. This isn’t is “two-for-one” character like those seen in League’s close competitors Dota 2 and Heroes of the Storm — Riot developers have made it clear they’re not that eager to add that level of micromanagement to the game. The thing that makes them really cool in my eyes, therefore, is the lore artwork behind the pair.

Riot hasn’t revealed Kindred’s full backstory yet, but they provided this deliciously creepy teaser right before announcing them:

The video shows Lamb telling a story to Wolf in a whispy voice, one of a “pale dark-haired man who was very lonely.”

“Why was it lonely?” Wolf responds in a deep, ominous growl. “All things must meet this man,” Lamb responds, “so they shunned him. Left as a pariah, the man took an axe and “split himself in too.”

“So he would always have a friend?” Wolf asks. “So he would always have a friend,” Lamb replies. They may not end up being the duo Lamb is speaking of, but the combination of Kindred’s banter and the foreboding music makes the hair on the back of my head stand up.

Riot has long had an unusual knack for making characters who are genuinely frightening — something that’s all the more impressive when you consider that League of Legends is a team-based multiplayer game that wouldn’t seem well designed for such a thing. Their rework of the undead zombie-esque warrior Sion turned a crappy Arnold Schwarzenegger lookalike into a savage beast who’s absolutely terrifying the first few times you confront him.

But even by their high standards, I think Riot’s really knocked it out of the park production-wise on this one. There’s the unnerving login music, that sounds like something pulled from one of David Fincher’s horror films:

And then there’s the 17 minutes of in-game dialogue Riot recorded for the two of them:

“Never one,” Lamb whispers in one particularly striking line. “…without the other,” Wolf growls in response. EEEEEEEEEEEK!!

For a point of comparison, Warwick — a werewolf champion Riot released much, much earlier for League — has roughly a minute’s worth of dialogue…and most of it is just growls:

They really have gotten a lot better with their character design since League first started out in 2009. Keep up the good work, Rito.