Noxus strikes me as a place where you are free to advance, but only if you have no scruples and a healthy love of violence. And the skills to enact said violence without getting killed yourself. Not very free in my view, since that limits the social structure to only the most violent or cunning.

Is that not sort of the whole idea of Noxus, though? What with the obsession with strength and all. If you do get knifed in the back, you kinda don't deserve to live in Noxus [or at all, what with the new addition to your spinal column].

Bit late, but then by that definition, no where is free.

First of all, there has to be a limit as to who can or can't advance It exists in all of the city states, in Demacia you have to be borne of the correct bloodline. In Piltover and Zaun you need to be intelligent. In Noxus you need to be strong and or cunning.

I could even draw parallels to real life, but still that's a bit off-topic.

However my point is that I find Noxus to be more free because it has the least restrictions (Outside of Zaun) and is honest about what it is. Noxus would be a chaotic neutral entity with chaotic evil tendencies. Demacia tries to portray itself as Lawful Good but is truly Lawful Neutral with Lawful evil tendencies.

Zaun and Piltover are neither free as well! For Piltover you need to be smart or useful but only with technology that is deemed clean or else you are effectively worthless. The same thing with Zaun but they often lack the morals so it is just useful technology.

I can see why anyone would prefer each of the city states, my own preference is towards Noxus because I believe that those with power are deserving of having power rather then holding an arbitrary restriction.

Can't argue with preferences.
Though I would say that Xin did rather well without being born into royalty.

This. You don't need to be royal to succeed in Demacia. You can shine enough to have authority take notice. Poppy, Xin Zhao, Shyvana, Galio, none of them are even native Demacian and all of them enjoy a status far exceeding anything you or I will ever achieve.

I disagree that Syndra is not "evil". OK, maybe she's not a black-souled monster like Cho'Gath or Nocturne, but she has no redeeming features whatsoever. She's psychotic, completely self-centred and cares nothing for anyone but herself. I never saw any shades of grey in her lore either, despite Riot's best efforts; she's just such a shallow b*tch that it made it completely impossible to sympathise with her. I still hold that her lore is the second-worst in the entire game after the retarded abomination that is the rewritten Karthus lore ("DEATHDEATHDEATH I LOVE DEATH" ~Karthus).

^ This is a big problem with Riot's mindset, imo. Let me use Noxus as an example.

Noxus is a nation that has waged at least two brutal and bloody wars of conquest against innocent nations, solely because Noxus perceived them as weaker and easier to conquer. In doing this, they enlisted the help of assassins to murder families, thus "pacifying the barbarians", they enlisted the help of Singed and Zaunite melters to melt alive entire villages of innocent people, and experiment on them, as happened in Master Yi's lore. They butchered Alistar's entire family, captured him, and forced him into the Fleshing, which speaks for itself. Xin Zhao found his way in there, too. Let's see... Annie and her family were forced to flee for their lives for daring to oppose the conquering monstrosity that Noxus was becoming, and it's generally believed that General de Couteau disappeared for this same reason. They are obscenely racist, as we saw in the case of Veigar.

Can someone please direct me to the gray in any of this?

I find it very hard to call any Noxian champion a 'shade of gray' except Riven. Why? Because, let's assume that the vast majority of Noxians had no idea what kind of horrific war crimes their assassins and Zaunite allies were committing. After all, very seldom do the citizens know of what their own soldiers do. But, lore-wise, several years have passed. Everyone knows what Singed did, everyone knows what the assassins did, everyone knows that pretty much every political leader in Noxus would be hanged like Saddam if the Geneva Convention existed in Valoran. Yet, what happens? No Noxian defects, no Noxian has ever expressed even the slightest shred of remorse. Katarina, whose own father is pretty much guaranteed to have been murdered for opposing the Ionian campaign, does not defect, does not go into exile like Riven, NOTHING. Hell, in one of the JoJ's, she mentions that Noxus was doing Ionia a favor and they should be thankful.

If this is what Riot thinks is 'shades of gray', I'd hate to see what they think is evil. Riven is the only Noxian that has been shown to have any redeeming qualities whatsoever. I guess the stance of Riot is "yeah, but so-and-so Noxian isn't really a bad guy, per se, he just values personal achievement as a means of excelling in society as opposed to bloodline and heritage." No, Riot, that does not excuse melting innocent people, experimenting on the survivors, forcing the survivors of that to fight each other to the death in front of a packed stadium of Noxian citizens, and then telling the world that Ionia should be thankful for it.

*exhale*

Noxus is evil.

And Syndra, while obviously not that bad, is no 'gray' either. "I'm not a bad girl, but I killed my mentor for daring to teach me to use my powers responsibly", that doesn't fly.

That's hardly what happened at all. They took her away from her home at a young age, out of fear of her power. The tossed her into what was basically solitary confinement, except for a mentor, who instead of being there for her in the way she needed it, took away the one thing she had left; her powers.
He didn't even have the decency to tell her that he did it, or why, he simply restricted them because he felt he knew what was best for her. Then when confronted, he more or less presented her with the ultimatum "Do as I say, or I'll seal away your powers for good.". Are you -really- saying that the Ionians did nothing but treat her with kindness, that she's simply a spoiled brat acting out for no reasons?

Am I the only one to realize that all the characteristics for Noxus that were given hold true for Ancient Rome too? One of the most famous and "civilized" nations regarded in history?

Don't phrase that like Syndra was some helpless, horrified slave of Ionia. Nothing annoys me more than this kind of creative wording.

Not exactly innocent. Yes, she was young, but there is no denying that she was acting dangerously and needed proper training.

She was not unwilling. She wanted to be there. She loved it.

The reference to "in her youth" implies that she had been being trained in this manner for years, unless people these days refer to "in my youth" as the events of last week. Once she learned that her powers were restrained due to her reckless use of it, her response was to crank it up and murder the master that she had enjoyed learning from for years.

How dare my best friend for my past several years try to prevent me from using my powers destructively! I'll show them by destroying them!



It's fine if you like Syndra, she is indeed an interesting and cool character, but don't make her out to be anything but what she is: a selfish, power hungry murderer.