Yes the League isn't entirely innocent, yes the circumstances surrounding the summonings of extraterrestrial creatures are questionable, but why would they mean that the Void has to do anything with it? I don't follow your reasoning.

And for Nocturne and Brand, of course they hate the League, but considering that the League basically denied them of their pastimes (namely killing people and destroying the world) it's only natural.

The Void has been around forever, yes, but the Void also has all of 3 significant agents in the world, two of which are under extremely close League observation all the time (They haven't outright stated that Cho'Gath is, but it'd be bizarre if he wasn't). So that leaves us with Malzahar in terms of ways that the Void can actually affect things to a significant extent. Obviously Malzahar is doing his best to call all sorts of nasty void stuff into Runeterra, but he also has Kassadin opposing his every move. I really do feel like you're reaching at straws here. Yes, the Void could have other major agents that haven't been even hinted at in the lore thus far. Yes, the Void could be mindcontrolling people, even though we've seen no evidence that they can do that kind of thing (Even Malzahar, who as a seer presumably had some kind of inherent connection to the otherworldly had to be led to Icathia via visions before the Void could actually influence him). Yes, the whole situation could be something thought up by the Void, but honestly that would be something of an asspull at this point. There really hasn't been any kind of suggestion whatsoever that any of the Void articles have anything to do with the Kalamanda articles.

Although this is a really internet argument-y thing to bring up, I feel like Occam's Razor applies here. Even though I could probably construct a scenario in which the elders of Trundle's tribe are behind this, it's less likely to be the actual answer than something that requires fewer leaps of logic. As it is, the only articles that we can be certain have relevance to the plotline at hand are those dealing with Kalamanda, though given Swain's prominence to the plotline, I feel like a strong case can also be made for Leblanc's Judgement, Cassiopeia's Judgement, and the article describing Swain's rise to the Noxian High Command to replace General Du Couteau.

i think we're putting way too much thought into this cult of malzahar's. i highly doubt they have any great influence at all. they're just fans. every champion has a following. the league champions r basically celebrities. malzahar's fans just happen ot be a bit more fanatical than others (like raiders fans... )

and all the agents the void currently has r being watched very tightly. chogath is confined to the league, kogmaw is a naive creature who does nothing but eat so i doubt he has any real way of amassing an army... and malz is under HEAVY restrictions veer since he escaped and basically killed karthus. he may have had his freedom before but now... not so much.

The reason I think the void get's the "they control everything" plot is that they have nearly won before. Mal just needs to kill kassadin and an inhibitor and...well we're doomed. He's learned to fight the champions and may have corrupted some. Even if he didn't...the magic that stopped the void is GONE. We're sitting ducks if they can pull one big stunt.

The whole Kalamanda situation may not nessecarily be void work but they stand to profit by sewing the seeds of chaos in the area.

The thing i'm trying to point out is the many many details in-between that i doubt Swain and friends can be responsible for. Someone is threatening the Black Rose, and many people assume it's Vayne.

Swain (As powerful as he is, even w/o League Restrictions) is getting to much credit in his ability to single-handedly annihilate the entire convoy AND Darkwill with such ease, not to mention leaving to trace.

Where does it say Malzahar is under severe restrictions? He's been sacrificing people in public, and after the situation with the Inhibitor the High Councilor just kind of brushed it off like -well we know they messed up, but we have our own reasons for leaving things be- and left it at that. We don't know what punishment if any that Malzahar and Kassadin received.

I'm not saying the Cult of Malzahar has power, what i'm saying is he's trying to pull another Icathia.

Icathia was a city, lots of people, Void Worshippers, and then they all poofed, and -supposedly- Void creatures charged out, threatened to destroy us all, followed by rune wars, blah blah blah.

Well now the Void might be attempting to re-create Icathia with Malzahar's swarm of followers as a bunch of sacrifices or something along those lines. Now all Malzahar needs is a location without the magical dampening of Inhibitors to allow such an event to happen, thus trying to destroy an inhibitor.

They might be -two different plotlines- but I'll be honest, a few things didn't make sense to me trying to read the Darkwill plot seperately.

The mining incident. The mining shaft exploded, nobody died, except a Noxian miner, which made Noxus look bad. Demacia wins the contract. Out of the blue Swain finds a random soldier that claims he killed said Noxian under orders of Jarvan. Everyone is shock and the guy is put in custody.

Obviously Jarvan believes the prisoner to be innocent, yet DEMACIA pushes back this interrogation several several times. Even the townsfolk said Demacia is up to something. Well after Jarvan pushes this execution back saying -he's doing a big background check- when the prisoner drops dead of a poison that they said -he must have taken willingly- because of the type of poison. Someone is making both parties look very suspicious at this point, and someone has gotten to Jarvan.

Well, now (and for no apparent reason) Darkwill just happens to leave to go to the camp to sign a peace treaty or whatever, and dies on the way over. Swain torches the bodies, not to remove evidence, but to ensure his position.

I don't think Swain or the Black Rose was involved in the murder! Swain just waned to make sure that the bodies were destroyed so he had a guarantee of taking the position. Maybe he legitimately thinks Demacia killed Darkwill, and is super POed that Jarvan's forces potentially took the kill that Swain himself wanted.

About Malzahar's followers, I don't think fanatical raiders fans sacrifice themselves in public.

malz's sacrificings were before he and kass had their little altercation. issue 21 has them in the basic mugshot position. no doubt the league is keeping a closer eye on those 2 now.

and with all these things u keep mentioning... i still dont see a void connection. u use noxus/demacia conflicts to somehow prove that the void is behind this? i dont even know how to properly enunciate my confusion... how can swain, noxus and demacian conflicts have anything to do with the void being behind this. if anything, it proves that swain is behind this.

mine goes boom and suddenly swain finds the scapegoat for the mine blast. swain is the master tactician. do u really not see how easily swain could have planted the bomb there and used a random black rose member posing as a soldier as a scapegoat? he showed up to the noxian hospital with no records at all. surely doing it again with someone else is easy. thats why demacia kept pushing off the treaty and blamed background checks. they couldnt find anything on the guy but if they said that in public, they'd look incompetent and even worse than they already did. it was a lose-lose situation for them

jarvan doesnt necessarily believe the prisoner to be innocent. they simply cant figure out who he is and they cant verify who he says he is. a black rose member led by the deceiver, leblanc, could easily pose as a soldier but obviously he has no official records. figuring out who he actually is would take A LONG time as that would entail investigating the noxian underground and thats no easy task.

when the prisoner dies, jarvan looks pretty guilty... and who hates jarvan with a passion? o wait... thats swain again. read his judgement, its pretty clear that he wants to kill jarvan. u dont need to be a master tactician to see the connection here.

how can u not think swain is behind this. swain doesnt just happen to get good opportunities like this. he's a master tactician. his specialty is planning things like this. he doesnt exactly fall ass-backwards through life.

also, swain has no reason to be mad that boram is dead. he didnt want to kill boram. he wanted to kill jarvan (read the judgment again...) he wanted to get borams position. he didnt care how he got it. his only vendetta was with jarvan and with his anti-demacia campaign on its way, he's primed to get jarvan blamed for this and executed.

o and the void is behind all of this? what...? where do u get void from demacia/noxus conflicts...? sure the void is probably up to something, but we know malz's plan. he needs to destroy the inhibitors first before doing anything. without that, he cant do a thing and as he was stopped before he could do so, the void has no reason to initiate any plans right now. in fact, the best thing the void could do now is to sit back and let things unfold. let noxus/demacia destroy eachother and THEN attack. they have no reason to initiate conflicts between the 2 either as they already have their own conflicts brewing. the void has no reason to dirty its hands and look suspicious.

That's from something a random person wrote in. I don't know how much stock we can put into that particular statement.

[/quote]Swain (As powerful as he is, even w/o League Restrictions) is getting to much credit in his ability to single-handedly annihilate the entire convoy AND Darkwill with such ease, not to mention leaving to trace.[/quote]

That's one of only two questions though. We're meant to be left puzzling out how he actually achieved the objective in that manner.

The thing is, we haven't had any indication that anyone else in Malzahar's cult has any real power besides Malzahar himself, and Malzahar's fights with Kassadin have brought him under a lot of scrutiny lately. Honestly, he'd have a harder time arranging all of this given that scrutiny.

Aaaand he failed (or at least, all indications point towards him having failed). And the inhibitor, whatever it was, wasn't even particularly close to Noxus or Kalamanda. If he'd succeeded, one would think there'd be a more dramatic change in events. You could claim that it allowed a bunch of void creatures to be summoned, but given the description in the JoJ, one would think that there'd be something horrifying described about the attack (the Void hasn't exactly been subtle in the past), but it was made to sound as if their wounds were pretty identifiable. At the very least, their bodies weren't mangled beyond recognition.

That's because the Demacian soldier DID do it, and believed he was doing it by Jarvan's orders. When you're working with Leblanc, it wouldn't exatly be difficult to convince a soldier who likely hasn't had any actual contact with Jarvan before (but does recognize him, of course) that it was in fact Jarvan who gave him the orders.

You're right! Demacia's reasoning behind pushing back the interrogation is currently completely unknown as of yet. Although I don't think it's as completely unreasonable as you seem to think that Demacia would have some kind of reason to delay the interrogation. It could be something as simple as them launching their own investigation to dig up any evidence before walking into an interrogation that could very well go against them. In fact, that's the reasoning that King Jarvan gave later.

The poisoning cast suspicion on both sides, but things are still looking Noxus's way. Had it gone to an interrogation, Demacia probably could have pieced together that there was a fake Jarvan, and things would have looked pretty bad for Noxus. While both sides have sufficient reason to try and stop the interrogation (from the point of view of the average person), the fact that the soldier claimed to be a loyal Demacian working under royal orders, casts doubt on the idea that he'd accept poison from Noxus. You could easily interpret that Demacia spent the delay getting people in place to get the poison to their loyal "secret agent" so that he could avoid further testimony, in a way that could potentially look bad for Noxus.

He went because he didn't want to go to war, and it doesn't look like Swain's going to be able to defuse the tension, so the only person he truly trusted to get the job done is himself.

If Swain didn't kill him, why would burning Darkwill's body guarantee Swain's promotion?


Well, no, but the cult's a step beyond anything that you'd find in sports on earth. It's a combination cult-fandom, with people from varying parts of the spectrum all in the same organization.

I'm saying it's all a bloody DISTRACTION

Malzahar and Kassadin's fight wouldn't have made ANY news if Kog'Maw hadn't led summoners right to the scene of the conflict. All the political tensions would be covering the front page allowing Malzahar to carry out whatever mission he has.

The quote from -some person- got a response acknowledging that they know there is a threat facing the Black Rose from LeBlanc herself.

And OF COURSE the inhibitor isn't near Kalamda. If you're attempting to rip open a dimension to get your army through to carry out a world-ending prophecy, you aren't going to make a scene about it.

I understand Malzahar failed, but that's because Kog'Maw is an idiot and led summoners to the scene, in which it was stopped. We know Karthas died protecting the Inhibitor, and no change in the magical area was affected. Even if Malzahar did destroy the inhibitor, the League stopped him before he could open the portal. That, and if it's anything like the Icathian disaster, his army of sacrifices would have to be moved to that location to begin with. That calls to much attention so Malzahar would have to take it one step at a time, destroy the inhibitor, then move his worshippers in, and sacrifice them all in a limit-less zone.

They said the Void doesn't have the ability to mind control people, but considering how well Malzahar is influencing massive groups of worshippers, I wouldn't put it past them to wander into a war-zone to cause some chaos in the name of the Void.

It can't be to difficult to delay an interrogation 6 times over a -background check-. Either someone didn't want Jarvan to interrogate the soldier, or it wasn't really a soldier, so they couldn't FIND a background, which was putting them in a nasty situation of figuring who was responsible. By that time the prisoner was already dead.

Just because Swain might not have killed him, doesn't mean the War wouldn't give him the promotion. The only thing probably going through his mind is to prevent any attempts at resurrecting Darkwill so that he can't reclaim his position. Swain is just going with the flow because of his extreme ambitions. He has a hatred for Jarvan, and anything that works in his favor he's probably not going to question it to much.

This is all just my idea.

In short, just to get my grand-idea in place...

A third party (I'd bet the Void) is attempting to make a move. Malzahar has been sent here, and is creating a cult following. Kog'Maw is here to learn. Cho'Gath is a master tactician. Assuming Cho'Gath is under watch, then the orders would have been given quite some time before his acceptance into the League, or else these orders would be over-heard by the League.

Now, Malzahar has his orders, and it's my bet that he wants to re-create Icathia, as i've said repeatedly. Lots of people, an area uninhibited by magic, and he can release an army of Void-Born. This takes time though, and his movements are being spot-lighted by Kassadin's constant interference (And now, of course, Karthas interference), so he needs to get attention away from him. Word reaches him that there's tension growing in Kalamda over recent discovery of minerals and such, and that Demacia and Noxus (who already hate eachother) have huge armies there.

Wow, sounds like a good way to create a smoke-screen eh? Malzahar sends a follower into the camp as a worker (They're flooding in left and right, so I don't think it'd be to noticeable) and send this follower disguised as a Demacian into the Noxus side, and blow it up. Oh man, now Noxus looks bad, and Demacia gets the contract. But that would end a little to easily...heck you've caused the sides to almost join together in the recovery effort. Can't have that can you?

Let's reveal our little henchman and have his admit to Swain that he killed the Noxian and caused the situation in the first place.

Now, first off, how did this Demacian soldier just make his way to the Noxian side and just say 'hey I killed that dude, orders of the prince, will you be so kind as to arrest me?' Swain is really ticked and marches right up to the King and throws this prisoner at his feet. The King is taken aback by what appear to be his own sons orders. They throw him in prisoner to interrogate him.

Now this prisoner could say a few things. 'Yeah, i did it, what of it?' but for all they know it could be a Noxian soldier or a puppet of swain, whatever. Anyways, Jarvan could easily tell his dad that it wasn't his orders, because i doubt Demacia wants a War, because they nearly won the mining contract, which was what the whole thing was about.

So what happens? They throw him in jail and wait for the interrogation. Right now however, Malzahar is attempting to make his move to destroy an inhibitor. The League has all eyes on the two Nexi in Kalamda, and is waiting to intervene should anything serious happen. Out of the corner of their eyes, they notice Kog'maw is going a little Hay-wire, and they look away from Kalamda for a few moments to figure out what's going on.

-Gasp- they've discovered a dead Karthas, and Malzahar and Kassadin fighting once more. League officials get Karthas out of there (even though he wasn't in to much harm...) and the press manages to get a few words about 'protecting the inhibitor'. Malzahar and Kassadin are spotlighted and Kog'Maw just wanders off to do his own thing. Kog'Maw obviously screwed up.

Notice though, nobody cares. Malzahar and Kassadin are fighting, and someone (assumingly Malzahar) is trying to destroy the inhibitor. Those things were put in place to stop the Rune Wars, to protect the whole of RuneTerra. What do they do? Not really anything. They just kind of 'well whatever, they're still aloud to fight and we'll "punish them" but we can't tell you anymore'. So Malzahar failed, Kog'Maw is an idiot, and the conflict in Kalamda has been...delayed?

Their big plan fails because of a few loose ends, and suddenly Jarvan is delaying the sacrifice of the prisoner? Well...that messed up. Let's kill the prisoner, he's lost his use to us, and hopefully this will stir up a distraction so we can try again. Nobody claims to have killed the prisoner, but both sides are a little riled up. Military forces on BOTH sides increase a-lot, and everyone is on edge now.

Well this didn't create the desired effect, but something interesting has happened. Darkwill himself has left the super-protected safety of Noxus and is headed to Kalamda to end this fighting. But look at this...this entire area doesn't really have inhibitors. What it does have, is two Nexi spewing out enormous amounts of energy. The League is all over it, but with that much power you could waltz in, cause all sorts of chaos, and waltz back out. Now the League has tights eyes all over Kalamda. We know for a fact they're watching Swain and Jarvan, because the writer goes out of their way to say -well Swain is seen walking around but he never leaves camp. Same for Jarvan, nobody sees him leave his tent at any time. So tight eyes are being kept on both sides, but someone missed something. Swain leaves camp with his patrol to greet Darkwill, only to discover Darkwill is dead.

I don't know about you, but if I were in Swain's position, and this opportunity laid itself infront of me on a golden tray, I wouldn't hesitate to jump in and tie up any ends. Someone has killed the King, and Swain just loves this. First thing to do, make sure he's dead for good. Solution? Quickly torch everything. Now, I don't think Swain himself got a good look at the bodies for a cause of death. His primary concern would be to get rid of the bodies immediately. Next thing, start a war.

Oh what's this? The two biggest parties on the continent have camps, right next to eachother, with their leaders and powerful soldiers, ALL THE WAY on the OTHER END of the continent. The League can't spare to leave their sights from this tension filled field, so what does this say? Malzahar isn't under watch anymore. Kog'Maw can't interrupt again, because if the League takes their eyes off the fight for even a second, it could erupt into war.

So under the shroud of all of this, Malzahar has more-than-likely moved out to set his plan once more into motion. Karthas proved no help last time, and I think Malzahar stands a pretty fair chance at beating Kassadin, especially if Kog'Maw or Cho'Gath happen to be with them. Kog'Maw walked out of the League without restraints before, Cho'Gath can probably do the same thing, and Malzahar can move his followers into position, blow open a hole in the dimension with his mass followers re-creating Icathia, and all the while Noxus and Demacia are at eachothers throats.

I will admit, it is a little far-fetched, but it just seems plausible. The Void being in the background of the JoJ articles would be a good thing for their group, avoiding attention is their whole plan after-all.

long post inc...

wait... what do u mean their altercation wouldnt have gotten any news if kogmaw hadnt shown up. THEY KILLED KARTHUS. u think the league wasnt going to look into that at all?

u mean when vayne warned leblanc in the recent joj about the judgement process and leblanc clearly called them petty threats that she can deal with?

it doesnt matter where it is. the league has eyes everywhere. the only place they really dont have eyes is in shadow isle, the deep jungles and karthus' domain. he's a lich and one that the league doesnt want to mess with. malz thought he could take out the inhibitor on karthus' domain and he failed. without succeeding he and the void cant do anything at all.

u do realize that malz basically controls kogmaw right?
that and kass was still there protecting. even with karthus dead, kass is more than enough to stop malz.

they may be fans but he isnt mind controlling them. also, even if he is, they arent much of a threat. when malz/kass/karth had their fight, void worshippers showed up at the institute's dooe and had a riot, which was promptly put down by the league (see the joj article. im way too lazy to quote it)

my guess is the latter, and the reason they couldnt find anything on the soldier was because he was an imposter set up by swain and the black rose... another reason swain is behind this...


or the 3rd party is the black rose and they're making their move for the noxian crown with swain... again, ur grasping at straws. the void has nothing to do with this and wasnt mentioned at all. they're still busy trying to down an inhibitor to summon an army. they have no reason to get into political squabbles. they dont care for such nonsense.

the fact that they're all under tight watch should be proof enough that they couldnt have set this up. setting up a boram assassination before the league accepted chogath and executing it now is unreasonable considering the amt of time between the 2 and the variables that theyd have to consider.
not really... this only distracts noxus/demacia. kass/karth are still on his heels and trying to stop the void. noxus/demacia wouldnt fight in the desert. they fight within the league, where ALL political squabbles are settled... if the void wanted a distraction, theyd need to distract kass/karth and a noxus/demacia conflict simply doesnt do that.



the rest is just u repeating ur argument over and over and i dont feel like repeating my argument again...


anyway, it really doesnt matter what the void does. they still have kass and karth stopping them. this conflict wouldnt change a thing. they're still without an army and without a means of getting one.

Well I'll stand by my theory. I'm just a fan of long-shots, and the timing on things, and the mention of the Void constantly doing mysterious things in the background of the political conflict just has me thinking something is up.