There's a TL;DR at the bottom.

I see so many people on this subreddit misunderstanding the logic behind the 10th region system and coming up with predictions that contradict everything we've seen in the cards so far.

First, it's important to know some important leaked upcoming champions to understand LoR's region system (i'll be using them as examples):

Malphite - Targon, Rek'sai - Shurima, Zilean - Shurima

From looking at the way LoR has assigned champions to regions, we can discern the following principles for the region system:

1. Theme is king - Regions are defined by aesthetic/conceptual/gameplay themes
2. Lore region assignments don't matter - A champion's region assignment on the lore pages is irrelevant.
3. Lore categories don't matter - Categories in the lore without strong thematic meaning are also irrelevant.
4. Misfits go to best partial fit - Some champions don't 100% match any region, so they'll go to the best match

To explain the evidence for each one in more depth:

Principles

Theme is King

Lore's regions are defined by theme. Think of the theme as a set of keywords/phrases that define the aesthetic/gameplay/concept of the region.

For example, you could describe the theme of the current regions as:

• Shadow Isles - Shadowy Spooky Ghosts and Ghouls, Death
• Ionia - Oriental Fusion Aesthetic (stereotypical Chinese + Japanese + Korean, e.g. Ninjas, Samurais, Zen, etc.), Fae
• P&Z - Steampunk and Grungy Chempunk
• Demacia - White and Gold Generic Righteous Hero Country
• Noxus - Black and Red Generic Anti-Hero Country
• Shurima - Desert with Egyptian Gods
• Targon - Moutain, Celestial Beings and Sun/Moon worshippers
• Bilgewater - The Ocean + Water, Pirates and other outlaws
• Freljord - Ice, Tundra, Barbarian Raiders

You can come up with some other keywords for each region, but you get the picture.

Similarly, each champion's identity is also defined by their theme. For example:

• Nocturne - Shadow that feeds on nightmares
• Malphite - Big walking mountain rock
• Lulu - Yordle Fae Sorceress that polymorphs

Looking at this, it's pretty clear why

Nocturne => Shadow Isles (shadow to shadow region)

Malphite => Targon (mountain to mountain region)

Lulu => Ionia (Fae sorceress to region with fae)

even though those are not their regions in the lore (we'll get to that in the next section.

Demacia and Noxus are a bit unique in that for a lot of their champions, their nationality IS their identity. They're strongly color-coded and constantly yell their country's name. For example Darius and Garen are basically just "Big Burly Soldier with 2H weapon", Noxus version and Demacia version.

Lore Region Assignments Don't Matter

This rule is pretty evident just by looking at the champions that are already in the game (or leaked). Many of theme are not in regions that they ever even visited in the lore (e.g. Malphite, Nocturne, Kindred, Teemo, etc.).

To realize why this is, first realize that the lore is malleable. A lot of champion lore was made way after the champions were created and released, and a lot of it has already been changed/retconned multiple times and can change again.

You can just add one line to the lore of most champions to justify putting them in a different lore region. For example, the lore says that Brand was born in Freljord or something like that. Let's say you want to put him in Ixtal. "Brand went to Ixtal". Bam, done. In reality, they probably wouldn't even update any wikis or web pages and instead just tell the story through the follower cards as was done with the existing LoR champions.

For the majority of champions, their region assignment and regional lore is not a part of their identity, and theme takes precedence. There are exceptions of course, for example most of the Demacian and Noxian champions are highly tied to their region as previously mentioned.

Lore categories don't matter

Species/type categories like yordle, demon, etc. that don't have a strong thematic identity do not matter for regional assignment. For example, the yordles are in different regions because yordle is just "short fuzzy humanoid". That's not a theme. Similarly, it doesn't matter if a champion is a demon or darkin or whatever for their regional assignment. Are Tahm Kench's followers demons? No, they're amphibians (and other similar animals). That's because Tahm Kench's identity is not "demon". His identity is "frog". "Demon" is just something written on a wiki page.

Misfits go to best partial fit

There are many champions that don't really have a strong regional identity. For example Teemo. The LoR devs probably felt they needed to include Teemo because he's like the Pikachu of LoL, so they needed to find a way to fit him into one of the regions with an actual thematic identity.

What they came up with was:

Teemo - Cute fuzzy yordle that plants mushrooms

Mushrooms => grow in dark, damp places => grungy sewers of Zaun

And it basically works. Also, they made mushrooms into spells to fit the spell-slinger gameplay theme of P&Z.

Process of elimination

Now, let's use these rules to eliminate some of the 10th region candidates that many people bring up.

Void

Void can't be the 10th region for a few reasons:

Rek'sai - Void creature sand shark

Rek'sai is in Shurima. This violates rule 4 - she would fit just as well, if not more into the void, and it would be confusing to have void champions in other regions that aren't the void.

Also, if Rek'sai is in Shurima, then Mal'zahar is also in Shurima. Malzahar clearly has the Bedouin Desert Nomad motif (head wrapping, jambiya, vizier/djinn skins, arabic name), and it would make no sense to put Rek'sai in Shurima, but not Mal'zahar.

Finally, the reason they probably decided not to put Rek'sai into the Void and make it a region is that it's very hard to force other champions the void, so they'd quickly run out of champions for it. Take a misfit like Ryze. You could come up with a way to put him into Targon or Ixtal. But it wouldn't make sense to put him in the Void. You also wouldn't be able to put Darkin champions in their without seriously diluting the identity and causing distinguishability issues with SI.

Instead, void champions will be distributed to other regions (similar to yordles), as evidenced by Rek'sai.

Bandle City

Bandle City - City of Yordles

First, that's not a real thematic identity (c.f. rule 3). This is probably why they decided not to make it in the first place.

Secondly, Teemo is the most Bandle City champion of all champions. It would make no sense to make Bandle City and not put him in there (breaks rule 4). Lulu is also not in there, even though she's clearly a yordle. So given the current champions we know they couldn't make BC be the 10th region

"Vastayans"

Some people bring up adding "Vastayans" as a part of the regional identity of the 10th region, e.g. "Ixtal + Vastayans". This doesn't make sense because "Vastayans" are not a thematically cohesive group.

What percent of the playerbase even knows which champions are Vastayans. Certainly the creators of Rengar and Ahri didn't know they were Vastayan when they made them, because that Vastayan didn't exist back then.

This was the creative process and thematic identity:

Rengar - Predator from Alien vs. Predator, but he's a cat

Ahri - Korean weeb bait kumiho waifu.

Then "Vastayan" was just added to a wiki later to appease the lore nerds.

Consider Sett, for example.

Sett - Mafia Boss Underground Fist Brawler

Imagine if you tried to put him into "Ixtal + Vastayans". What would his followers be. Mafia members hanging out in the jungle? Or in the mayan/aztec style cities? It wouldn't make any sense. He would fit more into Bilgewater, if anything.

Similarly, Nami is probably going to Bilgewater (she's definitely not going to Targon at least, despite that region appearing in her lore site bio).

The Only Possibility Left

Given that we can easily eliminate most candidates based on the existing evidence, there's only one real candidate left that would capture enough of the existing champions:

Ixtal

Ixtal - Jungle, Primal Elements and Wilderness

There are at least 7 champions that are an easy thematic fit:

• Qiyana
• Neeko
• Nidalee
• Gnar
• Rengar
• Kha'zix
• Zyra

Kha'zix belongs to Ixtal in the same way that Rek'sai belongs to Shurima.

Gnar is one of the most Ixtali champions in the game. He's a primal animalistic caveman who transforms. He fits more into Ixtal than Nidalee even. Before you say "Freljord", remember the principles. Freljord is not a part of Gnar's identity in any way. When you ask someone to describe Gnar, "Freljord" would not be one of the words that would come up.

That's not enough of course, but there are many other champions which they could stretch to fit in. For example, since void can't be a region, all of the void champions are up for grabs. Here's a list of easy stretch champions:

• Cho'gath
• Kog'maw
• Brand
• Udyr
• Xayah / Rakan

Then, there are the champions who are much more iffy: * Ahri * Wukong * Lillia * Ivern

The problem with Ahri and Wukong is that their core aesthetic identities are Korean and Chinese, respectively. Wukong is literally just Sun Wukong, and Ahri is a kumiho wearing Korean clothing. So it would be very jarring to not have them in Ionia.

Similarly, although Lilia and Ivern are both associated with greenery, their aesthetic/personality is more Ionian. Especially Lilia, who is so similar to Greenglade Caretaker. I could see Ivern => Ionia appearing in the same set as Zyra and sharing some plant/growth mechanic, similar to Shyvana and A.Sol.

Finally, there's always the possibility that there will be a new Ixtali champion (perhaps timing the release to coincide with the 10th region expansion), or that they'll make an original champion.

Caveat

It's possible that Ixtal will not actually be called "Ixtal". For example, it might be a combination region similar to P&Z. However, if it is a combination, it probably won't be with any of the excluded candidates above. They would have to find some way to make it easier to introduce void champions into the region without actually putting "void" in the name, since that would make Rek'sai's assignment jarring. It could also be "Ixtal et al." or Ixtal combined with some definition of outcasts/outlands. Like "The Wilds", "Outlands", or some other new term they create.

It's also possible that the region is just "Other", although it would be hard to come up with a name for that (obviously they wouldn't call it "Runeterra" like it is on the lore website.

Possible Objections

But Malphite is from Ixtal

"How can you say that Void won't be a region because Rek'sai, a Void champion, is going to Shurima, but say that Ixtal will be a region even though Malphite, an Ixtali champion, is going to Targon?"

This comes from a misunderstanding of what it means to be a champion from a region for the purposes of this LoR region discussion. Rek'sai is a void champion. Malphite is not an Ixtal champion.

Void - home of the void creatures (purple alien looking creatures)

Rek'sai - void creature sand shark

Ixtal - Jungle, Primal Elements and Wilderness

Malphite - Big rock mountain dude

If you ask people to describe Rek'sai or Teemo, the majority of them will mention void or yordle, respectively. If you ask someone to describe Malphite, almost no one will mention Ixtal. He's a mountain/rock, and that's one of the primal elements, so there's a thematic connection there, but the connection to the literal mountain region is much stronger and more direct.

Ixtal will run out of champions.

Ixtal is definitely the region that will have to stretch the most (probably why they left it for last), but it's not significantly in more danger than some of the other regions. For example, after this expansion is over, the remaining easy fit champions for:

Targon: Pantheon, Bard

Bilgewater: Graves, Illaoi

Bilgewater has some easy stretches like Nami and possibly Tristana, and Targon can possibly stretch with Kayle and Morgana, although Kayle has thematic conflict with Demacia. So considering that and the list of possible Ixtali champions above, Ixtal is about on par with Targon and Bilgewater.

The KDA K-pop cards disprove that Riot cares about thematic cohesion

Shh, I'm trying to forget.

There are assets for dual region icons

There are lots of assets for concepts that ended up being unused. For example, there are regional icons for Zaun, something that looks like Void, and Bandle City. There were icons for a sun/moon/twilight state mechanic that ended up being unused.

Even with dual region, there would be a load of complications with adding Bandle City/Void. There wouldn't be balance between the number of champions in each region. Since the 10th region is the last one, and they confirmed that they want to add all champions to the game, there would be too many champions left with a clear lack of a home.

Furthermore, the main problem with Bandle City is that it has no thematic identity, as mentioned above. If yordles all easily be added to other regions, even the icon of Bandle City, Teemo, then there would be no reason to add it as a region to the game. It would be a waste of a slot.

Similarly, Void's identity is too narrow, and it would be almost impossible to fit in stretch champions to the region, since every champion is either clearly from the void or not.

Finally, the presence of dual region icons and BC/Void icons only raises a further question. Why would they make one as a region, but not the other? If they put in BC as a region, then all the void champions won't have void as a region, and vice versa. The only thing that would make this possible is if they lied about there being a single 10th region and they actually add multiple.

TL;DR

The only region that fits the evidence and logic is Ixtal (or some other name that includes the concept of Ixtal and the wilderness/outlands, e.g. "The Wilds").

External link →