Your Runeterra atlas

Every place has a past.

From a city beneath a city to a mountain touched by the heavens. Choose a region, discover its landmarks and follow the stories behind them.

Not sure where to begin?

Follow a story through its places.

Choose a reading trail. Each connects places through a shared question, with champion stories along the way. These are story links, not travel directions.

An empire, a catastrophe, a different future

Start with the Sun Disc's imperial power, follow Icathia's disastrous rebellion, then compare Nazumah's independent community. Azir, Jax and K'Sante reveal why Shurima has more than one idea of a future.

Two cities, one unequal promise

Follow trade through the Sun Gates, explore Piltover's institutions, then look beneath them to Zaun's communities. Caitlyn, Vi and Ekko offer different perspectives on who progress is supposed to protect.

What survives an invasion?

Irelia's stand at the Placidium, Yi's lost village and the Kinkou's divided paths show how Ionia answers war. Follow resistance, remembrance and responsibility without assuming its champions agree on what comes next.

Duty, petricite and difficult loyalties

Demacia

Capital

Great City of Demacia

The kingdom's capital grew around magic-dampening petricite. Read its streets through the stories of the royal family, the Crownguards and those persecuted for magic.

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Mountain settlement

High Silvermere

Lux and Garen grew up in this Demacian city. Their Crownguard family expected lives of service, while Lux's curiosity and emerging magic complicated that inheritance.

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Regional illustration · exact site not pictured

Northeastern mountain hamlet

Uwendale

Quinn and her twin Caleb grew up in this Demacian hunting and farming community. Family loss and the ranger patrols protecting its wilderness form the background to her later partnership with Valor.

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Regional illustration · exact site not pictured

Old Demacian castle

Wrenwall

Shyvana carried a wounded Jarvan to Wrenwall. The rescue gives their relationship a concrete setting before the larger question of her place within a kingdom suspicious of magic.

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Ambition, conquest and power

Noxus

Ancient stronghold

Immortal Bastion

Older than the empire surrounding it, this fortress anchors the Noxian capital. Rebuilding has left layers of streets and buried districts; its history connects to Mordekaiser and the powers governing Noxus.

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Port city

Basilich

Darius and Draven grew up as orphaned brothers in Basilich before its conquest by Noxus. The city is a starting point for two lives that found very different meanings in imperial military service.

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Living magic and a fragile balance

Ionia

Archipelago

First Lands

Another name for Ionia's many provinces and islands. Forests, monasteries and communities share a landscape shaped by living magic and the consequences of the Noxian invasion.

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Sacred site

Placidium of Navori

A sacred site that became a defining battleground during the Noxian invasion. Irelia's resistance ties the Placidium to Ionia's struggle over how to defend its future.

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Mountain monastery

Hirana Monastery

One of the monasteries named on Riot's map of Ionia. Explore it as part of the First Lands' wider landscape of spiritual study, rather than treating every monastery as the same order.

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Spiritual order

Kinkou Monastery

The Kinkou seek balance between the material and spirit realms. Shen and Akali's stories show different responses to the order's responsibilities and limits.

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Lost community

Wuju village

The mountain village in Bahrl was Master Yi's home and the setting in which he learned Wuju. Its destruction makes passing on the art an act of remembrance as well as teaching.

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Regional illustration · exact site not pictured

Island and arts conservatory

Koyehn

Hwei grew up around the Temple of Koyehn, an arts conservatory on an island in northwestern Ionia. Jhin's visit and the later destruction of that community make the place central to the difference between their ideas of creation.

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Regional illustration · exact site not pictured

Sacred grove

Omikayalan

Known as the Heart of the World, this sacred grove belongs to the history of Ivern's violent mortal life and transformation. The Dreaming Tree's lineage also connects Lillia's story to the living magic nurtured in this tradition.

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Village and mountain temple

Pallas

The temple above Pallas concealed the bow in which Varus had been imprisoned. The lives of Valmar and Kai connect that ancient confinement to the later struggle between the Darkin and the mortal wills within his new body.

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Regional illustration · exact site not pictured

Martial and spiritual training

Shojin monastery

Lee Sin arrived at the Shojin monastery as a talented child who believed the dragon had chosen him. The training he sought here belongs to the longer struggle to place discipline and responsibility beside extraordinary power.

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Ancient gods beneath the ice

The Freljord

Frozen chasm

Howling Abyss

The Frostguard watch an ancient abyss associated with the Watchers. Its bridges and wards are part of a much larger story than a match on the familiar ARAM battlefield.

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Fortress

Frostguard Citadel

Lissandra's stronghold houses the Frostguard's religious and military power. The regional gallery shows its audience chamber and the guardians charged with keeping ancient dangers contained.

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Pilgrimage site

Rakelstake

A pilgrimage site named in Riot's Freljord gallery. It provides another view of the region's relationship with ancestral memory, beyond the fortresses and battlefields.

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Regional illustration · exact site not pictured

Volcanic forge

Hearth-Home

Ornn's smithy lies in the volcanic depths of Hearth-Home. The place connects the Freljord's landscapes with its god of craftsmanship, and the objects through which his work reaches mortal lives.

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Regional illustration · exact site not pictured

Bryni village

Aamu

Aurora grew up in Aamu among the Bryni. Spirits unseen by others were part of her childhood here, making the village the starting point of her efforts to understand and help beings between realms.

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Regional illustration · exact site not pictured

Northern peninsula

Lokfar

Olaf's origins in Lokfar help explain why a prophecy of peaceful death felt like an insult rather than reassurance. His search for a different ending takes him beyond this homeland into the Freljord's wars.

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Coastal community

Rygann's Reach

Before becoming Brand, Kegan Rodhe grew up on the margins of this Freljordian community. Rejection and isolation here belong to the human history behind the creature's later hunger for magical power.

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Discovery, trade and the cost of progress

Piltover

Trade passage

Sun Gates

The sea-gates helped turn Piltover and Zaun into a vital trading link. They explain why shipping, commerce and control of passage matter so much to the twin cities.

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Trade and invention

City of Progress

Piltover's workshops, institutions and wealthy houses give its champions different relationships with progress. Some seek to protect its people, others to control its future or challenge the inequality behind its prosperity.

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Ingenious survival beneath the city

Zaun

Industrial cityscape

Zaun undercity

Connected levels of workshops, industry and densely inhabited streets form Piltover's counterpart. Champion stories show different lives here, from community protection to dangerous chemical experiments.

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Lower city

Sump

Zaun's deepest inhabited level is associated with its harshest industrial conditions. Riot's gallery contrasts life here with the markets and institutions higher in the city.

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Upper city level

Promenade

The upper reaches of Zaun include markets and institutions. The Promenade helps explain why the undercity has distinct neighbourhoods and social worlds rather than one uniform landscape.

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Middle city level

Entresol

A middle level within Zaun's vertical city. Workshops, trade and movement between levels make it part of the city's everyday life, between the Promenade and the Sump.

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Regional illustration · exact site not pictured

Prison mine

The Dredge

The prison mine beneath Zaun is where the betrayed Noxian executioner Urgot was forced to survive. Its suffering reshaped his idea of strength before he brought that brutal doctrine into the city's underworld.

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Fortune, sea monsters and dangerous bargains

Bilgewater

Harbour

Bilgewater Bay

Treacherous approaches open into a harbour crowded with opportunity and danger. Shipping, sea-monster hunting and competition between captains shape the city around it.

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Regional illustration · exact site not pictured

Clifftop crossing

Butcher's Bridge

An old stone bridge connects the busy piers with slums beyond the harbour cliffs. It is a named place in Bilgewater's setting as well as a familiar name from League's map history.

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Island homeland

Serpent Isles

The island homeland of the Buhru surrounds the port built by newcomers. Illaoi's faith and the worship of Nagakabouros connect this older culture to Bilgewater's champion stories.

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Sea-monster trade

Slaughter Docks

Bilgewater's hunting industry turns immense sea creatures into work, wealth and danger. Pyke's life as a harpooner makes the docks a particularly important setting for understanding the betrayal behind his return.

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An empire returning from the sands

Shurima

Ascension landmark

Sun Disc

The great disc is central to Shurima's imperial history and the Ascension of its god-warriors. Azir's return makes the lost capital and its legacy important again.

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Trading city

Nashramae

A surviving city on Shurima's northern coast. Riot's artwork shows the architecture of a living settlement, an important counterpoint to the empire's monumental ruins.

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Desert landscape

Valley of Song

Wind passing through hollow rock gives this landscape its name. The valley shows how Shurima's geography shapes its local stories as well as the journeys between settlements.

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Sandfalls

Zoantha Cascade

A cascade of flowing sand rather than a river waterfall. This landmark is one of the distinctive desert landscapes featured in Riot's Shurima gallery.

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Ruined homeland

Icathia

Icathia's rebellion against Shurima unleashed the Void and destroyed the land its people hoped to free. Jax and Zilean preserve very different responses to that loss; other champions connect to the breach, the war or its aftermath.

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Regional illustration · exact site not pictured

Independent oasis city

Nazumah

K'Sante's home stands apart from Shurima's returning empire. Protecting its oasis and people against enormous beasts helps explain why his ambitions as a warrior are also responsibilities to a living community.

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Regional illustration · exact site not pictured

Shuriman city

Marwi

Akshan grew up on Marwi's streets under the power of local warlords. His relationship with his mentor Shadya and his response to her murder give the place a personal role in his pursuit of justice.

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Regional illustration · exact site not pictured

City on the Great Sai's eastern edge

Amakra

Samira and her parents performed on Amakra's streets before violence displaced the family. The city connects the showmanship of her later Noxian career to a childhood and homeland that preceded it.

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A mountain reaching toward the heavens

Targon

Mountain

Mount Targon

Reaching the summit is a spiritual ordeal as well as a dangerous climb. Some survivors return changed by an Aspect; the lower slopes remain home to migrating Rakkor communities.

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Solari temple

Temple of the Solstice

A gold-veined marble entrance on Targon's eastern slopes marks a place of Solari worship. It offers a grounded introduction to the region's religious traditions.

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Elemental mastery behind a living border

Ixtal

Hidden city

Ixaocan

Ixtal's hidden city joins architecture with elemental disciplines. Its cardinal arcology contains the Vidalion, where an initiate accepted into the Yun Tal receives magically woven garments.

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A lost civilisation and the Black Mist

Shadow Isles

Lost capital

Helia

The coastal capital of the Blessed Isles became part of the catastrophe that created the Shadow Isles. Ruined libraries and vaults preserve traces of its former pursuit of knowledge.

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Yordle paths beyond ordinary geography

Bandle City

Regional illustration · exact site not pictured

Spirit-realm landmark

Bandle Tree

Riot's regional account places the tree before the yordles' settlement of Bandle City. It is an entry point into stories of their home, chosen families and otherworldly journeys.

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Portal pathways

Low Roads

Enchanted gateways link Bandle City to Runeterra. Some move, while others remain rooted; passage can depend on gestures and symbols rather than ordinary travel directions.

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What lies beyond the world

The Void

Intrusions

Void rifts

Rifts are breaches through which the Void's influence reaches Runeterra. Treat them as a kind of world-threatening intrusion, rather than a single settled city or a safe route to explore.

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Sources and story contextOfficial stories, artwork credits and reading notes

Where the stories come from

VRC.LOL writes the introductions, reading notes and connections using linked Riot Universe biographies and regional guides. Short champion summaries use Data Dragon version 16.20.1. Longer histories link to the official story used; some champions currently have a shorter official overview.

What the pictures show

Artwork belongs to Riot Games. Scenery comes from Riot's Runeterra world map; champion art depicts the character. A regional illustration sets the scene when a landmark has no dedicated image. It does not show a confirmed event at that exact place.

A world still being written

Older biographies and newer adaptations can differ. These guides introduce connections rather than declaring a final chronology or a character's current whereabouts. Translations help you explore and may keep original proper names. Follow the official sources for full context.