Meet ‘League of Legends’ Latest Mage Champion, Aurora
League of Legends is ready to bring its newest champion to the game. Enter Vastayan bunny warrior Aurora, who makes her debut in the second split of Season 14 as a top and mid-laner. First teased in the Spirit of the Hearth mini-game, Aurora appeared as an explorer who forged an unlikely friendship with demi-god champion Ornn, and the various spirits that inhabit Runeterra.
She marks the game’s first prey animal Vastaya and comes four years after Sett, the last character from the race. Being able to see and traverse the spirit realm, she finds comfort in interacting with spirits and acts as a healer of troubled spirits and has powerful allies, including demi-god champion Ornn, who she considers her best friend.
Aurora is a skirmisher mage solo laner, boasting an AoE Ultimate that works similarly to Blitzcrank’s Static Field ability, but with the added bonus of teleportation. Her Spirit Abjuration passive gains movement speed for every three hits, and her Ultimate teleports her from one side of the battlefield to the other, trapping enemies in a bubble that deals magic damage when they are knocked against the sides of the barrier.
Which makes her both narratively and in-game, a foil to skirmisher assassin champion Yone, a fellow top and mid-laner. Where the latter, inspired during Aurora’s lengthy development process, cleaves spirits apart, she’s deeply connected with them and wants to understand them. Yone’s Fate Sealed Ultimate stickers all enemies in his path and knocks everyone airborne towards him, but there’s no barrier – something that Aurora’s Ultimate can prevent.
“Aurora isn’t a particularly violent person, but if someone is messing with the spirits, she’s going to do her research and then kick the s**t out of you,” said senior narrative writer Elyse “apothecarie” Lemoine. “Her champion ability is an example of that; she’s basically putting a curse on you, which becomes empowered and she uses that to kill you. She basically rips out a little bit of your soul.”
Beyond her lore, Aurora also stands out as a pillar of representation. The ginger bunny witch is described to be autistic, but the term has no bearing in the world of Runeterra. There, she’s just Aurora, a walker between worlds who’s always extending a helping hand to spirits – no matter the form.
“It’s impossible to fully encapsulate the autistic experience because it’s a spectrum, because everyone experiences it so differently,” apothecarie added. “There are a lot of things that a lot of us do that we wanted to capture, like toe walking, which is really common! But we know that it’s not something everyone does.
“And we wanted to kind of capture not just the common autism experiences a lot of us have had, but the most basic part of having autism. Which is that the way our brains work – the way we view the world. It doesn’t match the expectations that others have. And that’s really what we want to shine through for Aurora. She shouldn’t meet expectations.”
Aurora will join the League of Legends line-up on 17 July.
