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Interesting LoR concept art from the SIXMOREVODKA website
I saw someone mentioning that the sixmorevodka website has concept art for LoR units that don't fit within the current regions. I rummaged a bit through the pictures and sources on their Website and actually found a small number of interesting concept arts, hidden deep in their portfolio. It's five pictures in total and they are all found in the LoR section of their portfolio, the art style also matches.
The fashion style of the following units doesn't match with any of the current regions and reminds me mostly of either Bilgewater or Shurima, I do tend more towards the latter. The file name of all the pictures is 'BurningFist', indicating that they may all belong to the same archetype/tribe. The silver emblems that decorate their clothing all have the same symbol of a burning fist.
Keep in mind that these pictures could also be scrapped concepts and I don't think Riot would just let SIXMOREVODKA release art of unreleased regions unless they weren't gonna use it anyway. Maybe Shurima was once a strong consideration as one of the 6 beta regions but was then scrapped early in development in favor of another region.
riotstrokke
A long time before Legends of Runeterra! There's always been a lot of Rioters who loved card games, and it was only natural after LoL started seeing huge success that we wanted to make a LoR CCG ourselves to tackle some parts of the genre we felt have always been too predatory to players.
riotstrokke
Good eye!
Unfortunately I'll be a buzzkill on the speculation by saying there's not much more to this than concept pieces in the early days when we were learning how to build out the world of Runeterra and develop non-champions. So don't read into it too much :) Building the muscles for worldbuilding is a tough ask! It's a whole lot more than creative collaboration, we also had to define our art style, and figure out how to communicate and socialize within our team and the rest of Riot.
A good point was made in the thread - Companies usually don't bring concept to this level of rendering and leave it on the cutting room floor, but in this case we did because we needed to figure out what non-champions would look like (If you roll back a few years, there's wasn't much of that going on yet). I wouldn't rule them out ever making a comeback in some form, but for now they are on the sideline.
This was our first sub-group we built out from scratch, and it was a great learning experience for us! They ended up not fitting into our plans, but I can share the initial ideas to give you a sense for how much thought and care goes into our world building - even those that don't make the cut.
The idea was that Noxus is an inclusive and diverse group composed of many different factions and tribes that they have conquered and brought under their banner. That's how they got to have the largest army in the world. The burning fist was a warband from a hilly and arid region, and you can see a lot of our ideation was around the type of weaponry that a society of miners would have. And the silver emblem as you noticed was a way for them to keep their identity without being completely swallowed by Noxus.
We then had a crazy idea that Set 1 they would be the target of Noxus's raids, and then in future sets you'd be able to play AS them after they had been converted to Noxus. That ended up not fitting with the rest of the plans, BUT as a fun easter egg you can still see a little of that influence in some of the set 1 cards:
Legion Rearguard - What are they raiding?
Legion Saboteur - What is she listening to?
Trifarian Hopeful - They are in a hilly and arid region
So that's just a taste of what we were doing in the early days of the project, since then the team has really leveled up and I think you're all going to love what they've been brewing for future sets!