Varus

Sealed at the End of the Darkin War

Long before he carried a bow, Varus was one of the ancient darkin — a killer who drew out his victims’ suffering, driving them toward madness before finishing them with an arrow. When the Great Darkin War ended, he was imprisoned rather than destroyed, and for centuries that seal held. It broke only when two Ionian hunters, tracking down what they believed was an ordinary relic, released him without understanding what they’d freed. Varus returned in their combined, remade flesh, his essence bound into the very bow they now carry.

A Weapon Its Bearers Still Resist

The two hunters trapped inside that bow haven’t given up their hold on it. Varus is driven to hunt down whoever sealed him away in the first place, but every step toward that vengeance is contested from within — a struggle between the darkin’s hunger and the human remnants he can’t fully silence. His abilities carry the same tension between patience and cruelty: Living Vengeance rewards him with attack damage and ability power after a kill or assist, larger against champions, while Blighted Quiver turns his ordinary attacks into a slow poison, applying Blight so that a fully charged Piercing Arrow or a burst of Hail of Arrows can detonate it for damage scaled to the target’s health. Hail of Arrows also desecrates the ground beneath it, slowing survivors and cutting their healing, and his ultimate, Chain of Corruption, flings a tendril that binds one champion in place before spreading to immobilize anyone caught nearby — though the tendril dies if its target simply outruns it. Varus operates best at range, in Ionia‘s war-scarred provinces or wherever his hunt happens to lead, patient enough to let torment finish what an arrow starts. He’s far from the only champion walking that land — Jhin calls the same region home, for reasons entirely his own.