The Rift Remembers: The Final Nail In The Coffin

It’s that time of the year again. People trying their hardest to look like Frankenstein’s Monster or Jason Voorhees whilst effectively collecting some candy. Add some top notch horror movies to that mix and everyone knows what time of the year I’m describing. Yes that’s right, it’s Halloween.

Every League player that has been around a while associates this time with something else, something that occasionally takes the spotlights again as people try to reintroduce it. This being nothing less than the Harrowing Skin for Summoner’s Rift.

The famous sea cow

First things first. Everyone that played on the above mentioned skin knows about the little “graveyard”, where the ghost of Urf, the Manatee, occasionally appeared and claimed his ghost was seeking revenge. This refers to his lore where he was most likely butchered by Warwick while he was defending the shores of Summoner’s Rift, and thus making an end to the bravest of all sea cows in Runeterra.

Image courtesy of Torvald2000

As for the non-lore side of the story: Urf was used two years in a row by Riot Games to celebrate April Fool’s Day. Being announced two years in a row as a champion that was going through the process of Beta testing, and the skin developed in honour of the Manatee for his notorious killer, Warwick, made Urf feel very omnipresent. On top of that, Urf keeps popping up in splash art, Summoner Icons and Champion Skins.

"I will only be dead once everybody has forgotten about me" never seemed more fitting.

Nail-in-the-coffin

However, there are also other corpses hidden in Summoner’s Rift, Harrowing style. Three of those can be found in the farthest bottom-right corner of the map, in the outskirts of the Bottom Lane. In between a pile of rocks, three coffins can be found, in all three laying a corpse of a champion that was cancelled mid-development. Nonetheless, some of them can still be spotted from time to time in new splash art, reigniting the discussion.

- Averdrian

Probably a name that a lot of players have read once or twice thus far is Averdrian, mostly when they were browsing the Riot forums and reading a comment written by Riot Nocturne. Riot Nocturne had chosen Averdrian as an avatar and stated he would change his avatar picture when they would close the Averdrian project, which eventually happened in July 2011, so he changed his avatar to Ravager Nocturne.

Image courtesy of qpl.so

It was rumoured that Averdrian was eventually reworked as Heimerdinger (which the most obvious similarity being the rather unusual head-body ratio and the fact that Averdrian was the name of the placeholder for Heimerdinger). However, an Associate Game Designer at Riot Games later told that Heimerdinger was in fact NOT Averdrian and thus wasn’t being redesigned as any other champion. It should be noted that the icons for his abilities were released, and up to the present day, Averdrian’s Icon for his Astral Beam is still used to indicate the buff Baron Nashor gives when he is successfully slain.

- Gavid, the Plant King

The second champion that ended up in a coffin next to Averdrian is Gavid, the Plant King. Although he was cancelled with not as much as a “story” surrounding him, Riot Games released some information on him before he was eventually cancelled due to “not fitting within the League of Legends theme”.

Image courtesy of elohell

Although the general appearance of the Plant King has undeniable resemblances with none other than our very own Maokai, the skillset he was rumoured to have is without a doubt mostly turned into the skillset of the Plant Lady, Zyra. Taking the aforementioned into account, it could be considered that Gavid, the Plant King, was eventually reworked into two separate Champions.

-Tabu, the Voodoo Shaman

The last champion of the triumvirate of the Coffins on the Harrowing map is Tabu, The Voodoo Shaman or occasionally referred to as “The Puppet Master”. No real indication was given as to why Tabu was eventually cancelled, but he has been reworked into a various amount of Champions and other elements that can be found in the Rift.

It is believed that Tabu has been reworked as what is today’s Swain or Fiddlesticks, or even both, as was done with Gavid. On the other hand, a lot of the ability icons that were originally designed to belong to The Voodoo Shaman were reused for numerous templates such as Tryndamere’s Mocking shout, the Blessing of the Lizard Elder and Crest of the Ancient Golem, amongst others.

A final reference was discovered by a Reddit detective, claiming that Gnar’s insignia looked familiar, previously used by none other than the Voodoo Shaman himself.

Cancelled                                                                                                                           

Of course, League of Legends has been around for quite some time now, and a lot of Champions have been cancelled due to various reasons. Most notably the extremely hyped four-legged demon Omen, the Egyptian God Seth (which is most likely reworked into Azir) , a venomous looking Spider lady called Priscilla (which probably turned out to be Elise, although this is being denied) and many others. Sadly, these were not included as little Easter eggs in Harrowing Summoner's Rift, although some of them look quite interesting.

Thank you for reading and best of luck on Summoner’s Rift!