Ryze: Call of Power
Ryze’s search for World Runes and his fear of their destructive power.
The era of Demacia's founding
World history
The Rune Wars & a new refuge
The pursuit of ultimate power left entire civilizations searching for somewhere to survive.
From the Ashes follows Ryze and the catastrophic danger bound up with the World Runes. · Riot Games
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The Rune · original world history
The Rune Wars & a new refuge
The World Runes carried power on a scale that made ordinary political ambitions catastrophically dangerous. Those who sought to possess them could imagine securing a people, defeating an enemy or imposing an order that would finally end uncertainty. The problem was not limited to obviously cruel rulers. Even a person who began with a protective purpose could be changed by the conviction that such power was necessary.
Ryze encountered that danger through his apprenticeship to Tyrus. As the Runes passed into the struggles of mortal societies, their use helped turn conflict into devastation. The Rune Wars were not simply another series of campaigns to be measured by the advance and retreat of armies. Magical destruction threatened the places and populations those armies claimed to serve.
Tyrus himself became part of the lesson Ryze could not escape. His relationship with the power he studied changed, and the apprentice was forced to confront the danger in someone he had trusted. Ryze's later determination to gather and conceal the World Runes grew from experience rather than an abstract dislike of magic.
Elsewhere, people answered the catastrophe by fleeing. The origins of Demacia lie in a refuge where the surrounding petricite offered protection from destructive magic. Survivors could build a new community around the hope that what had happened outside would not be allowed to happen again inside their walls.
That founding fear outlasted the immediate disaster. Duty, defensive strength and resistance to magic became part of Demacia's identity. In later centuries, the desire to protect the kingdom would support institutions that persecuted some of its own people. The mage rebellion belongs much further along this story, but the historical connection begins here, with the memory of what unrestrained power had done.
Ryze continues along another path, carrying the burden of safeguarding artifacts he does not trust anyone to use safely. His modern journeys occur after the wars, in a world still capable of repeating their central mistake. The kingdoms that follow in this reading route are therefore built not only on foundations and borders, but also on memories of catastrophes their people are determined—or dangerously tempted—to revisit.
End of this reading
Their lives are a separate story
People in this history
The source archive
Sources & further reading
The Rune’s narrative connects these published accounts. Myths and uncertain relationships are identified in the reading rather than assigned invented dates.