Darkin (Dark-kin)

"We had another name once...now we are Darkin" -Aatrox
Darkin are corrupted God-Warriors who were traumatized by the horrors of the Void War as well as self infliction by the use of blood magic. Currently, all known Darkin have been imprisoned in weapons, unable to ever regain their original Ascended forms.
The nature of their corruption is implied to be self-inflicted after the mental scar left from the horrors of countless wars and those witnessed in the Void War. The death of Azir and the subsequent fall of Shurima were the final catalysts that led to them turning their backs to the world they had once swore to protect.
Without an emperor to command them, the Darkin felt forgotten and were left purposeless. They believed themselves to the rightful inheritors of the world and enslaved many races, forcing them to worship them. The Darkin used their knowledge of blood magic to augment their flesh and weapons until they were unrecognizeable from the noble warriors they had once been. The Darkin and their armies would clash with one another, leading to the Great Darkin War.
The Aspects would eventually intervene and aid the mortals in sealing the Darkin within their own weapons and scattering them across Runeterra, ending the Darkin War. In the centuries since, a handful of these weapons have been recovered by the ignorant and the ambitious alike. More recently, the Darkin have begun to stir and seek out vessels to free them from their prisons.
The Darkin began their story as revered human warriors of Ancient Shurima, Ascended into serving against the threat from the threshold. After finally halting the Void's perverse incursion, the surviving Ascended entitled themselves as "Sunborn", the first witnesses of a dawn of peace they brought to a now safe world. Centuries after an age of war with the Void, despite their divine makeup, their minds remained as fragile as the mortals they once were. When the light of Shurima finally left the world, many of the immortal Ascended found themselves lost. With no emperor to lead them, these “darkin” eventually fell to warring among their own kind—and the peoples of Runeterra were caught in the middle. The ceaseless warring and the horrors they witnessed slowly took their toll, leading them to fight over who was worthy of taking over the world that forgot them. This started the War of the Sunborn, known better to the world as the Darkin War.
The laws of mortal life held little meaning for the darkin. Over the centuries, they mastered many forbidden forms of primal magic, crafting their own flesh and armor with equal ease, until they were completely unrecognizable as the noble warriors they had once been.
During the Darkin War depictions of the self-corrupted Sunborn, now known as Darkin, as already having a demonic appearance—the result of using blood magic, fueled with each mortal and Darkin life they took, to reshape their own bodies and armor and meld them as one.
Toward the end of the Darkin War, the Darkin were imprisoned within their own weapons and wielded against their brethren until all who remained were likewise trapped. Those who wielded a Darkin weapon would gain a portion of their power, but through a vessel was also the only avenue through which a Darkin could gain a mockery of freedom. Even when able to wrest absolute control of a body, the power of a Darkin is too much for any mortal body to contain - condemning the Darkin to a fate of constantly harvesting life force, eventually completely depleting the mortal's energy and being forced to seek another vessel, lest they be rendered inanimate once more.
To date, a golden-armored warrior queen is the only being known to have held a Darkin and not succumbed to its will. That said, her final act after dispatching all other Darkin was to trap herself and the Darkin Bow the Darkin Bow within a well in Pallas, condemning herself but denying the Darkin freedom as well.
When an Ascended is created, a celestial concept merges with a mortal host body and grants them ascended power. When a Darkin is sealed, that concept is trapped or deleted. The ideal that they represented ceases to exist and it becomes indistinguishable what the Darkin was once the avatar of.
From the moment a darkin weapon chooses a vessel, that mortal will find themselves compelled by a power they can scarcely hope to master—no matter what seductive whispers they might hear in their mind. That power will soon take root in flesh and bone, reshaping them into a new, monstrous amalgam. At the early stages of a darkin infestation, the corruption can be reverted with minimal contact with the weapon, but the darkin will try to entice their host to wield them.
The weapon's wielder and any Darkin trapped within seem to enter a symbiotic relationship, the wielder gaining a portion of the Darkin's power and the Darkin in turn gain some agency and a venue of freedom. However, the Darkin can parasitically dominate their wielder, thereby annihilating the wielder's personality while in turn freely affirming their agency; similarly, the wielder can extirpate the Darkin's persona to gain full access to the weapon's power. In both cases, the dominated other is described as "dying".

Genetic Ancestor(s)

• Sunborn