Icathia

Overview

A rebellious vassal-state of ancient Shurima, Icathia is now a barren and forbidding wasteland. And yet, amid the ruins, unspeakable horrors of the Void are beginning to stir once more...

History

Shuriman Subjugation

Axamuk, the last of the Mage Kings, was the final ruler to fall before the Shuriman Sun Empress when she led her golden host of men and gods into the kingdom of Icathia. Icathia remained a vassal state controlled by Shurima for a thousand years, its people subjugated and enslaved. The ruins of their city's walls stood as a reminder to their defeat.

Fall of Icathia

During the last days of Icathia, the once-noble warrior order of Kohari was rebuilt to retake the city. The city was filled with screams, as baying crowds chased down and murdered every Shuriman official they could find. Resentment for centuries of humiliating laws intended to eradicate Icathian culture—and brutal executions for breaking those laws—came to a head in one blood-filled day of violence. It did not matter that most of these people were merely scriveners, merchants and tithe-takers. All servants of the Sun-Emperor were killed.
Sun Disc effigies were pulled from rooftops and smashed by cheering crowds. Shuriman scriptwork was burned and their treasuries looted; the statues of dead emperors were desecrated.
A day after the massacre, an army of stonewrights, laborers and thaumaturges were hefting giant blocks of freshly hewn granite into place of the city's ruined walls with windlass mechanisms that crackled with magic. Ten thousand men and women were conscripted to defend the city, clad in armor of boiled leather and armed with axes, picks, and spears. Three blocks of deep-ranked infantry formed the bulk of their line. Shuriman corpses were impaled upon wooden stakes driven into the earth at its base, and flocks of carrion birds circled overhead. A silken pavilion of crimson and indigo had been raised at its summit. Robed priests surrounded it, each one weaving intricate patterns in the air with their star-metal staves.
The Sun Emperor turned his gaze upon the rebellious satrapy and marched east. His five armies consisted of tens of thousands of men, with riders on golden mounted chariots ahead of the army. Heavy wagons the size of river barques bore strange war-machines that resembled navigational astrolabes; spinning globes orbited by flaming spheres, bursting with crackling lightning. Robed priests came with them, each with a flame-topped staff and an entourage of blinded slaves. At the heart of the army were the god-warriors. Nine Ascended (among them Nasus, Aatrox, Ta'anari and Enakai) led by their leader Setaka, were armored in bronze and jade.
The battle was long and bloody. The Icathians would have been overrun by the Shuriman army's might and their god-warriors, if not for the combined power of their mages. What happened next sealed Icathia's fate. The pavilion exploded with forking traceries of light. Arcing loops of purple energy ripped into the sky and lashed down like crashing waves. The force of the blast threw everyone to the ground. 
The sky, once bright and blue, was now the color of a week-old bruise. Unnatural twilight held sway. A nightmarish light, sickly blue and ugly purple, smothered the world, pressing down from above and blooming up from somewhere far below.
An abyss that bled purple light tore open amid the Shurimans, and Setaka was overcome by whipping cords of matter. She fought to free herself with wild sweeps of her blade, but the power of the Void proved too much for her. The pulsing, glowing light spread over her body like a hideous cocoon. Slick coils rising from the earth, or from the very air itself, reached to seize the flesh of mortals. Men and women were swept up and enveloped, bodies dissolved as the tendrils of foul energy overwhelmed them.

Aftermath

At the end of the battle, the territory where Icathia once stood became a Void-taken wasteland from where the forces of the Void attacked every lifeform it encountered. The Shuriman Ascended fought against it for years; many god-warriors and even more mortals died at this war, but through the heroic actions of Horok, who found a way to end Void corruption by destroying the Void hearts found far below the ground, where unknowable, beastly horrors were hidden, the Ascended were able to seal the greatest rifts. On a battle to seal an ocean rift on the eastern coast, Sypahx and Ta'anari fought for ten days and nights and were able to drive the Void back after the death of seven thousand Shuriman warriors upon the red shore. Only the Ascended heroes returned alive.
In the great battle to seal the Great Rift of Icathia, Sabeke and Sabake, twin raven Ascended, had their minds shattered with a glimpse of the Watchers. Even though those were some of the most affected, all the Sunborn (the Ascended who survived the war) lost something with that victory. Nightmarish memories of this war would haunt them and reinforce their fall into Darkin.

Locations

Icathia City

A great and terrible battle was fought against the Void before the walls of ancient Icathia. In the aftermath, the lands all around the damned city became deserted wastes, and its very existence was struck from the maps of Shurima. It was hoped, perhaps foolishly, that the horrors unleashed there would eventually be forgotten.

• Zilean's Tower: A building displaced in time due to Zilean's elemental meddling with time.

The Rupture

On the outskirts of Icathia lies the Rupture—evidence of the Void itself bursting forth from deep beneath the ground, in an age now lost to history. Though the bold and the curious alike have often sought to learn more, only the most foolhardy explorer would ever dare venture into the dark spaces beneath.

Culture

Icathia itself is considered mythical by most, though those who believe it once existed were certain that the sands had long since devoured whatever remained. The believers generally agree that the lost city was located somewhere in the southern half of Shurima, though details beyond this are almost entirely unreliable hearsay. Many explorers have struck out to discover Icathia, but the only fact their findings universally corroborate is that just about everywhere southeast of Shurima is malevolent, ominous, and spooky.

One of the only two living individuals to have been to Icathia and whose testimony may be considered anything more than mere delusion is Kassadin, the Void Walker. 
It is said that he found his way to the forgotten city following the scant breadcrumbs hidden in ancient texts. Within a decaying cyclopean city, Kassadin found secrets of the kind that he will never share - secrets that made him quake with fear at the visions of things to come that were thrust upon him. The power of the place threatened to consume him forever, but Kassadin took the only route available to him in order to survive - he let the Void inside him. Miraculously, he was able to overcome the alien urges that went with it, and he emerged as something more than human.
The other individual that is said to have been to Icathia is Malzahar, the Prophet of the Void. He claims to have traveled there at the urging of an unknown entity that he alone, as a gifted seer, could sense. The main substance of his report of Icathia, besides his demented visions of the yawning chaos and his communion with the entity that beckoned him thence, consists of an alien geometry of a ruined city adorned with bizarre crumbling obelisks and the giant decaying idols of dark and horrific gods. As he looked upon them his eyes, seeing what others cannot, and what none should, were filled with the essence of the Void.

Languages

The Naming conventions of Icathia consists of five elements unique to their culture:

1. Birth name
2. Mother's name
3. Father's name
4. Occupation / social standing
5. Clan name

Examples of such names are:

• Axamuk Var-Choi Kohari Icath'or
• Colgrim Avel-Essa Kohari Icath'un
• Saijax Cail-Rynx Kohari Icath'un Saijax Cail-Rynx Kohari Icath'un

Government

Icathia was once a magocracy, with free citizens ruled by the Mage-Kings. After becominga vassal-state of Shurima, however, they accepted an offer of autonomous satrapy, installing a governing council of distinguished mages, philosophers, and lawmakers to oversee the transition of power.
Icathian thaumaturges were the "magickers of earth and rock," and were tasked during Icathia's final days to excavate a weapon that would turn the tide in their nation's favour. Many of them were part of the governing council.
This is in stark contrast with Shuriman society, wherein slave labor was quite common, with slavemasters exploiting their slaves as labourers, foot-soldiers, and occasionally advisers.

Military

Kohari

The Kohari order consisted of deadly & dedicated "life-wards" of the Icathian Mage-Kings. However, the order failed to prevent the Shurima Sun Empress from deposing the Mage-Kings: many lost their lives fighting Shuriman invaders while surviving members committed suicide, thus ending the Order.
In a last ditch attempt to overthrow the Shuriman oppression and reinstate another Icathian Mage King, many Icathians adopted the occupational name Kohari, revived the order, and fought besides thaumaturges; unfortunately thaumaturges unleashed the Void, causing the ultimate destruction of Icathia.
Since the destruction, only one one known member of the Kohari has remained alive up to the modern age.

Relations

Ixtal During ancient times, both of these nations had cultural ties with one another. Mages from Icathia such as Zilean went to study elemental magics in Ixtali cities such as Ixaocan. After the Void Rupture, the Ixtali Ascended Ne'Zuk constructed a giant superweapon known as the Monolith to combat the entities of the Void. The battle decimated Icathian lands, leaving visible scars upon the entire peninsula. From the rubble and shards of the fallen Monolith, Malphite rose.
Shurima The ancient Empire of Shurima once conquered Icathia by overthrowing its Mage King. Centuries later due to being frequently ignored and marginalized in the greater empire, Icathians rebelled in the hopes of regaining their independence. The result of this rebellion and the hubris of the mages of Icathia, the entire Icathian peninsula was destroyed and corrupted by the Void.
The Void Discovering the Void Rupture near Saabera, Icathian mages were willing to use the power of the Void to combat the larger and stronger armies of Shurima. The result of their hubris ended up creating a Void Rupture in Icathia, spewing the energies of the Void across the entire peninsula. The few remaining survivors such as Jax and Zilean are gathering strength or searching for ways to combat this threat.