#defense of the ancients

Day 4 - Raijin, the Storm Spirit

Storm Spirit is literally a force of nature–the wild power of wind and weather, bottled in human form. And a boisterous, jovial, irrepressible form it is! As jolly as a favorite uncle, he injects every scene with crackling energy. But it was not always thus, and there was tragedy in his creation. Generations ago, in the plains beyond the Wailing Mountains, a good people lay starving in drought and famine. A simple elementalist, Thunderkeg by name, used a forbidden spell to summon the spirit of the storm, asking for rain. Enraged at this mortal’s presumption, the Storm Celestial known as Raijin lay waste to the land, scouring it bare with winds and flood. Thunderkeg was no match for the Celestial–at least until he cast a suicidal spell that forged their fates into one: he captured the Celestial in the cage of his own body. Trapped together, Thunderkeg’s boundless good humor fused with Raijin’s crazed energy, creating the jovial Raijin Thunderkeg, a Celestial who walks the world in physical form.

Badge design by Rebecca Sharkey
27 days until The International, 2014.

Day 3 - Crixalis, the Sand King

The sands of the Scintillant Waste are alive and sentient–the whole vast desert speaks to itself, thinking thoughts only such a vastness can conceive. But when it needs must find a form to communicate with those of more limited scope, it frees a fragment of itself, and fills a carapace of magic armor formed by the cunning Djinn of Qaldin. This essential identity calls itself Crixalis, meaning ‘Soul of the Sand,’ but others know it as Sand King. Sand King takes the form of a huge arachnid, inspired by the Scintillant Waste’s small but ubiquitous denizens; and this is a true outward expression of his ferocious nature. Guardian, warrior, ambassador–Sand King is all of these things, inseparable from the endless desert that gave him life.

Badge design by Rebecca Sharkey
28 days until The International, 2014.

Day 2 - Ethreain, the Lich

In life, the frost-mage Ethreain (not yet a Lich) had used the threat of destructive ice to enslave entire kingdoms. His subjects, aided by a few desperate magicians, eventually grew bold enough to ambush him. Armed with enough charmed rope to bind him forever, they tied the frost mage to adamant weights and dropped him in a pool known chiefly for being bottomless. It wasn’t. He only fell for a year or so before an outcrop snagged him. There he rested, dead but undecaying, until the geomancer Anhil thought to verify the legend of the supposedly bottomless Black Pool. Anhil’s plumbline snarled with the ropes that bound the drowned magician, and up he hauled an unexpected prize. Thinking that by rendering the dead undead, he could question the Lich about the properties of the pool, he removed the bindings and commenced a simple rite of resurrection. Even the descendants of Ethreain’s enemies were long forgotten by time, so there were none to warn Anhil against imprudence. But he learned the error of his judgment almost immediately, as Lich threw off the shackles and consumed him.

Badge design by Rebecca Sharkey
29 days until The International, 2014.

Day 1 - DotA 2

Established (officially released) in 2013 after that year’s The International competition. Owned and developed by VALVe. 

Badge design by Rebecca Sharkey
30 days until The International, 2014.