Previous Lore
In Noxus, any citizen may rise to power regardless of race, gender, or social standing - strength is all that matters. It was with committed faith in this ideal that 
Riven strove to greatness. She showed early potential as a soldier, forcing herself to master the weight of a long sword when she was barely its height. She was ruthless and efficient as a warrior, but her true strength lay in her conviction. She entered battles without any trace of doubt in her mind: no ethical pause, no fear of death.
Riven became a leader amongst her peers, poster child of the Noxian spirit. So exceptional was her passion that the High Command recognized her with a black stone 
rune sword forged and enchanted with Noxian sorcery. The weapon was heavier than a kite shield and nearly as broad - perfectly suited to her tastes. Soon after, she was deployed to Ionia as part of the Noxian invasion.
What began as war quickly became extermination. Noxian soldiers followed the terrifying Zaunite war machines across fields of death. It wasn't the glorious combat for which Riven trained. She carried out the orders of her superiors, terminating the remnants of a beaten and fractured enemy with extreme prejudice.
As the invasion continued, it became clear that Ionian society would not be reformed, merely eliminated. During one bitter engagement, Riven's unit became surrounded by Ionian forces. They called for support as the enemy closed in around them. What they received instead was a barrage of biochemical terror launched by 
Singed. Riven watched as around her Ionian and Noxian alike fell victim to an unspeakably gruesome fate. She managed to escape the bombardment, though she could not erase the memory.
Counted dead by Noxus, she saw an opportunity to start anew. She shattered her 
sword - severing ties with the past - and wandered in self-imposed exile. Now she seeks atonement and her own way to serve the pure Noxian vision in which she believed.
- Candidate
- Date
- 9 September, 21 CLE
- Observation
The weight Riven carries seems to hang in the air around her. The remnants of her Noxian armor are tarnished, they speak of her absence from duty. The broken sword she carries is, in itself, so massive that imagination falters to conceive of the blade's original size.
The echo of battle lingers with her. It smolders in her eyes, tenses in her grip, and coils in her step. It never leaves her. She is there now still, in the midst of it, as she enters the marble doors.
- Reflection
Riven's fingers played along the edges of her blade's runic inscription - an idle habit, long deprived of meaning. Her thoughts went where they often went in darkness: to dark memories. She gritted her teeth. There was nothing quite so cutting as the recollection of a guilty mind.
She twitched, involuntarily, as the scene of her death unraveled before her.
A damp fog yawned across the valley floor sheepishly, as though reluctant to conceal the horrors of the day. The gagging stench would have betrayed its effort, had not the smell so thoroughly permeated the Ionian countryside. Death was now a permanent resident of the somber isle, and its purchase grew with every passing hour. After so many similar fields, Riven no longer took account of it.
Dusk was settling as the company marched on, the stamp of their boots thick and dull crossing the grimy stretch. Riven's own boots were becoming stained a deep brown by the mud. She felt a pang of nausea as she realized it wasn't rainwater that dampened the soil.
She forced the thought out of her head. There would be more fields, more fogs, more harrowing muck - she could process it all later. "Focus is essential", her drill instructor used to bark. "A lot happens in the chaos of battle, but you can only accomplish one thing at a time."
Now it was marching.
Fury Company had trudged for days to catch up with the rest of the 42nd Standard, and the dreary trail through the Zaunite Melters' aftermath was... messy. War was all about casualties, but the rising number of civilian losses was staggering. The High Command had expected the peace-loving Ionians to roll over and surrender in the face of Noxus' military juggernaut. Instead the resistance was fierce and unrelenting. For a society that preached pacifism, the Ionians didn't hesitate to get their hands dirty.
Riven was impressed.
This was a particularly grim scene. The Coeur Valley was one of the few passageways through which the Melters could cross the foothills of northern Shon-Xan. The Ionians had made a desperate stand there that morning, hoping to stem or slow the pace of Zaun's death machines. It was a telling failure for Ionia. They hadn't even managed to scramble half the forces Noxian intelligence had predicted, and ample countermeasures were taken long before the Melters attempted the pass. Still, for such a meager resistance, Riven couldn't help but notice the abundance of Noxian uniforms littered amongst the dead.
A day or two behind, the Noxian cleanup effort was requesting reinforcements.
Riven's attention was drawn to the path by the sound of advancing footsteps. Someone was approaching the group from the front. Riven raised her blade high, halting the company and eclipsing herself beneath it. It was a true Noxian weapon, built to instill fear at sight alone.
The figure emerged from the fog. It was a girl, a couple years older than Riven, stumbling as she walked. Her clothes were torn and matted with blood. When she saw the company, her eyes went wide.
"No no no no no", she muttered. "No more, please." She fell to her knees and started weeping.
Riven ordered two men to retrieve the girl. Handling civilians was a chore that had wearied the men over the past several weeks. They'd been trained to kill soldiers in battle, not to dispatch helpless bystanders. Ionia didn't even have a standing military.
Only the strong survive, Riven reminded herself.
The two soldiers reached the girl and stood to either side, each silently hoping the other would take the lead. Riven was about to intervene when the girl made a quick motion and a thin red mist appeared in front of her. The two soldiers crumpled, dead before they hit the ground.
"Ambush!" Her warning was lost amongst the cries of her soldiers. On all sides of the company, corpses were rising, weapons in hand, and charging into their ranks. Except they weren't dead. Their eyes were very much alive with hateful resolve. Riven remembered the intelligence reports: 'less than half' the expected opposition. It was a trap. The Ionians had planned this all along.
Already the rear guard was overtaken. Riven screamed for the unit to collapse to a defensive formation. The army needed to be warned. She drew a distress flare from her belt and fired into the darkening sky. Pale green light illuminated the entire valley.
One of the Ionians leapt out at Riven. She slashed upward, bisecting him lengthwise. The Ionians had the advantage, but Riven wasn't one to surrender. If they could defeat her in combat, they deserved this victory. The strong 'would' prevail.
The remaining Noxian soldiers tightened their ranks, backs to each other. Nearly half the company was already dead or dying. The Ionians were taking their time now, savoring the growing Noxian despair.
They were surrounded and outnumbered. Her men were tired, demoralized. The Ionians, by contrast, were fueled by their hate. She wondered how long they had lain there, amongst the bodies of fallen friends, waiting for this moment. She tightened her grip on the sword. One way or another, she would end this.
A blinding ball of light erupted thirty feet in front of her, sending Ionians flying. Riven spun, looking for a source, just as another explosion hit the edge of the Noxian circle. Riven's ears were ringing, all she could hear was her heartbeat. Noxian and Ionian soldiers were in chaos, some fighting, some running, some... clawing at their skin.
And then she realized it. The Melters had opened fire on them.
Only the strong survive, she repeated... but that was meaningless here. Nobody would survive. By all rights, the Ionians should have won this fight, but they too would die. How did this follow the Noxian way?
As she fled the cursed valley, explosions rocked the ground around her. Soldiers on both sides were subjected to horrific, unspeakable deaths. Something changed in her then. The conviction with which she charged boldly to war had evaporated, and without it she was... lost.
The memory neared its conclusion. Though she'd relived it a thousand times over, Riven never understood why that day went the way it did. She didn't know why Noxus depended on Zaun's horrific techmaturgy instead of its own military. She didn't know why she didn't see the ambush coming. She didn't know why she survived.
"Why do you want to join the League, Riven?" Behind her, the weeping girl stood, matted in blood, tears running down her cheeks. But the voice was out of place.
"This isn't right... " Riven started, but the valley around her was melting away. This was some kind of trick.
"Why do you want to join the League, Riven?"
"What are you---"
"Why do you want to join the League?" Impatience.
"I don't know!" Riven spat. She was stung by the invasion of her mind. She'd lived with this memory for years, but it was something she wouldn't, 'couldn't' share. She took a deep breath, "I fought for something once, but it was a lie." Spoken in her own voice, the words hurt to hear. "I still love Noxus, I never stopped. But now... I want to fight on my own terms."
"How does it feel, exposing your mind?"
Riven let the question turn in her mind. So many times she wanted to confide in someone, to let someone else shoulder the burden. But telling the story - even watching it through her own eyes - didn't ease the pain. It was hers alone, and some things could never be shared.
"Exposed or not, it changes nothing."
Then the girl was gone, and she was alone in the Institute. Her broken sword glowed dimly at her side. The illusion was invasive, but she'd almost forgotten the former heft of her sword. As if in response, a faint green outline played out from the shard, tracing the blade's former curve. She felt a sudden wash of reassurance. Perhaps she wasn't so lost after all.
Previous Splash Art
Patch History
Broken Wings
- Bug Fix: Can no longer both pop a spell shield and deal damage in specific circumstances.
- General
- Bug Fix: During her joke animation, her fingers no longer clip through her sword.
- Runic Blade
- Removed: On-hit effect procing against wards.
- Dawnbringer Riven
- Ki Burst
- Bug Fix: No longer causes other Rivens in the same game to steal Ki Burst SFX.
- Dawnbringer Riven
- Bug Fix: Fixed special borders being cut off at the bottom during loading screen.
- Broken Wings
- Bug Fix: Casting it too quickly after one another no longer prevents unit targeting from working properly on casts beyond the first.
- General
- New Effect: Runic Blade's buff duration, Broken Wings' recast window, and Blade of the Exile's buff duration are now tracked as timers overlaid above their ability icons, rather than via buff bar icons.
- New Effect:
- Runic Blade
- New Effect: Stacks are now tracked below her health bar and are only visible to Riven.
- Broken Wings
- The timing around when Riven becomes able to animation cancel Q casts, as well as how long she has to animation cancel, have both been made more consistent.
- New Effect: Can no longer joke, taunt, or laugh during Broken Wings's animations.
- New Effect: Can more reliably target units on high-latency environments.
- Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where the knockback on Broken Wings's third cast ended sooner than intended if it interrupted a different displacement effect or if the target collided with terrain.
- Valor
- Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where spell queueing sometimes didn't properly work when casting Valor during Broken Wings' animation.
- Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where spell queueing sometimes didn't properly work when casting Valor during
- Valor
- Bug Fix: Riven being able to cancel crowd control applied by displacements.
- Broken Wings
- Bug Fix: Third cast not allowing Riven to go through walls if Valor is active.
- Bug Fix: Third cast not allowing Riven to go through walls if
- Battle Bunny Riven
- Broken Wings
- Bug Fix: Missing sound effects.
- Wind Slash
- Bug Fix: Missing sound effects.
- Error: Skin Championship for Riven is not specified in Module:SkinData/data.
- Broken Wings
- Bug Fix: Third cast's custom blue on-hit particles being replaced with Classic's green ones.
- Wind Slash
- Bug Fix: Custom blue on-hit particles being replaced with Classic's green ones.
- Wind Slash
- Minimum base damage increased to 100 / 150 / 200 from 80 / 120 / 160.
- Maximum base damage increased to 300 / 450 / 600 from 240 / 360 / 480.
- Runic Blade
- Bonus damage increased to Error: Parameter '3' is not accepted.% AD from Error: Parameter '3' is not accepted.% AD.
- Stats
- Base health regeneration increased to 5.34 from 3.34.
- Broken Wings
- Bug Fix: Third cast sometimes failing to get Riven through terrain she is supposed to be able to cross.
- Blade of the Exile
- Cooldown increased to 130 / 95 / 60 seconds from 110 / 85 / 50.
- Broken Wings
- Bug Fix: Cooldown being incorrectly reset at the end if Riven performed certain actions between casts.
- General
- Base movement speed reduced to 340 from 345.
- Wind Slash
- Projectile speed reduced to 1600 from 2200.
- Stats
- Base armor increased to 19 from 15.
- Stats
- Base health regeneration reduced to 2.5 from 5.
- Valor
- Shield strength increased to 90 / 120 / 150 / 180 / 210 from 70 / 100 / 130 / 160 / 190.
- Stats
- Base attack damage reduced to 51 from 54.
- Attack damage per level increased to 3 from 2.75.
- Broken Wings
- Damage per cast changed to 10 / 30 / 50 / 70 / 90 (+ 40 / 45 / 50 / 55 / 60% AD) from 30 / 55 / 80 / 105 / 130 (+ 70% bonus AD)
- Valor
- Shield duration reduced to 1.5 seconds from 2.5.
- General
- New running animation.
- Broken Wings
- New Effect: Third cast allows Riven to go through some terrain when positioned accordingly.
- Third cast's displacement changed to knockup from knockback.
- Wind Slash
- Bug Fix: Riven being able to cast a second time after using Zhonya's Hourglass.
- Bug Fix: Riven being able to cast a second time after using
- Runic Blade
- Bonus damage changed to Error: Parameter '3' is not accepted.% AD from Error: Parameter '3' is not accepted. (+ 50% bonus AD).
- (Undocumented) bonus damage increased to Error: Parameter '3' is not accepted.% AD from Error: Parameter '3' is not accepted.% AD.
- Broken Wings
- Bug Fix: Splash damage being incorrectly applied if Valor was cast too recently.
- Bug Fix: Splash damage being incorrectly applied if
- Stats
- Base health regeneration reduced to 6 from 10.4.
- Health regeneration per level reduced to 0.5 from 0.9.
- Valor
- Shield strength increased to 70 / 100 / 130 / 160 / 190 from 60 / 90 / 120 / 150 / 180.
- Blade of the Exile
- New Effect: Targeting cone is attached to Riven.
- Cooldown increased to 110 / 80 / 50 seconds from 75 / 60 / 45.
- Stats
- Movement speed increased to 345 from 320.
- Broken Wings
- New Effect: Movement commands issued within dash range are canceled to prevent Riven from automatically walking backwards.
- Broken Wings
- Bug Fix: Riven being unable to move during the third cast.
- Blade of the Exile
- New Effect: Allied ultimate HUD indicator remains green until Wind Slash is used.
- New Effect: Allied ultimate HUD indicator remains green until
- Stats
- Movement speed reduced to 320 from 325.
- Base health regeneration reduced to 10.4 from 12.
- Health regeneration per level reduced to 0.9 from 1.
- Broken Wings
- Base damage increased to 30 / 55 / 80 / 105 / 130 from 30 / 50 / 70 / 90 / 110.
- Ki Burst
- Base damage reduced to 50 / 80 / 110 / 140 / 170 from 50 / 90 / 130 / 170 / 210.
- Blade of the Exile
- New Effect: Tooltip displays the exact 20% AD value gained as bonus attack damage while active.
- General
- Bug Fix: Riven stopping her movement after being issued certain commands.
- Bug Fix: Riven's hitbox radius being incorrectly calculated.
- Broken Wings
- Bug Fix: Temporarily leaving unpathable killed minions behind.
- Ki Burst
- Bug Fix: Temporarily leaving unpathable killed minions behind.
- Broken Wings
- New Effect: Counts as an attack command when used to lock onto a target.
- Duration of minion collision ignoring after third cast slightly increased.
- Stats
- Attack speed per level increased to 3.5% from 2.9%.
- Base armor increased to 15 from 12.
- Broken Wings
- AD ratio increased to 70% bonus AD from 60% bonus AD.
- Ki Burst
- Cast time reduced to 0.25 seconds from 0.5.
- Valor
- Base shield strength increased to 60 / 90 / 120 / 150 / 180 from 40 / 70 / 100 / 130 / 160.
- Cooldown reduced to 10 / 9 / 8 / 7 / 6 seconds from 11 / 10 / 9 / 8 / 7.
- Wind Slash
- Cast time reduced to 0.25 seconds from 0.5.
- Projectile speed increased to 2200 from 2000.
- Added