Zoe (Zo-ee)

The Aspect of Twilight

“I bring a message for you all—a warning, a sigil. But first, I wanna see the sparkleflies!”

Biography

As the embodiment of mischief, imagination, and change, Zoe acts as the cosmic messenger of Targon, heralding major events that reshape worlds. Her mere presence warps the arcane mathematics governing realities, sometimes causing cataclysms without conscious effort or malice. This perhaps explains the breezy nonchalance with which Zoe approaches her duties, giving her plenty of time to focus on playing games, tricking mortals, or otherwise amusing herself. An encounter with Zoe can be joyous and life affirming, but it is always more than it appears and often extremely dangerous.
As befits her Targonian Aspect’s nature, Zoe did not come to the attention of the celestial realm in any traditional way. She didn’t win a great victory against overwhelming odds, or sacrifice herself for a noble ideal, or overcome the existential trial of climbing Mount Targon. Instead, Zoe was a normal girl, seemingly chosen at random from among the Rakkor. Her teachers reported Zoe to be an imaginative child, but willful, lazy, mischievous, and easily distracted. One day, as she skipped away from her studies of the holy texts to pursue something “less boring,” she was noticed by the Aspect of Twilight.
It observed as the young girl playfully mocked the angry cries of the scholarly priests chasing her through the village. Then, after an hour-long pursuit, she found herself cornered against the sheer drop of a cliff’s edge. Before Zoe’s teachers could grab her, the Aspect summoned six objects in front of her: a bag of gold coins, a sword, a completed study book, a devotion rug, a silk rope, and a toy ball. Five of these items could have let her flee, or otherwise defuse the situation.
Zoe chose the sixth option.
Unconcerned with escape or forgiveness, she instead grabbed the toy ball, kicked it toward the wall of a nearby house, and sang gleefully as it ricocheted among the humorless priests.
The Aspect hadn’t seen such joyful irreverence in the face of peril since its last host, who heralded the end of the Great Darkin War. Delighted by Zoe’s carefree exuberance, it opened a shimmering portal to the apex of Mount Targon, offering the girl a chance to see the universe. She dived backward into the portal, instantly merging with the Aspect, then stuck her tongue out at her dumbfounded teachers as she disappeared.
This transcendence was unique—in fact, it was unheard of in all the myths and legends of Targon. Yet Zoe did not trouble herself with why the rules that govern Aspects had been changed just for her. She didn’t trouble herself with rules at all. Instead, she journeyed to dimensions of reality at the very edge of mortal comprehension, playing with powers seen by few before or since.
While for Zoe barely a year had passed, she returned home after what had apparently been many centuries in Runeterra. Full of teenage curiosity, she wondered what she had missed while she was away. Fortunately, she could traverse the streams of time with only a thought. Among the events she witnessed were the rise and fall of “the big armored meanie,” Mordekaiser; the destruction of the Blessed Isles in the “Spooky Ghost Party”; the cataclysms of the “War for Sparkly Rocks”; and the founding of a dour new nation near the “No Fun Forest.”
One thing in particular became clear to Zoe—she was not alone. Walking the mortal world were other Aspects, in fact more than ever before. More friends for her to meet! But they brushed her aside time and again, seeming rather preoccupied with whatever it was they were doing in the spaces between realms. Intrigued, Zoe traveled to the stars, where she found the great cosmic dragon, Aurelion Sol.
Although he clearly despised her, as he did all of her kind, Zoe always returned to the dragon’s side, trying to discover what aggrieved him. From his bombastic and self-aggrandizing diatribes, she gleaned that her fellow Aspects had humiliated him, crowning him with a cursed artifact to siphon away his power.
Zoe felt sorry for this poor “space doggy,” and vowed to do what she could to protect him. For his part, Aurelion Sol has at least stopped threatening to destroy her when he eventually takes his long-overdue vengeance.
Whether Zoe’s curious relationship with the Star Forger is due to a mere whim, possessiveness, or her function as a cosmic disrupter, no one can be certain.
For the scholars and mystics of Mount Targon, the emergence of an Aspect is usually a joyous occasion... but Zoe’s unpredictability gives them pause, as not even she knows what her presence could portend. The only certainty is that Runeterra is on the brink of a profound transformation—one that may come at the cost of chaos, destruction, and blood.

Meet Zoe

The moment she thought of the cake store, Zoe dove into the air, surrendering herself to gravity. While falling, she reached out with her consciousness to form a gateway. Instantly, a portal opened beneath her and connected to the other place. She fell into the gate. Her mass collided and imploded as she traveled. It kinda tickles.
Unfortunately, Zoe did not appear at her intended destination. Instead, she emerged from a second portal only a dozen strides away, propelled through the air by the momentum of her previous fall. Then, after a brief moment of equilibrium, she was pulled back into the second portal. Again, time and space twisted around her—all swooshy-like, as she would describe it—before flopping her back at the starting point. Both portals then folded into space and disappeared.
A powerful magic was distorting Zoe’s ability to travel. It probably related to whatever change she was supposed to herald, and, obviously, she hadn’t succeeded yet. It was a problem, but not an unfamiliar one. She wasn’t really sure what the message was, who it was for, or even what it meant, but, in her experience, those details rarely mattered. The holy mathematics wanted to advance, and the messages generally fell into place shortly after she arrived. Zoe felt that was a pretty cool advantage of being an Aspect.
Of course, there was now the question of what to do while she waited. Zoe glanced around. Beside a nearby tree, she spotted a small, fuzzy creature with a huge tail. It looked similar to a tiny yordle, though Zoe noted how this creature’s connection to the spirit world was comparatively miniscule.
The small animal’s life-pattern flashed in Zoe’s brain. It would live only a dozen rotations before returning its spirit. To her, the brevity of its life made it more adorable. Zoe jumped up and ran toward it.
“So cute!”
The tiny animal scrambled up the tree away from her.
“Hey, come back!” she pouted.
Without slowing her pursuit, Zoe created a time bubble, turning it only half a planet’s rotation, before launching it at the tree. The anomaly bounced before bursting against the tree’s trunk.
For a second, the cute animal’s past merged with the present. The night sky overtook the area, and twilight butterflies pulsed around it. The small creature fell into the tired, restful sleep of the previous evening, as its past’s spiritual and mental state overwhelmed its current consciousness.
Zoe ignored gravity for a moment, floated up into the branches, and came to a stop beside the tiny animal. Her hand hesitated above its downy fur. She knew the moment she touched the creature, her spell would break.
“Zoe is a friend,” she whispered. But when she caressed the tiny animal’s head, it burst awake and dove away from her in a panic.
With a disappointed moan, Zoe floated a bit higher before flipping upside down. She considered visiting Aurelion Sol after she finished here. The dragon didn’t like being petted either. But, she thought, he was easier to catch without harming. This notion vanished as, thanks to her new altitude, Zoe saw past the hills and spotted a village on the horizon.
She willed a portal to the town into existence and dove into it. But, again, Zoe was only able to create a gate to a few yards away. Worse, it collapsed upon itself, as before, and pulled her back to her starting point.
The summer grass did seem inviting, so with no better option, she walked through the forest to the village.
She arrived at the outskirts of the walled town as the sun began to set. Hearing laughter, she dismissed gravity for a second and floated up to one of the village’s rooftops.
In the center courtyard, a half dozen mortals were playing. They were almost exactly Zoe’s size, unlike the children or adults she had encountered more recently in her tour of the planet.
One of the males chased a female around in a circle. Both were laughing. The rules of the game were unclear.
Zoe focused on the girl’s beautiful red dress—wondering if the coloration represented something. Even if it wasn’t a part of the game, Zoe liked it. The girl seemed taller than the other females, and Zoe felt the girl might know things she needed to learn.
The male was also interesting, but in a completely different way. She could tell his current incarnation would be short lived, but Zoe suspected it would be amazing if he chased her. There was something wonderful about his chin and the shape of his lips.
She swallowed nervously. It had, after all, been a very long time since Zoe was a mortal or had even visited this realm. She was strangely worried the group wouldn’t accept her, and she would be left out of whatever they were playing.
Two of the other boys, decidedly less interesting ones, began kicking a ball between themselves. This game, Zoe remembered.
Emboldened by this connection, Zoe swooped down from the rooftop to the middle of the group.
“Hi!” she said, while turning the base of her hair into a color that mimicked the tall female’s dress.
“A spirit,” the interesting boy said with wide eyes. Then he screamed, “Run!”
Zoe felt she should point out she was an Aspect rather than a spirit, but she was uncertain if his cry was part of the other game’s rules.
“Actually, I’m here with a message. But if you wanted to play, I have plenty of time,” she said, as she launched after them.
Then she flew, as casually as she could, alongside the tall girl.
“Your red outfit is so cool! Does the color mean something?” Zoe asked. But her attempt at starting a conversation hardly mattered. As she spoke, the tall girl was pulled into a house by the interesting boy. He then slammed the heavy, wooden door shut, blocking Zoe’s path.
Zoe glanced around, discovering the other mortals had similarly disappeared, but a commotion could be heard coming from a keep near the center of the town.
After a moment, a dozen men in armor came running toward Zoe with spears. They reminded her of Pantheon’s weapon.
Local guardians, she surmised.
Assuming she was a spirit, they screamed warnings, while their leader attempted a banishing spell. It was a very good spell, in Zoe’s opinion, but not one she wanted. She wondered if, perhaps, spirits frequently plagued the town.
When the men began throwing their weapons at Zoe, she manifested an arcane meteor and sent it on a flight path around the keep. Then, the twilight girl created a pair of portals to dodge the guardian’s spears, before finally redirecting the shooting star at her attackers.
The meteor’s impact created an implosion, causing a chain reaction with the small particles it had gathered while flying, which resulted in a secondary explosion that thundered through the guards and their tower—annihilating the area into a fine dust.
“Hello?” Zoe asked as the clouds of destruction whirled around her. She wondered if the tall girl or the interesting boy had run away. It seemed likely.
Momentarily dispirited, Zoe decided to visit a larger mortal settlement next. It seemed like someone might be willing to play with her at that sort of location.
Zoe remembered where a... city had been a few thousand years ago. On instinct and despite her previous failures, she willed a portal to it. And she was pleasantly surprised when a gateway opened to her intended destination.
“Oh cool!” she said, happy to be able to travel again, and eager to deliver her next message.
As Zoe stepped out of reality, she wondered if the new crater would lead some mortals to find the World Rune that was nearby. The tall girl or that interesting boy might even be the ones to discover it.
It would probably be funny if they did, she decided.

Divine Classification

Aspect

Current Location

Celestial Realm

Species

Human

Ethnicity

Rakkor

Realm

Celestial Realm

Age

1398-1548

Pronouns

She/Her

Sex

Female

Gender

Woman