Regional history · Freljord
A deeper reading path for the sisters and the modern leaders who inherit them.
Rakelstake, a Freljordian pilgrimage site illustrated in Riot’s regional gallery. · Riot Games
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Ashe, Sejuani and Lissandra introduce the modern Freljord. This official companion shows the legacy of the ancient north, not a reenactment of the Three Sisters’ lives.
Character stories and introductions set in Runeterra.
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Season films revisit different characters and moments. Release order is not the order of events.
Watch on the official channel ↗The Rune · regional history
Avarosa, Serylda and Lissandra first belong to a shared history of conquest and resistance, not three neatly separated modern factions. They joined their abilities in an age when mortal communities competed with old magic. Their later names became banners, but those banners preserve only selected pieces of the people behind them. Understanding the sisters requires keeping their original alliance in view, even when later traditions emphasize its destruction.
The losses described in Lissandra's biography give each sister a distinct place in that past: Serylda lost her voice, Avarosa her hearing and Lissandra her sight. They were wounded by the powers they challenged, yet continued to shape the north. Their authority therefore did not rest on being untouched by danger. It grew from surviving encounters that ordinary people could barely imagine.
Avarosa's defining disagreement with Lissandra concerned freedom. The bargain offered unusual survival while binding its beneficiaries to the Watchers. Avarosa rejected the premise that living longer made submission acceptable. Her resistance was not merely an attempt to replace one sister with another at the head of their forces; it challenged the agreement on which their expanded power depended.
That refusal helps explain why her memory can support a modern politics of hope. Ashe leads people who associate her with Avarosa, but the demands of leadership are concrete: feeding refugees, holding a coalition together and finding alternatives to endless raids. The old name gives those choices a larger meaning. It does not independently establish that Ashe is the ancient sister returned.
Serylda also opposed the fate Lissandra had accepted for their world. The surviving central account gives us fewer personal details about her than about Lissandra. That imbalance matters. A long history should not fill the silence with invented childhoods, speeches or private motives. What can be said is that Serylda helped build the sisters' power and ultimately stood against the surrender that threatened to consume its purpose.
Later traditions attach her memory to northern strength and rival claims of inheritance. Sejuani's own life, however, is explained by the Winter's Claw, her family and the conditions her people face. Treating her as a simple repetition of Serylda would erase that history. The useful connection is how an ancient name can lend legitimacy to a modern leader, even when the connection remains a belief rather than a demonstrated reincarnation.
Lissandra alone survived the catastrophe that destroyed the alliance. She is both a witness and someone with powerful reasons to control what others learn. Her continuing work against the Watchers cannot be separated from her suppression of the past. The Frostguard's public reverence for the sisters and its secrecy about their deaths exist within the same institution.
The three names consequently carry different kinds of authority: resistance remembered, an inheritance contested and a surviving ruler who can still intervene. Their relationship continues to influence the Freljord because memory is one of its political resources. A leader can claim a sister's legacy; Lissandra can try to silence that claim; ordinary people can preserve it in stories. The ancient family conflict survives through those choices.
End of this reading
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These editions keep the publisher’s wording. Their events and publication contexts may differ.
Riot Games · Complete story
Published 2020-06-09
Of all the tales of the old Freljord that have somehow endured into the modern age, there is one—and one alone—that can chill the blood of even the hardiest Iceborn.
The Frostguard do not tell it. Many of them do not even know it, in full.
By decree of the Ice Witch Lissandra herself, to perpetuate this forbidden legend is heresy against the true faith, and carries the penalty of death for any who speak it aloud. In all the vast libraries of the Frostguard Citadel, only a single written account remains—and that was penned by her most trusted scribe, many thousands of years ago. Few indeed are those individuals across Runeterra who know the truth behind the legend, and Lissandra can count on the fingers of one hand those who were there in person and might dare to contradict her…
It was in the final, dark days of the War of the Three Sisters that Avarosa and Serylda finally marched their warriors up into the mountains, to face Lissandra before the walls of her own fortress. They would not serve the otherworldly masters that she had pledged them to. This would be an end to it.
The Ice Witch gestured to the armies they led, the great alliance that had finally brought these wild lands to heel. The mortal Iceborn were all but immune to the winter’s chill. The troll kings had roamed far across the tundra, amassing tremendous wealth from their conquests. Even the magnificent and terrible Balestriders, twisted far beyond their original form, moved now at the command of the Three.
All of this, Lissandra reminded her sisters, was because of the bargain she had made with the masters of the realm below—the beings she knew as Watchers. It was they who had revealed to her the primal secrets of the world. It was they who would have the final victory.
And it was then, at the height of this bitter confrontation, that the Watchers finally came to Runeterra.
The ground split open, swallowing thousands of warriors into the abyss beneath it, before the first of the dread things heaved itself up into existence. It was new to the material realm, bewildered by such notions as form and constancy, and began immediately to rail against them. In a foul riot of unchecked metamorphosis, it sprouted horns, and patches of fur, and its colossal tentacular limbs grew into jointed humanoid arms with fingers that clawed the bare rock of the mountainsides. Worst of all, other Watchers were following closely in its wake, wracked by horrifying transformations of their own.
It might be fair to assume there was a battle, that the Iceborn rallied behind Avarosa and Serylda to fight back the darkness—but in truth, it was Lissandra who ended it. She saw these abominations now for what they were, and knew what had to be done.
Summoning every last iota of the ancient magic around her, including that of her allies, she sacrificed everything to seal the rift-between-realms with True Ice, entombing the Watchers within it. Vast plumes of freezing vapor howled through the chasm, and those mortal warriors who managed to escape were driven to insanity by what they had witnessed.
This, then, is not only the legend of how Lissandra saved the world from destruction, but also the only first-hand account of the martyrdom of Avarosa and Serylda.
And may the Three have mercy upon all who read it.
End of this reading
Open this reading on its own · Original publication · Riot Games ↗
Matt Dunn · Complete story
Published 2020-12-10
A hero is anyone who answers the call to do what must be done.
They sacrifice so much because of a singular truth: this fragile world requires protection.
This means everything to Lissandra, who rarely rests, especially not on nights like tonight, when stars align in strange ways. The round apex of her private sanctum features many rune-inscribed windows to harness the powers from various celestial syzygies.
Thousands of dark, coffin-like ice formations protrude from the snow-carpeted ground. They rise like great black teeth, jutting up from the depths below, poised to devour the sky. She knows exactly how far down these boulders descend, where their roots terminate, and their purpose.
Lissandra strolls through this unique structure. Under this alignment of the Frost Moon and the Cold Star, she sees more without eyes than anyone who has ever dared set foot in this sacred space. Although it is quiet as a tomb, she hears what no one else can—the voices of the half-dreaming and half-dead trapped within each crystalline monolith.
An ancient troll-king says nothing. Its deep-set eyes scream with malice as it tracks her path. When she passes out of sight, the troll-king’s growl shakes its black ice keep.
Lissandra counts thirteen steps from the troll-king to her knight in rusty armor. Tonight, he speaks first.
“Kill the Ice Witch!” he says. His eyes half-lidded, his grim face stoic. His teeth are broken from decades of gnashing.
But his refrain catches on, as Lissandra winds through the forest of midnight ice.
“Kill the Ice Witch,” becomes a rousing chorus, with voices from across the world, all suspended in stasis, reliving the moment they killed said Ice Witch.
As for the Ice Witch herself, she finds it beautiful when such a diverse crowd rallies behind a single course of action. Their tortured nightmares lull others to sleep. Tonight, though, one voice is peculiarly silent.
Lissandra weaves her way through the crevasses between crystals, toward one of the most exotic heroes in her collection. Silence breeds mysteries, and she loves coaxing secrets from unspeaking lips... She feels a shift in temperature, an aura of warmth.
She is not alone. Someone uninvited walks her menagerie. Her footfalls are whispers on the snow as she follows the trail of warmth.
“Frozen tongues have no place here,” Lissandra says.
“Release my sister, witch!” a voice, gruff and husky, cries out.
Lissandra turns toward this unseen threat. Up, is all she has to think for blade-like shards of ice to erupt from the ground, blocking the intruder’s path. She hears wind gush from the infiltrator’s lungs. Then the soft thud of the fall.
“Demands without a greeting make for ill-mannered guests.”
The would-be interloper finds a shred of courage, then her voice.
“M-My sister is Hara from the Caravanserai of Gilded Scarabs. She dreamt of eight hundred years of ice unless she slew the Prophetess of Frost.” The girl mustered some defiance. “Release my sister, witch, and I shall spare your life.”
Lissandra finds no need to waste good breaths on a pitiful laugh.
“Ah, you seek a bargain, then.”
Lissandra runs her bony fingers across the surface of Hara’s casing and listens to the voice trapped within. The guest’s name dances on Hara’s tongue, and now on Lissandra’s as well.
“You ignored your sister’s command, Marjen. You abandoned the caravanserai.”
Marjen recoils from hearing her name on the Ice Witch’s tongue.
“How do you—”
“We are similar. I too deplore the pleas of unwise sisters.”
“Release her now, or I will end you.”
Marjen brandishes a blade that warms the bitter cold. It reeks of familiar and particularly hard-headed magic. Forged by an older spirit whose name Lissandra erased from the Freljord’s memory.
“Consider the Ice Witch’s offer. I shall relieve you of that warm dagger, and in return, reunite you with your dear sister Hara.”
The alignment of the Frost Moon with the Cold Star completes itself. Lissandra cannot see the shimmering pale blue light descending on the grotto. She wonders how it looks to this woman, born in the Great Sai.
Marjen nods in agreement.
“You are smarter than almost everyone here.” Lissandra’s blue lips stretch into a crooked smile.
“Kill the witch!” Hara screams from inside her own dark prison. Marjen’s heart beats out of time.
And her arm follows through. The blade arcs through the cold air. It plunges into Lissandra’s chest.
“You listened to your sister...”
Lissandra slumps to her knees, then topples over. Silently falling snow shrouds her body.
Marjen turns to Hara, encased in cracked ice. Its surface runs slick with brackish meltwater. Dark water pools on the white snow. Whatever magic that held her ebbs.
“Remember when mother taught us to sand-dance? Follow the heat with the soles of your feet. Follow the heat, Hara. Follow me.”
The cracks widen in Hara’s prison as she struggles to break free. Finally, the edifice crumbles and there she is, kneeling by Marjen’s side in an inky puddle. Relief sweeps both their faces as they embrace.
“We did it,” Marjen says. “The caravanserai is safe. There is no eight-hundred-year freeze coming.”
Hara pulls closer, and whispers in Marjen’s ear.
“Sisters who listen...” Instead of Hara’s voice, she hears the cold, calm voice of the Ice Witch. “...are the easiest to trick.”
Marjen breaks their embrace. Hara’s eyes widen at the words pouring out of her mouth. Her lips mouth a single word.
Run.
Only Marjen can’t. Her fur-lined leather boots have iced over, freezing her to the ground. Black ice crawls up their legs.
“I-I killed...” She looks to Lissandra’s body, but sees only virgin snow. That’s when she sees the blade still in her hand.
The realization dawns on Marjen.
“I never threw the knife.”
A flash of chalk-white catches her attention. She looks up to the rune-inscribed window above. Where there should be a Frost Moon over a Cold Star, a pair of dark blue lips stretch into a mocking grin.
“Sisters,” Lissandra whispers to the two women inside their frozen tombs, “inseparable, devoted, but still so utterly foolish...”
Marjen and Hara, their arms wrapped around each other in a sisterly embrace that turns to terror. They lock eyes as the dark ice entombs their faces.
Lissandra admires her latest acquisition. “I found it more convenient to lose mine.”
Where a single rock of black ice once stood, two now stand, joined together at the base. Sisters perpetually reunited—Marjen and Hara from the Great Sai, their bond stronger than the distance between tundra and desert. A reunion so powerful, Lissandra tastes the satisfaction of the feasting monsters below. The illusions cast by the dreams of the sisters, projected through ice, will keep the beasts slumbering a little while longer.
How exhausting this work is, lulling monsters to sleep.
Tonight, Lissandra too may rest. For the hero protects this fragile world just a little bit longer.
End of this reading
Open this reading on its own · Original publication · Riot Games ↗
Keep the thread
The foundational Freljord chronicle of Avarosa, Serylda and Lissandra.
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How food, weather, oaths and raids shape Freljordian politics.
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The buried horror beneath Freljordian myth and Lissandra's impossible bargain.
Read the story →Their lives are a separate story
The source archive
The Rune’s original account, with separately captioned official illustrations. Sources distinguish regional history from individual biographies.
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