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mollysunder · 8 months

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Silco, Amara, and the Blood Moon Cult in Zaun

It's more likely that Silco was sending his shipment of Shimmer to Ionia rather than Noxus. It's easy to conclude that Silco was expanding his market into Noxian war bands because it's Noxus, of course they'd want it. But why would Silco trust Noxian clients with such a sensitive weapon when Noxus is so close to Piltover? A good chunk of Piltover's upper crust, which includes Councilors, go out of their way to accommodate their Noxian clients, even if it means engaging in illegal trade. Despite their principles on "peace" Piltover is fine to host a Noxian war lord, and when the Hexgates temporarily closed the people they voice concern for are for no one else but their Noxian clientele.

If Silco supplied Noxians with Shimmer and he managed to successfully establish Zaun. There's nothing stopping disgruntled Piltovans to call upon their own allies in Noxus to crush his revolution using the same weapon he used to start it. Once he sends it to Noxus, Silco has no real control over which war band actually gets the Shimmer, and who they're loyal to. Plus trusting Noxians is a losing game, they're more likely to try to steal Shimmer factories then do business.

If anything, the show points toward Ionia interacting more commonly with Zaun than with Piltover. Sure there are some cool easter eggs that reference Ionian champs like Jhin, and skinlines like the Blood Moon, but there's an actual tangible presence not found in Piltover. And it starts with the two mysterious figures in the background of episode 1.

They stand out not just because they're height and clothes, but because they're wearing very specific masks. Both these monks are wearing masks with the Blood Moon on their forehead. Despite the fact it's just the Lunari symbol flipped upside down, the Blood Moon cult is Ionian in origin. Technically the cult only exists in an alternate universe skin line where they're characterized as members of a secret order that performs arcane rites to merge with demons and harness their power, in the canon line it's only supposed to be a holiday in Ionia, like the lunar new year. Then again, Arcane isn't beholden to canon and tends to do its own thing.

We never see them topside in Piltover, but we do see someone dressed in a similar fashion, it's Amara. The Blood Moon cultists cover themselves in purple cloth and wear two orange ornaments shaped into the blood moon sigil that hang on either side of the front of their hats, with a third purple sigil on the forehead of their masks. On the two different occasions we see Amara she largely wears purple. And up close we can see that her she wears orange-red earrings with a purple bindi at the center of her forehead. The only thing missing are the crescents that wrap around the blood moon.

At first, I would have called this coincidence, but then I took further notice of her appearance. She appears to dress like a typical wealthy merchant from Piltover, but if you look closer, you notice glaring inconsistencies. Her entire outfit is off, it's got the general cut of a Councilors outfit, but it's also purposefully uneven in length of cloth and adornments, almost like you'd find in Zaun. I've mentioned before that the rich in Piltover probably play around with Zaunite fashion at parties, but Amara's outfit is practically casual in its asymmetry compared to her peers.

Amara's outfit makes her look like an outlier compared to everyone else. We already know Amara is corrupt, she donates large sums of cash to Piltover Academy so that Piltover looks the other way when her charters don't make sense, which means she's a smuggler.

But what does any of this have to do with Silco and the Shimmer trade? It's because Amara was helping Silco facilitate it through her own ships.

Let's thinks about it. One, Silco may be an industrialist to the Council but he needs contacts on the inside to keep track of developments in Piltover, he can't just rely on Marcus. He needs more established cover when he has Shimmer shipped out. Two, his crew may have been on the ship, but that doesn't mean the ship belonged to Silco. Silco has money, but not THAT much money by Piltovan standards. A part of their arrangement could just be that Amara provides her name and a ship (not a nice one), but Silco needs to cover the bribe, and give Amara a percentage of the profit.

Silco's probably cultivated a litany strange bedfellows both within and outside Piltover's borders to ensure Zaun's rise. Amara's donations means she gets to be among the first to hear about new developments in Hextech before the market does. Amara might share the news with Ionia and Silco, because how else did Jinx know where to find the hexgem with time to spare for graffiti? How would Silco know that the gem was actually important when he saw it for the first time and not just a high quality rock? According to the Council Archives, this wouldn't even be the first time Silco has recruited a Piltovan, one of his chembarons, Chross of the Hush Company, is originally Piltovan but is now dedicated to Zaunite Independence.

But what does Amara get out of it? Easy, arms for Ionia, or at least her faction.

Ionia's situation is tricky to explain because Arcane doesn't really follow League of Legends canon. It gets the general idea, but then does other stuff. The First Invasion of Ionia by Noxus led to the slaughter of countless Ionians during Noxus's occupation, which included soldiers and civilians alike. The Ionian region was wildly unprepared for the war as the people of the region promoted a culture of peaceful resolution towards each other and nature, while the Emperor of Noxus wanted to kill as many Ionians as possible to steal anything that MIGHT grant him immortality. To drive out Noxus, they had to take arms and defend themselves to end the brutality. After barely winning, plenty of provinces within Ionia (there's no real centralized government) we're left to decide how to move forward both culturally and geopolitically. Some factions sought to return to their pacifist isolationism, other groups are building an ultranationalist movement to unify Ionia under one leader and to militarize Ionia's magic, it's a mixed bag.

The Blood Moon cult, or whatever they call themselves in Arcane, is probably one answer some Ionians found as they dealt with Noxus's occupation. If you noticed the original iteration of the Blood Moon cult is bathed in red, but the cultists cover themselves in purple, Lunari purple. I've already talked at length about the possible Lunari diaspora in Zaun, but I didn't mention the one that canonically exists in Ionia!

To escape the ongoing pogroms organized the Solari, many Lunari either went into hiding or fled the Targonian region altogether. Some Lunari managed to flee all the way to Ionia. Imagine the utter devastation to know all the struggle to find safety meant nothing when Noxus invaded. It all just doubles over because in Arcane, we see Noxian war lords like Ambessa terrorize Targonian Lunari like the princess in Mel's flashback, likely with the aid of Solari allies. It never stopped for them. What's even worse is that NONE of the other regions aided them during the slaughter, the only real aid was the emperor's own incompetence.

After the war, I'm sure a good portion of Ionia's Lunari diaspora, and plenty of other Ionians never wanted to be that vulnerable again and are currently seeking ways to increase their military strength. Thematically, it goes hand in hand with Silco's own struggle to create an independent Zaun to escape Piltover's brutality, the willingness to do anything, no matter how dark to defeat a superior enemy. So, as problematic as Shimmer can be, it's an effective healer and strength enhancer in a vial for the desperate.

But how do we know that the First Invasion of Ionia even happened yet? Because Arcane has already hinted at Urgot appearing next season.

Urgot as a champion was a former executioner for Noxus. In Urgot's lore, Swain had to make sure Urgot was out of Noxus before he could execute his coup against the emperor after the failed Invasion of Ionia. So Swain had Urgot sent to Zaun on fake mission to have him subdued and subsequently imprisoned to never return to Noxus.

In this still of post time skip Zaun, we see that the central figure of the image is technically the tattoo that's supposed to reference the League of Legends band Pentakill. But to the left is the real hint, it's the tattoo artist. It's the same tattoo artist that appeared in Urgot's debut splash art in League. I'm sure Urgot's story won't be 1-to-1 with League lore, but it will fit enough to put him in Piltover because the Medarda family is in a bad spot against a man who clearly has more sway in Noxus than them.

I can't say whether or not the robed cultists work directly under Amara or not. Amara and them might be separate agents where the robed figures make deals and she provides cover. What I do know is that the cultists have shown up in Zaun since Silco was ready to distribute Shimmer from the very beginning and show up again after their largest shipment yet was destroyed. Does this make any of them friends? Probably not. Frankly, Amara probably wants to take control of the trade in my opinion. Why, because Amara is the name of a large fish species that acts as an ambush predator in river systems (it's just spelled Aimara). And Finn had said there's bigger fish than Silco (it's such a dumb pun, it has to be true). She might care about what Ionia suffered and can still feel like Shimmer should be under her control instead, but that's a post for another day.

There's a larger discussion to be had about the ways in which the moon(s) of Runeterra and Lunari have blended into Ionian culture in Arcane. Clearly the moon and Lunari imagery is more synonymous with Ionian culture in Arcane, and then it's juxtaposed against the Mel's Solari aesthetics mixed with Ambessa's Noxian violence. Then over the show Piltover is typically bathed in daylight and the shining sun while housing Noxians and their intrigue. It practically begs the final scene to mean more, that it isn't just Jinx striking back for herself, for Silco, or Zaun, but it's larger retribution against the existing order of power.