What I want from the Nautilus lore revamp

Riot Scathelock and Riot Thermal Kitten, the narrative folks over at Riot Games, popped onto the forums Wednesday to ask for help in updating Nautilus’ lore. Rather than simply jumping in and ripping his old story out of existence and replacing it with a new one, the team wanted to see what Nautilus players like and don’t like about his current lore.

So, I decided to pop in and have a go myself.

To be frank from the start, I think there is almost nothing good about Naut’s current lore. If you read his story as it is now, he is and old timey Bilgewater sailor who dawns a diving suit and gets sucked into the water and I feel like I’m falling asleep writing this.

We have so many champions who were once human and became something other. That is basically the same story as every non-Void monster Void champion. It’s also true of like 10,000 other champs as well, including Swain, Kayn, Varus and a bunch of others.

What makes Naut cool is his mystique. He has a lot of that right now cause there is like ... almost nothing to him. So how do we expand his lore without ruining the mystery behind him? We take away any human aspects to his story. He can look like a diving suit and he can walk like a man, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t 100 percent monster.

Riot Games

Some of the first few comments on the suggestion post push for even more Eldritch style monster stuff to be put into his story. Yes, please. Do not give me a man becomes monster story, give me a mysterious Titan from the sea story.

Nautilus is a beast, a giant monster. That is so clear after you see him in game just once. Thinking that he used to be some dude absolutely ruins that for me. There are ways to make him adapt human technology or ape some kind of human look without actually making him human in origin.

If you want to make him a monster that found an old diving shell and possessed it? Cool, do that. But no matter what, Naut needs to have some kind of folklore to him. Maybe the best way to do Nautilus’ story is to have him not have a clear origin. Pirate tall tales are one of their coolest aspects. So instead of giving him an A -> B -> C story, why not give him a bunch of stories all following different pirate tropes?

Riot Games

There are a lot of cool possibilities for Nautilus, and all of them are certainly cooler than his current lore. But this brings us to our final question, what do you want to see from a Nautilus lore rework?