If Arcane hooked you and now you’re wondering what the rest of that world actually looks like, the answer is: a lot. Piltover and Zaun, where Arcane takes place, are just two of the thirteen regions that together make up Runeterra, the fictional world of League of Legends. This article explains how that world fits together, what sets the individual regions apart, where the characters you know from the show come from, and what it all means for the next series Riot Games is working on. You don’t need to know the game; Arcane is enough.
How Runeterra is put together
Runeterra isn’t one state or one culture. It’s a continent (or rather a group of continents) split into regions, each with its own politics, religion, magic and attitude toward technology. There’s no central government and no single storyline tying everything together: Demacia believes in something completely different from Noxus, and Ionia deals with completely different problems than Piltover. The only thing the regions share is that they sit on the same map, and every now and then their interests (or their armies) collide.
To get your bearings, it helps to think of Runeterra as a set of separate “nations” with their own identities, not as a unified fantasy world with one hero and one evil that needs defeating. League of Legends as a game makes the most of this, because every champion carries a piece of their homeland: their look, abilities and fighting style usually say something about where they come from.
Piltover and Zaun: the world you know from Arcane
Piltover and Zaun are the only two regions you’ve already met if you’ve watched Arcane, and they aren’t two separate countries but one city with two faces. Piltover, the “City of Progress,” sits above ground: clean streets, academies, hextech inventions and the Council that governs the city. Zaun is its underground shadow, former mines and sewers that broke away with their own culture, gangs and chemtech, as represented in Arcane by characters like Jinx or Sevika.
The tension between rich Piltover and poor Zaun drives the whole show, but in the rest of Runeterra it isn’t an unusual pattern. You’ll find it in different forms elsewhere too, whether it’s class divides or a clash between tradition and progress. Piltover and Zaun are simply the most fleshed-out example, because Arcane gave them eighteen episodes. For a complete overview of who lives in Piltover and Zaun and which champion they represent, check out the article on all Arcane characters and their in-game counterparts.
Demacia and Noxus: justice versus strength
Demacia is a region that believes in order, honor and justice, so strongly that it considers any unsanctioned magic dangerous and often bans it outright. It’s a kingdom of soldiers and knights where honor counts for more than excuses, and where even the king has duties he can’t get around. Some of the best-known Demacian champions are Garen, Lux and Fiora, characters who embody this emphasis on discipline and duty, even though each of them deals with it differently.
Noxus is the exact opposite: an empire built on strength, not noble birth. In Noxus it doesn’t matter where you come from or how noble your blood is; what matters is what you can achieve. That’s why Noxian champions include characters from completely different layers of society, from generals to prisoners who fought their way up on their own strength, such as Darius, Katarina or Swain. Noxus has been expanding at the expense of neighboring regions for a long time, and its conflict with Demacia is one of the oldest and most prominent political threads in all of Runeterra. Noxus is also where Ambessa Medarda comes from, the mother of Mel Medarda, whom you know from the second season of Arcane. It was through her that Noxian politics found its way into the story of Piltover and Zaun.
Ionia, Freljord and Shurima: spirit, frost and sand
Ionia is a region built on balance between people, nature and the spirit world, a place where magic isn’t a danger to be suppressed like in Demacia but part of everyday life. The Ionian approach to combat is more about precision and inner discipline than brute force, which you can see in champions like Yasuo, Irelia or Ahri. The war with Noxus, which tried to conquer Ionia, left deep scars on the region and is one of the reasons Ionia looks calm on the outside while carrying a lot of unresolved tension inside.
The Freljord is a harsh northern region divided among tribes that fought one another for a long time before some of them were united by a legendary figure named Avarosa. According to myth, the Freljord was ruled by three sisters, Avarosa, Serylda and Lissandra, whose dispute over how closely to ally with a mysterious power called the Watchers ended in war and the creation of so-called True Ice, a magical frost you can still find in the Freljord only in the most sacred and most dangerous places. Freljordian champions include Braum, Ashe and Sejuani, each representing a different faction of this divided homeland.
Shurima is a former desert empire that once controlled a vast territory thanks to the Sun Disc, an artifact that could make chosen individuals “Ascend” and turn them into superhumanly powerful guardians of the empire. Nasus and Renekton are two such Ascended, brothers transformed into guardians of Shurima. The empire collapsed thousands of years ago after a being named Xerath betrayed the young ruler Azir during the Ascension ritual. Shurima sank into the sand and stayed there for centuries until Azir awakened it again many years later. Today’s Shurima is a mix of ancient glory and fresh rebirth.
Bilgewater, Ixtal, Shadow Isles, Targon and Bandle City: the rest of the map
Bilgewater is a lawless port city ruled by pirate councils, smugglers and anyone who can hold on to power through force or bribery. An official government practically doesn’t exist here. Power struggles are settled by duels, deals between ship captains, or simply by whoever has more gold and more people behind them. You’ll find characters like Miss Fortune or Gangplank here, figures who balance between crime and their own twisted code of honor, where betrayal is a normal part of doing business, not an exception.
Ixtal is an isolated region hidden in dense jungles in the south of the continent. Its inhabitants wield elemental magic tied directly to the elements around them and for a long time refused any contact with the rest of the world. That isolation is gradually crumbling, though, because the interests of the surrounding powers, mainly Noxus and Piltover, increasingly reach Ixtal’s borders. Ixtali champions include Qiyana and Neeko, both connected to nature magic, but each in a different way.
The Shadow Isles are a cursed archipelago shrouded in the Black Mist, a remnant of a catastrophe called the Ruination, which turned a former island with a pilgrimage site into a domain of the undead and lost souls. Anyone who gets too close to the isles risks becoming one of the wandering beings the Ruination trapped there. Thresh and Kalista are exactly the kind of characters you’d expect in a place where death isn’t the end, just a different (and worse) form of existence.
Targon is a mountain at whose summit you can supposedly touch the stars, literally. Those who climb to the peak of Mount Targon can be chosen by an Aspect, a cosmic force tied to concepts like the Sun or the Moon, and become its mortal vessel. Leona carries the Aspect of the Sun, Diana the Aspect of the Moon, and their eternal feud between the solar Solari cult and the lunar Lunari cult is one of the oldest religious tensions in all of Runeterra.
Bandle City is home to the yordles, small, playful and unpredictable beings who move between the other regions through magical portals without being visibly bound to one place. Teemo, Tristana and Poppy are their best-known representatives, and even though they look harmless, yordle history and motivations tend to be much older and darker than their appearance suggests.
The Void: a threat, not a homeland
The Void stands out a bit from the rest of the list, because it isn’t a region in the sense that anyone lives there by choice. It’s an alien, otherworldly force that breaks into Runeterra through rifts and twists everything it touches into warped, hostile forms. Kassadin, Kai’Sa and Cho’Gath are characters connected to the Void: some as its victims, others as those who fight against it or have been transformed into part of it themselves. The Freljordian myth about the Watchers, with whom Lissandra made a pact, is directly tied to Runeterra’s preparation for the arrival of the Void, which shows how even seemingly unrelated regions are connected beneath the surface.
Where the characters you know from Arcane come from
Most of Arcane’s main characters come from Piltover or Zaun. Vi, Jinx, Caitlyn, Jayce Talis, Viktor and Heimerdinger are all connected in one way or another to this single city split into two levels. The exceptions are Mel Medarda and her mother Ambessa, who bring Noxian blood and politics into the story: Mel as a member of the Piltover Council with roots elsewhere, Ambessa as a general arriving straight from Noxus with her own agenda. It’s thanks to them that a local conflict between two cities becomes part of a much bigger struggle for power across all of Runeterra, because Noxus has never limited its expansion to neighboring regions like Ionia or Demacia.
This Noxian thread is also the clearest hint of where Riot Games’ storytelling is heading next. For a complete overview of who’s who in Arcane and which champion they represent in the game, see the article on all the show’s characters, and for more detail, the articles on Jinx and her journey from Powder and on Vi and Caitlyn.
What’s next: series set in other regions
Riot Games confirmed that Arcane was planned from the start as a closed two-season series, not an open-ended story that goes on forever. Instead of a third season, showrunner Christian Linke and his team are preparing new projects set in other parts of Runeterra. Specifically, Noxus, Ionia, Demacia and Bilgewater are on the radar, the very regions you just got to know above. The exact format (one series or several standalone projects), release date and platform were not officially confirmed at the time this article was written.
For you as a viewer, that means one thing: knowing the regions from this article will come in handy for future series too, not just Arcane. When Riot Games presents a story from Noxus or Ionia, you’ll already know why these regions don’t like each other and what’s typical for each of them. What else you can watch or read in the meantime is covered in the article what to watch and read if Arcane hooked you.
FAQ
Thirteen: Piltover, Zaun, Demacia, Noxus, Ionia, Freljord, Shurima, Bilgewater, Ixtal, Shadow Isles, Targon, Bandle City and the Void (which is more of a threat than a homeland in the usual sense).
No. Arcane takes place in Piltover and Zaun and is written as a standalone story. Knowing the rest of the world just helps you understand the bigger picture, especially around Noxus and the characters Mel and Ambessa Medarda.
Noxus, mainly through Ambessa Medarda and her military agenda, which in the second season pulls Piltover’s politics into a much wider conflict.
The distribution isn’t even and changes with every new champion, but the regions with the largest long-term representation include Piltover and Zaun, Demacia, Noxus and Ionia, partly because they are also the oldest and most developed parts of the game’s lore.
Riot Games publishes an official interactive map and descriptions of the individual regions on its website dedicated to the game’s lore, where you can also see how the descriptions of individual areas are gradually being expanded.
Information verified as of 10 August 2026. The description of the regions is based on the long-stable lore of League of Legends, which changes much more slowly than champion balancing. Continue to the main guide to the Arcane series, the overview of all League of Legends champions, or head back to the League of Legends guide hub.