Ornn’s Smiths Died When His Fight Blew Off the Peak
The Hearthblood, the craftspeople of his mountain, were killed in his fight with his brother Volibear.
Ornn is the demi-god of forging and craftsmanship in the Freljord, the frozen land of warring tribes, and he lives under the volcano Hearth-Home. His biography starts with where he works:
He works in the solitude of a massive smithy, hammered out from the lava caverns beneath the volcano Hearth-Home.
From Ornn’s biography.
Our codex entry on the Hearthblood, the master craftspeople of Ornn’s mountain, says they were “killed when his battle with Volibear blew off its peak.” 
Volibear is Ornn’s brother, the demi-god the bear-like Ursine warriors are devoted to.
Riot’s two accounts disagree on how long the fight with Volibear lasted. The Lost Tales of Ornn, Riot’s short story about him, says eight days, and his biography says one night. In both, the Hearthblood do not survive it.
I have said enough.
Ornn, in his biography
That line is the quote Riot puts at the top of his biography. So the people reviving the Hearthblood craft today have no one left from the mountain to teach them, only tales, and the one witness is a god who keeps his words short. Our read: a questline can follow one of those smiths from the tales to his anvil.
Why Ornn and Volibear Fought
The brothers once fought side by side. They split when Volibear wanted weapons for a war Ornn would not arm.
Ornn and Volibear are brothers, two of the demi-gods who shaped the Freljord before the first tribes, when the land was called Vorrijaard. For a long time they were close. Volibear’s biography says he went to war “clad in rune-inscribed armor made by his brother Ornn,” and that the two often fought side by side, “even though Ornn never had quite the same lust for battle.”
The split came with the Three Sisters, the three mortal sisters Avarosa, Serylda and 
Lissandra, who rose to power “seeking to control and impose order on the Freljord.” The demi-gods could not agree on what to do about them. Anivia, their bird-spirit sister, leaned toward working with them. Volibear and the Iron Boar, another demi-god, wanted them destroyed. Volibear gathered the Ursine and went to Ornn to arm them.
Ornn refused. Volibear’s biography gives the reason: “He did not approve of the Ursine’s savage ways.” Ornn’s biography only says the brothers fought “for reasons no mortal could comprehend.” The Lost Tales of Ornn tells the visit itself:
“Give them swords and axes,” Volibear demanded, with wicked intent. “Give them armor, and I will make it worth your while.”
“No,” said Ornn, for he wanted no part in Volibear’s warmongering.
“Fine,” said Volibear. “Have your followers do it instead. I do not care. Do this. I am your brother.”
From The Lost Tales of Ornn.
In that story the Hearthblood are what start the fight. Ornn insists the smiths below his mountain do not follow him, and Volibear answers, “They are a reflection of your own image.” He takes a piece of armor off the forge wall, and Ornn charges him. The story says Volibear had been jealous for centuries “of the love the Hearthblood freely gave to his brother.”
Neither came out of it the same. Volibear cursed his brother’s name, threw off the armor Ornn had made him, and from then on fought “with just tooth, and claw, and might, and thunder.” Ornn lost the Hearthblood. His biography says, “Though he would never admit it, Ornn was devastated,” and he buried himself in his work for an age. Both still bring it up in Riot’s games:
Legends of Runeterra, when Ornn meets Volibear
Ornn: “Name's Ornn. No further pleasantries needed.”
Volibear: “None shall remember you, anyway.”
Ornn: “Gods do not need followers, followers need gods.”
Volibear: “Idiot, I need only foes.”
League of Legends, Volibear on first meeting Ornn
Volibear: “Ornn. You once denied me your weapons. Now, I no longer need them.”
League of Legends, Volibear on the move
Volibear: “When my brother gave them fire, they forgot the fire of their own blood.”
Volibear: “My sisters are gods of ice and salt and ever-winter. And Ornn? A liar.”
League of Legends, Ornn when Volibear is on the enemy team
Ornn: “I cannot choose my brother, only the weapons to slay my brother.”
League of Legends, Volibear after killing Ornn
Volibear: “Oh, brother... Your forge is empty and cold.”
Voice lines quoted verbatim from our database. Tap a line to play it.
The Hearthblood Craft Came Back as Tales
A Legends of Runeterra card says the Hearthblood name was nearly forgotten before the stories returned.
Hearthblood Mender, a card of a Freljord smith in Legends of Runeterra, Riot’s card game, says what happened after the fight:
The Hearthblood were gone, all of them, when Ornn decided to leave the world. Generations passed and their name was all but forgotten. More recently, however, the tales of Ornn resurfaced, and it was whispered that some had begun to return to the way of the Hearthblood.
Hearthblood Mender flavor text.
Every Hearthblood was dead before Ornn withdrew, so the smiths returning to their way are working from stories that outlasted generations, with no one to show them the work.
Ornn has already answered someone doing this. In Legends of Runeterra, when Hearthblood Mender arrives beside him:
Legends of Runeterra, when Hearthblood Mender arrives beside Ornn
Hearthblood Mender: “At last, you return to your most faithful followers!”
Ornn: “I have no followers. Not anymore.”
Hearthblood Mender: “In your name, I have rekindled the Hearthblood.”
Ornn: “Let the name die, boy. It means nothing anymore.”
Voice lines quoted verbatim from our database. Tap a line to play it.
He tells the smith he has no followers and that the name should die. Our read: the smith in this questline is reviving a name Ornn himself wants left alone.
Our read: a quest built on this card starts with one of those smiths.
- Quest step 1, gather for the smith. Ore, fuel and tools for a craft that nobody alive was taught.
- Quest step 2, make a first piece. The smith’s attempt at Hearthblood work, built from what the tales describe.
- Quest step 3, look for the forge. The tales are about Ornn, so the smith asks the player to help find him.
His Forge Is Hidden, and Forgotten Demi-Gods Fade
The climb ends at a forge nobody can find easily, kept by a kind of being that canon says needs to be remembered.
The search ends at Ornn’s Forge, which our encyclopedia files as the “hidden volcanic forge of the demigod Ornn, master craftsman of the Freljord.” Legends of Runeterra prints it as the Ornn’s Forge landmark card.
What a demi-god is matters for the smith who reaches him. Our entry calls them “ancient Freljordian demi-gods embodying fundamental forces of nature,” and canon shows what happens to one when worship stops. Haestryr, one of Ornn’s siblings, is in our bestiary as:
Aurora’s wayward companion: one of Ornn’s siblings, a demigod who lost his name and his shape as worship of the Old Gods waned, and now travels beside her as a monstrous, twisted elk.
Our Haestryr entry.
Our read, not canon’s: smiths who return to the Hearthblood way also keep Ornn’s name in use. Canon never says Ornn is fading or that he wants followers back.
Riot introduced him in the champion trailer Ornn, the Fire Below the Mountain.
Ornn, Volibear and the Ice Witch
Volibear blinded Lissandra in battle. Ornn built the bridge she turned into the Watchers’ seal, and says her followers do not know the truth.
Of the Three Sisters, only Lissandra, the Ice Witch, is still alive. Each brother dealt with her in his own way.
Volibear fought her. His biography says that after he threw off his armor, he “confronted one of the mortal sisters who sought to steal the power of the demi-gods for herself. Before her entire army, he struck her down, blinding her.” Lissandra’s biography tells it from her side: “the savage claws of a primal god raked across her eyes, blinding her.” Neither biography names the other, but a book in Ornn’s library does:
Blinding her did not stop her. Volibear’s biography says he “was unable to stop what she had already set in motion,” and over the centuries the tribes turned to the Three Sisters and away from the old gods.
Ornn helped her instead, without trusting her. In The Lost Tales of Ornn the sisters come to him twice. First he digs them the deepest trench in the world, to trap the creatures hunting their tribes. Years later the Third Sister brings him star-metal and asks how to build a bridge across it that can never break. “He did not trust her, for she had a scent of magic about her, and magic always makes sturdy things weaker.” He builds the bridge himself, and she walks it reciting incantations that turn it into a seal over the creatures below. The enchantment slowly eats away at his masonry.
The story never names the Third Sister. Lissandra’s biography says she sealed the Watchers, ancient Void beings, “beneath a glacial barrier of magical ice that could never be melted.” Our Watcher entry places them under the Howling Abyss, the chasm in the Freljord’s ice. After the bridge, the sisters “vowed never to speak of Ornn again.”
Later, Lissandra and her Frostguard, the followers who serve her, set out to rewrite the Freljord’s history, “seizing all records of what had truly happened.” Ornn’s biography says almost all of his tales “have been excised from history by his enemies, and the slow march of time.” Neither text says Lissandra erased Ornn’s stories. Our read: her rewrite is one likely reason so few of them survive. Both brothers have lines for her:
Legends of Runeterra, when Ornn arrives against Lissandra
Lissandra: “Ages pass, yet I remain.”
Ornn: “Yes... I remember you.”
Lissandra: “Secrets hidden by frost.”
Ornn: “If only your followers knew the truth, Ice Witch.”
League of Legends, Volibear on first meeting Lissandra
Volibear: “You have no power here, young witch.”
Voice lines quoted verbatim from our database. Tap a line to play it.
Canon does not say what truth Ornn means. It says Ornn knows something about Lissandra that the people who follow her do not. Our read: a questline that reaches him carries two things only he can answer, how the Hearthblood died and what he means about her.
The Questline Ends at His Anvil
Our read: the player does not fight Ornn. The smith’s own work comes back from his anvil as a masterwork.
Ornn’s League of Legends kit points to the ending. His passive, Living Forge, says he “can create masterwork items for himself and for his allies.” So the reward for reaching him is the smith’s piece from step 2, remade.
- Quest step 4, present the work. The smith’s piece goes on Ornn’s anvil and comes back as a masterwork.
- Quest step 5, ask about the Hearthblood and the Abyss. Ornn answers once and briefly, which fits a god whose biography quote is “I have said enough.”
- Quest step 6, decide who hears it. The player chooses whether the smith, and the others returning to the Hearthblood way, learn what Ornn said.
What This Means for the Riot MMO
Nothing is announced. Ornn’s canon reads as a crafting origin chain that ends at an anvil.
Our read. Riot has shown no class, profession or zone from its MMO. If crafting is in it, Ornn’s canon gives a crafting chain its origin instead of a trainer standing in a town: a craft that died out, smiths rebuilding it from tales, a hidden forge, and a master who upgrades your work. The masterwork upgrade also gives players a reason to make the climb again after launch week.
The part to keep is that Ornn knows what the smiths do not. A chain that ends with him reading out a recipe drops the reason to go to him at all.
Should Ornn Have Spoken?
Should Ornn have told Lissandra’s followers the truth?
Read Next
None of this is confirmed. Sources: Ornn’s biography; The Lost Tales of Ornn; Legends of Runeterra cards and recorded lines; our Hearthblood, Demi-God, Watcher, Ursine, Haestryr and Ornn’s Forge entries; the Freljord region gallery; Riot’s Ornn champion trailer. A RuneGrove lore read.
