An Extensive Analysis Of The Relationship Between Piltover And Zaun, Part 1

An extensive analysis of the relationship between Piltover and Zaun, part 1

With the new lore update, some things have been changed.

Piltover

Zaun

These posts will explore different aspects of this new situation.

Geographical position

In the original lore, Piltover and Zaun were described as sister cities situated across an ocean bay.

Piltover is left, Zaun is right.

This is how I imagined it, and this is how it will stay in Becoming the Herald comic (among other reasons, because I’ve already drawn too many pages and I’m not spending money on buying new expensive paper and redrawing everything).

Some of the details that I made up are, that they are connected by a thin floating bridge across the bay. Piltover is at a higher ground level, Zaun lower. That’s why the bridge does not connect with the ground level in Zaun. Instead, it arrives at some of the higher floors. Zaun has buildings that are reaching bigger heights than Piltover’s towers. Piltover is more packed by plan, organized and functional.

Winds blow from Piltover to Zaun. Such is the setting. On days with no wind, Zaun’s smog spreads towards Piltover, causing troubles there and in the bay.

Both cities are large, have their own bays in different areas and both have economical independence.

The note 1) is this:

The actual distance between the two cities, possibly even larger.

Both extend in the opposite directions as well, outside the drawing. These are their two closest points.

In the new lore:

We have been given this image.

The tips of Zaun’s tallest buildings are literally sticking out of Piltover’s ground level. There are several possibilities what this new layout means.

Personally, after some thought, I don’t think this is the case. That everything’s literally split between them and Piltover built on top of Zaun.

I get a feeling that it is actually like this:

Since Riot wants this to have started as a single city (so that they could explain the lack of technologically advanced civilizations in the world; one city can be called a freak of nature, two really can’t), Zaun started as a mining settlement of Piltover. It doesn’t have its bay and is economically dependent on Piltover. It says so in the new lore:

Piltover’s wealth has allowed Zaun to develop in tandem;

This idea is supported by this image:

This is literally looking from Zaun towards Piltover at the top. You can see the canyon cliffs left and right from the spot of sky in the image.

This second image presents the ground level of Piltover, with Zaun’s tentacles reaching out towards it from the left.

Personally, I don’t like the canyon idea. I think that keeping a city below one in all of its points is not good for the cities who were both independent in the old lore. If this was a brand new city, the idea would be fine. But in this state, the power level of the one below is metaphorically lower than the one above.

There’s also the problem of Zaun’s smog, which would surely leak onto the Piltovian streets. There’s no way of keeping it put. And no wind blows downwards.

If they really wanted them to be close, I would have solved it this way:

The city could have experienced a massive earthquake that split it in two. Afterwards, parts continued developing on their own. (This still has the smog problem, but it’s at least better in presenting them as two cities, and not having Zaun as just the underbelly of Piltover).

In the second part, economy in the new state and how it affects people’s mentality.