League of Legends: Aurora - The Spirit of Hearth-Home

Due to a supposedly unintentional leak on Chinese servers, the mini-game The Spirit of Hearth-Home was released before intended and with all translations already available, which caused Riot Games to officially make available - and apparently ahead of schedule - the patch with the cozy game available on all clients and servers around the world.

The game is short and based on the exploration of Hearth-Home, an ancient and lost citadel that today serves only as a home for the solitary Primordial Freljordian God of the Forge, Ornn. Its mechanics are simple and only rely on point-and-click to complete small puzzles that reveal more about the intriguing history of the region.

In the game that takes place in the citadel on a volcano and is accessible only through magical portals, you step into the shoes of Aurora, a new character with absolutely no other information about her other than the fact that she is joining the League Champions roster. A Vastaya with rabbit features (such as her ears and feet), she manages to enter the house of the huge Forge God without disturbing him, which makes him allow her to stay for some time.

Your objective is exactly this: not to disturb Ornn and, little by little, help him silently and carefully organize and tidy up his completely messy rooms. Each room has its own amount of collectibles, information and even interactions with Ornn himself, which tells the player more and more about this warm meeting and the cold and cruel stories of the Freljordian past.

The introduction scene, animated in Comic Book style and fully voiced, is beautiful and has a production worthy of Riot's high artistic standards, it’s available on the League of Legends channel and plays immediately when starting the game.

Aurora is coming to Hearth-Home looking for help for her Friend, who is apparently a Freljordian creature (called Haestryr, information revealed throughout the mini-game) with aspects similar to a deer, and which Ornn soon recognizes as “one of his countless brothers.” From there, Aurora's campaign begins through the immense forge city that tells us so much about the deep lore of the frozen north.

You can learn about some of these tales and historical moments In this article about the Timeline of League of Legends, but if your goal is to see what our beloved goat horned firesmith has to tell us, UmGamer came to bring you a small summary of The Spirit of Hearth-Home.

The Main Hall

In each of the accessible rooms, there are items and pieces to collect, arrange and organize until the interactions take place or the puzzles have been completed. The Main Hall is where your campaign begins, and apart from some of the items that appear right away, it serves mostly to introduce the player to the game's point-and-click mechanics and does not have any challenge in itself.

In this hall, however, we can see the Freljordian aesthetic present with aspects reminiscent of Ornn in every corner, such as runes, burning fireplaces, embers and many tools and historical books. It leads right to the Library, where Ornn keeps his book collections and will be discussed towards the end of the article, as it is also the place where most of the Lore is told. You can also go to the Courtyard, an outdoor area that provides access to two more work spaces.

The Courtyard

In addition to scrolls to arrange, books, tools and ores to collect, a scene is triggered as soon as the player pulls an apparent lever in a pile of snow. Their lanterns and heaters turn on, and the snow melts, revealing a statue of Ornn himself in what appears to be the center of Hearth-Home's outdoor area.

Ornn comments on how that place was once inhabited by brave, valiant people with united hearts. It is remarkable to see how there is a certain nostalgia and anguish in the character's speeches, even with his famous expressionless face, whenever he touches on the subject of his extinct people, the Hearthblood.

Other than the lever and the interaction with the Champion, there are no other puzzles in this area, and it serves more to take the player to the Smelter or the Workshop, two other key locations to unlock more interesting information.

The Smelter

Riot's affection for detail and good player experience shined through in this room: a smelter, the place where ores are smelted and transformed into tools, armor, weapons or whatever Ornn wants to forge. Here, we can interact with a small blacksmith Poro who, before our arrival, was taking the opportunity to take a nap.

In the background and most notable in the environment, there is a large scale with small altars in front of it. The ores collected in different locations in the game must be placed on their appropriate altars by discovering, one by one, the lightest to the heaviest. For each ore that is hovered over with the mouse, the player can see its origin and some details (like Shuriman gold, for example). The ores come from different places in Runeterra and contain a little technical or geological information, or some interesting facts about them.

Upon completing this puzzle, there is one more important interaction with Ornn that shows how useful you are in Hearth-Home and for his work. He doesn't say with all words that he really appreciates her work and company, but he appears very satisfied and has no intention of sending her away anytime soon.

The Workshop

Once again, another messy, dusty place which, after Aurora's quick cleaning, turns out to be a work office worthy of the God of the Forge. In addition to all the warm and tribal aspects of the architecture, something that is well done in all scenes, we can also see various equipment and weapons that Ornn himself forged.

In the center of the Workshop, the player can see a large piece of leather laid out on a table, and when it’s clicked on, they are directed to Ornn's personal tool collection. All tools and equipment that are not Books or Ores must be brought to this table and organized in their designated spaces to complete another puzzle and unlock another cutscene.

Despite thanking her only with harsh and inexpressive words, Ornn once again shows interest in his new visitor, in the way she works and takes an interest in things without being inconvenient.

Among the various tools, we can see how interesting it is that the Champion not only has equipment that he forged himself, but other pieces gathered from different locations in Runeterra such as a Buhru dagger or a hammer with Piltovian aspects. Each of the tools has its description, origin and curiosities, just like the ores, when you hover the cursor over them.

The Library

Certainly the most interesting and most lore-filled place in the entire game, it also has four different puzzles that require the player to have explored the entire citadel to complete. Three of them are just collections of books that must be placed on their proper shelves and in the correct order. Each of the book collections tells respectively about the story and deeds of three of the most important characters in the history of Freljord: Ornn, Volibear and Lissandra.

Ramhaug

Although the game is focused on Aurora and Ornn, the collection of books about the God of the Forge, whose original name is Ramhaug, is nothing more than the story behind his great achievements, such as his best works, his best weapons and tools, his importance as God of the Forge and in the formation of the Freljord, and so on. However, towards the last books, their content also begins to focus more on the Hearthbloods and the terrible fate they suffered, as well as lightly touching on the subject of the battle against his brother Volibear.

Valhir

The Valhir Bear, or Volibear in modern languages, is an old and well-known League of Legends champion whose rework was released in May 2020 with a major upgrade to its lore. The huge bear, who is also the Primordial Freljordian God of Storm, fought a fierce battle against his brother Ramhaug that resulted at the end of the Hearthbloods. After this battle, Valhir swore never to wear his armor which had been forged by his brother again (a direct reference to the pre-Rework Volibear who wore a full set of armor) and Ornn's seclusion within the now deserted Hearth-Home.

The Ice Witch

Most famous of Lissandra’s titles, The Ice Witch is the main character behind the entire plot involving the invasion of the Void in Runeterra through the Freljord, her capture of the Howling Abyss, her betrayal against her sisters Serylda and Avarosa and, finally, the imprisonment of the Void Watchers beneath a thick layer of True Ice that she tries to protect alone ever since. Her books narrate everything from the Tale of the Three Sisters to the turnaround of Lissandra, the main responsible for the destruction caused by the invading watchers, and also the one who became responsible for keeping them imprisoned.

Songs for Each of the Characters

Also in the Library, the player can access a musical instrument in the background, and it can be played freely. Although its notes are not the notes we normally hear on a piano or guitar, it only has a sequence of buttons that produce a certain sound or chord when pressed.

The player must go to each of the three bookshelves and read the runes in the correct order. The order of the runes will tell you the order of the notes to be pressed on the instrument, and each of them refers to the theme song of the champion in question: Ornn, Volibear and Lissandra.

When the order is correct, a small part of the song will be played and Ornn will appear to comment, respectively, on the Hearthbloods, the battle against Valhir and the dangers behind what the Ice Witch keeps under the ice.

After all the puzzles are solved and the rooms are properly tidy and clean, Ornn will finally call on Aurora to talk in the library, which unlocks the final scenes, also animated in a Comic Book style, ending the game in a warm and pleasant way.

Ornn does something he had refused to do since the battle with Valhir: forge a new weapon for someone specific, the artifact in question being a magic wand delivered into Aurora's hands. Despite not having gotten all the answers she wanted to help her friend Haestryr, the Vastaya decides to agree to leave Hearth-Home and continue her journey searching for more answers.

The quality and duality behind the narrative shows itself at the end, when Ornn questions how “funny” the word Friend is, just like its meaning. With a small plush miniature of himself in hand - most likely made by Aurora during her time in the citadel - it’s moving to see that even the brute made of fire and iron saw, in that girl, someone he can trust and deposit his feelings in. friendship.

That Riot Games has an exceptional creative and narrative team is nothing new, after all, even with all the complaints from players regarding the toxicity of the community and balance over so many years of the great success that is League of Legends, they are never directed against releases that tell us more and more about the fantastic universe that the writers created and expanded, on such a rich level, that allows the existence of a game as simple and captivating as The Spirit of Hearth-Home.

Even though we didn't receive a lot of new information about the universe or stories that we didn't know before, the mini-game has a wide range of curiosities and details that continue to give more and more depth to the fantasy world we know. The only new information, besides the fact that there are Poros who are forge assistants, is that at some point we will also be visited by Aurora in our League of Legends clients.

While we wait and are kept curious about how the character will appear, what her gameplay will be like and whether we will have even more details about her story and importance to Freljord and Runeterra, The Spirit of Hearth-Home is a great hit from Riot, a great way to wait and still leaves us, players, excited for more releases of this type to happen again in the future.