Champion Reveal: Sylas, the Unshackled

The champion reveal page, a new gameplay trailer, and biography are now available for our newest champion, Sylas, the Unshackled!

"Once I was a prisoner. Like you. 

Locked away by cowards and hypocrites. Left to die for the way I was born. 

Nothing to live for but vengeance. Nothing to lose but my chains. 

Yet in the revolution to come—our revolution—these chains will liberate us all. 

And I will make sure we are never shackled again. 

ABILITIES

PASSIVE: PETRICITE BURST
After casting a spell, Sylas’ next basic attack whirls his chains around him, damaging nearby enemies.

Q: CHAIN LASH
Sylas lashes out with his chains, damaging and slightly slowing enemies. After a brief delay, the intersection of the chains detonates, applying an increased slow and damaging enemies again.

W: KINGSLAYER
Sylas lunges at a target with a powerful strike, damaging them and healing himself. If the enemy is at low health, the damage is increased; if Sylas is at low health, the heal is increased.

E: ABSCOND / ABDUCT
Sylas dashes a short distance and shields himself.
For a short time, he can recast the ability to whip out his chains, stunning, damaging, and pulling himself to the first enemy hit.

R: HIJACK
Sylas hijacks an enemy’s ultimate for his own use.
Enemies can still use their ultimates if Sylas takes them. Sylas can take an enemy’s ultimate whenever Hijack is off cooldown, but can’t hijack the same enemy for a while after.

PLAYING AS SYLAS 

As Sylas, you lash out with merciless magical attacks, pummeling those who would oppose you with stone and steel. Beat down your enemies with repeated Chain Lash, following each flogging with a basic attack for a whirling Petricite Burst. Elude arrest and position yourself with Abscond before choosing a hostage to hook with Abduct. When your struggle becomes a matter of life and death, end the oppression with a crushing Kingslayer strike. 

When you reach level six, unleash your full potential and Hijack the powers of your foes for a greater purpose—your own. By the late game you can seize multiple ultimates in quick succession, using the enemy team’s own strength against them and bringing your revolution to a violent conclusion. In the end, they will be the ones who kneel.

TIPS AND TRICKS

• Crush your foes in combat by weaving in basic attacks after each spellcast for maximum damage. The perfect sequence includes a Petricite Burst after every ability, leaving enemies bruised and broken—if not dead.
• Consider all your options when Hijacking ultimates. What do you need most right now? What might be critical a little later? Seizing a brutal finishing move could clinch your current skirmish, but taking a powerful crowd control spell might win you the next teamfight.
• You can’t Hijack the same enemy for a while after you take their ability, so plot out the full revolt before you start stealing ults. There’s no rush to use what you have, but hesitate too long and you’ll miss opportunities to unleash even more ultimates. Triumph over your opponents by picking the right time—and power—to turn against them.

EXTRAS

Sylas, the Unshackled Biography

A bio was added to the Universe for Sylas:

"As a mage born to a poor Demacian family, Sylas of Dregbourne was perhaps doomed from the start. Despite their low social standing, his parents were firm believers in their country’s ideals. So, when they discovered their son was “afflicted” with magical abilities, they convinced him to turn himself in to the kingdom’s mageseekers. 

Noting the boy’s curious ability to sense magic, they used Sylas to identify other mages living among the citizenry. For the first time in his life he felt he had a future, a life in service to his country, and he performed these duties faithfully. He was proud, but lonely—forbidden from associating with anyone but his handlers. 

Through his work, Sylas began to notice that magic was far more prevalent than Demacia cared to admit. He could sense glimmers of hidden power even among the wealthy and prominent… some of whom were the most outspoken decriers of mages. But while the poor were punished for their afflictions, the elite seemed above the law, and this hypocrisy planted the first seeds of doubt in Sylas’ mind. 

Those doubts finally bloomed in one deadly, fateful event, when Sylas and his handlers encountered a mage living in hiding in the countryside. After discovering it was only a young girl, Sylas took pity on her. When he tried to shield the child from the mageseekers, he accidentally brushed against her skin. The girl’s magic rushed through Sylas’s body—but rather than killing him, it shot forth from his hands in raw, uncontrolled bursts. It was a talent he did not know he possessed, and it resulted in the deaths of three people, including his mageseeker mentor. 

Knowing he would be called a murderer, Sylas went on the run, and quickly gained notoriety as one of the most dangerous mages in Demacia. Indeed, when the mageseekers found him, they showed no mercy. 

Though he was still just a youth, Sylas was sentenced to life imprisonment. 

He languished in the darkest depths of the mageseeker compound, forced to wear heavy shackles of magic-dampening petricite. Robbed of his arcane sight, his heart turned as hard as the stone that bound him, and he dreamed of vengeance on all who had put him there. 

After fifteen wretched years, a young volunteer from the Illuminators named Luxanna began to visit him. Even with his shackles, Sylas recognized her as a singularly powerful mage, and over time the two forged an unusual and secretive bond. In exchange for Sylas’ knowledge of the control of magic, Lux educated him about the world outside his cell, and brought him whatever books he desired. 

Eventually, through careful manipulation, he convinced the girl to smuggle a forbidden tome into his cell—the original writings of the great sculptor Durand, detailing his work with petricite. 

The work revealed the secrets of the stone to Sylas. It was the foundation of Demacia’s defenses against harmful sorcery, but he came to see that it did not suppress magic, but absorb it. 

And if the power was held within the petricite, Sylas wondered, could he release it…? 

All he needed was a source of magic. A source like Lux. 

But she never visited Sylas again. Her family, the immensely powerful Crownguards, had learned of their contact, and were furious that Lux had broken the law to help this vile criminal. Without explanation, it was arranged for Sylas to be hanged. 

At the gallows, Lux pleaded for her friend’s life, but her cries fell on deaf ears. As the hangman pushed past her to tighten the noose, Sylas managed to touch against Lux with his chains. As he had predicted, her power surged into the petricite shackles, ready for him to unleash—and with that stolen magic, Sylas blasted his way free, sparing only the terrified young Crownguard. 

He left the mageseeker compound not as an outcast, but as a new, defiant symbol of the broken and persecuted in Demacia. Traveling the kingdom in secret, he has amassed a following of exiled mages, all now aligned toward a common goal: to topple the throne, and demolish the oppressive system that has made them suffer for so long."

For more on Sylas, check out the recent teaser:

• Champion Teaser: Vision of Demacia