New champion, Syndra, playable at Gamescom.

As promised, Riot's booth at Gamescom 2012 boasts a preview of our next champion! I'd like to introduce you to Syndra!
She is an AP mage and her kit revolves around manipulating the floating spheres that swirl around her. She is fully playable at Gamescom, right along side our other upcoming champion, Rengar.

Check out part one ( of two ) of Curse's video of her, fresh from Riot's booth at Gamescom.


Here is a rough rundown of her kit, thanks to some very helpful redditors.

Passive: (Thanks to xgribbelfix & Naekos for confirmation)
Abilities on maximun level gain bonus effects:
Dark Sphere: Deals 20% bonus damage against Champions.
Willpower : Knock an enemy in the air for a short time.
Dispersing of the Weak: Works on a 50% wider area.

Q: Dark Sphere 40 mana | 5s cooldown Conjures a dark sphere, dealing 70 (+16)[.55] magic damage. The sphere lasts for up to 8 seconds long and can be manipulated by Syndra's other abilities.

W: Willpower 60 mana | 12s cooldown First activation: Grabs a dark sphere or enemy minion.

Second Activation: Hurls a dark sphere, or minion. Enemies struck take 80 (+19)[.6] magic damage and are slowed by 25% for 2 seconds.

E: Dispersing of the Weak 50 mana | 14s cooldown Deals 60 (+13)[.5] magic damage and flings back opponents and dark spheres. Enemies hit by spheres are stunned for 1.5 seconds.

R: Unleashed Power 100 Mana 100s cooldown Syndra uses all her cataclysmic might and all her dark spheres to deal 70 (9)[.2] magic damage ( at the minimum of 210 (28)[.6] to one enemy champion.

Here is part two of Curse's video preview:
 

Conjecture time!

For the moment, my guess is that this is both our new champion with " gravity influencing" abilities ( she can pick up minions, fling people around,etc ) and Dark Sovereign - an assumption based solely on her passive being quite different from what we've seen so far. It certainly fits Morello's bill of "exploring new game play mechanics".

At any rate, I wouldn't get too riled up about the quick succession of champion releases or anything, this situation is very similar to the one with both Hecarim and Varus being playable at PAX East, yet that one didn't speed up the release date of Varus at all.

The real question though, the one I think a lot of people share, is... what is the lore behind our mysterious new champion? A lot of fans are pulling for this to be the reveal of Kassadin's daughter, who, in the lore, was captured by Malzahar and imprisoned within the Void. Could this be her big return?