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Janna is one of my favorite champions in League of Legends. When I first picked up the game, I transitioned from Sona to Karma to the Storm’s Fury herself, and for years on end I never looked back. Her inclusion in Arcane Season 2 – even if only a moment – made me smile from ear to ear, and when I learned that Woodkid’s iconic To Ashes and Blood contains a prayer chant dedicated to her, I immediately fell in love with it. For me, the devil is in the details, and while the choir’s inclusion enhances the track itself, it’s the symbolism that makes it so special. But Riot had to come up with an entire language to make it work, so I ask executive music producer Alex ‘Mako’ Seaver about creating his own fictional dialect.
The fight between Caitlyn, Jinx, Sevika, and Vi has become one of Arcane Season 2’s most iconic scenes. As the fractured sisters clash in a neon-bathed battle for the ages, a stone relief of Janna looks down disapprovingly, flooding her now ruined temple with howling gales as the scene draws to a close. It’s not only a reminder of how powerful Janna is – it’s a reminder that, beyond Zaun and Piltover, the League of Legends universe is teeming with threats that are bigger than Jinx and Vi combined.
But the sequence is brought to life by Woodkid’s To Ashes and Blood, a track that’s quickly become the poster child of Arcane Season 2. As his dulcet tones rumble through the Undercity, the scene comes alive to the sound of Shuriman chanting that’s grounded in the MOBA‘s overarching lore. “We invented a whole children’s chant,” Mako tells me with a laugh. “We invented a whole language.”
I ask how the team went about building the Shuriman tongue – it’s a region we’ve got a lot of lore for, after all, but creating a completely new dialect is quite the feat. “Maybe midway through working on To Ashes and Blood, Christian [Linke, Arcane’s showrunner] was like ‘we should add something here.’ The whole concept of the song is that this is an ancient, otherworldly warning from the past. Most of the songs are written in the present through the character’s perspective, but this is not a song that belongs to any of these characters. It’s a song from a long time ago.
“I’ve never invented a language before. I only speak English!” he laughs. “I went over to [Riot’s lore department] and lo and behold, there’s somebody that can invent languages. I got to watch his process, and then my process as a songwriter is looking for singable kinds of things, so as we’re going back and forth I’m taking sentences he’s written and going ‘I can work with this.’ We built it together.
“The ridiculous part of it was that we had to teach a children’s choir these words that nobody’s said before. There are a million and one reasons why that song could have totally folded in on itself and imploded.”
“The whole point of all of these songs is to make the scene as good as you can,” he continues. “Christian was like ‘this is an action-packed sequence. Let’s make this soft, brooding song underneath the action,’ and that’s a recipe for disaster unless it works. I felt like it worked, but you never really know until you release it to an audience.
“The fact that people responded to it so well [makes it] one of my proudest experiences across both seasons,” he says with a smile, and honestly, I can’t imagine To Ashes and Blood not being in Arcane Season 2. For me, the first act is the clear highlight, with that sequence easily ranking as one of my favorites because of the blend of bold musical choices, slick action, and vibrant animation.
But on a personal level, I’ve played League of Legends since Season 10, with several of my most-played champions hailing from Shurima. It’s my favorite region in the game, so to see it done justice means a lot as a long-time fan. I can confirm To Ashes and Blood worked.
As icy winds swoop in from the Freljord, check out our LoL tier list to keep you busy over the holidays. Alternatively, if you’re looking for some new cosmetics to celebrate the season with, here’s a rundown of which League of Legends skins are currently on sale.
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