Are you afraid?
Riot Games have released the recorded voice lines that the new rework of Fiddlesticks, the Ancient Fear, and they’re appropriately horrifying. If you’ve missed it, Riot is reworking Fiddlesticks, who has been in the game since the early days of the alpha and recently won a community-poll to be reworked. He’s got a mostly-new moveset, a complete visual makeover, and a full audio rework as well.
Lorewise, this new Fiddlesticks doesn’t seem capable of speech. Instead, he mimics things that he’s heard, much like a Dungeons & Dragons Kenku – and he’s heard quite a bit over his centuries as an ancient demon stalking prey in the countryside.
Knowing this bit of lore makes his lines significantly more horrifying – especially when you realize that a lot of what he says were the last words of his many, many victims.
He has quite a few lines directly related to other champions in the game that hint at their lore as well, even stories we don’t know yet. When facing Vayne, he’ll say “Vayne, give us a smile,” which many have speculated to likely have been a quote from her parents before they were killed. Another is to Annie, who he’ll call out by name while begging for help.
To Garen, he’ll call him his brother and beg him not to hate him, which others are still trying to discover. He launches guilt at Yasuo, Jinx, and Riven in the words of others from their past, and implores Miss Fortune to hide, calling her by her real name of Sarah.
So yeah, that’s about as spooky as it needs to be. It seems he knows the past of nearly every champion in the League and is more than willing to weaponize it against them to stoke the fear he feeds off of.
One interesting tidbit is that he calls the demons of the game, like Nocturne and Evelynn, simply by acknowledging them, hinting that he likely has some sort of demonic nature as well. This is reinforced further by him acknowledging Swain by the name Raum, which many believe to be the demon that follows Swain and give him his powers.
Perhaps the most unsettling are the lines that Fiddlesticks says when attacking and moving, though. He’ll recite his own nursery rhyme while traveling long distances, singing through labored breath of crows and scarecrows while calling for help in the words of others he’s chased through the forest. But when attacking, he’ll shout the panicked last words of his victims with phrases like “It’s in the house,” “let me in,” “open the door,” “it won’t die,” “we can’t get out,” and a disturbingly-high number of voice lines begging others not to leave, to keep their eyes shut, and to run for their lives.
If you intend to take the rift against the Ancient Fear then good luck, and remember, it’s just a scarecrow.
