Runeterra is a planet of the prime material plane, with three sprawling continents, Valoran, Ionia, and Shurima. Across these three continents exist ten nations. Connecting the continents of Valoran and Shurima is Piltover, a thriving progressive city state whose strength lies in technological innovation and commerce.
Piltover and Zaun are two halves of a single urban sprawl, divided by elevation, industry, and ideology. Piltover, perched on high plateaus and rolling hills, gleams with polished streets, ornate bridges, and towering spires that showcase the city’s wealth and ingenuity. Its culture prizes invention, commerce, and prestige, where academic academies, guilds, and inventors compete to define the future. Zaun, sprawling below in a tangle of smokestacks, pipes, and winding alleys, is cramped, chaotic, and alive with the constant hum of improvised machinery. Its people are resourceful and resilient, creating astonishing devices from scraps, turning survival into an art form.
Piltover is a thriving, progressive city whose power and influence is on the rise. It is Valoran’s cultural center, where art, craftsmanship, trade and innovation walk hand in hand. Its power comes not through military might, but the engines of commerce and forward thinking. Situated on the cliffs above the district of Zaun and overlooking the ocean, fleets of ships pass through its titanic sea-gates, bringing goods from all over the world. The wealth this generates has given rise to an unprecedented boom in the city’s growth.
Piltover has - and still is - reinventing itself as a city where fortunes can be made and dreams can be lived. Burgeoning merchant clans fund development in the most incredible endeavors: grand artistic follies, esoteric hextech research, and architectural monuments to their power. With ever more inventors delving into the emergent lore of hextech, Piltover has become a lodestone for the most skilled craftsmen the world over.
“The City of Progress” isn’t just a place—it's a pressure cooker of ambition, invention, and golden opportunity.
Map of Piltover (Includes Alcove District)
The Upper District, centered around Bluewind Court, is the oldest and most prestigious quarter of Piltover. Its broad promenades and towering estates were built in the era when Piltover first emerged as a coastal trade power, leaving the district full of ornate stonework, ancestral manors, and institutions that predate the rise of Hextech. Bluewind Court itself serves as both a cultural symbol and a functional center of civic authority, housing courts, archives, and gathering halls where the city’s most established families convene. Generations of tradition echo through its streets, and public life here often revolves around matters of lineage, politics, and reputation.
The residents of the Upper District tend to be Piltover’s oldest and wealthiest clans—families whose names shape laws, fund academies, and influence technological advancement across the city. Servants, clerks, judges, and scholars also fill the district, keeping its venerable machinery moving. Life in Bluewind Court is marked by ceremony and decorum, with social events that blend ancient customs with the latest innovations. It is here that Piltover’s identity as the “City of Progress” is most carefully curated and most fiercely protected.
