It’s a common misconception, but not in Runeterra.
Update June 22, 2:30pm GMT+8: An incorrectly transcribed quote has been corrected.
Aurora is already very different from the rest of League of Legends’ champion roster.
Not only is she a vastayan, but she can also see and travel into the spirit world.
She is sensitive to large crowds, noise, and large group interactions and can sometimes feel overwhelmed by sensory stimulation. Having difficulty connecting with her peers, she escapes to the spirit world and makes friends with spirits instead.
Credit: ONE Esports, Riot Games
Outwardly, the spirits of the Freljord she spends her time with may seem creepy to the average person, but to her they are lovable beings worthy of her love and protection.
Aurora is autistic, and she makes known the existence of a group of people with this disorder in real life.
So Aurora is autistic, the League of Legends development team confirmed to reporters and also mentioned in a Champion Insights blog post.
It’s important to note that while this developmental disorder can be identified and classified in the real world, “Runeterra has no word for her,” Riot Games wrote, meaning that in the fictional world, she’s simply Aurora.
Credit: Riot Games
The second, and most important, point is that she’s not meant to represent the entire, very diverse spectrum of autism, said Lexi “Riot Lexical” Gao, lead producer on Champions.
“A lot of the developers on the team are autistic, and their experiences are infused into her as a champion,” Riot Lexical continued. “In one version, she’s almost like a power fantasy, because she doesn’t have to live her life hiding her autism. This is who she is, and she’s totally herself, and that’s what’s great about her.”
“Other than that, there’s also the process that we went through, specifically with our research group. We actually worked with a consulting group as well. We thought that while there are things that our developers know about themselves, there are other things that we should know,” Riot Lexical added.
Credit: Riot Games
“It’s been a constant source of discussion and debate and trying to understand how to do this right every step of the way.”
In addition to thorough prep, the team also considered how much they wanted her to reflect the everyday autistic experience, senior narrative writer Elyse “apothecarie” Lemoine told Champion Insights.
In the end, they came down to the fact that the way autistic people’s brains work, the way they see the world “simply doesn’t match up to the expectations that other people have.” This key principle therefore applied to Aurora: “She shouldn’t meet expectations, she should set new expectations,” the apothecary concluded.
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