As many of you have probably heard, an invasion is coming towards Valoran. No-one knows from whom, from where, or how soon. All we know is to be prepared.

But what exactly is it that we need to prepare for? Let's take a look into some of the hints that Riot dropped, leaving everyone begging for more.

In early 2014, Season 4 of League of Legends hit the Live Client, much to the excitement of the millions of summoners that take to the rift everyday. To celebrate the upcoming season, Riot presented to the world a neat little promotional website, showcasing all of the features and promising "MORE LEAGUE OF LEGENDS EXPERIENCES BEYOND THE GAME". They took little time to hold up their end of the bargain, as on the very same promotional website, there was featured a "Beyond The Game" section.

This page hinted at more League of Legends experiences outside of the game, similar to the "Get Jinxed!" music video, or the impressively stunning CGI action short, "A Twist of Fate". Riot promised to "Push the boundaries of LoL for the 2014 season." But the most exciting and thought-provoking part of this page comes in the form of a simple afterthought:

"Oh, and keep an eye out for an invasion from the Outside."

What sort of invasion are we to look out for? What exactly is "the Outside"? Your guess is a good as mine. Or at least would have been, until Reddit user /u/Zeniru posted a thread named "New Void Champion." Inside the post came the text "Yep, finally a new void champion. Looks fantastic at the moment, finally getting a true monster in the league makes me happy." Who is the mysterious Zeniru? Who knows. But what we do know is that they were kind enough to provide pictures of what, sure enough, looks like a Void related champion on Summoners Rift.

See the full image here

Within the same post, Zeniru also posted a screenshot of what is believed to be the abilities of Vel'Koz. This is also where we see confirmation of the champion's name, although in some instances the name is missing the apostrophe, which indicates that all information is not set in stone and is subject to change.

See the full image here

Despite the exceptional quality of the ingame model and particles, and the incredible detail in the ability tooltips, this post was met with responses of mixed nature. Many questioned the legitimacy of the images, but went on to state that "Wow, if this is fake it's incredibly well done". It came to the attention of many that Zeniru had only created the account 50 minutes prior to posting the images, which aroused suspicion in many, but redditor /u/lummings pointed out that "If this guy is leaking a champ he will probably be posting on a throwaway." (An account intended for one time use which is in no way linked to the person's original account, sort of a Reddit smurf account). However, the suspicions of many quickly became excitement as another thrilling discovery was unearthed.

Another post arrived on reddit, this time from a user named /u/Cesstor. He had discovered "something on the official site." What followed was a screenshot of the official League of Legends website, with an empty champion tag page for a champion named, you guessed it, Vel'Koz. The page was, however, quickly cleaned up and deleted by Riot, but the cached version of the page can still be seen, "a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 1 Feb 2014 07:23:43 GMT."

Could this slip-up be confirmation of Riot's next champion? Only time will tell.

With the champion page slip-up from Riot, or perhaps it was just them teasing the community, conspiracy theories were being thrown about left and right, links between Lissandra, the Howling Abyss, the Watchers and all sorts of other crazy shenanigans were being rocketed back and forth between players, searching for some kind of link that had been overlooked by other members of the community. There was even a rather amusing, tongue in cheek theory that Vel'Koz is a ward, due to his purple eye being similar to that of a Vision Ward. With all of this happening, and the community becoming more and more hyped, awaiting the next discovery with baited breath, popular YouTuber and streamer Trick2g released his new video "Trick2g Invasions My Way". Dropping a hint in the title there, eh Trick? Well that's nothing compared to the bombshell that actually appeared within the video.

Wait for it...

The clip within the video showing an invasion from a creature from the Outside instantly caused havoc among the forums, and soon enough the same clip started to pop up in the videos of popular streamers from all around the world. Redditor /u/koenmvo pieced together a comprehensive list of all videos containing the "Invasion" clip. All of these videos having the same clip seems way too far fetched to be a coincidence, and Riot is no stranger to hiding little teasers for upcoming releases for the community to find, as with Jinx vandalizing Vi's champion profile page, though admittedly using popular streamers and YouTube channels is a new, but brilliant, concept.

As more information came to light, connections were noticed between the prospective champion and the mysterious silhouette hovering in the background of the Creator Viktor splash art. Then, as if on cue, the digital artists who create the splash art for Riot Games, released an updated version of the skin's artwork in which the unidentified, hovering monster was much more prominent in the picture, and clearer for all to see. Could this be an indication of Vel'Koz making the transition between a preposterous theory and fantastic reality?

As the evidence shows, there is a very strong argument that Vel'Koz is real and will be making an appearance on the Fields of Justice in a very short time. But while we're on the subject of the Fields of Justice, remember how we never got to see a Snowdown skin for Summoners Rift, no frozen rivers, no ice covered bushes, no Santa hat wearing Barons? Well, if we take a look at this post from Tryndamere, when asked why no Winter map was released, he simply replied "You'll see why in Q1 of 2014".

Cryptic.. Mysterious... Why must you do this to us?!

Could this perhaps mean that, not only do we see the release of Vel'Koz, but also a Void-themed Summoner's Rift skin? We can keep our fingers crossed, but we have no real way to know until an official statement from Riot. But what we do know is that Riot Games sure knows how to keep their audience passionate.