Chapter 104 - Camille - The Steel Shadow

Weaponized to execute outside the boundaries of the law, Camille is an elegant and elite operative who ensures the Piltover machine and its Zaunite underbelly runs smoothly. Camille's true strength is her adaptability and attention to detail, viewing sloppy technique as an embarrassment that must be put to order. Raised among manners and money, she is the Principal Intelligencer of Clan Ferros, tasked with cutting down her family's darker problems with surgical precision. With a mind as sharp as the blades she bears, Camille's pursuit of superiority through hextech body augmentation has left many to wonder if she is more machine than woman.

Camille's family gained most of its wealth through a rare crystal harvested from a creature native to the sands of a distant valley. These first hex-crystals, or "first crystals," contained power normally reserved to those born with innate magical ability. Camille's Great-Great Aunt Elicia lost an arm, and nearly her life, during one such early expedition. Her sacrifice was celebrated, and it set an expectation that is still reflected in the Ferros family motto today, "For family, will I give."

The creatures Elicia Ferros found, the Brackern, were not an unending resource, and Camille's family had to look for ways to augment the crystals they had acc.u.mulated. Utilizing certain shadow investments in chemtech and runic alchemy, the Ferros family brought to market the less powerful, but easier to procure, synthetic hex-crystals. Such power often comes with consequences, and the production of synthetic crystals is rumored to be a heavy contributor to the Zaun Gray.

Born into one of the wealthiest houses in Piltover's ill.u.s.trious Bluewind Court, Camille was the sixth child of Rhodri and Gemma, then Masters of Clan Ferros. However, Camille and her younger brother, Stevan, were the only children who survived to a.d.u.l.thood.

With the family's focus set upon Camille as the eldest surviving child, no expense was spared in her education, instilling both her aristocratic attitude and sense of duty at an early age. With so many of Valoran's finest visiting Piltover, Camille had no shortage of exceptional tutors. Accordingly, she speaks the Zhyun dialect of Southern Ionia and Ur-Noxian fluently. As a child, Camille was encouraged to take an interest in Valoran history, and learned to read and write Ancient Shuriman while assisting her father on digs in the Odyn Valley. Camille also became quite an accomplished musician and plays the cellovinna at a concert master level.

Among the leading families of Piltover, it is customary for one of the younger children to take up the mantle of the family's principal intelligencer, the sword and shield of their clan. Those chosen are tasked with operating in the best interest of a Piltover family, working with the clan master to secure the family's continued success by any means necessary. Clan Ferros, with its wealth of secrets, has always taken this position seriously, putting forward considerable resources to ensure its intelligencer was always the best. Camille's brother, Stevan, had been born with a weak constitution and was considered ineligible. Her parents—her father especially—were extremely proud when Camille took Stevan's place as the principal intelligencer for the clan. Stevan's jealousy simmered as he watched Camille embrace her additional training and tutoring. She became quite adept in combat, espionage, and interrogation. Camille's favorite techniques were fighting with the Shon-Xan footed glaive, gaining intelligence through classic inquisition, and rappelling from a certain broken clock tower with a grappling line and hook native to the Western Serpent Isles.

When Camille was 25, she and her father were attacked by a band of augmented thugs. The gang was determined to move up in Zaun's underworld by laying hands on some of the family's more lucrative secrets. Both Camille and her father were wounded. Camille recovered, but her father succ.u.mbed to his wounds. Camille's mother passed away soon after, unable to bear the anguish that settled over the house. The title of clan master passed to Camille's brother, Stevan. Young, impetuous, and eager to prove himself as a strong leader of the family, Stevan doubled the already extensive Ferros research in human hextech augmentation.

After a year of mourning, the Ferros house was decorated resplendently for the next Progress Day auditions. Stevan personally oversaw the induction of Hakim Naderi as the lead artificer for the family, a promising young crystallographer from the Shuriman coastal city of Bel'zhun.

Shaken by her inability to protect her father, Camille requested a hextech augmentation from Hakim to push her power beyond that of her human body. When Hakim met Camille, he was instantly enamored and was determined to draw Camille out of the darkness surrounding her parent's death. They bonded over the work at hand and late night stories of the sands of Shurima. After months of intimate work together, Camille could no longer deny she returned Hakim's feelings. As the day of Camille's augmentation approached, they grew reckless in their affair, as they knew the surgery would mark the end of their time together. Hakim would move onto other projects for the family, and Camille would once again be fully committed to her duty as principal intelligencer. More than that, Hakim worried that in carving away Camille's heart, he might cut too deeply and deprive her of her humanity as well.

Days before Camille's operation, Hakim's reservations about the procedure boiled over. He proposed marriage and begged Camille to run away with him instead. He painted a picture of their future--wandering the sun-kissed sands of Bel'Zhun, uncovering the ruins of Ancient Shurima, raising their children together--a future far away from the duty that bound Camille to her house. For the first time in her life, Camille was torn.

Stevan's position as clan master depended heavily on Camille's ability to execute his vision. When he learned of the secret proposal, he saw his principal intelligencer dangerously close to slipping away, and by extension, his control over the Ferros family. Stevan devised a plan to remind Camille of the duty she swore to their father. Stevan set himself up to be attacked the next time he knew Camille and

Hakim were to be together. Using the fragility that had once denied him his place, Stevan presented himself bloodied and beaten to his sister, preying on her dark memories of the night she failed her father. Camille could not deny the evidence that stained her hands, proof of what could happen when the intelligencer's attention was divided.

Hakim pleaded with Camille, but she would not have it. Hers was a duty going back generations, one that if she had been better prepared could have saved her father's life and should have prevented injury to her brother. Camille insisted her surgery go forward and ended her relationship with Hakim.

Hakim still loved Camille and knew that he was the only one who could perform the surgery safely. Unable to let the love of his life die on the operating table, he cut away Camille's heart as she asked. Once he was sure that her new mechanical heart would beat without him, Hakim resigned. Camille awoke to find the lab she and Hakim had shared empty and abandoned.

Camille threw herself into her work, taking on further refinements in the form of bladed legs, grapple-spindled h.i.p.s, and other, minor hex-augmentations. Each addition pushed Camille and the ever more ambitious technology to the limits. This led some to wonder how much of the lady was still left. As Clan Ferros amassed more power and wealth, the missions Camille ran for her brother became darker and more deadly.

Thanks to the rejuvenating vibrations of her hex-tech heart, time passed for Camille without age, and soon, Hakim Naderi became a distant memory. The years were not so kind to her brother. Stevan's body grew more frail, but that did nothing to loosen his iron grip on the title of Clan Master.

On a recent assignment, Camille uncovered a naïve Piltovan's ill-fated engagement and with it a series of events that exposed the depth of Stevan's treason. The lies that drove Hakim away now threatened to destroy Camille and the clan. She saw his greedy machinations for what they were; selfish and no longer in the best interest of the family. In that moment, she discarded the last sentiment she felt toward her brother and took control of Clan Ferros.

Camille now runs the family's public affairs through her favorite grand-niece she installed as master of the clan. This allows Camille to continue the more shadowy operations that ensure her family's success. Committed to her role as a solver of difficult problems, Camille has embraced her more-than-human transformation and the cutting judgment it affords her. With hex-crystal energy coursing through her veins, Camille has never been content to sit idle, and instead gains invigoration from well-executed industrial espionage, a fresh-brewed cup of tea, and long walks in the Gray.

"Precision is the difference between a butcher and a surgeon."