"When the festival ended twenty-one days later, Alistar was the only member of his tribe left." Riot's biography of the minotaur gives a number, and the number is the character: twenty-one days in the Reckoning arenas of the Noxian capital, in a gladiatorial festival called the Fleshing, turned a clan diplomat into the beast the crowd wanted. Most of Runeterra knows him as the bull. The text knows him as the one who begged his kin not to fight.
Who they are
The minotaur clans of the Great Barrier mountains had resisted Noxus longer than any civilisation, the biography says, protecting the overland trade routes to the ancient city of Zaun while keeping out of Valoran's wider wars. Alistar was respected across the clans. In the moot halls he argued for closer bonds with the other mortal races, who mostly saw minotaurs as beasts. When Noxus came, its emissary, the matriarch of House Tewain, announced the empire was about to take Basilich, a coastal city to the east, and pledged not to do it without the mountain clans, calling a parley on neutral ground. Many minotaurs wanted in. Alistar, who had met enough Noxian scouts to distrust them, was sent with fifty warriors to say no.
Under the banners of truce he was betrayed. The larger clans had already pledged to Noxus, and their representatives turned on him as soon as he spoke. He crushed Lady Tewain's skull with his bare hands and was still taken in chains to the capital, accused of inciting rebellion, and thrown with his survivors into the Fleshing. He implored his clanfolk not to give the crowd its show. Twenty-one days later he was alone, dragged out to face Reckoner after Reckoner until he fought and thought like the beast they wanted.
What pulled him back was a servant girl in the arenas named Ayelia. He charged the bars at her at first; she came back every day and spoke to him with respect until he answered. Her homeland had been taken by Noxus too, and she planned an escape for both of them. One night she brought the key. At the river a cargo barge waited, and Noxian agents burst from the shadows. Alistar fought with his vision tunnelled by rage, did not hear her calling, and when it was over the boat and Ayelia were gone. He fled south, searched everywhere, found nothing. Weeks later a coup shook the empire and the arena minotaur's escape was forgotten. He now travels alone, encouraging resistance in Noxian-held territory, fighting for the downtrodden, and in every city he asks after Ayelia.
Where they belong
Riot's faction pages give Alistar no region. His biography puts his home in the Great Barrier mountains, above the trade roads to Zaun, and his captivity in the capital of Noxus, the empire he now works against town by town.
Riot's page lists no race for him. The biography calls him a minotaur and describes whole clans of them, which makes him an argument in playable races as much as a champion.
Riot lists one related champion:
- Xin Zhao: not named in Alistar's biography, which mentions no other champion at all.
In the Riot MMO, as a guess
This is speculation. Alistar is a quest-giving character, and a wandering one: the text has him moving through Noxian-held territories stirring resistance, which is a contact a player finds in occupied towns rather than a hub character with a fixed chair. His two open threads are quests in themselves, a girl named Ayelia last seen on a barge, and a shame he says he must clear before he can go home. He is not a boss in any reading of the text; the only people who wanted to watch him fight for their pleasure were Noxians in a stadium. Whether a champion can be anything more is the question in will champions be playable.
What we do not know
Whether the game's era, the open question in when is the Riot MMO set?, finds him alive and still on the road. The biography places his escape weeks before the coup and leaves him travelling after it.
Whether Ayelia was captured, killed, or reached the coast. The text says only that there were no clues left to find.