Arcane! Jinx!

Jinx Background

Jinx’s real name was “Powder”. At a young age, then-Powder and her sister  Vi were orphaned during a battle between  Piltover and the people of Zaun. Seeing the girls in distress, Zaunite defender  Vander abandoned the battle to keep them safe, taking them away to Zaun. Powder was always teased by her adopted brother Mylo due to her clumsiness, and was always defended by Vi.

Life in the undercity was difficult, but Powder was able to stay out of trouble until Vi, Powder, Mylo, and fellow adoptee Claggor decided to break into the Piltover apartment of  Jayce Talis in order to carry out a burglary. Powder mishandled unrefined Hextech crystals, leading to an explosion that seriously damaged the building. This alerted the Piltover Enforcers which lead to a chase through the city. The four would-be thieves inadvertently lead the Enforcers back to the Zaunite slum known as The Lanes. To shield his adopted children, Vander claimed responsibility and allowed himself to be arrested. Zaunite crime lord Silco attacked the Enforcers and kidnapped Vander in order to both take revenge on Vander for betraying him years before and to accrue power.

The children decided to rescue Vander, but Vi told Powder to remain home, which lead to her being sad and crying in her room and eventually tracking down Vander’s location herself. Upon seeing her family in trouble, Powder set off a handmade bomb, powered by one of the stolen Hextech crystals. The explosion destroyed Silco’s Shimmer production facility, but also killed Vander, Mylo, and Claggor. After finding out Powder was responsible, Vi yelled at her, referring to her as a ‘jinx’ that ruins lives before walking away. Powder had another breakdown and found comfort in Silco, who adopted her as his daughter.

Powder was scarred from this experience, hearing the voices of Mylo and Claggor in her head constantly and even seeing hallucinations of their dead bodies. During her stay with Silco, she became more destructive as well as chaotic, adopting her name as Jinx.

Stolen Crystal and Vi’s Return

After Jinx failed to protect one of Silco’s shipments of Shimmer, she wanted to prove herself to him again. To do so, she decided to steal a newly made Hextech crystal from  Jayce Talis. She showed this to Silco, to which he said that she should make a weapon in case they needed to retaliate against Piltover if they decided to come after him. The stolen crystal lead to searches being performed in Zaun by enforcers.

Shortly after, Jinx found out that Vi had returned from prison after interrogating  Sevika. Afterwards, Jinx decided to light a flare that Vi had given her as a child. She was told to light it in case of an emergency and that Vi would come find her. She went to the rooftop of a tall building and lit the flare. Vi saw this and came to see Jinx. However, she came with  Caitlyn Kiramman, an enforcer, leading her to think that Vi was only there to get the crystal back and arrest her. After a fight with a local gang that had been tracking them, Vi and Caitlyn were kidnapped and Jinx was left alone.

Experimentation

After blowing up one of her bombs during a fight against her childhood friend  Ekko, Jinx was critically injured. In desperation, Silco turned to  Singed, a scientist, to save her, chemically altering her but saving her from death. However, this chemical alteration would amplify Jinx’s mental problems, making her paranoid that Caitlyn was trying to steal Vi from her.

The Tea Party

After learning that Silco had the chance to give the undercity independence from Zaun in exchange for giving her up to the enforcers, Jinx kidnapped him, Vi, and Caitlyn and tied them up around a dinner table. She made two chairs for herself, with one having ‘Jinx’ written on it and the other having ‘Powder’ written on it to represent her younger self. Jinx asked Vi if they were still sisters and if they could be together again. Vi said yes, but Silco said that they would be together from one day before Vi would come to her senses and realize that Jinx is a different person. He said that he would have never given her up to the authorities and that she should just kill Vi. As Jinx struggled to come to a decision, Silco freed himself from his bonds and pointed a gun at Vi. Jinx, in the midst of a mental breakdown, shot him multiple times. With his last words, Silco reaffirmed that he would have never given her up to the enforcers.

Vi asked Jinx to untie her and run away with her like she had before, but to her horror, Jinx sat down in the chair labeled ‘Jinx’, reaffirming her new identity and that the girl that Vi knew as a child was gone. She then took  the weapon that she built with the Hextech crystal and used it to launch a rocket into the room where the Council, a collection of the highest ranking members of the most prominent institutions of the city and the defector rulers of Piltover were meeting.

Jinx Appearance

Jinx is slender, sinewy, and light-skinned. She wears common punk street fashion typical for Zaunite youth. Her most noticeable features are her tattoos of stylized clouds, as well as her natural blue hair. As a child she would have a short hairstyle with one braid, later transitioning to two long braids as a teen. After her shimmer transformation, she would have even paler skin almost chalk white and her bright blue eyes would turn to pink occasionally turning to a reddish colour.

Jinx Personality

Powder was a curious and clumsy child, often making decisions that would badly affect the people around her. She was constantly teased for this, and it made her hate herself when she made these decisions. Deeply traumatized by the death of her parents, she would have attachment issues, specifically towards her sister Vi. After she caused the deaths of Mylo, Claggor, and Vander and Vi seemingly abandoning her during her most weakest moment, her trauma would become more pronounced, experiencing both auditory and visual hallucinations of Mylo and Claggor’s dead voices and bodies. She would put on a veneer of a bubbly and energetic person, only to hide the hurt and trauma of past events. She’s also very sarcastic, extroverted with a twisted sense of humour.

After she was adopted by Silco, Jinx became more chaotic and more prone to hallucinations, even enjoying becoming a criminal and being slightly sadistic. Sevika stated that Jinx is someone impossible to control, even for Silco. Although chaotic and unstable, she’s a very skilled inventor with a high level of creativity and intelligence, creating her own arsenal of weapons.

Her chemical alteration by Singed would further deteriorate her mental stability, making her even more paranoid and more erratic. With the return of her sister seemingly with another person, she would do whatever it took to not lose her again, even kidnapping her and accidentally killing Silco. Despite being mentally unstable a part of her as Powder remained inside her, this would make her feel scared of being the same fearful, weak and timid child before being Vi abandoned her, creating an inner struggle about her true identity. However, after Silco’s death, she fully embraced her new identity as Jinx.