FORMATION Stories: Cynprel

Lore is only as good as its keepers, and if you’ve ever wondered just what’s going on in the VALORANT universe, Annie—who goes by “Cynprel”—has some stories for you.

At first, VALORANT was simply Cynprel's latest game.They were a heavy Apex Legends player but only ever lurked at the edges of that game’s lore community. VALORANT was the first game where Cynprel leapt from observer to content creator.

“I love being able to pick things apart. During the closed beta, I put together a reddit thread and was one of the few people putting together stuff on lore at the time,” Cynprel said. “As far as I can tell, it sort of just took off from there.”

The Kingdom tower on Split defender spawn—which they called a “towering obelisk of corporate oppression”—piqued their curiosity early on. Not long after, Cynprel sought to create content for those interested in VALORANT’s narrative community, including a lore Discord server, and eventually video breakdowns.

“I’m a creative [person] at heart. I love writing, storytelling, drawing and art. Long term, I’d love to write on a video game team,” they said. “I’m really interested in the video game industry, both as an advocate for a more progressive movement within, but also to contribute to the greater community.”

Today, Cynprel continues as a sort of private investigator, unearthing clues embedded in-game, and prodding VALORANT Creative Director David Nottingham in interviews.

Cynprel investigates for that segment of the VALORANT community that enjoys both earning rank and knowing what makes Jett tick, how Breach likes his coffee, or what Kingdom plans to do about all this “mirrorverse” stuff.

The sudden uptick of content has pushed Cynprel’s workload into overdrive—they even admitted to reconsidering the whole thing.

That urge was fleeting, however, because for Cynprel, who identifies as non-binary, knew that there was a bigger picture.

“When I started doing this, one of the values I wanted to foster and protect was being a safespace and representative of the LGBTQI+ community,” Cynprel said. “I felt like this was the perfect opportunity to sort of use my platform to help others feel more welcome, especially in the competitive gaming space.”

You can follow Cynprel’s formation on their Twitter or YouTube channel.

CYNPREL Q&A

Favorite Agent back story so far?

Omen just because there is so much to grab from it. It’s so dynamic and seemingly central to the conflict in the VALORANT story.

Right now I speculate on how Omen’s body is unstable. He talks about being “split” and it’s likely that he’s split across these parallel universes. In this case the conflict between Earth 1 and Earth 2, the mirrorverse. Whatever happened to him set in motion this conflict, it's why we are seeing these rifts and phenomena.

[Editor’s Note: We can neither confirm nor deny these theories, yet.]

Favorite storytelling in a video game?

Darks Souls III had the perfect blend of storytelling—an in-your-face and story in some ways, and hidden in item descriptions, for example.

Favorite VALORANT weapon?

Vandal.

Favorite Map?

Breeze.

Skin?

Singularity Sheriff. It's the sounds.

Who do you main?

Killjoy.

What does “Cynprel” mean?

It’s actually a fictional place from my personal writings.

What can we expect from your future content?

I’m going to continue providing news on Twitter, and I’m looking forward to expanding on Twitch. As my platform grows, it’s only necessary to put more time into it.