Age: 36

Personality:
Surly, shaggy, and usually drunk, Laoshan Feng is a character who many people would generally prefer to avoid. On the outside, he doesn't care much for anything outside of drink and his own personal freedom, but he has a ferocious possessive protective side when he starts to consider someone one of ‘his’ people. Oftentimes this manifests as ‘testing’ people to see if they’re worth his time, generally with banter and fisticuffs. If you’re going to get offended and indignant after a few jam sessions, he’s not interested. Unrelated, he has a general grudge against earthbenders, who he currently sees as bloodthirsty barbarians due to the state of the world.
Likes:
-Physical pleasures: “There are few finer joys than food, fighting, and song.”
-Good company: “I lack coin, but I’ll gladly trade you six peach buns and a place to rest my head for a story, a song, and the end of your moleskink problem. Deal?”
-Competition: “Yes, I know it’s foolish, but are you telling me you don’t think you can steal the governor’s best robes and get away with it? Because I know I can, but if you’re not comfortable with it...”
Dislikes:
-Eastern Air Monastery: “Bastards kicked me out for having an ounce of foresight.”
-Earth-benders: “Bastards are unreliable, drunken, warmongering messes and I’ll be damned if they think they’re going to move one step outside of their dusty, useless continent.”
-Weak tea: “Weak tea is for weak people. Stew it for an hour in an old boot and get back to me.”

Background: It’s a long story, but we’ll try to keep it short.

Born from the union between a mercenary earth-bending father and a naive air nomad who was traveling the world, Laoshan Feng is an exile, a drunkard, and a bit of a warhawk from the Eastern Air Temple. When he was young, his mother took him back to the Air Temple so that he could be raised in the traditional ways, but his physical differences from his peers were noticeable from the beginning. Taller and bulkier than his peers, Laoshan was never quite accepted amongst the other airbender children, though they would not say it to his face. In spite of, or perhaps because of this, he redoubled his focus on airbending, striving to prove himself to the elders through his ability if not his heritage. As time went on, Laoshan proved himself to be too much of a hothead, and generally paid more attention to world events than the others of his age. Due to this, he believed heavily in a more aggressive style of airbending, focusing on finishing fights quickly and decisively instead of dancing around the opponent. Soon, the elders of the temple discovered a group of younger airbenders attempting to develop lethal airbending techniques, strictly against the teachings of the nomads. Rather than exile the lot of them, they strove to find the source of the aggression, and discovered that Laoshan had been leading this group of angry youths. He was swiftly ousted from the temple, much to the despair of his mother, and not many others.

Wandering through the earth kingdom and fire nation, Laoshan picked up a tendency to start fights and end them, singing and wandering his way through most prisons in the countryside. After a time, jailbreaking became a personal favorite passtime. In order to surprise most guards, he started duplicating bending techniques from other disciplines as best he could, throwing sand around with the wind and using matches and alcohol to duplicate certain firebending techniques. Grand fun. As time passed on, however, he grew disgusted with the constant warfare and blood of the earth kingdoms’ warlords, all to persuaded that he was correct about their belligerent nature. Worrying about what could possibly happen not only to his own temple, but more importantly the folk in the fields, farmers and peasants who couldn’t bend, Laoshan seeks to find the new avatar as the world’s single largest “get bent” gesture towards An and the warmongering ways of the Earth Kingdoms.

Bending Ability: Master airbender, though not in traditional style. Exiled from the nomads before he could go receive his tattoos, his bending style has been largely altered from base airbending due to his travels and a sense of rebellion against the masters of the Eastern Temple, with most current movements based off of fusion of drunken boxing and Ba Gua Zhang. This is, in large part, due to how often he’s in tight quarters, with many of his techniques being developed to be used in controlled environments where his movements are limited. A good number of his current airbending techniques take inspiration from firebending breath control. Currently, he is focused on adapting aggressive techniques from other bending arts into airbending, and teaching any airbender who will listen for half a minute.

Other: Like any airbender worth his salt, Lin carries an airbending staff, a large urn full of sand, a huge flash of pure alcohol, and phosphorus matches when possible, though his multiple captures and subsequent escapes tend to lose him some nice things. Currently, he has in his possession an old walking stick, some basic camping supplies, 50ft of hemp rope and the clothes on his back. Or at least he would, if he wasn’t locked in a prison cell. Still, the first time they put him in the yard… well, they’ll see.

Skills excluding airbending include a strong knowledge of general fist-fighting with a focus on throws, trips, and boxing that’s kept him alive in situations where the grandiose motions of traditional airbending aren’t as welcome as they’d usually be. On top of this, he’s become a bit of an escape artist as time has gone on, learning to be proficient with lockpicks and keeping his body flexible. Finally, he has an excellent singing voice(or so he thinks) and is an exceedingly capable cook, having learned to make do with few ingredients on hand.

On the downside, he is an actual alcoholic. High-functioning and he doesn’t QUITE have cirrhosis of the liver, but it’s a close thing. It’s a problem.

Sample Post:

The man awoke, flopping upright with a cold sweat dripping from his brow. His beard was matted and dirty, tangled with his own spit and vomit, and his blankets hung taught around him, torn and ragged fabric pressing against his chiseled body. Looking out of the alleyway in which he had roosted…

This was not his alley.

This was a jail cell. An entirely metal jail cell.

Gods damn his breath, he was in the Earth Kingdoms again. Perfect.

Well, nothing to do about that now. Groping beside him for a moment, he heard the cries of prisoners echoing down the corridor, realizing that he was being kept in an iron cage… bending prison. Fantastic, that meant they didn’t know he was an airbender… Probably. Light flickered from braziers along the wall, piercing his eyes like sewing needles, looping thread around his brain and squeezing his thoughts through his temples. A loud groan escaped him as his bound hands fell upon a capped gourd beside him, shaking the vessel for a moment. His lips curled and his scowl deepened.

Empty. They took his staff, his sand, his alcohol, and his pack, but left his empty winegourd. Why’d they even leave the bloody thing with him, especially if it was empty? This was cruel and unusual punishment!

Squinting through the fog of his hang-over, fueled by frustration and the pressure of a headache that would crush diamonds, he struggled to get a grasp on the last memory of the previous night. There was… a guard? No, several guards. No one died, he thought. Probably. That was good. Some firebender had seen him using the Gouting Dragon, declared an Agni Kai (Which frankly, was absolutely hilarious) after Laoshan had said something about his mother... Okay. Getting somewhere. There was a fight, honor duel, the bar was burning, people were running and screaming… Oh. That was it. They had burned the bar down.

Heh, woops.

Screwing his eyes shut and massaging his temples, the monk crossed his legs and took deep breaths. He repeated mantra in his head, narrowed his mental vision. Pain is an illusion, feeling transient, the world is only as real as your perceptions… It didn’t help that most of what he could perceive right now was pain. The nausea was almost overpowering, and it was cold as hell in this thrice-twisted cell. Ugh. Deep breaths. Use breath control, exclude pain from your mind, focus on your surroundings…

Sight: torchlight, iron bars, an emblem on the wall… Hearing: Cries of the other prisoners, his own labored breathing… Feeling: cold iron floor, his thin robes rubbing against his skin… Smell: Sweat, fear, desperation from cells around him… Taste: a mistake, euch. No, he would skip that one today. Right… Hoo. Okay. He was there.

Whether or not that was a good thing, however, was an entirely different story. Eyes open… alright. Headache could be worse. The emblem on the wall meant that he was in Ba Sing Se, heart of the Earth Kingdoms, greatest city in the world, and the ONE place he really wished he wasn’t. Security would be heavy in a prison like this, benders and dangrous criminals were kept in the capital. On top of that, he could be in any one of the 8 Path Prisons set throughout the city, and more than that he didn’t know which sub-building he was in. Not good. Not good at all.

That being said, aside from the grim nature of his confinement, the bender noticed a few more physical things immediately. There was no one in the cell directly across from him, but cries from down the line meant there were definitely other prisoners in this hall. Where this hall was, he had no idea, but that could be gotten around. Fire on the walls, but out of reach. A metal bucket to use as a chamber pot, straw on the ground for a bed, no guards in immediate sight. Looked like the passageway ended in a door on either side, potentially with trouble outside. Hrrrrn. Not much to work with, but he’d done with less before. More importantly, as he combed through his matted beard, he found a small, twisted piece of metal along its straight, hard counterpart. They never searched the beard.

A grin split his filthy face as he extracted the tools of his escape from the filth encrusting his hairy visage. “So…” His voice echoed down the hallway for a moment, a baritone melody carried on the breeze as he exhaled a rancid breath. “Two things. First off, anyone here know a man named Laoshan Feng? If not, you’re all about to. Second, who else here has better places to be?”

P E R S O N A L

---

Nationality: Fire
Ethnicity: Fire

Gender: Male
Age: 19
Height: 5'9"

B A C K G R O U N D

---

Zhen was born a peasant child to a peasant family, in a peasant village in a Fire Country backwater. His father was a farmer, and his mother worked the loom. He grew up on spirit-tales and wistful smiles, and never asked why, every few months, maybe every year if they were lucky, they would rush down to the rough-hewn hole that passed for a basement and pull the trapdoor firmly shut, light blocked out by the rug that slid back in place atop it. The noises unsettled him anyway; he didn't really want to know what made them.

Still, he didn't like the look that would be on his father's face when they came back out, a tightness about the eyes as they slid almost lifelessly across a half-empty storehouse, scattered grain trod carelessly into the dirt.

When he got a little older, he realised that these unpleasant interludes in an otherwise slow and simple life were raids, evil bandits right out of his mother's stories come to loot their food and valuables.

So where, he wondered, were the benders, the Avatar, come to stop them?

When he got a little older still, the candle-flame decided it liked him, following his fascinated fingers to and fro.

And he decided that if nobody would save them, he'd just have to do it himself.

Of course, it wasn't that simple. A firebender couldn't just command the flame to do his bidding, not so easily. He needed training - and there was only one place to get it.

The bandits, as it turned out when he grew old enough to be sat down and have certain facts of life explained to him, weren't bandits at all. They were the loyal soldiers of the local lord, off on leave and having a little fun.

So naturally, he wanted nothing to do with them. But the lord decreed that all firebenders must join his army, and to do otherwise was punishable by execution. If he wanted to learn, he had no other options. And no bender could go without bending for long; hiding himself would be a horribly risky undertaking.

At twelve, he joined Lord Josin's Firebender Cadet Corps. At sixteen, laughingstock and favoured target, barely able to do more than project a simple burst of fire, he deserted. For four years, he had swallowed his objections, his disgust at the callous disregard and entitlement that infested Josin's army of thugs, the quiet resignation of his fellow peasant Cadets and the cruel, mocking superiority of those who hailed from military or noble stock - and most of all, his hatred for the brutish, aggressive firebending they drilled mercilessly into every Cadet, tolerating not even the slightest of deviation.

So he ran. And he kept running, kept ahead of the retrieval squads for as long as they were after him (more a formality than anything, he was useless, a talentless failure; they only wanted him back to make an example), until, eventually, he hit the mountains.

Even then, he kept running. Up into the foothills, up the mountains themselves, past the treeline and deep into rocky crags and caverns.

Until, finally, he found what he never knew he'd been looking for.

He found dragons.

And he found a teacher.

P E R S O N A L I T Y

---

Still possessed of much of the drive of his earlier youth, Zhen's time with the dragons has nonetheless greatly benefited his ability to keep an even keel. Though he feels strongly, and is naturally inclined to act decisively and on instinct, he has grown far better at banking the flame, so to speak, than he once was; even still, however, there are times when his passion overcomes his reason.

With a strong bent towards justice and fairness, Zhen finds himself, to a certain degree, railing against the nature of the world - and far more against the nature of spirits, at best capricious, at worst operating on a logic entirely alien to the human mind. Unfortunately, his time with the dragons has not left him unmarked, and many tend to be curious about what could draw and keep a dragon's attention to a mortal man.

Beyond all else, Zhen will not tolerate tyranny or abuse of authority, and after the Cadet Corps, refuses to swear allegiance to anyone or anything but his own judgement. A diehard free spirit, placing any sort of expectation of obedience on him will inevitably result in his deliberate flouting of that expectation. For someone he respects, whose skills in an area he acknowledges as superior, he will follow reasonable instruction, but he would refuse even the tutelage of a master if it came at the expense of a teaching style reminiscent of the uncompromisingly harsh drills of his youth.

At the same time, however, he has no compunctions acquiescing to the request of a trusted friend, however few of them he has.

B E N D I N G

---

Basically, he's pretty good at Dragon Style but has a fair way to go before mastering it, and knows the very basics of Mountain Style. Due to living on top of a mountain for three years, he's got chi-based breath enhancement down pat; even at eight kilometres above sea level he can still get all the air he needs.

O T H E R S K I L L S

---

• Competent mountaineer and survivalist.
• Hates, but knows, military firebender drill and basic tactics.
• Decent hand-to-hand combatant, mostly soft-style based on Dragon Style firebending.
• Surprisingly excellent campfire cook.

M A J O R P L O T H O O K S

---

• Finding Home - Zhen never learned to read or write as a child, and the Cadet Corps saw no need to teach him. As a consequence, maps were things he heard more experienced members of Josin's army talking about. He knows his home lies on the mainland, and that it's somewhere in the south, but nothing more than that.
• Mastering the Flame - Though he learned much from the dragons, Zhen has not yet fully grown into his art. His skill is enough to keep safe on the road, and to seek further advancement alone without the risk of working a fundamental flaw into his bending forms, but he still has a long way to go.
• The Avatar's Answer - The Avatar has disappeared. Abandoned their duty, and the people who rely on them. They have lifted no finger to help the hundreds, the thousands slaughtered in the Fire Lords' pointless warring. Zhen's feelings on this topic are many and complex, but above all else he wants to look them in the eye and ask: Why?

S A M P L E P O S T

---

"Spirits fucking take it-!"

A flare of bright yellow-orange light splashed off bare stone, before fading away.

There was a rumbling sigh. "Did that make you feel better, young one?"

"... No."

"You have suffered much, I understand. But though fire and water oppose, they are all too similar - they both have their ebb and flow. If you cannot learn to let go, you will never grasp the truth of flame."

"Let - you want me to just let go?! To just forget about - Josin, and his rabble of spirit-forsaken thugs, and -"

"No, young one. Not forget. Fire is life, but it is also passion; to deny your grievances, your fury, is to deny your own flame. But at the same time, if it is all you can return to, you will burn yourself away from within. I do not ask that you cast it away - only that you learn to set it aside, to accept what you cannot do in the moment until the time comes that you can. To allow yourself time and space for more than just revenge."

Cloth rustled faintly in the background, half-lost under the thump of someone dropping to the ground.

"It - hurts. Knowing he's out there, that nobody's stopping him, that there are more just like him. That there's nothing I can do about it."

Somewhere in the gravelly bass that replied, there was concealed just the bare suggestion of a smile. "And that, too, is fire. Endlessly, always, we burn. Even when all there is to burn is ourselves. It is something we must all come to terms with. But this, I think, you know already."

"... Yeah. Yeah, I know." A snort. "Alright, you old lizard, let's get back to it. What am I doing wrong this time?"

For several long moments, silence stretched out.

"Ren?"

"Truthfully, young one, I think there is little more I can teach you. Or, rather, little more I should." Again, just the barest wisp of a smile crept in. "All hatchlings must leave the nest eventually. You have grown well here, sheltered beneath my wings - but if you wish to become all you could be, I cannot coddle you forever. Fire must burn freely, or it is not fire at all!"

"... Already? I mean, I knew this was coming, but... two and a half years?"

This time, the smile was far more evident. "Oh, young one, you really have no idea, do you? Mountain Style did not suit you at all, no, and you were nearly extinguished beneath it - but you are talented, and your fire burns bright within, when given a chance to blaze unrestrained. You have come very far indeed, in this time, and I am proud of you."

A moment of wordless - word-lost - silence. "... 'Cmon, Ren, I'm not that good..."

"Yet. Your beginning in the art of firebending left much to be desired, this is true - though through no fault of your own - but in two and a half years, you have come further than I would expect to see in five, perhaps closer to ten. A decade or two from now, I do not doubt I will see you stand tall among the ranks of masters. In fifty, you will be a figure of history, and I shall be proud of your accomplishment, and take pride in having been your teacher. But part of that is knowing when to let you go. Because a flame cannot be cosseted - if you try, you will only smother it. And you are beginning to grow restless here, even if you have not or cannot see it yourself."

Finally, there was laughter.

"Shit, Ren, you're wiser than I'm ever going to be. I'll miss it. You really think it's time for me to leave?"

"Age and wisdom, young one, often go hand in hand. But yes - it is time you spread your wings and fly." Powerful coils, as much spirit as mortal flesh, moved over each other, the soft hiss of scale on scale almost blending into the wind. "Truthfully... there is another reason, too. You have told me of your frustration with the state of the Fire Nation - though recently, an uneasy truce has come to be between the Lords - with the world at large, and as a part of that world, the Avatar. But... there is really no easy way to say this. The Avatar is missing. Since the assassination of Avatar Er at the hands of the Earth warlord An, the world has awaited his successor, but though twenty years have passed, they have not revealed themselves."

"And you expected any better? It's not like the Avatar even cares. Bridge to the Spirit World and all - but you know what spirits are like."

"Perhaps it is so. Or perhaps it is otherwise. By the metrics of Lord Josin's reign, you are a coward and a traitor - but do those labels define you?"

"... Fine. So, what, you want me to find the Avatar? Seriously?"

"If you wish. It would be a long journey, one that would take you to many places. You would have many opportunities to study bending, both of fire and otherwise. And there is far more to learn in the world than only that; I have seen and learned much in my life, but there is much more I simply cannot teach you. And... if you did find them... wouldn't you have an opportunity to discover an answer?"

"Oh, fuck off. You're a canny old bastard, you know that?"

The amusement could only have been missed if one was deaf. "Why, thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment!"

As the sun set, the mountains echoed with laughter.

D E S I G N N O T E S

---

On Names: Zhen does not, in the present, have a last name. He is a peasant, from a peasant family. In the Avatar world, from what we see in canon, the only people with last names are the ones who have things to pass on (the Bei Fong merchant family, say) but don't have enough status that when people say their names, everyone knows who they're talking about (Ozai/Iroh/Zuko/Azula - they're the royal family, everyone in Fire knows them.) Thus, the quote under the image, from Old Man Zhen, is attributed to Zhen Long. Long is Chinese for dragon - I figured once he got more famous, and word of him being trained by the dragons got around, he might well end up being called something along those lines. So it's sort of a nickname turned title turned surname.

High-End Bending Abilities: Yes, I've got some wacky shit in there. I don't expect Zhen will ever actually get that far, or at least not in the scope of the game, I'm just envisioning capstone abilities that would be awesome. Maybe I'll find a high-power game somewhere in the future and break out Old Man Zhen, the walking volcanic eruption :v