That was one of the first rules that Laoshan had tried to drill into his small group of militant airbenders back at the Eastern Monastery when they decided to learn strategy with him. Stay together, or you’ll be split apart and hacked to the ground. Sadly, no one ever saw fit to teach this lesson to Laoshan’s stomach, something he had learned the hard way over the course of dozens of prison escapes and hundreds of hangovers. Bearing this in mind, the monk tried his damndest to maintain momentum as he dodged General Fang’s offensive thrust. The former prisoner didn't break stride as he was assaulted, leaping atop the stone as it moved, quickly kicking off of the projectile and launching himself over the wall as the missile was forced to the ground. He rolled one way upon his introduction to the ground; his stomach rolled another. Rolling was bad, rolling was VERY bad. A wave of nausea came over Laoshan as he popped to his feet, the world spinning around him as he forced the bile back down his throat. “Keep moving, keep moving…”
Escape. Righting himself, Laoshan immediately dove into an adjacent alley, using the earthbent wall as cover for his escape. The large man bulldozed his way through a series laundry lines, rain barrels, one cooling pie, and a slumbering drunkard with something in her hands. He ignored the alley-drunk's protests as he plowed through her designated sleeping alley, snagging whatever bottle she had been cradling in her hands as he went. "You shouldn't drink this, it'll kill you, trust me I know!"
Laoshan emerged from the alleyway, his knuckles white around the bottle of heaven and his lip still bleeding. He wasn’t alone. There were teenagers, two of them. One a woman and the other a young man, both with the look of 'Fire nation tourist' plastered on their faces. Odd. Glancing down, the airbender saw the food stains, vomit stains, and blood stains absolutely coating his tattered sack clothes. The tooth from earlier was still buried in his hand, and somehow he had managed to accidentally steal a solid dress's worth of torn fabric as he plowed through the passage. Between that and the alcohol, he could make something work for a disguise and his headache. That boded well. For the time being, however, his head still pounded and that sturdy earthbending woman was still on his trail.
Laoshan flashed a quick, dirty smile to the two kids, all too aware of what he looked like, and bolted down the new road like An himself were after him, his stride turning from a shifty, side-to-side jog to huge, bounding leaps. The wind swept down to meet him, moving air caressing his body and carrying him to greater speed and height. Whip him bloody and call him Nan, it was good to stretch his legs again!
Laoshan Fang Ba Sing Se, 8 Path Prison: Northeast.
"We gotta get out of here and get to my boat before the smelly airbender steals it!" She growled, racing towards the metal-covered stonework. There were a few rioting prisoners beating futilely against the wall who were about to be very useful. Throwing her right hand up, Jai let loose a concentrated blast of fire, watching the flickering orange blast impact the deadly-looking razor wire at the top of the wall. Pouncing forward, Jai let loose a feral growl as she leaped onto the shoulders of a rioting prisoner and used his height to spring up. Lashing out with her left hands, Jai twisted her wrist and tossed the chain upwards, watching with surprised satisfaction as it wrapped around a piton connected to the ruined razor wire, and gave her the final edge she needed to pull herself up onto the wall.
With her new vantage point, Jai now saw the threats Laoshan had been talking about. The old man was staying put too, seemingly waiting for her and the other airbender. Jai whistled up to the watchtower to get his attention, glaring up at him with fire in her eyes. "Hey! You better hope you know how to sail if you plan on ditching me again!"
"So, you're an Airbender too? Don't think I'm about to let that go, we've probably got business to settle with each other-" He glanced down at the swiftly approaching, small army headed their way. "After we escape. I'm not leaving without my glider though. If we don't find it on the way to the ship, I have to sneak back in afterward and find it here, it's just that I'm not crazy enough to stay while an army's here on high alert. You can leave me behind then, but it's something I need to do. You might wanna take the pirate lady though. I wouldn't wanna piss her off."
Laoshan blinked. He looked from the young firebender, who was LEGITIMATELY impressive at this point, to the nomad boy trying to pick a fight with him, and loudly declaring that he would break back into the prison after they escaped. His head throbbed, his eyes still burning from the noonday light. The light of noon. When they were escaping. Spirits behold, he loved his life, and this youngblood was going to cause nothing but trouble.
Of course, he could always… Heh.
Laoshan took one solid look at the younger airbender, glanced back at the approaching army, let off a nasty grin. “So you think we have business to attend to, eh?” The air nomad chuckled as he dropped down from the tower, landing next to the youths with the softness of air cradling his descent. “Baldy…” The monk paused, his body stiff, and turned exactly 90 degrees to face the oncoming army. Cupping his hands, Laoshan cried out,
“OH, YOU’RE GOING TO BREAK BACK INTO THE 8 FOLD PRISON, HERE, IN THE NORTHEAST SECTOR OF THE CITY, AFTER WE ESCAPE TO GET BACK YOUR AIRBENDING STAFF?? THAT SURE IS GOOD TO KNOW.”
The sound echoed off of walls of the city, supernaturally enhanced by the absolutely astounding lung capacity of a master airbender and the geography of Ba Sing Se. It bounced from the walls, curved off of the ground, and there wasn’t a penguin-owl’s chance in a volcano that it didn’t reach the swiftly approaching horde of An’s cronies.
Laoshan turned back, his rank breath escaping through bloodied, smiling lips. “Now, we have business to settle with each other.”
Without another word, the drunkard leapt from the wall, jetting off another burst of wind and sprinting down the stonework to the streets below. He landed with the puff of a zephyr, feet tapping lightly onto the cobblestones before launching him deeper into the city. “We better hurry, kids, the army gets here soon! Best of luck to both of you! Badger Girl, I hope you’re there when I get to your boat or it’s miiiiiine…!”
The monk’s voice echoed up to the stone walls as he ran. He smiled through the pain of his throbbing skull. Those two would have to move fast or they would get caught, and if he had guessed right, he had given them juuuuuust the incentive they needed. They would be after his head, and something told him that a shared goal would help them work together. Besides... “First lesson of being an airbender is freedom. Can’t be free if you’re too attached to your earthly possessions. Hell, I’ll make him another one after he cools off, but breaking back in after the prison break would be suicide.”
Blood was shed, tears were shed, clothes were shed, and through it all was the constant refrain of violence and passionate youth. A battle between two colors, red and blue, parsing the notes of a primal song; part humanity and part of the wild, bodies clashed and the ball flew. Magnificent, beautiful, disturbing: all these words would well describe the fray, but Blaine would settle on: expensive.
At the end of the period, Blaine stood in a tattered coat, shredded pants, buttons from his assorted clothes littered the floor of the gym, and his shoes were entirely covered in scuff marks and the damage of being used repeatedly as launch pads. For now, he would have to remove his jacket and tie it about his waist if he was to preserve a sense of decency. As he understood it, showing too much of one's thighs was inappropriate, and he still had first impressions to make. Impressions aside, he couldn’t afford to keep doing this, much less considering the rather small remains of his scholarship money. There simply wasn’t room in his budget for more clothing. If only the school gave out some kind of... exercise clothes. Like a gym uniform. He should look into that.
Still, it was worth it. One uniform was a small price to pay for the beginnings of bonds with his fellow Hunters and Huntresses-in-training, and from the look of things, there were a few people who seemed interesting to Blaine. Of particular note were the vibrant faunus girl, the metal-armed boy with his poor attitude, and the leader, Ben, to whom Blaine had explained that he had no tablet, but that the colossal faunus could be found in his room, and if not present would respond shortly to written notices.
...There was also the attractive man who had changed into a woman at the beginning of the match, but it was best to keep those ideas to himself, at least for now. So far, it seemed as though he had made a good first impression, so it was with a parting of teeth meant to approximate a smile and a twinkle in his amazingly intense eyes that he strode towards Practice.
As he walked, Blaine kept his eyes forward, face composed with a polite disinterest, and back ramrod straight. As long as he acted casual, surely no one would notice his largely destroyed uniform. He had seen stranger fashion statements already. Besides, he had business to attend to. He had already given Orrin the charm he had made for him, and from what he had seen on the class registry, the other members of Team Obelisk would be in Practice, providing the opportunity he needed. Most excellent.
Cheerful in his heart of hearts, throat humming ever so slightly with the growling music he remembered from the old days, the young faunus arrived at the obstacle course where he soon spotted Selena and Iona. Reaching into the pocket of his ravaged jacket, the faunus walked behind them, his practiced footfalls unintentionally quiet. With a guttural cough, Blaine cleared his throat, covering his mouth with one hand and clutching towards the charms he had made with the other. He bore his teeth, trying to smile and not really managing to reach his eyes. That was something he still had to practice. “Pardon me, teammates Selena Cecilia and Iona Murasaki. Teammate Selena, I am aware we have seen one another, but missed the chance to introduce ourselves. Teammate Iona, it is a pleasure to finally meet you. I am Blaine Olbrecht, fellow member of Team Obelisk. As our instructor has stated, we have one minute to ‘catch our breath,’ I have already expended 23 seconds, and I need roughly 20 more to properly give each of you a gift and exchange proper... cultural… um.”
As he spoke, Blaine’s teeth ceased to show, his expression becoming more and more intense as his face paled. The faunus rooted through his tattered jacket’s breast pocket, the front pockets of his destroyed pants, his back pockets. ...The charms weren’t there. He had placed them in the morning, but the charms weren’t there. The words died in his throat, his breath wheezing out like a dying accordion.
All of a sudden, it was very hot outside to one Blaine Olbrecht, Hunter-in-training.
“Remember now, we have to keep moving if we all want to get away! I want whoever hired these guards to be horrifically disappointed when they show up!” While the young ones were still talking, Laoshan started hoofing it up the stairs, confident the others would follow. Where they went after they escaped the prison wasn’t immensely important as long as it got them out of the city. Things were a little hot right now, and the former monk most certainly didn’t want to know what happened to prison breakers in Ba Sing Se. The old regime crushed their hands, and he could only imagine what this supposedly crueler warlord of a king would do. “Boat sounds good. Boat sounds quite good. Upriver would be… bloody badgermoles, that’s towards the Middle Ring. Fantastic. We should be heading that way anyhow. Gates are open today with coronation, at least according to the guards I overheard blabbing about it. That, and no one will expect prisoners to escape towards law enforcement. This plan can’t possibly go wrong. Right? Right.” Laoshan muttered to himself, well aware that he was fully audible to those around him.
Destination aside, things inside the prison were going rather smoothly. As things turned out, the guards weren’t prepared for a prison break on the day of An’s coronation, which meant that the riot, the wave of angry nonbenders, and the scattered handful of capable benders from various nations that had been picked up by the wave of rebellion proved more than capable of taking on the reduced watch. The middle aged man smiled as he ran past unconscious prisoners. The meatshields were doing their jobs, and the few groups of guards they encountered on their way outside the cellar were swiftly dealt with by a small horde of angry benders.
Soon enough, the metal of the bending section of the prison turned into the stone of the regular quarters, and the group emerged from their subterranean incarceration into the blinding light of day. Laoshan blinked several times, muttering oaths to himself as the bending party made their way outside. His headache still hadn’t gone away, and all the sun wasn’t doing him any favors.
Glaring through the piercing assault on his brain, Laoshan took note of a few things. The escaped prisoners seem to have taken the guards they found hostage, hog-tying the lot of them and throwing them into the middle of the prison’s yard. The yard itself was huge, with vast metal walls and a clever gate system. The gates were made of gigantic slabs of stone, requiring multiple earthbenders to open them. That wasn’t the problem. The biggest issue was that they would have to be opened from the outside, the entire inside of the courtyard lined with metal so that any earthbending escape could only make it so far. As things stood, the collected masses of prisoners who had helped clear the guards away from Laoshan's escape route was stymied, slamming their faces against the gates in frustrated woe. However, for a clever airbender, it wasn’t hard to notice that there wasn’t a ceiling on this courtyard, and the walls could be surmounted with a bit of fancy footwork, assuming he could get past the razor wire ringing the place.
Taking a moment to gather himself, the mendicant crouched, leaping up into a spinning jump propelled by a gout of wind that dented the metal where he had stood. His dirty feet made contact with the steel of the wall, pushing off, turning, and jetting loose another air blast from his legs to propel himself up to the razor covered wire surrounding the lip of the walls. His fingers latched onto the top of the wall, and he felt himself dangle. Laughing for a moment at how absurd he must look, a massive man with his arms outstretched like a child hanging from a tree, the monk shoved off of the wall, kicking off one final burst of air to flip over the wire and land atop the high ground. Laoshan spun on his feet, adopting a low defensive stance to take on the guards rushing towards him…!
...No one was on the wall.
What? The airbender leapt up to the viewports of the nearest watch tower with a small gust to push him, clinging onto the bars on the exterior of the tower and staring into the city. He knew he heard alarm bells ringing, and sure enough, there was plenty of sound coming from the Inner Ring… then the monk blanched.
“So about those confiscated items… I think we should forget them.” The bulky man tottered slightly, resembling a filthy hog monkey as he leaned away from the bars, shouting down to his younger compatriots. “We have company coming. I see… lots. Lots of ostrich-horses, and a good bit of fancy armor at the head of the charge. We have… 2 minutes? Let’s say 2 minutes, until they get here. Personally, I’m going to skedaddle and find that boat. You all are welcome to join... You know, if you can make it over the walls.” Laoshan grinned his dirty grin, hair slapping across his face in the fresh air as he stared down at badger-girl and the bald one. It was the challenges that made life fun, especially when they were for people other than him. Still, he hoped the fire nation girl would be willing to take help from the nomad. Lao sure as hell didn't know how to pilot a ship by himself.
“‘Please and thank you’ wouldn’t be remiss…” Laoshan went door to door, opening the cells after fumbling with the key-ring where he heard coherent complaints. Apparently, there was a lively one or two, but most of the prisoners were soaked, frozen, and not in a state remotely close to being able to fight. Unfortunate. He used his airbending to pull those still hanging from inside their cages to the platform then undid their bonds, but that was about all the happiness he could afford them. Stragglers would be left behind. Poor buggers.
The monk sucked on his teeth, frowning as he regarded those around him. The blasted headache was back, and his mouth was all cotton. The sooner they got out, the sooner he could find something strong, and he had at best a handful of benders to work with. Most of those present were dead in the eyes, but two in particular stood out: a young air nomad, he could tell by the build and the shaved head, and a firebender with blackened fingertips and snarl like a dragonbadger. She had been waiting for him, bonds torn from the corners of her cell and rage in her eyes. Dangerous. Neither one of the young guns would go quietly. Laoshan liked it. He could work with fighters. “Alright. If you can still walk, we’re leaving. If you can’t, that’s tough, but we can’t get weighed down. There’s only so much time before the rest of the city guard catches on to what’s happening here, so I hope for your sakes you’re all capable. Baldy, you're our left flank. Young gun, you're on the right. I'll lead. Let’s hop to.”
The former monk turned, weight on the balls of his feet. Uneven teeth showed through a slightly maniacal grin. Laoshan had what he came for, and now it was time to split.
It seemed like Ba Sing Se had gone through a change in management, at least in the prison system. For one thing, there were more chains in this cell than Laoshan was used to. Usually, for non-violent misdemeanors they bound their hands and kept some benders on the prison staff. Simple stuff.
Not the case today. Today, He hung from the ceiling, arms pressed to his side and his body encased in a suit of iron links. Odd. Still, nothing the usual tricks couldn’t fix. Closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths, the airbender opened his left hand, flexed a few times. Fingers were still free. Idiots.
This next portion was the hard part, made him glad he did his breathing exercises after he was kicked out. He started easy, pushing hard with the exhale and pulling in deep with the inhale. The chains started to move, ever so slightly. He could feel the air flow through his beard, his hair as he picked up momentum, increasing the speed and depth of his breaths. The monks always said that a clean shaven head was better for this kind of thing, but that was a load of garbage if you asked Laoshan. The wind jetting through his mane while he flew on his glider, clouds parting in his wake, it always felt so free… Just like he was about to be.
The breaths formed a small gust, but that was all he needed to get started. He directed it with each breath, in, out, back, forth, until the air in his cell was moving all together. His body rocked back and forth in his chains, pulling tighter and tighter against his body by the push and pull of the newfound current. If he was less sturdy, this would’ve been really damn painful.
Fortunately for him, Laoshan was built like a small mountain and twice as stubborn.
At this point, the chains were beginning to feel the stress. The former monk’s body was held completely taut, muscles hard as granite as he kept breathing, red-faced and strained, the iron digging itself into his flesh as his restraints jangled and tightened. The monk pushed himself more and more, back and forth, until he heard the groans from the metal. Chains creaked, bolts complained, and most importantly, his restraints were beginning to loosen from all the frantic back and forth… just enough for him to do what he needed to.
Fun thing about Earth Kingdom protocol was that they bound hands together with cuffs, where each hand could reach the other. Usually not a problem, but most prisoners didn't know the proper way to dislocate their thumbs.
After loosening things up and popping a few joints, a little bit of wiggling and a great load of oaths, the monk stepped free from the chains, the last of his bonds clattering to the floor. After that, all there was to do was wait for mealtime. A guard would have to open the door sooner or later…
Huan was a simple man.
He kept his nose clean, stayed out of trouble for the most part, and over the course of some forty-odd years, he had managed to make his family relatively happy with a prestigious position in Ba Sing Se’s guard. When the forces of Warlord An attacked, he had defended the city as best he could, but at the end of the day he surrendered with everyone else. Short on manpower for the full management of the city, a good bit of the old guard was recycled, not like they cared about regimes. Huan personally was promptly put back in position as a guard in the Northeast Penitentiary of the Eight Path Prisons, where he was in charge of benders. Pretty simple. Keep ‘em chained, keep ‘em out of trouble. Who knew, if things stayed simple, he might even get a promotion at some point. 'Warden Huan,' he liked the sound of that. As he sat down outside of the stairs to Cold Storage, he blew over the top of his cup of tea and shivered. Part of him always felt bad for the firebenders, but it was infinitely worse for the other poor bastards that got thrown in the river from time to time... Still, though he knew it was selfish, Huan couldn't help but be glad it wasn't him. He was cozy out here, with hot tea, 3 square meals a day, and a good job.
For just one moment, the world was gonna be okay for Ol' Huan. Then there was a deep, slow rumble, accompanied by the sound of distant shouting.
After that, the world exploded.
The door from the non-bending section of the prison rocketed off its hinges with the shrill complaint of shredding metal, the hulk of iron slamming against the wall and falling against the opposite side of the hallway with a series of clangs. Huan let off a high-pitched shriek, his voice cracking like the teacup he dropped at his feet as he scrambled to grab hold of the spear he had left beside him, getting stuck briefly in his chair as his feet refused to cooperate. Through the wreckage at the end of the hallway, he could see a single, unsteady figure lumbering through the newly christened portal, a full head taller than Huan himself and covered in dirt and grime. The figure smiled grimly, yellow teeth showing through a wrankled grimace. His knuckles were bleeding slightly, a substantially whiter tooth than his own wedged into one of his hands. “You’re going to want to move, little man.”
“H-halt! By order of Soon-to-be Earth King An, Leader of Ba Sing Se, Lord of Stone, B-bearer of the Eternal M-mountaaaiiEE!” Huan’s feet flew up and his head flew down as the disgusting monk launched across the room like a smelly freight train, propelled by a sudden gout of hurricane-force winds and twirling like a drunken dervish. The bulky man spun on his heel, shattering the spear’s haft with a strong chop from his left hand and closelining the guard with his right. The guard only had time to make a muffled ‘eep’ through the fabric covering the sweaty vagrant’s elbow before his face hurtled towards the ground, kissing the earth at about thirty miles per hour.
It was a good thing Huan was wearing a helmet, or the concussion from his resulting impact with the ground would’ve ended him. Instead, he merely lay prone, clutching his bleeding face and groaning. Not quite dead. Laoshan nodded as curtly as he could manage through his headache, satisfied with himself. “Purely lethal technique, my blackened, ashen backside…”
Bending over, Laoshan patted the guard down for a moment before finding what he was looking for. As he straightened up, the airbender stumbled for a second, steadying himself against the wall and gritting his teeth as he rubbed his temples. Fucking withdrawal… how long had it been since his last drink? Two days, three? Too damn long.
With a click of the key and a creak from its hinges, the door in front of the mendicant opened, letting a cold gust of air flooding up from the stairs leading down. Earthbenders… always with the underground chambers, always the blasted restraints and stone and rock... Utterly unnecessary.
Laoshan pulled the keys from the door and began to head down. The nonbenders should’ve been rushing the courtyard by now, trying to find some guards to take hostage. Personally, he didn’t think the administration under this new Earth King would give a damn, but who knew? In the meantime, the monk was going to try his luck with some REAL firepower. Heh. Firepower.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Laoshan muttered to himself as he flipped through the dense ring of keys before finding the correct fit. This door was the heaviest he had run across yet, undecorated, iron, and heavy as a bitch. He frowned for a moment, considering the hulk before him. After a moment's consideration, the airbender braced himself against the door, leaping into the air, twisting his body, and letting off a staunch airblast from the dirty soles of his dirty feet. The portal shot open, the stone of the stairs behind him cracking beneath the force of Laoshan's demonstration.
Improvising to protect his head, the nomad twisted the air around him, convincing his body to perform a small flip and land on its feet. He only staggered a little bit. Solid six point landing.
Brushing himself off, the former monk began to examine the room. The only light that showed anything was the glint of torches from the stairway, all fire kept away from this place. Still, garnering a bit from what he did see, there were rows upon rows of metal doors standing in stone, and… the sound of rushing water? More than that, this chamber was freezing. Additionally… he couldn’t hear any prisoners. Usually they cried out, rattled their chains, complained about the food, something. This was… unnatural. Still, Laoshan was here for back-up, and if anyone was still alive and kicking he was going to snag them.
“Oy! If you’re breathing, sign off! A certain man by the name of Laoshan Fang is running a hard jailbreak, and you lucky sops are about to benefit from his great magnanity and desire to get just, so far away from here. We’ve got keys if you’ve got an able body. Any takers?”
Note: Like so, but usually wearing rags and slightly more out of focus. Laoshan is a massive man, standing around 6'2" and weighing roughly 230lbs, with broad shoulders, a chiseled body, and a generally horrible smell. That Earth Kingdom heritage is doing work for the man. This is not reflected in his typical manner of dress, as he tends to go around with a ragged cloak and whatever he can find to cover his body. If it doesn't get him arrested, it works for him.
"Remember, children, weak tea is for weak people."
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?”
Note: Like so, but usually wearing rags and slightly more out of focus. Laoshan is a massive man, standing around 6'2" and weighing roughly 230lbs, with broad shoulders, a chiseled body, and a generally horrible smell. That Earth Kingdom heritage is doing work for the man. This is not reflected in his typical manner of dress, as he tends to go around with a ragged cloak and whatever he can find to cover his body. If it doesn't get him arrested, it works for him.
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?”
Color me interested, if you've still got some room. Depending on how other characters play out, I'm thinking either a hardcore peregrine knight-type air/firebender looking to better his bending with travel, or a world-weary alcoholic water bender with a strong sense of "fuck it." Honestly I've got like six ideas, just depends on what other people play.
