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| Something of a local enigma in the circuit of towns she travels between, Saza (as she calls herself) is a street performer known for her displays of acrobatics, gymnastics, juggling, and general physical flexibility and agility to entertain an audience. She is also a local curio for her prowess as a martial artist, and sometimes teaches women and girls personal defense techniques when her instruction is sought out. Rumor has it that she is skilled and precise enough to perform devastating qi-blocking attacks that render opponents paralyzed, although she steadfastly refuses to acknowledge or teach such methods. | == Saza == |
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| == Appearance == Saza has long black hair, blue eyes, a slender but defined build, with a slightly below-average weight and standing slightly taller than average for women in her area. While performing, she usually wears brightly colored outfits over appropriate modesty clothes for a contortionist (short pants and chest-concealing undershirt). In her off time, she dresses in unremarkable female fashions common to the area she's in and tries not to stand out. |
||'''Gender'''||Female|| ||'''Nationality'''||No Association|| ||'''Hair'''||Black|| ||'''Eyes'''||Blue|| ||'''Occupation'''||Contortionist and acrobat, street performer|| |
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| == Possessions == Saza owns a long, straight-bladed sword, although she has never used it in her act and no one has ever seen her draw it. She also owns several wooden staves of various lengths, which she ''does'' frequently use in performances of juggling, twirling, and vaulting. Similarly, she sometimes shows her proficiency with a wide variety of throwing knives and stars, batons, nunchucks, and sundry other performance items. Most of what she owns can be either worn on her person or fit into a large backpack. |
=== Background === |
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| == Professional life == Saza's primary work is as a street performing contortionist and acrobat. She is sometimes hired by businesses to perform for a set rate at events to help attract attention and bring in crowds, or by wealthy locals to liven up private parties, but most days she performs independently in public and relies on the voluntary generosity of her audience of passers-by. The income stream from voluntarily crowdsourcing her pay is inconsistent and often disappointing. Because of this, she often resorts to earning extra money by working with local bookies to take a cut of gambling proceeds in exchange for participating in knife-throwing and other contests of dexterity or aim. These contests may or may not be rigged by those organizing them. |
Saza (as she calls herself) is an itinerant street performer who puts on displays of acrobatics, gymnastics, juggling, and general physical flexibility and agility. These are skills she learned as a former performer in a traveling circus. She's also a martial artist and rumor has it she knows qi-blocking techniques to paralyze opponents and temporarily break bending abilities. |
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| Occasionally she also supplements her income by selling an unusual (for the region) alcoholic drink made by fermenting honey, or mixtures of honey and fruit. "Saza's special" as she calls it is uncommonly available, her appearances in any given town being only periodic. It is generally considered a luxury item and has developed a small following among a few upper-class administrators of the towns she circuits between. Especially in demand (when it can be made seasonally) is the variety that uses mulberry juice for the fruit component; mulberries and their association with the expense of silk give a connotation of wealth and high status to the consumption of mulberry products. She isn't able to produce very much of this drink, given her often itinerant professional life - to make it, she has to rent a modest brewing and racking space in the wine cellar of a tavern in one of the towns she spends time in, making her brewing schedule dependent on her traveling performance schedule. Honey is expensive in any case, and sometimes she doesn't have the funds to invest in the ingredients for making a batch. Nonetheless, her willingness to provide the local administrative authorities with this delicacy when she has some to sell them has helped shield her from official interest in prying much into her background or private life. | In conversation she has vaguely mentioned having water tribe ancestry, but without much in the way of specifics. |
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| She would like to someday stop having to perform on the street and perhaps settle somewhere to brew full-time instead, or even better, somehow become independently wealthy and simply spend her days in leisure, fishing and wandering the forests without having to work at all, but these aspirations feel utterly out of reach to her and she's resigned to likely being an acrobat for life. | === Current === |
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| == Past history == Other than being aware she wasn't born in the area, Saza's past is largely unknown to the people of the towns she travels between. Because actors and performers are not among the more respectable classes of society, most people are satisfied to just assume that she comes from nowhere remarkable and her circumstances are uninteresting. A few speculate that she must have learned her trade by being a circus performer. Her martial arts skills are murkier and there isn't much consensus on where they may come from. Saza herself prefers not to help clarify. |
From her perspective as someone labeled an ethnic foreigner, the Earth Kingdom administrative state doesn't feel much different to her from the invading Fire Nation in terms of being met with unjust treatment. The proverb of "When elephants fight, it's the ants who get trampled" was recently confirmed in her mind when she was swept up in a broad dragnet and imprisoned by invading Fire Nation military autocrats over nebulous concerns about "spies and saboteurs." Her cellmates turning out to actually be people antagonistic to the Fire Nation has only reinforced her distrust and bitterness for both sides; in her view, their actions are responsible for giving the Fire Nation officials the incitement that collaterally led to her own arbitrary imprisonment. Having broken out of jail, her goal is to reach the Northern Continent where she thinks she'll be safest from recapture by Fire Nation forces. Pragmatically, the best option she sees is to travel with her fellow prison escapees for as long as their goals of reaching the Northern Continent coincide. As far as the rest of the party's goals regarding the Avatar, she's highly skeptical of both their motives and the value of the Avatar tradition itself. Beyond the Avatar, Saza's views of spirits in general are complex. She tends to conceptualize them as having their origins in being products of interdependent causes and effects of human perception representing personifications of abstract ideations and concepts, or as externalizations of the internal beliefs and views of people on an individual or cultural level, more than as objectively real phenomena that have an existence of their own outside of the people observing them. Generally, she wants as little to do with the affairs of spirits as possible, since in her experience they only reflect the problems and ambitions of the people associated with them, and becoming entangled in either of those things is not something she sees as likely to be good for her. Her beliefs tend to be over-simplistically misinterpreted as an unnuanced denial of the existence of spirits, so she's largely given up trying to discuss spirit matters with her companions. === Inventory === ||Street clothes|| ||Performing outfit|| ||Juggling balls|| ||Throwing and juggling knives|| ||Sword, with straight blade, made from an unusually corrosion-resistant metal. Claimed to be recovered a long time ago from a "star that fell" but she's not sure how true the story is. Handed down to her as a gift from her old circus when she departed.|| ||Whetstone|| ||Dried traveling food|| ||Water flask|| ||Firestarting box|| |
Saza
Gender |
Female |
Nationality |
No Association |
Hair |
Black |
Eyes |
Blue |
Occupation |
Contortionist and acrobat, street performer |
Background
Saza (as she calls herself) is an itinerant street performer who puts on displays of acrobatics, gymnastics, juggling, and general physical flexibility and agility. These are skills she learned as a former performer in a traveling circus. She's also a martial artist and rumor has it she knows qi-blocking techniques to paralyze opponents and temporarily break bending abilities.
In conversation she has vaguely mentioned having water tribe ancestry, but without much in the way of specifics.
Current
From her perspective as someone labeled an ethnic foreigner, the Earth Kingdom administrative state doesn't feel much different to her from the invading Fire Nation in terms of being met with unjust treatment. The proverb of "When elephants fight, it's the ants who get trampled" was recently confirmed in her mind when she was swept up in a broad dragnet and imprisoned by invading Fire Nation military autocrats over nebulous concerns about "spies and saboteurs." Her cellmates turning out to actually be people antagonistic to the Fire Nation has only reinforced her distrust and bitterness for both sides; in her view, their actions are responsible for giving the Fire Nation officials the incitement that collaterally led to her own arbitrary imprisonment.
Having broken out of jail, her goal is to reach the Northern Continent where she thinks she'll be safest from recapture by Fire Nation forces. Pragmatically, the best option she sees is to travel with her fellow prison escapees for as long as their goals of reaching the Northern Continent coincide. As far as the rest of the party's goals regarding the Avatar, she's highly skeptical of both their motives and the value of the Avatar tradition itself.
Beyond the Avatar, Saza's views of spirits in general are complex. She tends to conceptualize them as having their origins in being products of interdependent causes and effects of human perception representing personifications of abstract ideations and concepts, or as externalizations of the internal beliefs and views of people on an individual or cultural level, more than as objectively real phenomena that have an existence of their own outside of the people observing them. Generally, she wants as little to do with the affairs of spirits as possible, since in her experience they only reflect the problems and ambitions of the people associated with them, and becoming entangled in either of those things is not something she sees as likely to be good for her. Her beliefs tend to be over-simplistically misinterpreted as an unnuanced denial of the existence of spirits, so she's largely given up trying to discuss spirit matters with her companions.
Inventory
Street clothes |
Performing outfit |
Juggling balls |
Throwing and juggling knives |
Sword, with straight blade, made from an unusually corrosion-resistant metal. Claimed to be recovered a long time ago from a "star that fell" but she's not sure how true the story is. Handed down to her as a gift from her old circus when she departed. |
Whetstone |
Dried traveling food |
Water flask |
Firestarting box |