It is said that during the minority of the Avatar, wicked schemes are poured out on the Four Nations as a violent flood. Certainly, this was true during the years following the unexpected death of the Avatar Kuruk, during the minority of Avatar Kyoshi, when her identity was known to none or few in the Earth Kingdom.

In the second year of the thirty-ninth Earth King, a minor official in the Far West, QIN Ji, rose up in rebellion against the corruption and injustice of the ruling Hao Ting dynasty. Many disaffected peoples and provinces of the Kingdom rallied to the side of the charismatic and brutally effective hegemon, whose strategies confounded the bookish, aristocratic generals of the Royal Earth Army. In the North, though, the famous warlord General Wen, the son of a humble wine-house matron, has come to lead the loyalist opposition to Qin, answering strategem with strategem and making Qin's Northern Army purchase every li of Northern soil with blood.

At last, the rebel armies of Chenbao and the Yonggan khaganate, as well as sundry troops loyal only to Qin the Great, have come to the walls of Beigang, one of the great northern ports that supply the capital of Ba Sing Se. Under the overall command of the great rebel general TONG Youlan, known to her enemies (and a few bold internal rivals) as "Dirty Blood" Tong for her half-Yonggan ethnic background, they have laid siege to the port, cutting off the flow of river shipping by erecting huge stone pillars in the river and attacking visiting maritime traffic with earthbending artillery.

You are soldiers and camp followers of Qin's Northern Army, identified as trustworthy by the military intelligence section of General Tong. Yours has not been an easy campaign; the name of General Wen is cursed every day in the camp as the reason you have not had an easy war like your comrades in the West, where the Hao Ting loyalists fled before the victorious Qin. At last, here in Beigang, there will be a direct confrontation; scouts see the battle standards of General Wen flying from the Beigang yamen, and Ganjinese merchant spies with sympathies toward the rebellion have confirmed his personal command over the city's defenses. As much as his presence here represents a threat, it is also an opportunity to deal a crippling blow to the enemy and liberate the North from the unworthy Hao Ting and their cronies.

Summoned to the command platform of General Tong herself, you await your audience with the supreme commander of the Northern Army nervously, to find out what mission is assigned to you...