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...

* a.k.a. Chin the Great / Chin the Conqueror, 秦籍, lived 325-270 BG

Pregens:

RAN Guiying (冉桂英), a 22-year-old Zhongzu (and 1/4 Ganjinese) woman, from Beigang in Xibei Province. A native of Beigang and a member of an anti-Hao-Ting dissident group (The Society for National Reformation), Guiying has been feeding detailed reports of goings-on in the city to General Tong for some time; her spying from the roof of her family's posh Sand Hill townhouse was pivotal in allowing Qin's Northern Army to trap most of the Hao-Ting's North Sea Fleet of the Royal Earth Navy inside the Royal Dockyards in the daring raid that heralded the arrival of the siege. However, her activities were discovered by General Wen's internal security apparatus, and she barely escaped the city with her life. Her usefulness as a spy in Beigang likely at an end, she joined Qin's forces outside the city. Guiying is literate and educated, and is a ideological enemy of the Hao Ting; her dissident group has supported Qin since he gained legitimacy by marrying the Ganjinese princess regnant not long ago. She is acquainted with secret writing, codes, and means of assassination such as poisons.

ZAI Wenjing (宰文靖), a 30-year-old Honghu man, from the Far West, a sergeant of Qin's Northern Army. Zai is one of the so-called Red-Beard people, indigenous to the Far West. His settlement, long dissatisfied with their treatment by the Hao Ting, was quick to throw in their lot with Qin. He and a dozen warriors from his hometown fought with Qin in his Western Campaign, entering Xijing in triumph under the banner of the hegemon, and then acclaiming him Regeneration Emperor in Gansanjiao. Already several years into a successful military career, Wenjing has found the fraught and difficult Northern campaign an unwelcome contrast to the others, and like many, focuses on the Hao-Ting loyalist warlord General Wen as the lynchpin of their difficulties. He is a strong physical fighter, favoring the sword, but he also has a little earthbending - not strong enough to be of much direct use, but enough to trip up opponents fighting on ground. He is not literate (though he can write his name and knows a few characters.)

LI Wanzhong (酈萬鍾), a 19-year-old Ganjinese man, native to Nitan State. Wanzhong wanted to be a painter and calligrapher, and was apprenticed to a master in Apana town, where his family owned a trading post. He was courting a Ganjinese girl from Xinlin Province, and hoped to marry her and move to the provincial capital to continue developing his art in a more sophisticated milieu. All of those hopes seemed dashed, though, when the warlord General Wen's army entered Apana town and forcibly conscripted him to fight against the rebel army of Qin the Conqueror. Given a crossbow and some basic armor, he was soon thrust into battle against a numerically superior and well-motivated detachment of Qin's Northern Army, in which he nearly died. He managed to desert when his commanding officer was slashed to death by a Nara war badgermole, but when he made it back to Apana town, he discovered that it had been burned to the ground by General Wen to deny it to the enemy. He spent a week searching for his family, fiance, or master, but discovered that his master had died trying to save his precious art collection from the flames, his fiance had been taken by one of Wen's officers as a war bride, and his family had fled East to parts unknown. Dejected, Wanzhong decided to join Qin's army, in the hope of inflicting some pain on the force he now blamed for most of his troubles. Fortunately, he turned out to be a very good shot with the crossbow.

YONG Abahai (雍·阿巴亥), A 20-year-old woman, whose father was Zhongzu and whose mother is Yonggan, native to the State of Yi. The illegitimate child of an earthbending miner from the State of Yi and a Yonggan badgermole herder's daughter, Abahai lost her father to a mining accident when she was young. Never close to her maternal family (who had looked askance on her mother's choice of partner), Abahai moved to the far north of the State of Yi and practiced mostly self-taught earthbending for hire in the mountain mines. Bored of her work and inspired by the tales of Yonggan bards, Abahai hearkened to the promises made by General Tong's recruiters, and joined the Great Northern Army - she was particularly inspired by the fact that general Tong was a half-Yonggan woman herself, and figured there could be opportunities for advancement. Abahai received additional training in martial earthbending, and is now considered a promising up-and-comer among the ranks of the bending officer. She has basic functional literacy and is also good at using the badgermole hook as a weapon at times when earthbending would be inappropriate.

CHANG Lianzhe (昌聯喆), a 25-year-old Zhongzu woman, native to Chenbao State. The only child of a modestly wealthy family of scholar-officials, and both a beauty and a fascinating conversationalist by all accounts, Lianzhe thought she was on an easy road to a contented if sedate life of an upper-class lady of the house. Everything changed when she was fifteen - her father was accused of treason by the Hao Ting, deposed from power, and executed. Her aunt, though spared the garrote, was also deposed from her official appointment and stripped of her rank. The Chang family's former friends were suddenly afraid to even be seen near them, and assistance was soon exhausted. Her family name having been made toxic in polite society, Lianzhe became a prostitute, sending back remittances to support her family. When Qin the Great's Northern Army arrived, Linazhe discovered from one of her clients that the prostitutes among the camp followers there were relatively well-treated; she made a daring escape from the brothel in which she worked and joined up with Qin's army as it passed through town. Now enjoying the full fruits of her labors and the protection of General Tong's military discipline, Chang hopes to save up enough to move her family to a new region. Lianzhe is charming, very literate, and plays several musical instruments.

MA Zhaoying (馬兆楹), a 27-year-old Zhongzu man, native to Mukai Town in the State of Nitan. Zhaoying comes from a long line of folk magico-religious practitioners in the traditional of the Central Earth Kingdom, though his branch of the family long ago gave up the plains of the Five Grains Province for the Northern frontier. A literate man with no love of the Hao Ting's mismanagement of the country, he took up following the camp of Qin's Northern army. He tells fortunes and sells amulets (always in demand during a difficult campaign), offers advice in love, war, and business, and also offers the practice service of helping illiterate soldiers with writing letters to their loved ones and reading the replies. A smooth talker and skilled cold reader, Zhaoying also has some skills as a gambler and slight-of-hand artist.

TAISI-NARA Xianyu (泰锡纳喇·顯玗), 24-year-old Yonggan woman, native to the countryside of the Nemuland (in the Yonggan State.) Xianyu was discovered as a talented earthbender early in life and trained in the earthbending school of the khagan. Although exempt from forced conscription due to her membership in the princely Nara clan, she nonetheless heeded her khagan's call to join the war against the Hao Ting as a commissioned martial earthbender (土術尉, lit. "earth technique officer") in Qin's Northern Army. Her family, though of noble blood, is fairly poor and politically unconnected; she hopes her participation in the war will allow her to make a name for her family and perhaps provide opportunities to move up in the world materially. She is literate in Common and Yonggan and has a basic classical education, and speaks Yonggan with only traces of a rustic accent.'