Avatar/The Mountain Air

The Mountain Air is part of the Transitional Sessions prior to the main Avatar Campaign. It is to be GM'd by Bryce.

In the golden years of Late Antiquity, Air Nomads arrived in the remote southeastern highlands of what would one day become the Earth Kingdom. Deeming the lofty tundras and dry tablelands incapable of sustainably supporting their sky bison herds, they moved on, but they left behind their religious ideas and legends of mighty airbending with the indigenous earthbending peoples of the region. In time, these highlanders came to practice a form of the Air Nomad religion, and kept a loose communion with them over the long centuries. Even as the successive dynasties of Great Omashu and then the Earth Kingdom imposed their suzerainty on what they called the State of Lancang, its people remained distinct from them and became known as the "Mountain-Air Villagers."

Centuries later, when the Fire Nation attacked the Air Nomads, aiming to wipe them from the face of the earth, their spiritual siblings of the high plateau welcomed the ragged survivors into their villages and countryside. But this would have a cost. Soon, the Fire Nation began sending raiders deep into the Earth Kingdom to hunt down the refugees, and the Royal Earth Army was too weak and spread-thin to repel this affront to Earth Kingdom sovereignty. Despite his fealty to the Earth Kingdom, the Prince of Lancang even turned collaborationist, attempting to find the refugees and turn them over to the Fire Nation in the hope of sparing his kingdom from further collateral damage.

It has been five years now since the Air Nomad genocide began. In these dark days, your tiny village of settled agriculturalists, Tianjiao (田教村) , has recently taken in a family of Air Nomads from the now-devastated pastures of the Southern Air Temple. In so doing, you have defied the decree of the Prince, and risk not only his wrath, but attacks by Fire Nation raiders. Already there are rumors that the Prince's inquisitors are on their way to your village...

The goal of this two-off will be to protect the Air Nomad refugees (and other villagers) from those who seek to harm them, ideally without compromising your characters' religious obligations regarding violence.

Pregenerated characters can be found below; if you wish to make your own character out of whole cloth or modify one of these, that can also be arranged, just let us know.

Chai Queji 柴确吉	A twenty-four year old man born in Tianjiao, he is from a family who left Boshan Angjiao and practice only Earth Kingdom folk religion, to the extent that they practice any religion. He was employed by the Holy Treasure temple to "drive away" vermin from the temple stores, a trade viewed as ritually polluting by the Shanqi, especially the monks, as such workers are suspected of killing the vermin. While the work was anything but prestigious, it paid well for Queji and supported his wife and two young children comfortably. However, the Fire Nation destroyed the temple and its granary, as well as killing the monk-official who paid Queji. What's more, there are now rumors that Queji slew a fire nation soldier with his trusty rat-poking stick, which have further damaged his family's reputation among the pacifistic villagers. He hopes that helping to find a solution to the refugee issue will rehabilitate his image and help him find a new job. Queji is very handy with his rat-poking stick, which is a 180cm-long sturdy wooden staff tipped with a sharp metal point, useful for ensuring that rats "poked" with it do not come back.
Mo Suonan 墨索南	A seventeen-year-old gender-nonconforming person who is a solitary mediumistic religious practitioner of somewhat-heterodox Angjiao. Born with a rare connection to the spirit world, they have dealt with the burden of spiritual vision for most of their young life. They came to Tianjiao a year ago and survive mainly by fortune-telling and alms, living the rest of the time in a hermitage near Tianjiao. Two other hermits also live there, though the three interact only occasionally, and mainly in the spirit world, which they are all cultivating the ability to enter. Suonan is an earthbender, having been instructed by a spirit; their style is highly individual. Although the villagers are cautious about mediumistic gifts and wild earthbending talents, they are generous with their alms for Suonan, as Suonan once saved the life of the village headman, Jia Danzeng, and his family, from a landslide.
Jia Danzeng 郟丹增	A 54-year-old man of Shanqi ethnicity. Danzeng is the officially recognized headman of Tianjiao, though the village is governed by a consensus system. His family are farmers growing highland barley, and also maintaining a vegetable farm and a small goatmarmot herd for the milk and wool. When the village elders discussed sheltering the Air Nomad refugees, Danzeng spoke forcefully in favor of it, and was asked to help come up with a solution. His wife died in an accident six years ago, but he has five children in their late teens and early twenties who help run the farm. His oldest son became a monk and lives in a monestery in Boshan. Danzeng is an Earthbender, but of unexceptional skill; he mostly uses his bending for farmwork. The Jia family have lived for many generations in Tianjiao and are respected members of the community.
Qu Qimei 瞿其美	A thirty-three year old merchant woman of Tianjiao. Widowed ten years ago after her husband succumbed to an outbreak of malignant chilblains, Qimei turned around the family's struggling rug-making business and became successful. She has a son, Qu Wei 瞿伟, who is eleven years old, and employs two hired women, her sister, and her brother-in-law in the family business; they live with a pair of domestic servants and her niece and nephew in a large courtyard house that also contains her shop and weaving facilities. Qimei is also sheltering one of the air nomad children and a wayward teenager, Chao Quzhen, that the village elders have asked her to look after. Qimei is angling to become on of the village elders herself in ten years or so, and hopes that a successful resolution to the Air Nomad refugee issue will make political as well as spiritual merit for her. She is a shrewd businessperson but well-liked for her generosity.
Pu Wangmu 浦旺姆	A 26-year-old woman from Gaoling. Her family, of mixed Shanqi and Air Nomad stock, migrated to Gaoling in her grandparents' generation after a falling out with the then-incumbent village elders over her paternal grandfather's goatmarmot ranching practices. Wangmu discovered she had an earthbending talent and became skilled in the Gaoling School. Finding the conservative elite culture of Gaoling stifling and materialistic, she decided to return to Lancang and teach earthbending outside the monastic system. While this is not illegal, she has faced some opposition from the monastics, whom she views as unfairly gatekeeping earthbending by only teaching it to those willing to take holy orders. She would probably have moved on, were it not that she had fallen in love with a fellow villager who does not want to leave her ancestral village and extended family. Wangmu hopes that helping the village and the refugee Air Nomads will win over some of the village elders who are opposed to her freely teaching earthbending.
Dolkar	A thirty-year-old Air Nomad refugee woman. Dolkar is an airbending master who survived the destruction of the Eastern Air Temple because she was away at the time, having been visiting her relatives among Air Nomads living in the Earth Kingdom in the Mountains of Lede. When this band was also destroyed by the Fire Nation, Dolkar barely escaped with five others on her sky bison, Snowy, all children not yet capable of handling a bison or glider. Unfortunately, however, none of the others attempting to escape turned up at the rendezvous, and shortly after their arrival on the Boshan plateau, Snowy succumbed to blood poisoning from an infected wound. Dolkar brought the children to Tianjiao in the hopes that they would be raised as Shanqi and escape the Fire Nation's notice.
Chao Quzhen 譙曲珍	An 18-year-old woman of the town of Shishi (石市), one of the larger highland settlements, located in an adjacent county where lapis lazuli is mined and traded by craft miners. She is of mixed Shanqi and Nanzu descent, her father having come to Lancang from Omashu to seek his fortune as a miner before perishing in a feral badgermole attack. Her mother is a courtesan who pried information about their mining claims from her clients and made her fortune through "insider trading" of mine shares, parleying her wealth into a virtual monopoly on brothels in Shishi. However, when Quzhen showed signs of desiring to follow her mother into the business, her mother panicked and packed Quzhen off to a nunnery to get a good moral education as a postulant. After the nunnery, at the Holy Treasure temple, was destroyed, Quzhen got into trouble attempting to "earn a living" in Tianjiao and was sent by the village elders to live in the household of Qu Qimei.
Yang Caiwang 閻才旺	A 16-year-old young man of Shanqi ethnicity. Caiwang was a postulant of the Holy Treasure temple until its destruction in a Fire Nation raid a few months ago. He is pondering taking monastic vows, though he is questioning the commitment to nonviolence that would entail in light of the brutality of the raids. His family live in a neighboring village; he is staying with his former tutor in the home of the headman Jia Danzeng and is afraid that if he returns to his home village, he might attract unwanted attention there. Caiwang is a proficient student of neigang but knows only basic earthbending. He is athletic and intelligent, but sometimes headstrong.
Ha Sangde 哈桑德	38-year-old monk of the Holy Treasure temple until its destruction in a Fire Nation raid a few months ago. He is a skilled earthbender, and even knows some combat earthbending, though he is religiously committed to use this power to subdue, rather than kill, foes. The third brother, he didn't want to spend his life in the shadow of his older siblings, so Sangde left his ancestral home and family business in Dongga to become a monk. Before the destruction of the monastery, he served as a teacher of postulants and novices in neigang and bending. Released from the rule of his abbot by the latter's death in the Fire Nation raid, he is considering teaching Caiwang combat bending without requiring his ordination, but has not done so yet.