AngelOfPerdition
New Member
The Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation had been at odds over small things for close to a century, but things came to a head with the deaths of the Earth Prince and the Fire Princess. With Prince Charan already married and Princess Tanzi engaged, the affair lead to ripples of discontent within both nations. The Earth King claimed Princess Tanzi had seduced and manipulated his son, the Fire Lord claimed Prince Charan had stolen Tanzi away in a fit of deranged lust. As the star-crossed lovers traveled to the Fire Lord, hoping to make him see reason before turning attention to the Earth King, they stopped in a small village on the edge of the Earth Kingdom. The next day, they were discovered dead, split open from the chin to the navel.
War!
The world has forever been torn, ravaged by the scourge of war!
Tensions were high, and the smell of blood already wafted on the breeze. I felt it in my bones even before the news came, that dreaded letter that proclaimed what we all had feared. Those bastards had gotten to her. The Avatar had been assassinated.
In the year preceding the death of Avatar Mizu, things were already precarious. The daughter of the then Fire Lord, Princess Tanzi, had left home suddenly and appeared in the Earth Kingdom at the side of the heir, Prince Charan. The circumstances, though both seemed happy, were considered suspicious, and the Fire Lord accused the prince of abducting his daughter. On their way to the coast to meet with the Fire Lord, both were killed under mysterious circumstances, and the nations of the world suspected murderous intention on the part of the Earth King.
With the world on the brink of war, and the Water Tribes and Air Nomads tentatively supporting the Fire Lord's calls for justice, the Avatar stepped in to mediate the situation. Avatar Mizu arrived to stand between the two hostile camps and spoke with both the Fire Lord and the Earth King in an attempt to stop them resolving their differences with the bloodshed. However, the Avatar, being a native of the Fire Nation, was suspected of bias, and was killed in her sleep! It is our belief that the Earth King had the Avatar murdered to prevent her from helping the Fire Nation, and for this, we of the Three Nations Alliance have brought war to the Earth Kingdom!
But the Earth Kingdom is vast. We have made gains, but we have taken losses, and the Earth King has launched an assault on the Northern Air Temple to force the allied forces onto the defensive. We need volunteers to bring the royal family to justice for their crimes, and to stop the Earth King from harming more innocents! Remember Princess Tanzi and Avatar Mizu!
—Allied Propaganda Pamphlet—
Horrified at the brutal murder, both sides struggled with each other ever harder, claiming each other as the perpetrators of the crime. Avatar Mizu intervened, hoping that by quelling the rage of the two royal families and their kingdoms war would be averted. She called a summit to be held, and the leaders of the Water Tribes and the head monks of the Air Nomads came to help mediate. On the first day of the summit, however, the beginning of war came in the way of Avatar Mizu's body found on the floor of her room, the life drained from it with a large stab wound through the neck.
It was inevitable that war would break out, and when it did the Air Nomads and the Water Tribes honored long-standing alliances with the Fire Nation by taking sides against the Earth Kingdom. For the first several months the war was piercing, tearing through the lands and fed by the vitriol of royal families and their subjects. Bloody battles soon gave way to a slow war of attrition, however, and it continued in such a state for nearly twenty-five years. The Order of the White Lotus, secretive and unknown except to those in it, began a desperate search for the avatar.
The story beings in the snowy mountain range home to the Northern Air Temple. Located on the northern shore of the Earth Kingdom, it was the base of operations in the early stages of the war as the Northern Water Tribe slowly took control of the area with the Air Nomads. As the years passed, the battles against the Earth Kingdom turned in the favor of the Tribe and the Nomads, and soon they were able to push the front line further south. With a sizable chunk of land under the control of the Tribe and the Nomads, the Northern Air Temple became a place of refugee. Those heading to the well-fortified Northern Water Tribe lands would make stops there, and citizens of the Earth Kingdom who disagreed with the war gathered at the temple for safety.