When we first see our characters, they are on a ship heading towards a beautiful island in the middle of a crystal clear ocean. On the ship there is sixteen people tied up with rope, one man in a long flowing robe, and the person driving the boat. As we come into view, the man in the robe welcomes us and asks us to stay and enjoy the show, "Welcome everyone. I am Avatar Roku, and you will be watching a reality game we call Survivor: Ryoko Islands. I will be your host for this game show. These contestants have no idea where they are, don't know what they're doing, and they are bound and almost gagged. We are about to strand these contestants on the beautiful islands of Ryoko where they will spend thirty-nine days having to fend for themselves, getting their own food, water, and shelter. So this competition will be fair, we have injected those who have bending skills with a special chemical that will stun their ability to bend air, water, earth, and fire for the entire thirty-nine days that they are stranded on the islands. We have allowed them to bring one weapon though. We guessed the weapons by the way it looked, separating them by nation, and if it was on the contestant's person when we ambushed them. If there was no weapon on their person, or near them, we provided them with a weapon according to their nation." As the boat stops, we are told that we will be able to see everything that happens, but the contestants will never see us.
Roku then introduced the contestants to what they were doing. He and the boat driver unbound and took the cloth off from around their mouths and ears. They then passed out buffs and told the contestants to put them on. "We have chosen you sixteen people to participate in our game of survival here on the amazing Ryoko Islands. For those of you who don't know about the Ryoko Islands, I'll go ahead and give you a little information about the island. Ryoko is most known because it is the only island that is equally divided between all four nations. What most people don't know is that Ryoko was the home for a group of benders that weren't your normal group of benders. These benders were able to bend four other things besides the four normal elements. They also had a different set of ideas about Avatars. According to this group, the Avatar wasn't a spirit, but an ability that only one person was given. Whenever the person with this ability died, the ability would then be sent to someone else. The fact that it went in a cycle was decided to be a coincidence, until one elderly member of the tribe said he had an explanation for the cycle. Before the man could tell anyone else, he died. After this amazing bit of information, the rest of the tribe worked themselves into extinction trying to find out what the old man's explanation."
"Well, now that you know a little about where we are, you need to know what you will be doing. We are going to strand you here on Ryoko for thirty-nine days. You will also be split up into two tribes and live with that tribe for thirty-nine days here on the island. While here on the island, you will compete in different forms of challenges for different forms of prizes, but every three days, you and your tribe will compete in what we call an immunity challenge. The winning tribe will win what we call an immunity idol. The losing tribe will have to vote out one of its members. But don't think that you will be able to get out of competing by getting yourself voted out, because trust me, when you get voted out, it won't get any better. If anything, conditions will get worse. As most of you already know by now, you cannot perform bending. You will not be able to perform bending for thirty-nine days, voted out or not. The last person left will receive one million gold pieces. You will remember that you were given buffs that you were told to put on when we unbound you. As you can see, there are dark blue buffs and orange buffs. You who were given the dark blue buffs are going to be on the Kurayami Tribe, and you with the orange buffs are going to be on the Akari Tribe. This experience itself will be well worth the reward that comes."
As we looked at the beach, there were two crates, which were labeled with the new tribes names. The tribes were told to follow the maps to find their part of the island. The crates included a map, a container of rice, a jug of drinkable water, and a small tarp. After a large amount of arguing, the two tribes decided to go ahead and play the game.