292 AG.
It was a time in which all four nations lived in quiet harmony.
It had been thirty years since Korra, the then-Avatar, had passed with peace, in her sleep at the ripe age of eighty-eight with her wife at her bedside. The nations had rejoiced in the legacy she had left and all was well in the world for benders and non-benders alike.
As the thirtieth anniversary of Avatar Korra's death approached, the nations were struck by the realization that a new Avatar had yet to be named and the silent joy that had encased the world for more than a hundred years became religious terror. Each Earthbender over the age of sixteen was put through rigorous, and oftentimes torturous, examination: without an Avatar, the bridge between the spirit world and the mortal world would seal shut and people searched for the Avatar with terrified fanaticism.
The water tribes retreated into fearful solitude, the scarce remaining few Airbenders became secretive recluses, the Fire Nation regained its old "spark", and the Earthbenders tore their own strongholds to rubble in desperate search for the Avatar.
But there was no Avatar.
