In anticipation of the season finale of The Legend of Korra…
The history of the Avatar is as such:
At the beginning of ages, our world and the Spirit World were one. Both beings of spirit and beings of men existed together in peace. But it is not in the nature of this world to be peaceful and eventually, the beings of our world went to war with beings of the spirit and chaos grazed the world like fire. The spirits knew they could no longer exist in the same existence as the being of our world and decided to separate.
Not all spirits were happy with the agreement. Many still believed in the goodness of our world. These spirits were allowed to exist in our world as physical manifestations, but had to give up their immortality to do so. Some decided the price was worth it.
Thus, our two worlds were created.
After the spirits left, a new age began. With no spirits left to war with, the being of our world decided to settle the home that now belonged to them. They spread far and wide over the world and as the world aged, the beings of our world forgot the spirit world.
Long after the spirits had faded from memory, being of our world began to discover unearthly beings. The spirits who had remained in our world were rediscovered and these spirits, seeing a new era of our world had appeared, a more peaceful era, decided to teach the being of our world to keep peace. To do this, they taught the being of our world the ability to use their spirit to shape the energy within themselves. They called the power bending and the ability energybending.
Reassured that the beings of our world could keep peace, most of the spirits ascended to the spirit world.
The beings of our world lived together peacefully for generations. There was no fighting, there was no war. Energybending was used to pursue knowledge of peace. But peace could no endure. Eventually, beings of the world called lion turtles learned the ability of energybending to harm and began to fight with the other beings of the world. The spirit world saw the world fall out of balanced and influenced the destruction of the war. Many species died out and the lion turtles themselves nearly died out, only a handful remaining.
The death so many served to the rise of a new species. The species was called men, and they spread out across the world far and wide.
The art of energybending still existed within men, but they did not know how to wield it. Thus, the art of energybending was lost, save for the small number of lion turtles who remembered the destruction they had wrought with the art and had decided to hide it.
Men were even less peaceful than the previous inhabitants of the world. They fought constantly. But the spirit world turned a blind eye for, although there was much fighting, the world was still in balance.
Then, the people of the world began to change once more.
During this era, there were two lovers. They were from feuding villages and had met atop a mountain in between their villages and fell in love. But they realized it was too dangerous to keep meeting each other.
Desperate to find a way to keep seeing each other, they discovered a cave. Inside this cave were ancient creatures. They were called Badgermoles. The Badgermoles were one of the species that had been around before the rise of man and had once known the art of energybending. After the great war, the badgermoles had retreated underground and continued to refine energybending. From energybending, they learned to move the earth they lived in and, although they had lost energybending, created the art of earthbending. They taught the lovers this art and the lovers became the first earthbenders. The lovers created a labyrinth to meet each other in secret.
One day, the woman came to meet the man but he did not appear. He had been killed in the war between their two villages. Grief stricken, the woman used her earthbending to end the war between her village and the man's. She brought the two villages together as one and after she passed away, the city was named Omashu, in honor of her, Oma, and her lover, Shu.
But before she died, Oma taught earthbending to other in the city. And they taught others. Soon, there were villages all across the continent made up of earthbenders. These earthbenders used their arts to carve out the underground city of Ba Sing Se and united all the earthbenders in the land. From this, the Earth Kingdom, the most ancient of the four nations, was formed.
And the world began to tip out of balance.
In another part of the world, a man named Inzon lived in a large city. The people of this city worshipped the great serpents that orbited above their city. Long ago, these serpents, dragons, another ancient species from before the energybending war, had given man the first fire. Although these people worshipped the dragons, they also feared them and stayed as far as possible from them. Inzon was the first to approach the dragons, who deemed Inzon and worthy man and decided to teach him another art. The art of firebending.
Inzon then taught this to the people of his city and they learned to firebend. They decided to worship fire as well and eventually, their admiration of fire beat out their fear of dragons and these firebenders named themselves the Sun Warriors.
Some Sun Warriors decided to leave, wanting to spread the gift of fire with the rest of the world. Inzon joined these Sun Warriors on their journey to spread their gift. They left the city and named themselves the Fire Sages. The Fire Sages established the Fire Nation and ruled it through worship of fire. Towards the end of his life, Inzon decided to forgo worship of fire and took the position of Firelord to rule the country, making the Fire Sages a separate and overall, unimportant portion of the Fire Nation.
The world began to move further out of balance.
It is still unclear when the formal creation of the Air Nomads took place. The nomads who would learn the next element were originally nonbenders from the Earth Kingdom who had left in search of spiritual enlightenment. Their travels eventually lead them to the sky bisons, who they employed as their method of travel and were other former energybenders. Through their high level of spirit, they learned collectively the power of bending air from their steeds, the sky bisons. Eventually, they decided to settle, although they had already formed their nations in their travels. The nation never grew very large, however, as many monks practiced celibacy, in the generations following their founding, the Air Nomads grew very little, although unlike the other nations, the Air Nomads were all benders due to their high level of spirituality.
The world was teetering off the edge of balance.
Years passed and the three nations thrived. But the world was out of balance. The balance that had been held when there was no bending had disappeared. The spirits that had once lived on the same earth as us were furious but none were sure how to restore order. They still wanted to keep balance in our world, even if they had left it long ago.
But there were two spirits who hadn't abandoned the world. The moon spirit, Tui, and the ocean spirit, La, had long ago taken up residence in the farthest end of our world. They saw the imbalance in the world and decided to try to restore the balance. Working together, they used the power of the moon and ocean to bring a nearby ship to them. The ship was mostly nonbenders from the Earth Kingdom and a couple of traveling airbenders. The boat shipwrecked off the icy shore and the people on board began to explore the icy terrain. With few natural resources to call on, the wanderers divided into two neighbor villages and began a new life.
A generation passed and the settlers had still not discovered Tui and La. Finally, the daughter of an airbender and the chief of one of the two villages, a nonbending young girl named Aka, discovered a small pool in cave just outside the villages. She found the Spirit Oasis and Tui and La in the form of two Koi fish. She was mesmerized by the fish, swimming together in alternating patterns. She dropped her hand into the pool and stroked the fish. As soon as she touched them she was granted a vision showing her push and pull of the ocean and the moon.
Aka left the pool and soon, learned the art of waterbending.
Aka taught the nonbenders of the two villages the art of waterbending. Years passed and the villages expanded. Soon, under the guidance of maser waterbender Aka, the villages came together to form the Water Tribe.
It seemed balance had returned to the world.
It seemed that it had, but it hadn't. The world had been thrown into chaos. The four nations were constantly at each other's throats. It seemed another bending war was imminent.
Finally, the spirit world intervened. They had come up with a way to restore and maintain balance in the world. On the summer solstice of one year, when our world and the spirit world come closest, the spirit world introduced a new spirit to our world: The Avatar.
The Avatar was first born into the Water Tribe, the last bending element discovered. The Avatar was a woman named Luka. She didn't know she could bend other elements than water until she reached the age of ten, when she accidently set fire to her mother's clothes. After this, she was contacted by the Spirit World, who told him of the role of the Avatar and what she must do.
Luka traveled the world and spent most of her life learning the other elements. Because of the newness of the spirit, it took a very long time to learn each element. During her lifetime, the story of the Avatar spread far and wide and both the threat and hope of the Avatar began to balance out the world.
For a hundred generations, the Avatar was continuously reincarnated into the next element, each contributing to the balance of the world (with the exception of Avatar Iro, an waterbender who died in an earthbending accident at the age of eight).
During the Age of the Avatar, the world changed very little, which is to say, that the Avatar did his job. Until my time, the only real worldly changes were the splitting of Southern Water Tribe from the Northern and the splitting of the Foggy Swamp tribe from the Southern Water Tribe. The only big change was the near complete conquering of the Earth Kingdom by Chin the Conqueror before being restored to normal by Avatar Kyoshi, who also separated her home from the rest of the world.
When I turned sixteen, the Fire Sages told me who I was. Everyone was shocked, not the least of which my friend Sozin who was sharing his birthday with me. But no one was more shocked then me.
The Sages took me to the Fire Temple on Crescent Island. There, I met with the spirit of the Avatar who had come before me, Avatar Kyoshi, who told me I was meant to maintain balance in the world.
My years of training, however, counted for little in the end, for I failed to stop the true threat. My former best friend Sozin had arisen to Firelord and was preparing to take over the world. I warned him once, hoping he would stop. After that, I turned a blind eye to the growing of the Fire Nation, particularly the military. When I died, I died having not brought balance to the world.
The next Avatar was born to the Air Nomads. My successor was an airbender named Aang. It was to him that the pressure of my failures fell.
He was told of his status as the Avatar when he was twelve. The monks knew war was looming and decided that Avatar had to be ready early.
But he wasn't. He was afraid, as any young boy would be. Another failure on my part. Aang ran away and ended up nearly drowning in a storm. He survived by going into the Avatar State and freezing himself and his pet bison.
One hundred years passed. The Fire Nation was nearing victory when a waterbender, Katara, and her brother, Sokka, discovered Aang and freed him. They set off on their travels together, deciding to head to the Northern Water Tribe so Aang and Katara could learn waterbending. It was at this time I contacted Aang from the spirit world. I told him that the comet Firelord Sozin had used to start the war was returning and the current Firelord was going to use it to end the war. I gave Aang an impossible task: He had to master all four elements in the few months he had before the comet came and then defeat the Firelord.
Aang and his friends had many adventures. Aang eventually learned waterbending at the Northern Water Tribe and defeated an entire Fire Nation fleet. He later learned earthbending, albeit with difficulty, from Toph, a young, blind girl who join the trio in their adventures. They witnessed the fall of Ba Sing Se and in between, discovered a Solar Eclipse coming that would render the Fire Nation helpless and unable to bend. The Avatar was supposed dead again until the invasion. The invasion failed and the Firelord escaped.
After the invasion, Aang met up with Prince Zuko, a former enemy who had been having an internal struggle between good and bad. Zuko taught him the final element, fire. On the day of Sozin's Comet, Aang, with the help of Katara, Sokka, Toph, Zuko, and Kyoshi Warrior, Suki, defeated the Firelord and, rather than kill him, used energybending to take the Firelord's bending powers away.
Avatar Aang restored balance to the world, redeeming both himself and me. But a worse war was coming. Another threat that would tip the balance even farther.
Aang lived for another couple of decades before dying at age sixty-six. His life force was diminished from being in the Avatar State for a hundred years.
Aang died and like the cycle of the seasons, the cycle of the Avatar began anew.
The next Avatar was born in the Southern Water Tribe. Before his passing, Aang had instructed the White Lotus to find the Avatar as soon as possible, hoping to avoid the shock he felt when he was told at a later age.
The Avatar was found at four years old, already learning to bend fire and earth along with water. Avatar Korra was trained in water, earth, and fire for the next twelve years. Korra traveled to Republic City, the capital city of a nation of benders and nonbenders that Aang and Zuko had founded.
Korra began to study airbending under Tenzin, one of Aang's three sons and one of the only airbenders in the world. But just as Korra got to Republic City, a great revolution had begun. A man named Amon was leading a whole legion of nonbenders into rebellion against the benders of the city. Amon possessed the power to take away bending.
Now, a great battle looms on the horizon, and when Korra and Amon's final battle comes, there can be only one survivor.