Prologue: Conquest

I remember a time when there was hope.

For a hundred years the Fire Nation waged war on the other nations of the world. Water Tribe, Air Nomads, my own beloved Earth Kingdom all fought valiantly for our freedom, but to no avail. The Air Nomads fell first, for the Fire Lord believed that the Avatar had been reborn among them, and so he hit them with all of his power. They were a brave people, but peaceful. They knew little of war, and in the end war consumed them.

For a century afterwards the war ground on, and every few years a rumor would resurface that the Avatar lived and would save the world. All prove false, until one- a boy named Aang was said to have airbending powers, and to have mastered the basics of waterbending as well. But that hope was short lived- he was captured by Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation and born back to the prince's homeland in chains. Imprisoned in the depths of the Fire Lord's fortress, he was never heard from again.

That summer Sozin's Comet returned and enhanced the powers of the firebenders a thousandfold. Fire Lord Ozai assaulted Ba Sing Se himself, along with his elite warriors, and the great city was leveled to the ground. My advisors had kept the war secret from me- for my own protection, they protested as the palace burned around us- and so I watched my world destroyed without knowing fully why, and I wept for my people. Ozai came for me himself- I will never forget his savage smile, or his eyes that burned like comets themselves- and ordered his soldiers to me to take me back to his Nation in chains. He did not fear me, personally, for he knew that I had spent my life as nothing but a figurehead. A dead king, he said, might still become a martyr, but an imprisoned and humiliated one was nothing but a joke.

Moments later, his daughter rushed in, telling the Fire Lord that her brother Zuko had been killed in the fighting. Neither firebender seemed overly concerned, or surprised, and I have wondered often if one or both of them had not arranged the prince's death. From what I later heard, there was little love between brother and sister, or father and son.

Standing on the ashes of my palace, Ozai proclaimed himself the Phoenix King, absolute ruler of a new world born from the ashes of the Four Nations. Then he had me loaded onto an airship and transported to the Fire Nation, where I was locked in a cell and largely forgotten, save by a single sympathetic guard who brought me news. I was to learn from this same guard that at the same time as Ba Sing Se fell, a certain Admiral Zhao led a vast fleet to attack the Northern Water Tribe. With the comet's power behind them, the battle was intense but brief. I do not know what horrors Zhao committed against that people, but the moon itself seemed to shine less brightly through my window, and the friendly guard told me that with the fall of the north, waterbending itself had seemingly vanished from the world.

Another century is almost past, and the great Fire Empire rules the world unchallenged. Ozai is long dead, and his daughter Azula is an old woman now (though not yet as old as I!). She took the throne of Fire Lord following her father's passing, and gave herself the personal title Dragon Empress. Even in her age, her wits and firebending powers are as sharp as ever, though I have heard rumors that she is no longer entirely sane. The Dragon Empress has no heir, and I have heard the guards talking fearfully of the future. When that dreaded monarch is no more, they think that the power struggles will tear the Empire apart.

I am older than she is and likely will not see that day. The guards allowed me paper to write these thoughts, because they know that no one will ever read them. But I hope that someday, somehow, it will be read. This tyranny cannot last forever- it never does. Sooner or later the captive Avatar will die- if he has not already done so- and then his spirit will be reborn into the world. Even if the Fire Empire somehow manages to silence him again, oppression breeds heroes. Sooner or later, someone in some oppressed village of the former Earth Kingdom or Water Tribe- or even the Fire Nation itself- will decide that they have suffered enough and will lead their people to freedom.

I believe this with all my heart and soul. I must. To all those who resist the Empire, I give you these ancient words of wisdom- "from beginningless time darkness has thrived in the void, but it always leaves to purifying light." I do not know their origin, but I hear them in my heart in the stillness of my prison. Once, I thought I was such a light, but I learned too late that I was merely a tool for others' ambitions. Now it must be new heroes, true heroes, who will take up the challenge. My blessings and those of all the spirits be with you, whoever you are.

You will need them.

(From the writings of Kuei, once Earth King, during the last days of his imprisonment under Dragon Empress Azula, year 89 post-ascension)

/

Fall of the Fire Empire is a fanfic I first began to work on in May of 2009, and wrote until November of 2010 (60 chapters in total, counting prologue and epilogue). It remains one of the most difficult, but also fulfilling, fics I've ever written, not to mention the longest. The repost was inspired by the recent, and amazing, Korra episodes detailing the origins of the Avatar; though grad school leaves me little time to write completely new fics, I still have the time to do a sort of "Special Edition" of an old favorite of mine, with some minor revisions, general editing, and some commentary/reflection on the individual chapters. For people reading FotFE for the first time, I'll try to keep spoilers out of my comments. My hope is to have a couple of chapters up per week.

FotFE was a somewhat unusual writing experience for me, because of how quickly the idea came to me and how I started writing only a few days after the initial brainstorm. Ordinarily, I try to plan out every detail in my head before I start writing, but FotFE was very much a process of discovery. I knew my three main characters, I knew the general world situation, and I knew the shape of the story I wanted to tell in broad details, and that was it. My inspiration came from three main sources, not counting the original Avatar: The Last Airbender show itself. The first was a little oneshot on by one Atiaran, called, if memory serves, "When All Your Dreams Come True". It was a dark, introspective, and very well-done little character study about Zuko capturing Aang at some point early in book one, and how achieving the Fire Nation's victory and ending his banishment didn't really bring him the happiness he thought it would. I was struck by the basic idea, but wanted to take it in a different direction, exploring the consequences of victory not to Zuko personally in the immediate aftermath, but to the world at large a hundred years down the line. My second inspiration was the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson, of which I'm a major fan; the trilogy's basic premise is to take the archetypical fantasy story and twist it, showing a world who's "Dark Lord" won (though books two and three introduce further complications). The world of Mistborn is very different from the world of Avatar, but FotFE definitely has some Mistborn in its DNA. Finally, at the same time I was writing a trilogy of fics I call my "Azula Trilogy" dealing with the redemption of our favorite evil princess. Of course, if there's one thing that we fanwriters are prone to falling prey to, it's liking our favorite villains a bit too much, so I decided to challenge myself by writing a really evil version of Azula in contrast to the trilogy's sort-of-heroic one. Thus did the Fire Empire find its Dragon Empress (though seriously, do you really think Ozai would have let Zuko inherit if he could at all avoid it?).

There's not a whole lot to say about this little prologue. It's a brief rundown of the history of this AU, though it leaves out a lot of the specifics which Kuei wouldn't have access to. Some of my first reviewers thought he was a bit of an odd choice to write the intro, but I thought he fit- he always struck me as someone who wanted to be a good person and a good king, even if his own government was determined to keep him in the dark, and I would hope that with age, reflection, and loss he'd find some measure of wisdom. I also wanted a canon character for readers to recognize, but who was minor enough that I could still pull out the big names later on. I don't think I'm spoiling much to say that most of the canon cast is dead (it is a hundred years later, after all), but Azula is still around (of course) and there are a couple more who'll be popping up later…

Welcome to the Fire Empire. If you've read it before, this won't be different in any meaningful way, but will hopefully be cleaned up and polished a bit from a technical standpoint, and I hope you don't mind my rambling. If you're new, strap in. At the risk of sounding self-congratulatory, I think it'll be a ride.

-MasterGhandalf