Note: this speech is to be read in the voice of Steve Blum.
0. City of Heroes
The Universe, we know, is made up of a million sister worlds. Each is just like the next; and a thousand of these worlds clustered together is a galaxy. A thousand such galaxies makes up a middle cosmic system. The Universe is a thousand thousand cosmic systems, stretching into infinity, all of them stars glittering like the snow beneath the Northern auroras. Our world and its sisters sparkle close together like diamonds, floating in a night as thick and slow-moving as the glaciers of the tribal lands.
The thousand sister worlds are as momentary as the unfolding of cherry blossoms, and will repeat eternally the same wheel of rise and destruction over the aeons. But our world's birth describes every gasp of life that follows it. So let me tell you how our world was born.
From nothingness, a wind begins to blow. It carries memories of a dead world. It scours the filigree edges of the galaxy into sand, into desert, it churns the slow white water until it remembers riverbeds, and it summons back the sun. The galaxy trembles. The wind whirls into a hurricane, which spins at such a speed it can support the whole weight of the world. Upon it form the layers of hell, one above the other, where the demons live. Above that, our human world of earth and water. Above that range the heavens, where the gods reside, intertwined with the matter of the galaxy. The cycle of reincarnation has completed a rotation. The world now exists, and will, for several aeons.
Some say the spirit world is the star shining closest beside ours. Others say it is our core, carrying the memories of our world's last incarnation. Others again say the spirit world drifts in and out, like breath, as ungraspable for humans as our short lives are for the spirits. But we all know that the spirits, separate from gods and demons, are the soul of our world.
We know it is the spirits who gifted humans with the divine touch of the elements. Earth, air, water, fire: these have become the four cornerstones of the world. Each spirit has a natural affiliation with an element - like all the humans of this world used to.
To earth belong spirits such as the foxes, naga, face-eaters, blind touches, tree-dwellers, and the heibao.
Snake-spirits, seven-headed polar dogs, the hunters of the aurora, the painted gods, and the kappa are some that belong to the realm of water.
Garuda harpies, the first herds, heavenly maidens, treehoppers, and winged colugo are some that belong to air.
To fire belong, among many: the night lights, spectral tigers, lacewing dragons, the shining dawn mist, and cursed Homusubi of the volcanoes.
In this young world, people would spring up as people forever do; kissed by earth and wind and snow and sun in different measures. Blessed by the elementals living nearest to them, their ancestors took on features of the elements.
Some bore directly the element of their favor; others were bound to the material plane and ask their shamans –the first benders– for guidance. They were one people. There was no separation between the shamans and their communities. The elemental benders held no lofty place over their non-bending kindred. They were the designated defenders of their world. For the largest part of our history, this sense of loyalty protected our nations and our families. This used to be our sense of security. Our benders were our protectors and our heroes. They were ours. They would never – never – have turned on the non-benders.
So much has been lost.
The balance has been shifted, and we know why. Neither the great Earth Kingdom, nor the noble Water Tribes, nor the fierce Fire Nation, can any longer claim equal treatment of their non-bending folk. Of the remainder of the Air Nomads, I shall not speak. What can be said of an old man and a few children, but this? On that island, non-benders are their servants.
The hundred-year war, the genocide of the nomads, the wide-spread colonisation, the abrupt end of Ōzai; these things have shifted our world on its axis, bringing old enemies together but estranging brother from brother. That fabled Avatar Aang! He failed to prevent the war, and only ever managed to bring about a late peace in a weakened world before he died. Now his reincarnation is as mute and feeble as a newly-hatched ostrich horse, hiding her head in the snows of the South.
Aang could not do anything to lighten your load, and she will be no different! My fellows, search your feelings – you know this is the truth!
But – oh, my brothers and sisters, the spirits, too, have suffered under this chaos. They have observed our plight. They have considered what can be done to even out the imbalance. The spirits are among us, sublime as light. They no longer support the fourfold bender as the great protector of the world. Instead, now, they choose us.
You. The oppressed, the downtrodden. The spirits have blessed your work-worn hands. They have graced us with the knowledge to guide chi, the very breath of life–! They have brought to us men and women, innovators and leaders who will carry the movement together with you.
We now have the organisation; the technology; the sponsorship; the protection; the soldiers – all the resources needed to redress this injustice.
The truth of chi-blocking can only be passed on from teacher to pupil. Only from within our community, through our discipline and faith, will we change the world. But change the world we shall. Brought together are poor and rich, low and high; all the forsaken and the betrayed. We are no longer afraid. We will no longer carry the blame and tarnish of the sins of benders. We are no longer patient – the truth is there, in the steady coursing of our blood.
The truth is that injustice glares at us from every corner of the city. This city which was built once, for a dream of opportunity which never manifested; now it is packed to the brim, full of vermin.
Our politicians, our athletes, our police. Our dear benders. Our great heroes. They oppress us no less than the lawless, shameless Triads.
Benders must be punished. Benders will be punished. I know that their transgressions, tallied in your memory –tallied in ice, in fire, in stone– they can no longer be smudged out.
Let them burn us. Let them drown us. Let them stone us and smother us. We will not surrender. We will flit in and out of sight, insubstantial like sublime spirits. We will bear down the wrath of the spirits on them. The Avatar will be torn away from her undeserved pedestal and banished to the lowest layer of hell. When we are ready we will rupture their citadel of power; from its jade-roofed towers of prejudice to its rotting slums of oppression, in a fell storm we will reclaim the city that was built by us, for us.
With the force of retribution we will bring benders back down, back from being monsters; and scourge them into being humans of the four cornered world. This is your great task. You will learn to defend yourself. You will learn to subdue them. Most importantly, you will learn to think like a new community. You will be the citizens of a new world, a changed order. We will not return matters to the way they were, but to the way they were meant to be.
Join me, Sister! Join me, Brother! Here at the heart of your modern world, and raise your blessed hands to mine.
The real story starts in the next chapter. This prologue is just to get you in the right mindset. I will post the first chapter very, very soon..!