Iroh

Player Name: Anders

E-Mail: andylongwood at gmail dot com

IM: chalkwitch

Character Name: Iroh

Series: Avatar: The Last Airbender

Timeline: Post The Eclipse, just after his escape from a Fire Nation prison.

Abilities: Iroh's main canonical power is firebending, the ability to produce and manipulate fire through movements based on the style of Kung Fu.Although he has displayed great power as a firebender, he is more often seen defeating his opponents using only hand-to-hand combat and improvisational weaponry, making him a valuable warrior even without his ability to breathe fire.He also has the ability to see spirits and recognize people who have been affected by them. He’s had a lot of experience as a leader and a military strategist from his past as a general and heir to the throne of the Fire Nation, though he is more inclined these days to take an advisory role to the younger leaders around him.His lifelong study of martial arts in a world where martial arts are a staple of education, has given him excellent reflexes, and has made him much stronger and faster than his age or bearing usually suggests.However, his recent self-imposed training regiment has given him an uncharacteristically trim and muscular physique which has increased his physical power but decreased his ability to hide his skill behind the appearance of a fat, silly, lazy old man, a tactic which he has frequently used in the past to keep his opponents off their guard.He’s an excellent teacher, having served as a firebending master for his nephew, Zuko, whose lack of innate talent was compensated by his own drive to succeed and Iroh’s patience as his sifu.He’s a good adviser, a lover of music, and a paragon of cheerful elderly wisdom.

And he brews one kickass cup of tea.

Writing Sample: The eclipse was just beginning, and Iroh, meditating inside his cell, felt the shadow of the moon falling over the sun as a cool shiver running through his body. Behind him, the wall of iron bars that fenced him in his small cell looked as solid as ever, their appearance betraying nothing of the points of weakness where the metal had been exposed, over the past few days, to repeated application of intense heat.

Soon, the eclipse would blot out the sun entirely, causing every firebender in the Four Nations to temporarily lose their power to ‘bend, and by the time it had returned, Iroh intended to be very, very far away from the cell.

Unfortunately, the warden chose that moment to pay him another visit. The misfortune, in this case, was all the warden's.

“How are we doing today, old man?Still crazy?”

Iroh’s back was to the warden, and he allowed himself to sigh just slightly as he cast an exasperated look at the wall in front of him. Maintaining a state of peaceful serenity just before a jailbreak was enough of a challenge without the Warden’s inconsequential yet invasive taunts in the background.

“I can’t believe anyone ever expected you to ascend the throne.Did Fire Lord Azulon have a secret soft spot for pathetic failures that nobody knew about?” The man snorted with disbelief.“It’s a blessing you lost Ba Sing Se when you did.If you were Fire Lord, the armies of the Earth Kingdom would be at the shores of our glorious nation.”

The Warden had mentioned the 600 day siege before, and Iroh saw in his mind the Earth Kingdom battlefield, covered with the bodies of the slain, feeling himself angered by the Warden’s disrespect for their sacrifice.

Anger was good, for this particular situation. Anger would fuel his escape so long as he did not let it cloud his mind.

The moon had shifted halfway over the sun by that time, and Iroh began to count backwards in his head, mind on the flickering of his own inner fire as he waited for the moment to be right for him to deliver his last blow to the cell door. The Warden had begun to file his fingernails behind him.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t last another day out there,” the Warden continued, “Otherwise Fire Lord Azulon would have named the wrong man Fire Lord, and we’d have a ruler who couldn’t even save the life of his own son – ”

The warden was not able to complete his sentence before Iroh was on his feet, hands parting the energy around him into positive and negative, and he had only begun to get into his own stance when the Dragon of the West released his control and allowed the energy to come crashing back together in a furious, concussive explosion.

The sound of the iron bars clattering to the stone floor of the prison was almost as deafening as the blast, and the faint square of light from the cell’s window faded completely as the moon blotted out the sun. In the settling dust, Iroh leapt out of his confinement.

He could feel the fire within himself smothered as the sun was overshadowed by the moon, as though the embers of his own life force had been banked with a layer of sand. It put him at far less of a disadvantage than the Warden, who, like most young men, believed more in his firebending than in the strength of his own arms. He was not difficult to dispatch.

It was a quick journey from his cell through the rest of the prison.The remaining guards were all disbanded easily due to a combination of their lesser skills and a loss of their own confidence without their command of fire.The dim, veiled light of the sun was visible through the door to the tiered prison, and Iroh raced for it, feeling the embers inside him crackling to life again as the Eclipse started to life, anticipating his freedom and his revitalization by the return of the sun.

So when a sudden darkness descended over him just as he crossed the prison’s threshold, he fought admirably his body’s sudden need to stop, to fall – but there was no resisting that dire cold, not even for the Dragon of the West, and all went dark around and within him.