(Reboot) Legend of Korra: The Academy Signups

Time: Parallel with Legend of Korra, with a slight bit of AU

Tech: Everything from Legend of Korra applies here.

Premise: On the outskirts of Republic City, there is an academy for the especially gifted benders. This RP is to portray the lives and trials of the students who attended the Academy.

The Academy: The Academy is the prime school for benders of all kinds. The dormitories contain sections for each form of bending, though the House of Air is almost always empty. Here, gifted benders learn how to apply their new skills and train under a master to learn a specialized version of their elemental bending. Students enter at around the ages of 14-16 and study there for five years.

Student Life: Students spend 8 hours a day training under their specialization master, spending the rest of their time learning trades/skills in the city. Students of all years train at the same time. As this is the equivalent of a bending high school, there are inevitably fights between students. Firebending students often settle this with nonfatal Agni Kais; Earthbending students use one-on-one Rumbles; and Waterbending students have Duels. Once a year, the Academy holds their own amateur Pro-Bending tournament. All students living in the Academy dorm building must report back there for the curfew at midnight. Those not living there can do as they wish.

Houses: Each Bending element has its own House for itself. Water has a natural rivalry with Fire, and Earth is a rather neutral party. Earth and Fire also have divisions within their own houses; Sandbenders and Metalbenders are usually divided against each other, and Blue Firebenders and Lightningbenders don't hold each other in the highest regard either. Air is the empty house of the Academy. The Academy did make this section for Airbenders, but don't expect a high amount of students there for another century or two. Earth is the most populated house, making up half the population of students, with Fire and Water being about equal in numbers. Water is often mocked for supposedly only having one specialization, when in reality Water is just as deadly and potent as Earth and Fire.

Specialization Classes:

• Air: None, no masters to even teach a class and no students to learn. Even if there was an Airbending master, they would teach his/her students Air's applications, rather than any form of specialization (if one even exists).
• Water: Water publicly has two teachers, of which only one teaches a specialization class. In reality, both teach a specialization. Both classes teach healing.
  • Plantbending: The Waterbending master of this class hails from the Swamp, and teaches students to learn how to feel and bend the water in plants. Students of this class usually are or end up becoming very caring for life and compassionate towards others, feeling the water of life flowing all around them.
  • Bloodbending: The Waterbending master of this class hails from the Southern Water Tribe, and is a trusted member of the Order of the White Lotus. Publicly, they simply tutors those who don't plantbend, but in reality she teaches those she finds worthy and moral enough to use bloodbending. This is the secret of the Academy, with only the faculty and staff actually aware of it, and the students of their master are sworn into secrecy to keep the knowledge secret.
• Earth:
  • Sand: The Sandbending master hails from the desert, a former criminal, teaching students to manipulate the Earth into sand to supplement their bending. Students of this class are usually rather shady and mischievous, playing pranks with their bending.
  • Metal: The Metalbending master is a former officer of the Republic City Police, and teaches students he finds worthy of this bending art that is especially valuable in a modernizing world. Students here are often no-nonsense, rigid followers of the law much like their master. Indeed, most graduates of this class become police officers themselves.
• Fire: The firebending specialization classes are held to be the most difficult classes compared to the others, aside from Metalbending. (and Bloodbending)
  • Blue Fire: The master of this art is a boisterous man, and very Spartan-like in his teaching methods, gaining a reputation for being one of the more unforgiving and harsh teachers in the Bending Academy. He teaches students to use their passion to fuel their fires to the point where their flames turn blue, as well as an almost extinct technique learned by himself and his students as their solution to lightning: Combustion, where students learn to concentrate as much as they can to fire compressed balls of fire. Students here are usually passionate like their master, the best of which gain reputations for their competitive spirit and knack for getting into fights.
  • Lightning: The master of this class is twice as old as the master of Blue Firebending, and is a member of the White Lotus as well (what a coincidence!) She teaches her students more than just how to shoot and redirect lightning. She teaches them to make their surges last longer, to quicken the body movements required to fire, and for her greatest students, to create more than one burst at a time. Students of this class are usually very cunning, disciplined and focused like their master, as that is required to make lightning.

Bio Format

• Name:
• Age: 14-16
• Gender: Male or Female (duh)
• Element: Water, Earth, or Fire only.
• Family: Any relatives living or dead.
• Occupation: What your character does for a living, if they do anything.
• Specialization: What specialization class you intend for your character to take.
• Appearance: What your character looks like (height, weight, eye color, hair color, etc.)
• Skills: What your character can do.
• Personality: Who your character is (likes, dislikes, beliefs, etc.)
• History: What's happened to your character so far.
• Other: Anything else you don't think fits anywhere else.

Accepted Bios:

Masters:

• Plantbending: whizzerd as Lun
• Bloodbending: G Ms as Kuilei Xue
• Sandbending: G Ms as Shamo Feng
• Metalbending: Insano as Bakal Kalooban
• Blue Firebending:
• Lightningbending: mr AHR as Naru Fann

Students:

Water:

• Blood
  • Stratofarius as Kaizer
• Plant:
  • maxyrama as Naima Spoden

• Metal:
  • mr AHR as Rubus Eudicot
  • Replica as Tian Qian
• Sand:
  • whizzerd as Tai Lerong

• Lightning:
  • Insano as Kuya Shen
  • Speedchesser as Aiko Hattori
  • desdendelle as Zhao Yun
  • 3of 4 as Shuo Xia
• Blue Fire:
  • luckybreak91 as Minato Ryugamine, AKA "Phoenix"

edited 6th Aug '12 7:38:34 PM by Insano

• Name:Rubus Eudicot
• Age: 16
• Gender: Male
• Element:Earth
• Family: Smithing family that used to be well known for it's production of weapons and strong benders, but have since declined due to increasing modernization. Nothing else of note.
• Occupation: Has a job at a flower shop.
• Specialization: Family would love to have Rubus be a metal bender, but he is more interested in sand bending.
• Appearance: Tall, at 6' 6", and is thus awkward, clumsy, gawky, and tends to stare down at people without realizing it. Is usually mistaken to be a teacher, since he doesn't speak much to give away his more youthful personality. Neck length dark brown hair, and relatively darkish brown skin. Golden eyes though, which he got from his grandmother on his mother's side, who was from the Fire Nation.
• Skills: Fairly competent earth bender, but lacks the solidity of a traditional one, something he's received much flak for from his parents and grandparents, and is thus self conscious about it. He was taught how to metal bend at a young age, but can barely use it for anything more than "oh look I can make this spoon bend with just my thumb!" When it comes to earthbending, he has a tendency to wall himself in, and expand from there, and is frequently a strategy he falls back on.
• Personality: Bit of a wet towel, a sour resigned expression by default, and is a bit introverted as well. He really likes beaches though, and occasionally gets romantic when seeing them. Nature in general really fascinates him, and he sometimes wishes he was born a Waterbender, because they can control plants to a degree.
• History: Grew up in a stable, formerly old money, if slightly lower class family. Felt lots of pressure to do well, and was sent here as a result. Saved up money to afford his own apartment, which is extremely small, but comfortable.
• Other: Wants to be a cartographer, and take maps. Especially of deserts and beaches.

I am willing to NPC as teachers (so long as not earthbender) if need be.

Accepted. Here's my bio:

• Name: Kuya Shen
• Age: 16
• Gender: Male
• Element: Fire
• Family: Firebending father, Waterbending mother, waterbending 13-year-old sister
• Occupation: None yet, apprenticed as a blacksmith before sent to the Academy
• Specialization: Lightning
• Appearance: Kuya may have the Firebending of his father, but his appearance comes from his mother: brown skin and brown hair. His father's DNA seems to have affected the appearance of his eyes, which although blue, are blue in the same way lightning is. Kuya stands at 5' 9", weighing 155 lbs. His body is in good shape, on par with most athletes. He wears a red waistcoat over a long-sleeved black shirt and gray pants with regular shoes.
• Skills: Kuya is skilled enough in Firebending to qualify to go to the Bending Academy. He has practiced creating lightning with his father, but hasn't shot lightning so he can save it for when he actually starts learning in the Academy. Kuya is able to cook adequate meals, play instruments, and throw knives with deadly precision. Kuya is also an accomplished non-bending martial artist.
• Personality: Kuya is an intelligent young man whose outlook on life would be brighter if his childhood was better. He feels very protective of his family and what little friends he has, especially his sister (she looks like a firebender but is a waterbender). He had harbored a justified hatred of bullies, but he hates the ignorance that made them his bullies even more so (This is what drives him to be an educated man). He holds fear that his father may believe the same things his bullies spoke of him, driving Kuya to become a Master Firebender to prove himself to his father. He is also scared his mother believes that his Firebending is a stain on her bloodlines, and seeks her approval as much he seeks his father's helping her whenever she asks him to, and whenever she doesn't as well. He has very little grasp on the fact that his parents are proud of what he is and that they believe he is a wonderful young man and a powerful bender who will do much for the world. Because of his psyche, Kuya is the kind of loner who wants friends but acts like he doesn't need them. He is also hesitant to look for love, as he is afraid he will be rejected due to his nature.
• History: Kuya was born to a firebender and a waterbender who lived together in the Fire Nation. When he was born, his parents and their families believes that he would possess his mother's Waterbending. Imagine their surprise a few years later when Kuya nearly burned down the house with his firebending! From then on, Kuya was seen as some anomaly in his world, being mistreated by other children for not possessing the same skin as most Firebenders. When it appeared that his father didn't approve of him (when he most certainly did), and other children declared he would never be a good firebender because of his skin, Kuya made it his mission to become a great Firebender, to prove that he could be a great Firebender despite his appearance. As he grew, he defeated many of his bullies in Agni Kais before leaving for the Academy to continue his mission.

edited 5th Aug '12 1:45:39 PM by Insano

• Name: Kaizer
• Age: 15
• Gender: Male
• Element: Water.
• Family: Mother (waterbender), Father (waterbender) and Aunt (waterbender).
• Occupation: Works as a paperboy, delivering newspapers.
• Appearance: 5'6, messy brown hair and blue eyes. Always wears a sleeveless blue shirt, a black belt, blue pants, boots, and fingerless gloves.
• Skills:
  • Excellent at various skills- mainly fighting, hunting, fishing, cooking, survival- thanks to his training back at the Northern Water Tribe.
  • However, he also knows quite a lot about acting and has a great charisma.
  • He is a talented waterbender, always finding new styles and ways to use with his bending, and joined the Academy in order to perfect it.
• Personality:
  • Kaizer desires to impact the world. He's ambitious, and likes when things follow a certain plan, being a very focused person. However, when he's not on a mission on training, he loves going on little side-adventures. He believes that friends are important, and he always tries to leave a good impact on people. Unfurtonately, he has a split personality, one that he keeps buried and hidden. If someone managed to unlock said personality, they would find a totally different boy- greedy, heartless, ready to do anything to get what he wants, and easy to be controlled.
• History:
  • Ever since the beginning, Kaizer's fathers have wanted to him to be not only the greatest waterbender in the Northern Water Tribe, but also the greatest waterbender in the world, making him spend most of his childhood training on both the arts of bending and survival. But the boy always wanted to do something different, believing that it was his mission to change the world, and being just another waterbender wouldn't change anything- so he began to create a deephatred for his parents for never letting him do what he wanted, a hatred he always kept buried- Kaizer began to have acting and charisma lessons from some of his friends when his parents weren't home.
  • One day, after disrespecting his waterbending teacher, he suffered an accident trying to prove to her that he could do so much more ambitious things with his bending, and ended up hitting himself in the head, creating some sort of split personality- one that based itself off the hatred for his parents, one that was a representation of Kaizer's uncontrolled ambition. The accident also made his original personality much more focused on training too.
  • His parents, believing that staying in the Northern Water Tribe would be a bad idea for him, sent Kaizer to Republic City, to train in the Academy to perfect his bending, and to train with his Aunt on how to control said side. At 15 years old, Kaizer managed to keep his split personality hidden and buried away with no problems, but some people in the City might be interested in using this dark side of the waterbending student.

Might as well make a character.

• Name: Aiko Hattori
• Age: 16
• Gender: Female
• Element: Fire.
• Family: A nonbender sister named Yuka Hattori, a bending brother named Sai Hattori, a dead bending earth kingdom father named Hong Hattori, and a fire nation bending mother named Misaki Hattori.
• Occupation:
• Specialization: Lightningbending
• Appearance: Long black hair, red eyes, thin, pale skin. More to be added later.
• Skills: She's very good at driving, and is reasonably talented at painting. Her firebending skills are mostly focused on creating lightning, which made her better than most at it but left her normal fire unusually weak.
• Personality: She's fairly friendly, and she's very critical of her own skills. Brave in social situations and with reasonable social skills. She has a playful streak, leading to her occasionally showing off in combat.
• History: She was born in Republic City, and her father drowned after falling off a boat when she was four. After that, she spent her life in relative peace, being taught directly by her mother, who was also capable of shooting lightning. She was sent to the academy to train for the navy.
• Other: Nothing comes to mind.

edited 8th Jul '12 10:32:32 AM by Speedchesser

• Name: Tai Lerong
• Age: 16
• Gender: Male
• Element: Earth
• Family: Earthbending parents, mother is disabled. Older non-bending sister, also an amateur chi-blocker.
• Occupation: Does odd jobs around town, mainly delivering newspapers.
• Specialization: Sandbending.
• Appearance: Short, unkempt brown hair and green eyes. He's short and surprisingly quick on his feet. Wears a plain beige top with green trousers, and goes barefoot when he can. He also has a pair of sandals, a dark green jacket and brown gloves for colder days.
• Skills: Has a lot of domestic skills such as cooking, sewing and general craftwork. He's a talented traditional Earthbender, but also has some skill in the pro-bending form since he's a big fan of it. Can also use a bo staff but isn't confident yet with using blades.
• Personality: He often acts childish, playing pranks and generally goofing around as is expected from a sandbender. He is however very serious when he needs to be and more responsible than he lets on. He hates people being picked on and will stand up for them, regardless of whether he even likes them or not. He also can be very stubborn in his beliefs, and often acts first and thinks later (though he's by no means unintelligent).
• History: His maternal grandparents were a rich family who lived in Ba Sing Se, but moved away after the war reached it. His parents lived many years in a quiet village until Republic City was built, and his mother's city roots called to her to move again, leaving his father in the village. When he was a child his family were threatened by the Triple Threats, who permanently disabled his mother. He didn't want to go to the academy but was persuaded to by her, as she didn't want her son to have to waste his childhood looking after her. He still does odd jobs when he can and sends the money to his family. He isn't aware yet that his sister has joined the Equalist movement.

And my master sign-up as well:

• Name: Lun
• Age: 42
• Gender: Female
• Element: Water/Plantbending
• Family: Husband, fellow plantbender. One waterbending son.
• Occupation: Master at Academy. Teaches plantbending to students.
• Appearance: Long, greying black hair and dark green eyes. Wears a long green dress with a chest plate made of wood, a leaf hat and wrappings around her forearms and ankles.
• Skills: Despite her personality she's a very strong plantbender, enough to rival or even best Huu, and she also serves as the academy's best gardener. She often visits the ocean so she can easily control seaweed as well.
• Personality: Very compassionate, often going on spiels about how all life should be loved and treated equally. She's also a bit of an oddball, but can be quite insightful nevertheless.
• History: She and her family had an idyllic life in the swamp until their son left due to seeing his family as an embarrassment. She chased after him but ended up in Republic City, promptly forgot about her search and gladly took up a position as one of the academy's masters.

Master Sign up:

• Name: Naru Fann
• Age: Middle aged.
• Gender: Female
• Element: Fire Bending
• Family: No one is sure, she doesn't speak much about such things.
• Occupation: Master at the school.
• Specialization: Lightning.
• Appearance: An eyepatch on her left eye. Claims to have gotten it from the first time she ever manipulated lightning. She wears long flowing robes of maroon and dark red, and has auburn hair in a french braid◊ that reaches her elbows. Fairly tall for a woman, at around 6 feet.
• Skills: Lightning manipulation, is also extremely good at gambling games, and is a dancer as well.
• Personality: Naru is one of the odder teachers, and she frequently rambles off telling stories that are sometimes hard to discern as truth or just Naru messing with you. She is very meticulous and a perfectionist, organizing her rooms in a very precise manner.
• History: Graduate from the Academy, and now teaches there.

edited 5th Jul '12 2:21:32 PM by MrAHR

Everyone so far is accepted. We just need a clear metalbender (Or for Rubus to become one), a plantbender, and a blue firebender.

I'll have a metalbending master bio up soon enough.

edited 5th Jul '12 2:43:56 PM by Insano

Name: Phoenix. His old, official name is Minato Ryugamine.

Age: 15

Gender: Male

Element: Fire

Family: Dead father, dead mother, dead sister.

Occupation: Street fighter.

Specialization: Blue Firebending

Appearance: 5'5. Brown hair, green eyes. A muscular, athletic form. A collection of scars litter his body.

Skills: Phoenix is an extremely skilled hand to hand fighter. He is possibly the most physically adept and capable student at the school. He is a master at all forms of physical activity. He is not nearly as skilled a bender. As talented, maybe. Only time will tell. Also, he is a talented chef and board game player.

Personality: Phoenix is a battle maniac. He loves to fight above all else, although all types of physical activity as well as any type of challenge, physical or not, call to him. He is a nice, kind young man. He is very dependable and responsible. He does not do anything he considers dishonorable. He will not lie, break a promise, steal, cheat, or use weapons.

History: When he was 10 his house burned down at night, killing all his family members. They were all of fire nation descent, yet none were benders. Witnesses say they saw him jump out the window. When he awoke he had no memory of his life before, and took up the name Phoenix, because of his belief that as a phoenix dies in a fire and is reborn in its ashes as a different person, so to did he die in that fire and was reborn as a different person. He lived on the streets after that and took up street fighting to earn money. Over the years he encountered a number of benders and grew interested. He began to teach himself how to bend, and by the time he reached fifteen he had barely saved up enough money and gained enough skill to go to the academy.

edited 5th Jul '12 4:54:07 PM by luckybreak91

Accepted. Just one thing. Your character's old life ended when he was ten years old. So therefore Phoenix would probably still have his old, official name recorded in the system somewhere. Add his former name, and I'll let him in.

Rubus is gonna be a metal bender. Or at least, join the school with that to learn. He wants to bend something else, but he is technically learning metal bending.

Fine. But we still need a plantbender. In other news, here comes the metalbending master!

• Name: Bakal Kalooban
• Age: Early 40s
• Gender: Male
• Element: Earth
• Family: Deceased parents
• Occupation: Metalbending Master
• Specialization: Metalbending
• Appearance: Bakal managed to keep his armor from his days as a police officer, and still wears it in public to this day. The only addition to his appearance is a strip of cloth that he wears over his eyes, since he no longer needs them. The soles of his feet are also perpetually bared to provide him earthbending sonar in addition to his regular echolocation. Bakal is 5' 11" and about 170 lbs without his armor. He looks like a regular earthbender, with brown hair so dark it can be mistaken for black, and eyes that were once brown before they were cut from him.
• Skills: Bakal is a very powerful metal and earthbender, a skilled martial artist and weapons master, and a competent detective. Since he lost his sight, Bakal has trained his other senses to be greater than most people, especially his senses of touch and hearing. Bakal is also practiced in navigating Republic City using unorthodox methods.
• Personality: Bakal is a very stern and stoic man. He keeps many of his thoughts to himself, but will be frank when he speaks. He is very intolerant of those with a disdain of authority and the law, whipping his students into shape to become proper police officers in the future. Bakal does retain a soft spot for students with tough lives, personal issues, and disabilities. But that sympathy he shares with them doesn't overlap into classes, often being harder on them than he is on his usual students. Bakal is also distrustful of most of his fellow teachers, especially the Sandbending master since he is a former criminal and the brother of the Dai Li's leader.
• History: Bakal led a normal life in Republic City, acting like a regular child of a blacksmith and a chef would, learning from his parents while honing his bending skills. Eventually Bakal became a police officer at the age of nineteen, and remained an officer until he was twenty-three. At that time, he realized that one of his friends was a Dirty Cop working with the Triple Threat Triad. In attempting to report him, his parents were murdered. In a final confrontation, the traitor slashed Bakal's eyes before he was killed in what was the last time Bakal showed real rage. Blinded forever, Bakal lost his ability to trust in his fellow officers and left the police force. He eventually found a job as the new metal bending master of the Academy.
• Other:

edited 5th Aug '12 1:49:07 PM by Insano

Do we need one right now? If the roleplay shows up, more people are likely to sign up.

I added Phoenixes old name.

Yes, yes we do.

Accepted.

Well, why not.

• Name: Zhao Yun.
• Age: 16.
• Gender: female.
• Element: Fire.
• Family: The Yun family is known for the high number of Firebenders it counts as members, and their bending style is particularly ancient. They supported the Fire Nation's imperialistic ways, so they're under close scrutiny, but they're law-abiding citizens, and did not have any trouble with the authorities.
• Occupation: She helps maintain her family's dojo.
• Specialisation: Lightning.
• Appearance: I will make my adoptive father Liu Bei proud!
  She is tall for a sixteen-years old, but skinny.
• Skills: Aside from being a good Firebender, Zhao is somewhat knowledgeable of close combat techniques stemming from the Yun bending style. She also writes poetry and practices the Tea Ceremony.
• Personality: Zhao is a reserved person. She does not like talking to others, preferring to write or practice. To her few friends, however, she is a warm, open person, and extremely loyal and helpful.
• History: Trained to be a Firebender from a young age, Zhao was sent to the Academy as soon as it was possible to further strengthen her. A future in the family dojo awaits her, but in the meantime she has developed the ambition to open a tea house. Her family's feelings are mixed on the matter, with some members, such as her mother, thinking it's a good idea, while others, such as her maternal grandfather (a retired soldier) do not like it.
• Other: Sleeps at home. Already studied in the Academy for two years.

Alright, then. Looks like we've got our first senior player.

Am I a senior player because I'm a mod candidate?

"senior"?

Also, AHR is definitely my senior here.

As in a character who's got more experience than the other characters, since she has two years at the Academy already. I wasn't even aware you were a mod candidate. Who else is?

edited 5th Jul '12 5:53:10 PM by Insano

Ah, got it.

This the crowner that interests you.
Also: ah.

: Interesting.

Also, I've figured we just need a single player in each class, master or student. So even though we have no Plantbending students, we still have a teacher to play in that class. So, who wants to start either today or tomorrow. Because I'm still figuring out how the plot should play out at first.

I'm good either way.