[center][img=http://i60.tinypic.com/2zj9pqp.jpg]
[b]LIEN
[Female | 25 | Foggy Swamp][/b]
[i]Never Used...[/i][/center]

[indent][b]Lien[/b] is a spiritual and determined woman from the Foggy Swamp. While having lived a sheltered life in the mostly peaceful Swamp has given her a very relaxed and low maintenance personality where many aspects of life are concerned, when it's time to be serious, she can get down to business. However, if she can help it, she'll avoid physically fighting people, preferring instead to foster peace through civil discourse, but she is aware that words aren't always well received, and that action is often necessary. With that in mind, she does feel that all life is sacred due to the connections every living thing has to every other being. When it's necessary to kill - such as for food - she always speaks a prayer to help guide the being to the Spirit World.

At times, Lien can be rather naive about the world outside the Swamp though she's eager to learn in her own way and in her own time. Unlike many others in her Tribe, she often craves the adventure of leaving her homeland so she can experience new terrains and meet new people. She's very social, after all, and she isn't as fearful of the unfamiliar experiences as she probably should be. Even so, she understands that those who try to hurt others aren't as inherently good as those who attempt to aid people, and she knows to be wary. However, her good intentions and general naivety about the world around her could leave her easily susceptible to manipulation schemes.[/indent]

[b]Traits[/b]
[indent]Despite the rarity of the occurrence in the Foggy Swamp Tribe, Lien was born without the ability to bend water to her will. Instead of making her feel like an outsider, the Tribespeople taught her other ways to become a productive member. The first thing she learned was how to heal with herbs and plants. Lien took to it right away, thoroughly enjoying the tasks of helping those who became sick or wounded. It felt far more productive to her than learning how to fight in a Tribe as peaceful as hers. However, it was important that each member understand the necessity of protecting oneself and each other. The Tribe itself may have been peaceful, but there were predators and other dangers in the Swamp. She was taught how to utilize blow darts and knots and traps to avoid confrontation. For the same purpose, she was taught to move quietly but efficiently, to sneak away from danger. If it could not be avoided, she was taught to wield a bone knife. Because she could not propel their swamp skiffs conveniently herself, she taught herself to move through the trees atop branches. It didn't always end well when she first began to learn, but over the course of many years of practice, she's become quite adept at climbing and moving from place to place in unexpected ways.

Additionally, with the help of Huu, she became spiritually enlightened. He taught her how to use her natural ability to feel the life energy - or chi - in all living things to better understand just what each aspect meant. In this way, she felt like she could communicate with plants in a way that needed no tongue. From one simple organism like a plant, she learned to communicate with all others that stretched far and wide. As such, she could gather a vague understanding of almost anything occurring in areas of the Swamp, even in places where she wasn't currently standing. In this way, Huu trained her to become a better ally in defense of the Swamp though her lack of true fighting skills prevented her from becoming a true defender. Unfortunately, due to their greater complexity, living bodies have always been challenging to understand, and she's still learning to diagnose health problems using her understanding of life energy. [/indent]

[b]Relations[/b]
[indent][b]Huu[/b] | Male | 56 | Foggy Swamp Tribe | Living | Spiritual Mentor & Potentially Biological Father (though there's no way to verify)
[b]Binh[/b] | 55 | Female | Foggy Swamp Tribe | Living | Healing Master
[b]Phuoc[/b] | Male | 41 | Foggy Swamp Tribe | Living | Stealth and Traps Master
[b]Suong[/b] | Female | 47 | Foggy Swamp Tribe | Living | Mother & Fighting Styles Master
[b]Foggy Swamp Tribespeople[/b] (as a whole) | All Ages | Foggy Swamp Tribe | Some Deceased, Some Living | Taught her all aspects of life, spirituality, and her culture
[/indent]

[b]History[/b]
[indent]Lien was not born to two parents as most children of the Swamp seemed to be. Instead, Suong's unexpected and unplanned pregnancy eliminated any marriage prospects she could have had. Lien was brought into the Tribe as a bastard, and though she was still treated as warmly as any kin, her lack of two, wed parents prevented her from the benefits of living with various families as she grew into a woman. Despite this, she was still permitted to learn various skills, but the lessons were rarely one-on-one or lengthy unlike the lessons legitimate children received. Even so, her Masters acknowledge her skills and sought to help her master them.

Within the Swamp, everyone had an equal opportunity to become something regardless of gender or bending ability. For Lien, though her mother had been hopeful that the child of her body would become a warrior, she made the decision for herself to take a very different path.

The path she eventually chose had less to do with parental influence and more to do with her natural abilities. From the time she could remember, she'd felt the energy of others almost as if it was calling to her. Her then-childlike mind had dubbed the chi within everyone "lifesongs" though it was't the kind of music she could hear with her ears so much as feel with her very being. She couldn't understand the complexities of the things this energy tried to convey, but there were some very basic, very vague notions she was able to eventually gather. Because of this, she always shied away from hunting, for the song always, inevitably, became more like a scream. Lien did not, at the time, have the strength to bear the change in the lifesongs of animals and plants that were maimed or harmed, and decided to try to focus her abilities elsewhere such as healing.

She was taught plant-based healing, and though she didn't like the confusing way energies felt when they came to be healed, the way they changed after a healing session or two always lifted her spirits. Under Master Binh's steady tutelage, Lien was able to learn a great deal about plant properties and mending the sick and injured.

It wasn't until she was on the cusp of entering her preteen years that she realized that others were unable to sense lifesongs the way she could, and she decided to try explaining it to someone in the hopes that she wasn't alone. This prompted Huu, one of four Council Members and the Tribe's spiritual advisor, to take notice of her. He took her to the Banyan-Grove Tree at the center of the Swamp, and after over a decade of training with Huu's steady guidance, she was finally able to understand the songs she felt in each living thing. More than that, she was able to connect them to each other and project herself through them to get a sense of other places and events as they occurred within other areas of the Swamp. While she still continued her studies in healing and non-confrontational weapons-use, her heart truly lay with Huu's spiritual teachings, and she worked hard to hone them.

Perhaps because of her strengthened spiritual abilities, a part of her became incredibly curious about the outside world. Her early attempts at projecting herself outside of the Swamp through the plants offered little success. After all, everything living in the Swamp was directly connected via the banyan-grove tree, but in the outside world, the connections were flimsier and would require a greater understanding if she was going to do it correctly. As a result, she often traveled closer and closer to the edge of the Swamp in order to attempt to extend her reach farther.

Unfortunately, the outside world wasn't quite what she'd hoped. On the edges of her home, she found humans who worked to cut back the Swamp foliage, to conquer it instead of working with it. Though Huu had tried very hard to spread fear to these outsiders, to make them believe there was a giant, monstrous Spirit protecting that land, he was simply one man who could not face those numbers alone.

When the Swamp's deforestation began to increase as more of these outsiders realized the angry Spirit hadn't killed anyone in their ranks, warriors from the Tribe banded together to help fight the outsider. Unfortunately, their unsophisticated weapons and bending were no match for the technological advances of people who wielded fire. They'd never seen weapons made of such hard, sharp stone, and they'd never seen fire emerge from a living being. Their ranks were decimated, and the Swampers were forced to retreat. Fortunately, the firebenders could not follow them into the Swamp lest they become lost in the maze and die.

The survivors of the onslaught brought the injured and dead back home. Even while they grieved for those they'd lost and sang them pathways into the Spirit World, they tried to come up with plans to prevent what was happening. A part of Lien knew that her healing abilities and spiritual guidance would be needed, but another part of her realized that the only way to defeat an outsider would be to find an outside sympathizer to help her. Thankfully, because of her travels to the Swamp's edges, she'd been privy to several meetings that were held at the northwestern borders of the Foggy Swamp, and she thought she knew how she could help her people best.[/indent]

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