[hider=Tao][table][row][sup][h3][color=2e2c2c][b]▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅[/b][right][b]▅▅▅▅▅[/b][/right][/color][/h3][/sup][/row][row][cell]
[color=2e2c2c]................................................................................[/color]
 
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[center][color=181818]T A O  [/color]
[color=white]T A O[/color][/center]
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[center][color=181818]Thirty | ♂ | Air Nomad  [/color][/center]
[center][color=9fc2c6]Thirty | ♂ | Air Nomad[/color][/center]
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[center]"It does not do well to dwell on the past and grow sick in the spirit."[/center]
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[center][color=181818]Bending  [/color][/center]
[center][color=9fc2c6]Bending[/color][/center]
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Formerly of the Southern Air Temple, Tao made it through fifteen tiers of airbending on the way to mastery before he abandoned his people's lifestyle and hit the road. His bending potential has atrophied in the years since; of those fifteen techniques, he can use the typical evasive and defensive maneuvers but not much else, at least not without advanced preparation, practice, and a dash of luck.

On the other hand, Tao had an unusually strong connection to spirits as an adolescent and retains that ability today – much to his relief. He can guide others into the spirit world through meditation and as well as enter it himself, though the tumultuous nature of his own heart can make the entry... problematic.

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[center][color=181818]Skills  [/color][/center]
[center][color=9fc2c6]Skills[/color][/center]
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[color=9fc2c6][list][*][color=white]Philosophy & Spiritualism[/color]
[sub]Tao's thirst for knowledge about spirits and the Spirit World has resulted in first-hand experience of how they live and work alongside the mortal world. To fund his lifestyle, he sells his services as an expert who knows how to settle a dispute with things you can't see (real or otherwise).[/sub][/list]
[list][*][color=white]Professional Xenophile[/color]
[sub]Having traveled across the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom, and encountered Water Tribe members in the past, Tao is a worldly sort with a lot of cultural and geographical knowledge of the various peoples who inhabit the world.[/sub][/list]
[list][*][color=white]Self-Defense[/color]
[sub]The best defense is running away, but having a staff and knowing how to use it doesn't hurt, either.[/sub][/list][/color]
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[center][color=181818]Weaknesses  [/color][/center]
[center][color=9fc2c6]Weaknesses[/color][/center]
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[color=9fc2c6][list][*][color=white]Hypocrisy[/color]
[sub]Tao doesn't practice what he preaches, because what he preaches is Air Nomad enlightenment, and he is far from enlightened. He might teach that relaxing one's hold on their earthly ties is a noble pursuit, but he would never in a million years follow his own advice. He might say that vengeance is wrong, but...[/sub][/list]
[list][*][color=white]Fading Airbending[/color]
[sub]At some point in the not-so-distant future, Tao knows that he will lose his airbending to the turmoil that simmers within him. He has made his peace with it (or so he thinks) but can one ever grow at peace with losing the equivalent of a limb?[/sub][/list]
[list][*][color=white]At the Bottom of the Cup[/color]
[sub]Tao is a bit of a lush. As far as vices go, he's far from unusual, though perhaps a life among the Air Nomads did not prepare him for the excess of it.[/sub][/list][/color]
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[center][color=181818]Biography  [/color][/center]
[center][color=9fc2c6]Biography[/color][/center]
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Born into the Air Nomads, Tao and his brother, Tseten, had the gift of airbending, but more unusually, a shared talent for seeing and interacting with spirits years prior to their induction into the Southern Air Temple. Tao's younger years were spent chasing phantom fireflies and being teased by small, rabbit-like creatures that nobody else could see except for his brother. When they did become monks, the childlike wonder faded but the innate ability never did. One of the first things Tao learned was respect for the spirits – respect, and a healthy degree of fear. Stories of dark things that stole away children in the night were not uncommon when the older boys tried to frighten the younger ones.

Tao was a decent student, more prone to mischief than working hard and constantly in the shadow of Tseten, who tore through the path to mastery at a breakneck pace. Tao was content to take the scenic route, to enjoy his time on the earth, and only rebelled against the teachings of his mentors [i]a little bit[/i]. This changed only when tragedy stuck as he was leaving his adolescence behind, when Tseten, the night before he was due to receive his arrows, disappeared.

The only clues were a dead sky-bison, a shattered glider, and deep gouges in the temple stone like no animal that existed in the physical world.
 
Within the next three years monastic life began to chafe at him worse than it ever had before. There were only so many times Tao could hear a monk quote that old adage to him without tearing his hear out in frustration. "Revenge is like a two-headed rat-viper. While you watch your enemy go down, you're being poisoned yourself," they parroted. But it wasn't [i]their[/i] family that had been torn apart by a spirit –– it wasn't [i]their[/i] brother that they would never see again –– so what did they know?

Distracted from his training and distanced from his peers, it came as no surprise (to Tao at least) that one day he flew out of the Air Temple on his glider to never return. He set down first in the Earth Kingdom. Earthbenders understood the meaning of an "eye for an eye", and if they didn't, at least they didn't lecture him on it.

Much of the next decade was spent adapting to a life away from the temples. There, the needs of the many were taken care of through the community, and communal living meant nobody was left alone with their thoughts for long. Outside, Tao had to quickly adjust to having nothing provided for him but the clothes on his back in a world that cared only for the individual. Mostly, he paid his way offering his services as someone who knew a lot about spirits, which was unsurprisingly rare in non-benders. And because it was so rare, if he [i]could[/i] exaggerate the effort needed to talk a gopher spirit out of eating up all the fields, he did.

In the Earth Kingdom, he learned a lot about how and where the spirits interacted with the world in practice, not just in dusty scrolls. At the end of a journey towards and through the tempestuous Fire Islands to reach Caldera City, as always in search of knowledge of one spirit in particular, he found it. The name of the spirit.

Heba.

The Sky-Eater.

Two things stand in the way between Tao and his heart's desire, which is to put an end to the malevolent creature that stole his brother away from him. The first is that although he knows the Sky-Eater is the spirit who vanished Tseten away without a trace, he is not sure of what or where it is. Ten years of searching and studying has yielded one lead; the name of a spirit that may know more answers: Wan Shi Tong. To that end, he has travelled to Si Wong City to advance his own interests.

The other problem is not so easily solved. Even if he could find the spirit and find its realm within the Spirit World, he wouldn't be able to bend there (or at all, even if it were in the physical world). Finding a way to defeat it once and for all would require cunning or trickery he does not possess, or the help of a different spirit––

Or the Avatar. Perhaps it is a pipe-dream, but Tao does believe that the Avatar exists out there. The Avatar Spirit can't just [i]disappear[/i]. If he could find them and help them on whatever their quest for spiritual enlightenment may be, there is a chance that they may be willing to help with his selfish goals. To adjudicate the conflict between him the spirit. To kill it.[/cell][/row][/table][table][row][sup][h3][b][color=5e777b]█████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████[right]██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████[/right]
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[center][color=181818]Supporting Cast  [/color][/center]
[center][color=9fc2c6]Supporting Cast[/color][/center]
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[img]https://i.imgur.com/ddvJ7cw.png[/img]
[color=2e2c2c].......................................................[/color][/center]A knowledge seeker that Tao is trying to stalk (and befriend) to find the library of Wan Shi Tong.[/cell][cell] 
[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/P2xz10N.png[/img]
[color=2e2c2c].......................................................[/color][/center]Kiya is a matronly innkeeper who Tao works for to pay for his room, keeping away mischievous spirits.[/cell][cell] 
[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/ml2DqqW.png[/img]
[color=2e2c2c].......................................................[/color][/center]Tao's 'white whale'; the spirit Heba, also known as the Sky Eater, who killed his brother.[/cell][cell][color=2e2c2c]................[/color][/cell][/row][/table][/hider]