[hider=Han Xin]
[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/phVMI8d.png[/img]
[h3][b]Han Xin[/b][/h3]
[sub]”Keep your friends close, and your enemies at the tip of a long blade.”[/sub][/center]

[b]Character Age:[/b] 35

[b]Character Gender:[/b] Male

[b]Character Race:[/b] Earth Kingdom

[b]Bending:[/b] Earthbender - Han Xin is an experienced earthbender, but his style is almost exclusively self-taught, with no formal training beyond tips and advice picked up from other benders during his travels. Many of his maneuvers and attacks are improvisational in nature, and this has given him an edge against rival benders expecting a studied style to compete against. He’s even found ways to incorporate stances and motions from other bending techniques into both his bending forms and his spear fighting. 

[b]Skills:[/b] Beyond bending, Han Xin is a seasoned spear fighter and mercenary, having fought for various princes and lords of the Earth Kingdoms as the nation solidified itself over time. He’s also quite the liuqin guru as well, and greatly enjoys practicing musical freestyling with it in his freetime.

[b]Weaknesses:[/b] Han Xin is an alcoholic, plain and simple. He always has at least three calabash jugs of spirits on him at any given time, and he’s been known to add some to nearly any other liquid he consumes, including water itself, if he finds the initial taste unpleasant. Han Xin also suffers from narcolepsy, and while having never fallen asleep while in a fight or on watch for one, he regularly dozes off without care or regard for those around him otherwise.

[b]Possessions:[/b] His most valued possession is his Ji spear, a weapon that only ever leaves his person when absolutely necessary. He also carries a trio of knives on his belt for utility and emergency purposes. Three calabash jugs, generally filled with some form of booze, are tied to the belt as well. Strapped to the belt on his back is the case for his liuqin, which he keeps carefully maintained to keep the instrument inside safe.

[b]Biography:[/b] Han Xin was born and raised in a small village in the Earth Kingdoms, near the infamous city of Ba Sing Se. His youth was marginally uneventful, without knowing about his latent bending talents at the time, most of his childhood consisted of lessons, games, and getting into brawls with others of his age. One of the few remnants of this time in his life he keeps with him is his early lessons in the liuqin from his mother, the same instrument he learned with them being the one he keeps with him now.

Eventually, Han Xin shaped from a youthful lad into a fine and proper young man, and it was around this time that the King of Ba Sing Se’s men came knocking. Seeking conscriptable people from among the villages surrounding the city, Han Xin was chosen alongside others from his village. Initially, he refused, not wanting to leave his home and people, but he found the speartips of the soldiers rather convincing. Marshaled into the city’s armed forces, it was during his training that Han Xin’s latent earthbending abilities manifested properly. However, a disregard for authority and the rigidity of the style's masters led to Han Xin being mustered back down to the nonbender ranks, with only a haphazard amount of basic rock manipulation to show for it. While he was never reprimanded to the point of an insubordination discharge, Han Xin was by no means a model soldier. He drank, he ignored orders, he slept on duty, and the only thing that kept him in the army was a small village hovel called Xingwei's Rest.

Xingwei's Rest was a small village along the main road towards the capital of Ba Sing Se, and its existence of the garrison was more for the comfort and stability of the region than for any real military advantage, and this took much of the pressure off of Han Xin and his unit. The one thorn in his side was his unit's commanding officer, Lieutenant Gao. The Lieutenant was the poster boy for the ideal officer of the army, dutiful, vigilant, and orderly. And the exact antithesis of Han Xin. The two butting heads was a constant sight in the garrison, and Han Xin skirting by being booted out was as much a miracle as him making through training in the first place. But all things must pass, and eventually Lieutenant Gao managed to get Han Xin discharged on "serviceable merit to the great city of Ba Sing Se", or as Han Xin would put it "We couldn't get you kicked out, so we're asking you politely, yet firmly, to retire."

With a small stipend of cash, pent up frustration, and experience in the army and not much else, Han Xin decided mercenary and bodyguard work might not be a bad way to make some coin. Taking advantage of the rampant banditry and unrest plaguing the solidifying Earth Kingdoms, he found steady work as a weapon for hire, and it was here his unusual and ramshackle bending style took form. Learning stances and moves from enemies, allies, scrolls, and even benders of other elements, Han Xin crafted a unique style that paired well with his spear fighting.

His mercenary career brought him in contact with many a foe and rival, as well. Would-be bandit lords, mercenaries seeking the same contract, and even the occasional private army of some uppity land baron trying to oppose a superior power. But the first and foremost of these was a man named Lai Chen. This man somehow found himself on the opposite end of nearly every contract and job Han Xin worked. Protecting a caravan? Lai Chen was raiding it. Defending a village? Lai Chen was attacking it. The two seemed to be opposites chosen by the spirits to diametrically oppose one another, and even now Han Xin awaits the inevitable next encounter with his longtime foe.

The loosened lifestyle of a mercenary is not a great one to beat old habits, however. Time outside the army solidified his drinking and sleeping, leading to the two becoming a blend of alcoholism and full-blown narcolepsy. As the Earth Kingdoms solidified into relative peace, Han Xin found his work drying up, eventually washing up in the city of Si Wong, hoping to shack up with desert caravans as a guard, while also looking into rumors of war in the Fire Islands as a nice way of making some quick coin.

[b]Supporting Cast:[/b]
[i]Lieutenant Gao[/i] - Unknown to Han Xin, but his former commanding officer has continued his lofty career in the military of the King of Ba Sing Se, and while the two have not yet crossed paths, Han Xin's mercenary lifestyle leaves this an increasingly likely situation every day.

[i]Lai Chen[/i] - The longest-lasting rival of Han Xin's mercenary career, and a man he always seems to cross paths with at the worst of times. It's been a while since their last encounter, moreso due to the lack of work than anything else, and Han Xin has found himself constantly watching vigilantly, almost out of paranoia, for his strongest foe.
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