Laoshen Feng
Note: Like so, but usually wearing rags and slightly more out of focus. Laoshan is a massive man, standing around 6'2" and weighing roughly 230lbs, with broad shoulders, a chiseled body, and a generally horrible smell. That Earth Kingdom heritage is doing work for the man. This is not reflected in his typical manner of dress, as he tends to go around with a ragged cloak and whatever he can find to cover his body. If it doesn't get him arrested, it works for him.
"Remember, children, weak tea is for weak people."
Age: 36
Personality:
Surly, shaggy, and usually drunk, Laoshan Feng is a character who many people would generally prefer to avoid. On the outside, he doesn't care much for anything outside of drink and his own personal freedom, but he has a ferocious possessive protective side when he starts to consider someone one of ‘his’ people. Oftentimes this manifests as ‘testing’ people to see if they’re worth his time, generally with banter and fisticuffs. If you’re going to get offended and indignant after a few jam sessions, he’s not interested. Unrelated, he has a general grudge against earthbenders, who he currently sees as bloodthirsty barbarians due to the state of the world.
Likes:
-Physical pleasures: “There are few finer joys than food, fighting, and song.”
-Good company: “I lack coin, but I’ll gladly trade you six peach buns and a place to rest my head for a story, a song, and the end of your moleskink problem. Deal?”
-Competition: “Yes, I know it’s foolish, but are you telling me you don’t think you can steal the governor’s best robes and get away with it? Because I know I can, but if you’re not comfortable with it...”
Dislikes:
-Eastern Air Monastery: “Bastards kicked me out for having an ounce of foresight.”
-Earth-benders: “Bastards are unreliable, drunken, warmongering messes and I’ll be damned if they think they’re going to move one step outside of their dusty, useless continent.”
-Weak tea: “Weak tea is for weak people. Stew it for an hour in an old boot and get back to me.”
Background: It’s a long story, but we’ll try to keep it short.
Born from the union between a mercenary earth-bending father and a naive air nomad who was traveling the world, Laoshan Feng is an exile, a drunkard, and a bit of a warhawk from the Eastern Air Temple. When he was young, his mother took him back to the Air Temple so that he could be raised in the traditional ways, but his physical differences from his peers were noticeable from the beginning. Taller and bulkier than his peers, Laoshan was never quite accepted amongst the other airbender children, though they would not say it to his face. In spite of, or perhaps because of this, he redoubled his focus on airbending, striving to prove himself to the elders through his ability if not his heritage. As time went on, Laoshan proved himself to be too much of a hothead, and generally paid more attention to world events than the others of his age. Due to this, he believed heavily in a more aggressive style of airbending, focusing on finishing fights quickly and decisively instead of dancing around the opponent. Soon, the elders of the temple discovered a group of younger airbenders attempting to develop lethal airbending techniques, strictly against the teachings of the nomads. Rather than exile the lot of them, they strove to find the source of the aggression, and discovered that Laoshan had been leading this group of angry youths. He was swiftly ousted from the temple, much to the despair of his mother, and not many others.
Wandering through the earth kingdom and fire nation, Laoshan picked up a tendency to start fights and end them, singing and wandering his way through most prisons in the countryside. After a time, jailbreaking became a personal favorite passtime. In order to surprise most guards, he started duplicating bending techniques from other disciplines as best he could, throwing sand around with the wind and using matches and alcohol to duplicate certain firebending techniques. Grand fun. As time passed on, however, he grew disgusted with the constant warfare and blood of the earth kingdoms’ warlords, all to persuaded that he was correct about their belligerent nature. Worrying about what could possibly happen not only to his own temple, but more importantly the folk in the fields, farmers and peasants who couldn’t bend, Laoshan seeks to find the new avatar as the world’s single largest “get bent” gesture towards An and the warmongering ways of the Earth Kingdoms.
Bending Ability: Master airbender, though not in traditional style. Exiled from the nomads before he could go receive his tattoos, his bending style has been largely altered from base airbending due to his travels and a sense of rebellion against the masters of the Eastern Temple, with most current movements based off of fusion of drunken boxing and Ba Gua Zhang. This is, in large part, due to how often he’s in tight quarters, with many of his techniques being developed to be used in controlled environments where his movements are limited. A good number of his current airbending techniques take inspiration from firebending breath control. Currently, he is focused on adapting aggressive techniques from other bending arts into airbending, and teaching any airbender who will listen for half a minute.
Other: Like any airbender worth his salt, Lin carries an airbending staff, a large urn full of sand, a huge flash of pure alcohol, and phosphorus matches when possible, though his multiple captures and subsequent escapes tend to lose him some nice things. Currently, he has in his possession an old walking stick, some basic camping supplies, 50ft of hemp rope and the clothes on his back. Or at least he would, if he wasn’t locked in a prison cell. Still, the first time they put him in the yard… well, they’ll see.
Skills excluding airbending include a strong knowledge of general fist-fighting with a focus on throws, trips, and boxing that’s kept him alive in situations where the grandiose motions of traditional airbending aren’t as welcome as they’d usually be. On top of this, he’s become a bit of an escape artist as time has gone on, learning to be proficient with lockpicks and keeping his body flexible. Finally, he has an excellent singing voice(or so he thinks) and is an exceedingly capable cook, having learned to make do with few ingredients on hand.
On the downside, he is an actual alcoholic. High-functioning and he doesn’t QUITE have cirrhosis of the liver, but it’s a close thing. It’s a problem.
Sample Post:
The man awoke, flopping upright with a cold sweat dripping from his brow. His beard was matted and dirty, tangled with his own spit and vomit, and his blankets hung taught around him, torn and ragged fabric pressing against his chiseled body. Looking out of the alleyway in which he had roosted…
This was not his alley.
This was a jail cell. An entirely metal jail cell.
Gods damn his breath, he was in the Earth Kingdoms again. Perfect.
Well, nothing to do about that now. Groping beside him for a moment, he heard the cries of prisoners echoing down the corridor, realizing that he was being kept in an iron cage… bending prison. Fantastic, that meant they didn’t know he was an airbender… Probably. Light flickered from braziers along the wall, piercing his eyes like sewing needles, looping thread around his brain and squeezing his thoughts through his temples. A loud groan escaped him as his bound hands fell upon a capped gourd beside him, shaking the vessel for a moment. His lips curled and his scowl deepened.
Empty. They took his staff, his sand, his alcohol, and his pack, but left his empty winegourd. Why’d they even leave the bloody thing with him, especially if it was empty? This was cruel and unusual punishment!
Squinting through the fog of his hang-over, fueled by frustration and the pressure of a headache that would crush diamonds, he struggled to get a grasp on the last memory of the previous night. There was… a guard? No, several guards. No one died, he thought. Probably. That was good. Some firebender had seen him using the Gouting Dragon, declared an Agni Kai (Which frankly, was absolutely hilarious) after Laoshan had said something about his mother... Okay. Getting somewhere. There was a fight, honor duel, the bar was burning, people were running and screaming… Oh. That was it. They had burned the bar down.
Heh, woops.
Screwing his eyes shut and massaging his temples, the monk crossed his legs and took deep breaths. He repeated mantra in his head, narrowed his mental vision. Pain is an illusion, feeling transient, the world is only as real as your perceptions… It didn’t help that most of what he could perceive right now was pain. The nausea was almost overpowering, and it was cold as hell in this thrice-twisted cell. Ugh. Deep breaths. Use breath control, exclude pain from your mind, focus on your surroundings…
Sight: torchlight, iron bars, an emblem on the wall… Hearing: Cries of the other prisoners, his own labored breathing… Feeling: cold iron floor, his thin robes rubbing against his skin… Smell: Sweat, fear, desperation from cells around him… Taste: a mistake, euch. No, he would skip that one today. Right… Hoo. Okay. He was there.
Whether or not that was a good thing, however, was an entirely different story. Eyes open… alright. Headache could be worse. The emblem on the wall meant that he was in Ba Sing Se, heart of the Earth Kingdoms, greatest city in the world, and the ONE place he really wished he wasn’t. Security would be heavy in a prison like this, benders and dangrous criminals were kept in the capital. On top of that, he could be in any one of the 8 Path Prisons set throughout the city, and more than that he didn’t know which sub-building he was in. Not good. Not good at all.
That being said, aside from the grim nature of his confinement, the bender noticed a few more physical things immediately. There was no one in the cell directly across from him, but cries from down the line meant there were definitely other prisoners in this hall. Where this hall was, he had no idea, but that could be gotten around. Fire on the walls, but out of reach. A metal bucket to use as a chamber pot, straw on the ground for a bed, no guards in immediate sight. Looked like the passageway ended in a door on either side, potentially with trouble outside. Hrrrrn. Not much to work with, but he’d done with less before. More importantly, as he combed through his matted beard, he found a small, twisted piece of metal along its straight, hard counterpart. They never searched the beard.
A grin split his filthy face as he extracted the tools of his escape from the filth encrusting his hairy visage. “So…” His voice echoed down the hallway for a moment, a baritone melody carried on the breeze as he exhaled a rancid breath. “Two things. First off, anyone here know a man named Laoshan Feng? If not, you’re all about to. Second, who else here has better places to be?”
