Fate of the Airbenders

Avatar: Fate of the Airbenders

The fate of the Airbenders is widely believed to be a closed matter.  When Firelord Sozin began the War of Fire, his first campaign was to purge the Air Nomads from the world.  Popular belief holds that the Airbenders and their traditions have been lost to the world.  Rumors persist, however, that a few of Air Nomads survived Sozin’s purges and live on in secret.  Most people dismiss these rumors as the fanciful musings of wishful thinkers.  They are wrong.

The Airbenders did indeed survive the slaughter of Sozin’s Purge.  Only a precious few managed to escape – barely over a hundred, but their incredible mobility and speed allowed the Air Nomads from the four Air Temples to converge and move as a single unit.  For fifty years the Air Nomads lived in hiding as fugitives, always staying just one step ahead of the Fire Nation and their hunters.  Eventually, the Fire Nation gave up their search, satisfied that the Air Nomads were truly extinct.

With the hunt over, the Air Nomads finally settled in a mountainous, uncharted island in the Earth Kingdom’s southern archipelago.  There they would have remained in anonymity if not for a bizarre twist of fate.  Their village was accidentally discovered by a Dai Li agent.  It is important to note that the Dai Li of this time were very different than the Dai Li of the modern age.  They had not yet degenerated into a corrupt secret police force holed up in Ba Sing Se, they were still a professional intelligence agency truly devoted to the welfare of the Earth Kingdom and its citizens.   

This agent was one of the many spies that the Earth King sent out to the Fire Nation to gather intelligence and conduct covert operations to aid the war effort.  During a mission to investigate rumors of Fire Nation outposts in the Earth Kingdom, he stumbled upon the Airbenders by accident.  Once he realized who and what they were, he befriended them and lived among them.  

At first they lived in fear that he would expose them and cause their deaths.  He assuaged their fears and in time convinced them that the only way they can live normal lives again was to help in the war against the Fire Nation.  To achieve this, he began training them in the art and tradecraft of the spy; espionage, sabotage, intelligence gathering, counterintelligence, and a myriad of other skills.

Under his leadership, the Air Nomads of today live as spies, thieves and rogues, all secretly united in their covert war against the Fire Nation