Lu Ren

Advanced Novice Posts : 24 Age : 30 Join date : 2020-12-22

|BASICS|
Name: Lu Ren
Age: 22
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Birthplace: Gao Ling
Current Residence: Omashu
Bender or Non-Bender: Bender
Rank: King of Omashu
Occupation: Royalty
Element: Earth, Sand, Metal, Fire, Lava

Family:
Lu Meleng (Father)
Kira (Mother) (Deceased)

|APPEARANCE|
Height: 6’1”

Image: Lu Ren 6SDRpcl

|CHARACTERISTICS|
Personality: In his youth, Lu Ren was full of energy and passion. He leapt between hobbies, finding joy and fulfilment in all that he did. His group of friends, Earthbenders in the academy in Gao Ling, encouraged him to stick to one of his hobbies and develop that, but Lu Ren was far too fluid for them.

After the death of his Mother, Lu Ren retreated into himself. He became distant and brooding, sometimes going months without talking to anybody. It was then that he trained, but his power in bending came at a cost to his personality. He is still quiet to this day, preferring to have internal conversations with himself rather than seek the advice of others. But he is not unkind - his Mother had taught him better than that, and his Father (on his infrequent trips to see his bastard son) had reinforced the teachings of fairness and equality.

Personal Strengths: Bending strength, agility
Personal Weaknesses: Distrusting, unwilling to listen to advice, inexperienced, unaware of the finer aspects of social interactions
Hamartia: Scepticism of allies, leading to Lu Ren acting alone in most cases
Personal Hero: None
Dreams and Ambitions: Privately, to find the people who hired the bandits that killed his Mother and exact his revenge. Publicly, to serve his Father, the Earth King, in all things.

Likes: Solitude, training, quiet

Dislikes: Those who presume to his friendship, sycophants, weakness

Brief History: When Lu Meleng served in the Earth Kingdom army in his youth, his first station was in Gao Ling. It was there that he met Kira, a Fire Bender who had taken up residence in the city after leaving her family home in the Kumamoto Province.

They fell in love, but their joy could not last forever. Lu Meleng’s sights were set on bringing order to the Earth Kingdom, and he refused the pleas of his lover to stay in Gao Ling to raise the child that she was carrying. He left before she came to full term, and she carried and delivered him alone. She lived out the early life of Lu Ren, or simply Ren as he was known then, within the city walls, but soon the memories of her love with Lu Meleng soured the town and they moved out into the rural Earth Kingdom.

Ren, now a student of the Earth Bending Academy of Gao Ling, made the two-hour journey back to Gao Ling every day, continuing his development as an Earth Bender. His Mother watching him grow more and more into his Father, gave him everything that she could in order to turn him into the very best version of himself he could be.

But then, one day, everything changed.

Ren came home from the academy one day to find his village deserted, with a gang of bandits standing around one house - the house that he and his Mother shared.

His response was instantaneous, turning the ground at their feet to sand before releasing strips of metal from his waist to bind their hands and feet. He didn’t stop moving for a second, rushing into the house to find his Mother, kneeling on the ground, with a bandit stood behind her.

Ren was quick, but the bandit was quicker. The shock had caught him off guard, and it was all that the leader of the bandits needed to encase the younger Earthbender in a pillar of Earth, trapping all but his head. Struggle as he might, there was no way for him to escape - and he was forced to watch the events that transpired.

**

“Tell me where he is.”

“I don’t know!”

**

His mother’s protestations would stay with him for life, echoing his every waking hour while the vision of her face plagued his dreams.

**

“We know about the two of you - we know you were together, back in Gao Ling. He’s been causing a lot of trouble for us, so tell us where he is or else.”

“I told you, I don’t know where he is!”

**

They talked of his Father, Ren had realised many years later. His Father, now a leading General of the Earth Kingdom, who had not visited the pair for over ten years now.

**

“If you won’t tell me…”

“Please, I’m begging you!”

**

Ren’s world shattered at the same moment that the knife cut across his Mother’s throat, the red mist of her lifeblood flowing forth like water from a faucet.

All he could remember was the heat, and all he could feel was rage. Fury bubbling within him, a melting pot of emotions that forced down any sadness that threatened to overwhelm him.

He remembered the eyes of the bandit, wide in shock, as the Earth that bound him started to glow. The cry of apprehension and terror as he tried to escape, and the pained screams as he failed.

Lava consumed the village, along with the bodies of the bandits and Kira. The scent of burning flesh lingered in the air for days, but Ren didn’t seem to notice. He knelt on the ground in the place where his Mother had died, now covered in a hardened crust of once-molten rocks. There was no evidence that a house had ever stood there, or that such a tragedy had occurred.

Slowly the other villagers returned, and still, Ren knelt. Their belonging, as well as their homes, had been consumed in the lava that had been born of Ren’s passion and left them with nothing. They would have hated him if they knew - but instead, they felt pity for the young Earth Bender, not knowing that the flames of his mother’s ancestors had awoken in him that day.

He left the village the next day, as the other villagers were erecting new homes and trying to salvage what crops they could. Nobody stopped him, or asked him to stay - grief was something that had to be dealt with alone, and the young bubbly boy that had once been the joy of the village was gone. In its place was a sullen, quiet shadow of the boy they once knew.

He was seventeen years old.

He had no destination, he had no plan. He wandered aimlessly, often spending days at a time in the Si Wong Desert, when the troops found him. His father had heard of his plight and had finally deigned to lift a finger in the care of his only son. He was whisked away to Ba Sing Se, where he was quickly enrolled in the finest academy in the city - but it didn’t last for long. He spent more time with his Father over the three short weeks that he spent in the Capital than he had for the rest of his life, but it did nothing to fill the gaping hole in his heart. He hid his new bending talents from all of his teachers, including his Father - not out of any sense of fear or self-preservation, but merely because he didn’t want them to have an excuse to see him more often.

Ba Sing Se had been easier to leave than his village, and he left better equipped. With a pack of non-perishable food and equipment to allow him to catch his own food, he left for the mountains. It took him over a month to find a suitable place - a quiet valley, seemingly untouched by man - but it was there that he set up his new home.

Then his real training began - not training to impress a teacher, or training to further his career in the army, but for a far more important cause.

To seek revenge on those that had driven his life to this.

Years later, on one of his infrequent trips to a nearby settlement to stock up on some supplies, the Royal Messengers found him. His Father, General Lu Meleng, was now seated upon the Throne of Ba Sing Se - and, even more surprisingly, it hadn’t been a military coup that had placed him there. More importantly for Ren, it meant that he was being assigned a position of his own, a position reserved for the Crown Prince and Heir to the Throne.

He was Ren no more.

He accepted the summons, accepted the offer that his Father had made, not in the hope of becoming King, but in a vain attempt to become close to the only parent that he had left - or at least, that was what it appeared to be. In reality, his new position would give him power and resources to continue his true quest, and bring about the goal that he had been seeking to fulfil for five years.

In the great Throne Room of Ba Sing Se, he knelt as Ren, the Earthbender and secret Firebender, and rose as Lu Ren, King of Omashu and Heir Presumptive to the Earth Kingdom.

Subject: Re: Lu Ren Tue Jan 12, 2021 1:31 pm

Approved my dude! Well done Smile