Avatar featured powerful nonbenders from all nations except Air Nomads
One of the Four Nations never had non-bender fighters, but Avatar Legends shows why the Air Nomads could train the best non-benders of them all.
Avatar: The Last Airbender built much of its world around the incredible elemental talents of its masters, but in both the original series and the sequel The Legend of Korra, many non-benders have proven their own martial skills. Even without the items that aid them, the skills and weaponry of the Four Nations stood out in the franchise.
However, it wasn’t until recently that one of the four nations had nonbenders. Although there have been notable non-bending fighters from the Water Tribes, Earth Kingdom, and Fire Nation, avatar captions proves why unbending air nomad warriors might be the fiercest fighters of all.
While mastery can be a huge boon to a fighter’s talents, the Avatar The franchise often went out of its way to demonstrate that even non-benders could punch above their weight class with the use of weapons and skills that helped level the playing field. series introduced Sokka as Katara’s unyielding brother, and over the course of the series he honed his expertise with his boomerang, mace, and machete to deadly effect. By the end of the series, he’s even become a master swordsman, fully capable of using his surroundings to his advantage and joining the likes of his father Hakoda as one of the Tribes of Tribes’ greatest unyielding fighters. the water.
Yet even Sokka’s skills were surpassed by others across the Four Nations. The Kyoshi warriors Sokka learned of on the isolated Earth Kingdom island formed an elite group of unyielding warriors whose metal fans, shields, and armor made them fierce fighters in their own right. Jet and his Freedom Fighters proved equally capable, with the teenagers using ambush tactics and weapons like hook swords to harass the Fire Nation forces. And yet, even still, some of the greatest innovations in unyielding fighting styles came from the Fire Nation, developing over time to define how these fighters would level the playing field throughout history.
Mai’s use of projectile weapons and electrified weapons designed by Hiroshi Sato provided firm counters against bending abilities that could quickly incapacitate bending masters in a chunk. Equalists even used bolas to incapacitate enemies from a distance, and Hiroshi’s daughter Asami improved on her father’s taser gauntlet designs to combine with her martial skills in combat. Most groundbreaking of all were the chi-blocking techniques the Equalists used to paralyze their enemies, first seen in the series being used by Fire Nation’s Ty Lee. However, this is only Avatarthe last addition that the Air Nomads had non-bending fighters to speak of, and Legends reveals that it was not the Fire Nation who first developed chi blocking techniques.
avatar captions‘The sourcebook introduces a new character from the Roku-era franchise named Rioshon – an air nun from the Western Air Temple famed for her chi-blocking prowess. Rioshon passed his talents to Princess Zeisan of the Fire Nation, perhaps explaining the earliest origins of chi blocking in the Fire Nation, but since Rioshon herself was an airbender, the opportunity to Exploring Air Nomad nonbenders remains unexplored. The explanation seems simple at first glance, as originally all Air Nomads had the ability to bend. However, the Air Acolytes who helped revive the nation changed that, and the franchise has yet to prove what they can do in a fight.
Airbending techniques can be deadly when used in combination with a non-bending style of combat. Zaheer proved it when the inflexible student of the Air Nomad philosophy gained a chilling reputation, but since the public of Korra never saw him after gaining airbending through Harmonic Convergence, never really had a chance to show off his former skills. While Harmonic Convergence brought countless other airbenders into the Air Nation, becoming the focal point of the nation’s legacy from that point forward, the non-Acolyte Airbenders who have fostered that legacy between Aang and Korra’s Eras remain largely ignored.
These Acolytes of Air should be given the chance to show off their skills in the future, especially if it means exploring their roots with the chi blocking that until now has been so primarily associated with other nations. An evasive and agile nonbender, armed with the ability to paralyze enemies on contact, and wielding the Air Monks’ signature staff, could be a deadly friend or foe for a future Avatar to face.
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