Full Name: Ahlya Nita (ah-lie-ah ni-tah)
Gender: Female
Age: 20
Element: Earth
Birthplace: Omashu
Position: World traveler
Training: Earthbending [expert] hand-to-hand [intermediate] metal bending [beginner]
Personality:
-Temper- Ahlya has a rather short fuse. Her brother often tells her that with her fiery temper she would make a better firebender than an earthbender. It is more of a self defense mechanism rather than an angry personality thing.
-Calm- She's a people person and doesn't mind being a part of a crowd as long as they don't do something to piss her off and... well you know. Ahlya is friendly to those around her at first unless they do something to make her feel otherwise (ie rude guy bumping into her without apology). It's best to stay on her good side.
-Humor- When things are less stressful, Ahlya tries to make light of every situation. She's a joker at heart.
-Loyalty- Ahlya will be loyal to any friend to the end. She would fight, kill, and die for the people she loves and cares about. She will defend any cause she believes in with her life and will allow no one to get in between her and her goals.
-Vengence- She's not much of a vengeful person despite her wicked temper (on occasion). She takes apologies to heart, and even without an apology she will eventually let things slide (depending on the situation of course).
-Strength- Aside from her physical attributes, Ahlya prides herself in her mental strength and stability.
-Emotion- Ahlya is a highly emotional person... on the inside. She only ever allows people to see a range of a mere three emotions (anger, happiness, and her normal default face). Only those closest to her can see every emotion she experiences when she experiences them.
Abilities:
-Earthbending- Ahlya discovered she could earthbend when she was about five-years-old. At first, she didn't really care about it until her younger brother turned out to be an earthbender as well a few years later. She was determined from that point to learn earthbending and to be better than her brother. Of course, time went on and she dropped the competition and chose to learn earthbending because it was something she loved passionately.
-Metal bending- Ahlya knew about the existence of metal bending for a long time before she ever considered trying it. Alas, she has not been able to bend metal at all, but she's determined to understand it and practices almost every day.
-hand to hand- The hand to hand combat really came along with Ahlya's earthbending training. Her old master taught her first how to fight without earth before actually teaching her how to earthbend. Even though she learned this skill first, she loved earthbending more and chose to pursue it with more passion. She practices when she can (usually when she walks into taverns and finds drunks who want to fight).
Appearance:
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 127 lbs.
Eyes: Almond shaped and emerald green with long lashes, like her mother.
Hair: Ahlya keeps her hip-long, jet-black hair pulled back in a low, loose ponytail. Sometimes she'll manage a braid on hot days to keep as much of it off her neck as possible.
Skin: She has surprisingly pale skin seeing how much time she spends out doors walking miles a day.
(see avatar) Ahlya is often seen sporting a sleeveless, cutoff shirt, black leather shorts (slightly loose fitted and held up by suspenders), her 'power gloves' as she likes to call them (without the long sleeves on hot days), and ankle high combat boots she only wears when she knows she'll be traveling longer distances than normal. When she's not wearing the boots, she'll toss them into her bag and go barefoot. Ahlya finds it more freeing as an earthbender to be barefoot.
Ahlya is a very physically strong person. Most of her power comes from her legs. You see, because she is traveling so frequently and never stays in one place for too long, every day is leg day. About two or three nights a week Ahlya will stop on her walking journey to make camp along the road and works on her physique rather than her bending or hand to hand training. She takes pride in staying healthy and strong.
Often hidden from view, because it is on her neck, is a tattoo of the character for strength (see below). The only makeup she ever applies is a little eyeliner now and then. Nothing too special, but sometimes she wants to look a little sharper.
Weaponry & Other Gear:
Ahlya doesn't carry around any weapons other than a knife she uses for cooking and other tasks while camping out in the wild. Her bag is only large enough to fit the knife, some food, a canteen of water, minimal medical supplies (bandages and such), a money pouch, and her boots when she doesn't feel like wearing them.
History:
Ahlya was born into a baking family in the city of Omashu. Her father, Nobu, owned a bakery in the city that he ran with his wife, Tana. Ahlya became the only girl out of four children and the second child of Nobu and Tana. She was also one of two of the children (the other being the third child, Kan) to become an earthbender. The eldest of the children, Tao, was highly taken with the baking trade like his father and plans to one day run the bakery. The youngest child on the other hand, Ling, was jealous of his siblings and demanded his father took him to see a weapon's master. Thus, Ling began sword training at the age of ten.
Ahlya was forced to work in the bakery by her father in order to receive her earthbending lessons from Master Beku. She hated the work, but it was all worth it in order to become a master like she always dreamed. As she got older, Ahlya began wanting to make her own decisions about what she would do and decided that working in the bakery was not one of them. She began signing up in earthbending matches in the Omashu underground and often skipped work to do so. At first, she wasn't very good but some how manage to scrape up a little money each night she fought in the ring. Her parents, particularly her father, grew infuriated with her absence and/or tardiness from work. The fallout was inevitable. It tested her sense of loyalty to her family, but she had to prove to her father what she was capable of. Leaving was the only option.
It wasn't long before Ahlya moved herself out of her parents home at the age of seventeen and began making a living in the matches she fought in. She racked up plenty of money to support herself and pay for her own earthbending lessons. However, the fighting in the ring brought out her aggression in her bending during her lessons with Master Beku. He wasn't pleased. He insisted she stopped the earthbending matches and find another job, but there was nothing Ahlya wanted to do more than earthbend.
By the next year, Ahlya had left the ring and her master for good in order to travel the world in search of learning more about earthbending from other parts of the globe rather than in her master's studio. She studied the other elements to learn the styles that could be transposed into earthbending.
Sample RP:The past hour of walking had been next to brutal for Ahlya. Her canteen ran dry an hour ago with no river or stream or any body of water in sight. How convenient, she thought. Her strides became smaller and slower to conserve her energy and keep her hydration going as long as possible. It wasn't until about an hour before sundown she had stumbled upon a small village nestled within the forest with both an inn and a tavern. Ahlya's stomach growled as soon as she could smell the grilling of meat up ahead.
Ahlya kicked the mud off her boots as best she could before stepping into the tavern. Mud on the floor of the place probably would have been a better problem to have, Ahlya could see, compared to what was inside the tavern. The place was buzzing with rowdy drunks with big booming laughs and the inability to hold a drink correctly in their hands. Ahlya had dealt with places like this before, so this one would be no different.
She found an empty table in the corner of the tavern and let her bag fall to the floor in a heap. She sat herself down in the chair that faced the rest of the tavern to watch these so very...
interesting people go about their spilling of drinks and singing of tavern songs. There seemed to be a tournament of arm wrestling going on between some beefy looking, tattooed brutes. Ahlya watched them struggle until a waiter came to her table.
The waiter was very plain looking in comparison to all of the unique characters that filled his tavern. He wore a brown and green tunic with brown pants under his dirtied, white apron. His smile looked friendly enough. Ahlya was probably the only decent human being he'd seen all day.
"What'll it be?" he asked in a sort of yell over the dull roar of the tavern that wasn't in anyway yelling.
"Water," Ahlya replied in a similar yell. "And something with chicken, please."
The waiter nodded and ducked away. Ahlya's attention turned back towards the men arm wrestling to see one of them starting to gain the upper hand. Both of them were red faced like a couple of shiny apples. The bigger one of the two was baring down of the smaller one faster and faster with each passing second before he finally managed to smash his opponent's hand into the table that ultimately gave way from the impact. The smaller guy fell over somehow with all of the table's drinks falling after him to the floor. There were moans and more laughter over the spilled drinks and broken glass.
Ahlya's attention was again diverted from the fight when the waiter brought over her food. He looked frustrated this time. She assumed it was because of the aftermath of the arm wrestling match that he would have to clean up.
"Is it always this crazy?" Ahlya asked him hoping to delay is eminent cleaning duties.
"Not always," he replied. "There are always one or two busy days a week. Most of these guys are a gang that travel around from town to town in the area. They're not horrible as long as we don't disrupt their fun. They're actually really good about paying their bills, to be honest."
Ahlya nodded slowly as she watched them. "Strange people..." she concluded. "I'm sorry you have to deal with this."
The waiter smiled at Ahlya. "It's okay. I get payed overtime for working late on nights like this. The clean up isn't fun, but I manage to make decent pay for my family... I'll leave you to your meal."
"Thank you," Ahlya said to his back. It wasn't until he walked away that she finally saw what he had brought her. It was a whole grilled chicken the size of her head. She went for the glass of water before digging into the meat.
The constant drone of the tavern continued on over the course of Ahlya's meal without any signs of quieting down. In fact, but the time Ahlya's appetite had been satisfied, things were starting to get louder and more angry. The arm wrestling team was starting to get bitter with one another because one guy lost and had hurt feelings over it or whatever. Before long, one of them threw a punch and started a fight. The rest of the drunken party circled around the two or three fighting brutes chanting each of their names while their fists flew. The waiter and bartender didn't seem too worried about them. All of a sudden, the crowd in front of Ahlya's table broke free of a falling drunken brawler that landed onto Ahlya's table and sent it crashing to the floor.
"Hey!" Ahlya shouted as she stood up quickly from her chair. Before the drunk could so much as contemplate how he had gotten on the floor and covered in chicken bones Ahlya kicked him hard in the head leaving him passed out on the floor. The place had dramatically gone silent. All eyes were on her for a long awkward moment.
Two separate hands grabbed at her arms and threw her into the center of the fight to rally the cries of the drunks once more. It quickly turned into a two on one match from the looks of it. Ahlya figured it wouldn't be so bad since they were both drunk and starting to stumble just by standing. Still, Ahlya wanted to try to defuse the situation as much as possible.
"Listen," she tried to explain, "I don't want to fight--"
One of the brutes sent a fist flying her way which Ahlya easily dodged. She kicked him away effortlessly and sent him to the floor. His friend tripped over his body on his way to avenge his fallen comrade. Ahlya waited for them to get up, but they were both too drunk to move. She rolled her eyes when the drunken crowd cheered for her even though their friend had lost.
She parted the crowd to get back to her table where her bag was. The first fighter was still laying in the remains of her chicken. Ahlya picked up her back and search for her money pouch. She walked up to the waiter behind the counter and handed him a handful of coins from the bag.
"The food was great," she told him before fighting her way back out the front door of the tavern.
Ahlya decided it was best she didn't stay at the inn that night with all of those drunks in town also needing a place to crash. She found a water pump near a stable where she filled up her canteen before she left town. The sun was already down, but there was still a little under an hour left of light before night fully set in and she would have to make camp.
