Oh my spirits!
So, when I’m bored, sometimes I make up AtLA spirits: their personalities, their designs, their powers.
And I was really bored on the car ride back from camping.
I don’t expect to use most of these in my writing (save perhaps those that came up in chat), nor do I even consider all of them part of my head-canon. I just wanted to throw them out there for perusal by the discerning public.
The Spirit World itself is composed of many locations, though they are not fixed in place. Rather, if you know where you’re going and the resident spirits are willing to let you in, you can get anywhere from anywhere. It is impossible to draw a map.
Wan Shi Tong is the Knowledge Spirit. He’s existed since the first people began transmitting knowledge through speech. Back then, knowledge was impermanent, and Wan Shi Tong was very weak, since his intelligence, his mind, is basically the sum of all knowledge that exists currently. As people began writing knowledge down, his power grew, and he began collecting it, so that it would not be lost and he could know it forever.
In early times, Wan Shi Tong was more than willing to share his knowledge, and his library stood wide open to all comers. However, as the millennia passed, he became concerned with the warlike nature of humans, at the way they seemed to only want to use knowledge to get an edge over each other. Human minds create knowledge, so were valuable to him, and he didn’t like their loss. Still, he is utilitarian to the core, and was willing for some time to allow that some wars were ‘for the greater good.’
There may have been a particularly vicious war, during which the leader of the victorious army used knowledge stolen from Wan Shi Tong’s library for his own needs. There may have been some burning of books by a totalitarian government. There may have been a killing of some of Wan Shi Tong’s favorite scholars. It isn’t known exactly what happened, but it made Wan Shi Tong close his library to all mortals but those that he himself selected as worthy, and then as time went on, to no mortals at all.
Wan Shi Tong needs humans because they are the creators of knowledge, but he hates them because they do not value their knowledge as he does. His books are his children, and he loves them as much as he could anything.
After living there for so long, the Knowledge Spirit can still cross to the mortal world, but it is hard for him. Even sending his foxes is difficult, and his influx of knowledge has slowed to a trickle. This makes him upset, though at the moment he is too paranoid to bring his library back to the mortal world for easier access to knowledge.
The spirit foxes are more spirit than they are fox, but they still have bodies, and need food and care.
Koh was once (and maybe still is) the Spirit of Empathy. In the early days, Koh wanted to learn about others’ feelings, about how they see the world through their own eyes. He was especially fascinated by the emotions of mortals. Eventually, this fascination became obsession, and Koh was driven to steal the faces of others to quench his desire to know what others feel. It’s only an approximation of the real thing, but it’s close enough for Koh.
Koh, however, is not entirely satisfied by an existence of sitting and waiting for victims. As he devoured more faces, he began to feel more of what mortals do, including feelings he shouldn’t. Like loneliness. A spirit should be completely content with their role in the universe, but Koh was not. Koh wanted company.
So, Koh made some.
Koh’s ‘expression game’ is just a rule, one amongst many, that Koh made up and adheres to in order to give his ‘guests’ a fighting chance and make life interesting.
Koh’s home at the base of his tree is well-chosen, and from the depths of its roots he can hear what is happening all over the spirit world.
Agni is the spirit of the sun. He appears as a golden dragon with dozens of eagle wings on his back, and eyes like lightning. In the early days of the world, he romanced Tui the moon, but she didn’t love him back, instead giving her affection to La the Ocean. This angered Agni, and he was willing to fight La for her heart. To quell the aggression, which threatened to destroy the newly-born world, Tui agreed to meet Agni and let him try to win her heart, but only during the solar eclipse. She would otherwise stay with La.
So far, Agni has been unsuccessful in wooing the moon, but his pain was abated when he met and fell in love with Fenghueng, who became the mother of his children, the dragons.
Agni is passionate and at times ferocious, but he holds his fire under tight control. He knows that if he lessened his control, the world would burn, and if he strengthened it, the world would freeze, so he acts and speaks only very deliberately.
In the spirit world. Agni rests in a palace of gold, guarded by the spirits of dragons, and he sees everything that happens under the sun.
Fenghueng is a spirit of Life and Death. She takes the form of an iridescent phoenix, pink, gold, and orange. She is the consort of Agni, and is gentle and caring in disposition. She takes the spirits of the dead to their destinations in the Spirit World, holding them in her claws, but occasionally she misses one, or drops one, and other spirits are quick to snatch these lost souls up for their own (not always good) purposes.
Every millennium, she burns herself to death atop a designated tree in the Spirit World, then is reborn from her own ashes. These ashes, if eaten, can change an old woman into a young maiden, and turn a boy into a man.
Fenghueng was rather annoyed that former Fire Lord Ozai took her likeness as his symbol.
Raudra is the spirit of War. Appearing as a 7-foot man dressed in ancient samurai armor, Raudra has the head of a tiger, but with only a single vertical eye in the center of his forehead. Looking directly into this eye can be a bit painful for mortals.
During times of peace, Raudra is drowsy and dull, and sometimes even falls asleep. But when the world is filled with conflict, Raudra wakes, and becomes active. He doesn’t usually incite violence amongst mortals, but he enjoys prolonging battle and looks forward to the next war that will inevitably come.
Warriors looking for his favor wear his symbol (the vertical eye with stripes running through it), though he is fickle and doesn’t always give it. The gifts he offers include victory, watching one’s enemies run in defeat, and (often) a glorious death.
Tu Di Gong is the Spirit of Earth. She appears as a huge ox, and I mean HUGE. Each hoof is 10 feet across. Tu Di Gong’s hide is covered with compacted soil, and all manner of plants and mosses grow across her skin. Between her horns floats a polished stone orb that represents the world. If you can get close enough to it, you can see reflected in its surface anything that is currently happening in the Mortal World.
Tu Di Gong rarely speaks, and when she does, she speaks slowly. She is steadfast in her notions and very stubborn. She wanders all over the Spirit World, following the same tracks she always has, stepping in her own (huge) footprints.
If you stand in her tracks, she might step on you. If she does, don’t take it personally. She tends to ruminate on her thoughts, and not notice things around her.
Amarok is the Spirit of the Hunt. He is a patron spirit of the Southern Water Tribe, and appears as a giant wolf with white around his eyes. He guides the spirits of dead animals to the roots of life, renews the herds, and leads worthy hunters to fields of plenty. He has no patience for those who hunt without respect.
Tian is the Sky Spirit. He appears as a giant crane with the tail of a peacock. His feathers reflect whatever color the sky is in the Mortal World (iridescent white and blue by day, deep scarlet and purple at sunrise and sunset, pitch black flecked with bright white at night). Tian rests atop an enormous stone pillar, from where he can see everything that happens both in the Mortal and Spirit Worlds. His spread tail makes up the horizon.
Tian loves watching mortals and spirits both, but doesn’t like to interfere, believing in the free will of all beings without interference. He is one of the few spirits (the Moon Spirit being another) who speaks with the stars, and thus has some inkling of what the future may bring.
Tian’s pillar is guarded by many tengu, humanoid ravens who heckle and may even attack unworthy mortals or spirits who seek to speak with Tian. Also living around the pillar are the Choe Li, six-legged horses that bring the wind with their hooves. Tian made the first flying bison by putting the spirit of a Choe Li into a landbound buffalo.
Mogu-Tengu was once a tengu working under Tian, but found that he liked humans too much to just watch them without interfering. Tian let him leave, as he believes in freedom, but gave the tengu a new form to match his new role, as the Traveler’s Spirit.
Mogu-Tengu appears as an old, bald man with a walking stick, wearing only a simple brown cloak and sandals. However, his nose is about a foot long, and he still has raven wings, though they are now too small to carry him. He is good-natured and jovial, and quite willing to guide lost spirits or mortals to where they need to go.
Maripo is the Spirit of Love. He/She is less of a singular being in the spirit world than a place. Maripo exists in an open, sunny meadow, lush with grass and wildflowers and full of butterflies. These flowers constantly exude a heady perfume that brings out feelings of love in those that smell it. These feelings can range from an all-encompassing love of humanity to brotherly love to motherly love to romantic love to pure lust, depending on the person, and they deepen the longer one stays in the meadow.
Maripo wants mortals to be happy and in love, and wants them to stay in the garden. If any being, spirit, human, or animal, touches the skin of another being while in the garden, they will fuse at that point, and will share all sensations. This fusion can be undone at any time by the ones who fused, but while in the garden, the experience of being fused is so pleasurable that they generally do not want to. If they are forcibly removed from the garden, they can still separate themselves. Doing so is painful, but leaves no lasting damage.
Occasionally, while in the garden, a traveler may come across ‘guests’ of Maripo who have decided to stay. These ‘guests’ can be fusions of two to hundreds of individuals, both spirit and mortal, and are often quite horrific in appearance.
Maripo him/herself is personified in the garden’s butterflies, and when he/she must appear, he/she takes the shape of a beautiful but androgynous human, wearing nothing but a robe of live butterflies.
Maripo cannot stand violence in his/her garden, and will expel from the meadow anyone who threatens to harm another.
Bandara is a Spirit of Thieves. Appearing as a yellow monkey, he is charming and personable. He will try to convince travelers in the Spirit World to stay in his tree-house for the night, then rob them blind as they sleep. If they don’t take up his offer, he’ll steal from them as they travel. He’ll steal anything: your food, your keys, your coins, your heirlooms, your home, your mind, your heart. His movements are always completely silent, but he may give himself away by laughing as he makes his getaway.
They say that all lost objects are actually stolen by Bandara.
Bandara loves hats, and for a good hat is quite willing to let travelers pass unmolested.
Jwi is the Spirit of Inspiration. Patron of scholars and artists alike, Jwi takes the form of a rat with human hands. He can change his size from the size of a cat to the size of a fly. He goes around picking seeds of inspiration off of the trees in the Spirit World, then shrinks, climbs into human ears, and plants them there. The procedure is painless, but for those sensitive to spirits the sight can be rather startling. He is amicable and friendly.
Nura is a river spirit, and the Spirit of Change. Appearing as a snake with a human face, Nura can shift colors and patterns as she pleases. The venom in her bite gives ecstatic, violent visions of the future, though what the visions mean, when exactly they take place, and whether they are even relevant to the person having them is up to interpretation. Nura is antisocial and bitterly sarcastic, and she sheds her skin when the world is about to go through a great change.
She’s been shedding her skin a lot lately.
Gongji is the Spirit of Pride. Appearing as a red rooster with a crown hanging around his neck, he’s loud, obnoxious, and self-aggrandizing. He won’t hesitate to denigrate others and make himself look better. He’s easy to manipulate, however, by appealing to his competitiveness.
Flatter Gongji, and he’ll literally grow in size. Do this enough, and he may give you a boon of good luck. This extraordinary luck may last hours or years, but since pride comes before a fall, the fortune is inevitably followed by a horrible event of bad luck.
The Avatar Spirit has no other name. It is both one and many, being a composite of all the past lives of all the Avatars. Older Avatars tend to meld in with all the others, while newer ones (within the last one or two cycles) can still separate themselves as individuals with minimal difficulty.
And I was really bored on the car ride back from camping.
I don’t expect to use most of these in my writing (save perhaps those that came up in chat), nor do I even consider all of them part of my head-canon. I just wanted to throw them out there for perusal by the discerning public.
The Spirit World itself is composed of many locations, though they are not fixed in place. Rather, if you know where you’re going and the resident spirits are willing to let you in, you can get anywhere from anywhere. It is impossible to draw a map.
Wan Shi Tong is the Knowledge Spirit. He’s existed since the first people began transmitting knowledge through speech. Back then, knowledge was impermanent, and Wan Shi Tong was very weak, since his intelligence, his mind, is basically the sum of all knowledge that exists currently. As people began writing knowledge down, his power grew, and he began collecting it, so that it would not be lost and he could know it forever.
In early times, Wan Shi Tong was more than willing to share his knowledge, and his library stood wide open to all comers. However, as the millennia passed, he became concerned with the warlike nature of humans, at the way they seemed to only want to use knowledge to get an edge over each other. Human minds create knowledge, so were valuable to him, and he didn’t like their loss. Still, he is utilitarian to the core, and was willing for some time to allow that some wars were ‘for the greater good.’
There may have been a particularly vicious war, during which the leader of the victorious army used knowledge stolen from Wan Shi Tong’s library for his own needs. There may have been some burning of books by a totalitarian government. There may have been a killing of some of Wan Shi Tong’s favorite scholars. It isn’t known exactly what happened, but it made Wan Shi Tong close his library to all mortals but those that he himself selected as worthy, and then as time went on, to no mortals at all.
Wan Shi Tong needs humans because they are the creators of knowledge, but he hates them because they do not value their knowledge as he does. His books are his children, and he loves them as much as he could anything.
After living there for so long, the Knowledge Spirit can still cross to the mortal world, but it is hard for him. Even sending his foxes is difficult, and his influx of knowledge has slowed to a trickle. This makes him upset, though at the moment he is too paranoid to bring his library back to the mortal world for easier access to knowledge.
The spirit foxes are more spirit than they are fox, but they still have bodies, and need food and care.
Koh was once (and maybe still is) the Spirit of Empathy. In the early days, Koh wanted to learn about others’ feelings, about how they see the world through their own eyes. He was especially fascinated by the emotions of mortals. Eventually, this fascination became obsession, and Koh was driven to steal the faces of others to quench his desire to know what others feel. It’s only an approximation of the real thing, but it’s close enough for Koh.
Koh, however, is not entirely satisfied by an existence of sitting and waiting for victims. As he devoured more faces, he began to feel more of what mortals do, including feelings he shouldn’t. Like loneliness. A spirit should be completely content with their role in the universe, but Koh was not. Koh wanted company.
So, Koh made some.
Koh’s ‘expression game’ is just a rule, one amongst many, that Koh made up and adheres to in order to give his ‘guests’ a fighting chance and make life interesting.
Koh’s home at the base of his tree is well-chosen, and from the depths of its roots he can hear what is happening all over the spirit world.
Agni is the spirit of the sun. He appears as a golden dragon with dozens of eagle wings on his back, and eyes like lightning. In the early days of the world, he romanced Tui the moon, but she didn’t love him back, instead giving her affection to La the Ocean. This angered Agni, and he was willing to fight La for her heart. To quell the aggression, which threatened to destroy the newly-born world, Tui agreed to meet Agni and let him try to win her heart, but only during the solar eclipse. She would otherwise stay with La.
So far, Agni has been unsuccessful in wooing the moon, but his pain was abated when he met and fell in love with Fenghueng, who became the mother of his children, the dragons.
Agni is passionate and at times ferocious, but he holds his fire under tight control. He knows that if he lessened his control, the world would burn, and if he strengthened it, the world would freeze, so he acts and speaks only very deliberately.
In the spirit world. Agni rests in a palace of gold, guarded by the spirits of dragons, and he sees everything that happens under the sun.
Fenghueng is a spirit of Life and Death. She takes the form of an iridescent phoenix, pink, gold, and orange. She is the consort of Agni, and is gentle and caring in disposition. She takes the spirits of the dead to their destinations in the Spirit World, holding them in her claws, but occasionally she misses one, or drops one, and other spirits are quick to snatch these lost souls up for their own (not always good) purposes.
Every millennium, she burns herself to death atop a designated tree in the Spirit World, then is reborn from her own ashes. These ashes, if eaten, can change an old woman into a young maiden, and turn a boy into a man.
Fenghueng was rather annoyed that former Fire Lord Ozai took her likeness as his symbol.
Raudra is the spirit of War. Appearing as a 7-foot man dressed in ancient samurai armor, Raudra has the head of a tiger, but with only a single vertical eye in the center of his forehead. Looking directly into this eye can be a bit painful for mortals.
During times of peace, Raudra is drowsy and dull, and sometimes even falls asleep. But when the world is filled with conflict, Raudra wakes, and becomes active. He doesn’t usually incite violence amongst mortals, but he enjoys prolonging battle and looks forward to the next war that will inevitably come.
Warriors looking for his favor wear his symbol (the vertical eye with stripes running through it), though he is fickle and doesn’t always give it. The gifts he offers include victory, watching one’s enemies run in defeat, and (often) a glorious death.
Tu Di Gong is the Spirit of Earth. She appears as a huge ox, and I mean HUGE. Each hoof is 10 feet across. Tu Di Gong’s hide is covered with compacted soil, and all manner of plants and mosses grow across her skin. Between her horns floats a polished stone orb that represents the world. If you can get close enough to it, you can see reflected in its surface anything that is currently happening in the Mortal World.
Tu Di Gong rarely speaks, and when she does, she speaks slowly. She is steadfast in her notions and very stubborn. She wanders all over the Spirit World, following the same tracks she always has, stepping in her own (huge) footprints.
If you stand in her tracks, she might step on you. If she does, don’t take it personally. She tends to ruminate on her thoughts, and not notice things around her.
Amarok is the Spirit of the Hunt. He is a patron spirit of the Southern Water Tribe, and appears as a giant wolf with white around his eyes. He guides the spirits of dead animals to the roots of life, renews the herds, and leads worthy hunters to fields of plenty. He has no patience for those who hunt without respect.
Tian is the Sky Spirit. He appears as a giant crane with the tail of a peacock. His feathers reflect whatever color the sky is in the Mortal World (iridescent white and blue by day, deep scarlet and purple at sunrise and sunset, pitch black flecked with bright white at night). Tian rests atop an enormous stone pillar, from where he can see everything that happens both in the Mortal and Spirit Worlds. His spread tail makes up the horizon.
Tian loves watching mortals and spirits both, but doesn’t like to interfere, believing in the free will of all beings without interference. He is one of the few spirits (the Moon Spirit being another) who speaks with the stars, and thus has some inkling of what the future may bring.
Tian’s pillar is guarded by many tengu, humanoid ravens who heckle and may even attack unworthy mortals or spirits who seek to speak with Tian. Also living around the pillar are the Choe Li, six-legged horses that bring the wind with their hooves. Tian made the first flying bison by putting the spirit of a Choe Li into a landbound buffalo.
Mogu-Tengu was once a tengu working under Tian, but found that he liked humans too much to just watch them without interfering. Tian let him leave, as he believes in freedom, but gave the tengu a new form to match his new role, as the Traveler’s Spirit.
Mogu-Tengu appears as an old, bald man with a walking stick, wearing only a simple brown cloak and sandals. However, his nose is about a foot long, and he still has raven wings, though they are now too small to carry him. He is good-natured and jovial, and quite willing to guide lost spirits or mortals to where they need to go.
Maripo is the Spirit of Love. He/She is less of a singular being in the spirit world than a place. Maripo exists in an open, sunny meadow, lush with grass and wildflowers and full of butterflies. These flowers constantly exude a heady perfume that brings out feelings of love in those that smell it. These feelings can range from an all-encompassing love of humanity to brotherly love to motherly love to romantic love to pure lust, depending on the person, and they deepen the longer one stays in the meadow.
Maripo wants mortals to be happy and in love, and wants them to stay in the garden. If any being, spirit, human, or animal, touches the skin of another being while in the garden, they will fuse at that point, and will share all sensations. This fusion can be undone at any time by the ones who fused, but while in the garden, the experience of being fused is so pleasurable that they generally do not want to. If they are forcibly removed from the garden, they can still separate themselves. Doing so is painful, but leaves no lasting damage.
Occasionally, while in the garden, a traveler may come across ‘guests’ of Maripo who have decided to stay. These ‘guests’ can be fusions of two to hundreds of individuals, both spirit and mortal, and are often quite horrific in appearance.
Maripo him/herself is personified in the garden’s butterflies, and when he/she must appear, he/she takes the shape of a beautiful but androgynous human, wearing nothing but a robe of live butterflies.
Maripo cannot stand violence in his/her garden, and will expel from the meadow anyone who threatens to harm another.
Bandara is a Spirit of Thieves. Appearing as a yellow monkey, he is charming and personable. He will try to convince travelers in the Spirit World to stay in his tree-house for the night, then rob them blind as they sleep. If they don’t take up his offer, he’ll steal from them as they travel. He’ll steal anything: your food, your keys, your coins, your heirlooms, your home, your mind, your heart. His movements are always completely silent, but he may give himself away by laughing as he makes his getaway.
They say that all lost objects are actually stolen by Bandara.
Bandara loves hats, and for a good hat is quite willing to let travelers pass unmolested.
Jwi is the Spirit of Inspiration. Patron of scholars and artists alike, Jwi takes the form of a rat with human hands. He can change his size from the size of a cat to the size of a fly. He goes around picking seeds of inspiration off of the trees in the Spirit World, then shrinks, climbs into human ears, and plants them there. The procedure is painless, but for those sensitive to spirits the sight can be rather startling. He is amicable and friendly.
Nura is a river spirit, and the Spirit of Change. Appearing as a snake with a human face, Nura can shift colors and patterns as she pleases. The venom in her bite gives ecstatic, violent visions of the future, though what the visions mean, when exactly they take place, and whether they are even relevant to the person having them is up to interpretation. Nura is antisocial and bitterly sarcastic, and she sheds her skin when the world is about to go through a great change.
She’s been shedding her skin a lot lately.
Gongji is the Spirit of Pride. Appearing as a red rooster with a crown hanging around his neck, he’s loud, obnoxious, and self-aggrandizing. He won’t hesitate to denigrate others and make himself look better. He’s easy to manipulate, however, by appealing to his competitiveness.
Flatter Gongji, and he’ll literally grow in size. Do this enough, and he may give you a boon of good luck. This extraordinary luck may last hours or years, but since pride comes before a fall, the fortune is inevitably followed by a horrible event of bad luck.
The Avatar Spirit has no other name. It is both one and many, being a composite of all the past lives of all the Avatars. Older Avatars tend to meld in with all the others, while newer ones (within the last one or two cycles) can still separate themselves as individuals with minimal difficulty.