Acte I
Verrouillage
Twenty ♦ Male ♦ Pansexual ♦ Waterbender
Occupation
Apprentice Healer – Nilak learns on the job under Healer Amaya from the Northern Water Tribe, one of her many students. The pay is low, but work experience in the Lower Ring is ripe for the taking with the crammed-in population spreading plague and pestilence much quicker, and also with increased incidences of occupation-related injuries.
Place of Origin
Southern Water Tribe.
Residence
Nilak lives in the Lower Ring near the largest enclave of Water Tribe expats. His funds are low, hence why he can only afford a room in a large tenement-style block of housing. Occasionally he sleeps in a hammock in his mentor's free clinic.
Appearance
Nilak is a tall, well-built man who clearly has the build to weather the long, arduous winters of the South Pole. He has typical Water Tribe colouring: dark brown skin and hair and blue eyes. His facial features are broad: a wide, flat nose, a square jawline, and thick brows that give him the appearance of someone permanently perplexed. He is someone who has been called "brutish" before, and it is true he lacks the air of gentleness and calm that his peers have. Some think that Nilak looks older than his years, and are surprised to find out that he's only barely an adult.
As someone who tussled with his friends during childhood, Nilak has an assortment of fading scars with embarrassing stories behind them. He has only one from battle since he has managed to avoid conflict wherever possible. A passing encounter with a Fire Navy ship left him with treatable burns which have healed over well. If his natural height wasn't enough, Nilak also has an imposing presence brought about by his straight-backed posture and a subconscious stance of taking up as much space as possible. It is once more a suitable trait for a bruiser, not a healer.
In Ba Sing Se, Nilak wears his Water Tribe colours proudly, though sans the heavy leathers he might wear at home. His outfit is adorned with fur trims, pure white but stained grey and brown with coal dust and dirt. Two feather earrings hang from the cartilage of his right ear, contrasting with his shaggy and untamed hairstyle.
Personality
It takes guts to try to break into an exclusively female area of study, breaking away from centuries of tradition. Nilak likes to believe Healer Amaya when she says so – she's practically family at this point, and family doesn't lie in his worldview. He has developed a thick skin for insults and sly remarks based on his lack of manliness for doing women's work, which usually come from warriors of either Water Tribe. As someone who doesn't like violence or competitiveness based on "who has the biggest spear?", Nilak just rolls his eyes when the digs come from them. It is the accusations that he will never be equal to the female healers that rub him the wrong way and stick in his head, the chip in his shoulder; that he's too boorish, too muscly, too male to ever be good at what he loves to do.
While subverting gender norms in some ways, he still has a lingering belief in the traditions of his people. Women shouldn't be warriors, they should be protected; an old-school kind of misogyny that is hard to shake. It doesn't help that the people of the Water Tribe enclave in Ba Sing Se do, to some extent, reinforce the rules of a culture that some of them are trying to escape, but that's no excuse. Nilak does have problematic beliefs that must be challenged while he's trying to challenge those of others himself. Thankfully, he is open-minded, and it's more a matter of unintentional ignorance than deeply held beliefs.
At his best, Nilak is a Good Samaritan, aspiring to be charitable like the Air Nomads and friendly like the normal people of Ba Sing Se tend to be. He does not think much of his own needs, instead preoccupied with those of others. Though he may deny it, Nilak fears judgement and prejudice from others more than he does the Fire Navy's massive, impenetrable ships, because that's an everyday fear. He's a good fit for Ba Sing Se: the city's unspoken rules allow him to forget his great fear of the Fire Nation and what they can do, and even at times forget the risk to his own people, in favour of more mundane fears. He obeys the rules, and is the type to shush someone if they think otherwise, and not just out of concern for their continued well-being.
In one particular way, Nilak is stubborn, and that is upholding his black-or-white view of the world. If he is a healer, he cannot be a combatant; if he's of Water Tribe descent, he doesn't belong in the Earth Kingdom; if someone does a bad thing, they must be untrustworthy, lacking in morals, or a whole host of other unsavoury characteristics that he attaches alongside it. This is his fatal flaw: he is purposefully deaf and dumb to the idea that people are nuanced, shades of grey instead of monochromatic.
Nilak is superstitious to the extreme and goes to great lengths to avoid angering any spirits or bringing bad luck down upon his head. He carefully avoids cracks on paved roads to ensure his mother's continued good health, leaves no food wasted in fear of retribution for it if he ever goes hungry, and a wide variety of other eccentricities that are all written off by others as 'simple fears'. His belief in the scary tales that old salty sailors tell of what lurks beneath is amusing to some, and in retelling the stories to children during storytime his wariness is authentic, but other adults just find him strange, or worse, simple.
Likes and Dislikes
• Cool temperatures, cold water and ice.
• Healing - the doing good, the helping people.
• Pacifism and what little he knows about the Air Nomad way of life.
• Polar winters.
• Tea. (He has been told it's an acquired taste.)
• Mythical sea serpents and other monsters from folk-tales.
Skills
• Waterbending – Nilak has never needed any other weapon but his own bending abilities. The Southern Water Tribe has older waterbenders teach the youth how to control their abilities in one-on-one scenarios. For men, that includes using it in combat. Nilak is better at creating escape routes and structures than fighting with it, and if he does use it in combat, it's with a focus on negative jin. Disarming opponents by whipping away their weapons when they come for him is his signature technique.
• Healing – Though still an apprentice, Nilak is now capable of healing in the style of the women of the Northern Water Tribe. His three years of experience allows him to mend the body both inside and out. His specialty is in war wounds or accidents with broken bones and large lacerations. His healing is considered clumsy (because he has a tendency to leave scars where his peers leave none) but nonetheless it is fast and effective. There are still many gaps in his knowledge, however.
• Non-Bending Medical Techniques – For the past few years, Nilak has been studying various scrolls for how the Earth Kingdom's medics and doctors work. Sometimes, healing via waterbending is not necessary, or would take up too much chi. In which case, he can set broken bones, stitch cuts, and administer correct herbal remedies (even if he cannot make them himself).
• Sailing – Nilak pretty much grew up on boats, large ships or small canoes. He is comfortable in navigating dangerous waters and in general good fitness because of that.
History
When Nilak was born, there was no war on the horizon –– at least none that the Southern Water Tribe could see. For a waterbender to be born into a family was a cause for great celebration in those days: his parents were non-benders, and as far as anyone knew, there had never been one with the talent in his family tree. So when the ability surfaced in his early childhood, he was whisked away into one-on-one lessons with an older mentor to learn to control his abilities. Nobody wants their igloo to melt in the middle of the night because a toddler throws a tantrum.
Not that it was a risk for Nilak. He was a conscientious child, taught early on that bending could be a great gift or a terrible omen. Tall tales or not, he was frightened by stories of "evil" waterbenders heading off alone into the polar waters and transforming into sea serpents, preying on lonely tribesmen. Though he had a love of playing with his abilities, catching fish and building ice sculptures, that was not to be for long. The moment war struck the world, the young waterbenders of the Southern Water Tribe had to be prepared for it.
Nilak recalls some of the fighting men heading out to aid their allies, including his mentor, and fewer of them returning when the ships returned. During that time he was left to his own devices – he didn't need a teacher past a certain point, as they were all self-taught in the Southern Water Tribe to some extent – but nevertheless he ended up under the guidance of a female waterbender. He was taught how to utilise his skills for building and repairing the ice structures of their home, while his previous mentor wanted to teach him how to hunt and fight.
'The be all and end all of the world is not war,' the elderly woman told him; in the Northern Water Tribe, where her mother was from, they could heal. It is fair to say that this was a formative moment in the life of a child who didn't like play-fighting on the ice or poking his friends with blunted spears as practice for hunting polar leopards. He did not know how to voice his concerns without being mocked, but he liked the sound of this healing. The only problem was that they would never teach him at the North Pole, and his own tribe had no such tradition.
When he came of age, Nilak embarked on a boat with the other warriors of their tribe who were seeking to aid the Earth Kingdom in naval combat against the Fire Nation. After being involved in stopping a blockade at Chameleon bay that took many ships and many lives but was ultimately successful, Nilak discovered that inside the city he had never set foot in, there were members of the Water Tribes. The healers came out to assist the wounded warriors from the South Pole as well as the Earth Army. While being treated for his own burns by the reputable Healer Amaya, Nilak took a chance to escape from combat he was not suited for, and asked if there was any chance of her taking him on as her apprentice.
She laughed, then she said maybe. Nilak will never know what motivated her to accept. Some of his fellow warriors were allowed entry to the city because of their grievous wounds, but Nilak was snuck in –– in plain sight, at that.
His first few weeks were torturous. Amaya was a cruel mentor. There would be no bending until he learned a good bedside manner. There would be no bending until he knew how to drain infection from wounds, boil bandages to keep them clean, or carefully remove debris from an open cut. Then, he had to explain that he would not be returning to the Southern Water Tribe with the rest of the victorious warriors; he had a place here, and yes, it was unusual.
Not much has changed. He still receives the off-handed remarks. Sometimes, one of the other apprentices will tut and push him out of the way if she thinks he's not doing well enough. But he's learning. During the mornings, he receives curt instruction from Healer Amaya, and later on he practices his bending forms, or makes miniature sculptures out of ice for the neighborhood children, or avoids the Dai Li like the plague.
Ambitions
At present, Nilak wishes to finish his training under Amaya to become a fully-fledged waterbending healer, defying the odds and the naysayers. It is mostly out of love of the technique, but that's not to say he isn't partially motivated by spite. When he finishes his studies, he sees a branching path: he can return to the Southern Water Tribe as planned and perhaps take on an apprentice himself, which would be the option with the best utility for his people, but he could also stay in Ba Sing Se, helping the needy. He has not yet decided, but the time to choose is coming up quickly.
Other
Art seems to be from GreenifyME on Deviantart; a deactivated account.