Emplacement: Anneau inférieur – Au mur à l'anneau moyen
Interagir avec: S.O.

L'heure de la ruée à Ba Sing Se a apporté avec elle l'ébbée sans fin et l'écoulement de la circulation des pieds d'un anneau de la ville à un autre, mais le nombre absolu de corps se baissant lentement à travers les rues principales de l'Anneau inférieur a été impressionnant à ces moments-là. Avec le soleil bien sur son chemin jusqu'à son sommet, les fermiers partiraient normalement pour la Zone agraire à travers des trous dans le mur créé par les terriens sanctionnés, les commerçants et les acheteurs allaient à leur entreprise sur les marchés, et quelques chanceux quelques navetteurs voyageraient à travers l'un des murs intérieurs et monter une quantité inhumaine d'étapes dans l'anneau moyen et supérieur pour atteindre leur lieu d'occupation ou d'étude. Comme le sang se précipitant dans les veines, la circulation des citoyens d'un côté à l'autre de la ville – bien que strictement contrôlée et régimentée – est ce qui a apporté la vie à la ville.
Aujourd'hui, le gardien était sur des instructions strictes pour y mettre un terme. Une telle chose s'était produite dans le passé. Arson dans l'anneau moyen a donné lieu à un système de vérification plus rigoureux en place pour ceux qui entrent de l'anneau inférieur pendant quelques mois. Les réparations au mur intérieur l'ont fermé l'année dernière, mais seulement pour une soirée, et plus de quelques-uns des camarades de Nilak avaient utilisé la journée comme excuse pour une fête impromptue. Il y avait un précédent, bien sûr, mais il ne pouvait pas tout à fait ébranler le sentiment qu'il y avait quelque chose de différent à ce sujet cette fois-ci. Poêle.
Il a laissé le maître de l'eau aussi nerveux qu'un rabaroo, debout au milieu de la foule comme un gardien a fait l'annonce impromptue. Nilak s'est coincé les coudes pour se faire une salle de respiration. Ce n'était pas l'endroit de l'espace personnel, même s'il se tenait à ce qu'il pensait être le dos de celui-ci. Avant lui étaient tous les premiers oiseaux qui se sont montrés pour voyager dans le Middle Ring pour travailler seulement pour être retournés ou dit d'attendre. Il y avait plusieurs visages bouffés de rouge dans la colère vers le haut près de l'avant.
« Nous avons mis en place une quarantaine sur l'anneau inférieur. Le mouvement des gens d'ici vers le Middle Ring n'est pas permis pour le moment pour empêcher la contagion », leur a dit le gardien cool et recueilli, la voix en plein essor. "Ce n'est pas une cause d'alarme."
"Oh oui? Combien de temps? Comment sommes-nous censés nous mettre au travail?"
"Ce ne sera que pour quelques jours." Nilak regarda le gardien qui tira la courte paille regarder vers l'ombre d'un bâtiment voisin dans lequel se trouvait une figure blindée verte : un agent Dai Li. Et s'il pouvait en voir un, il était sûr qu'il y aurait mille autres bizarres coincés dans de petits coins, hors de vue mais jamais hors de l'esprit. "Rien à craindre."
Quelques autres questions ont été criées à l'homme au sujet de l'injustice de tout cela ou de la peur des maladies infectieuses ou du couvre-feu nouvellement imposé, et la foule a glissé dans ce qui était le mécontentement limite – aux limites de ce qui était acceptable outrage à Ba Sing Se – mais Nilak ne les a pas entendus. Healer Amaya était parti comme un coup de feu et il a dû courir pour la rattraper. Ils devaient aller au chevet d'un noble paranoïaque qui pensait que chaque toux était un hochet de mort, mais cette fois c'était pour de vrai; il avait mangé quelque chose de potentiellement venimeux. Elle a été annulée à cause de la quarantaine.
"Y a-t-il vraiment une peste qui frappe?" il a demandé à son professeur, scepticisme clair. "Nous serions au courant. En fait, nous serions les premiers à le savoir. N'est-ce pas?"
La vieille femme, plusieurs têtes plus courtes que lui, roula les yeux. "Si vous devez me demander ça, je me demande pourquoi je vous garde."
"C'est un non si jamais j'en ai entendu parler."
"N'allez pas le répandre", a averti Amaya. Quand elle s'est déplacée, la foule s'est séparée, laissant Nilak suivre ses traces avant que les trous se ferment. Il était beaucoup trop lanky pour que ça ait l'air maladroit. "J'espère qu'ils trouveront qui ils cherchent. Je retourne à la clinique. Les leçons reprendront quand les murs seront ouverts, et d'ici là, essaierez-vous d'éviter les ennuis, n'est-ce pas Nilak? »
Nilak a donné un salut de jaunty alors qu'elle partait dans une rue latérale à sa clinique. "Vous pariez." Il a jeté son regard une fois, deux fois autour de la foule pour repérer d'autres rappels de l'existence du Dai Li avant de revenir dans le bord de la foule. Ce n'était pas trop un problème pour traîner un peu, n'est-ce pas? Il n'était pas fou. Ce n'était pas vraiment fouiner.
Quelqu'un pourrait être blessé dans une foule mécontente comme ça.
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.