posting up second character on GM request ^_^
Name: Dafeng Chunji
Age: 19
Gender: Male
Hails from: Air Temples
Bender: Air
Appearance:
Background: Daefeng had always been a very rowdy and rebellious young boy. Something of an air bending prodigy, he far outclassed his peers when it came to mastering his chi, but lacked any interest in the lessons of meditation and spirituality. The way he saw it, all the instructors' talks of being at one with oneself and achieving peace of mind were only tools used by normal people to get a batter handle on their chi, he was already great at it so he didn't need to wast his time on those things. He would sneak out by himself often to amuse himself with bending,flying around on spheres of wind that could zip around entire court yards, taking to the skies with his glider to perform gravity defying tricks. He especially liked using his abilities to pull pranks on the other air nomads such as directing precise and small gusts to blow out random candles a monk was lighting on the other side of the room, seeing how long he can amuse himself before they realize what is happening. He wasn't afraid to target more than one person at once either, often doing things such as dispersing a cloud of pepper in the air above a meditation group, directing the flakes into their nostrils and laughing as the group erupts in a flurry of sneezes.
Many of the elders demanded the youth be subjected to harsher disciplining so he become more serious and respectful, but one Monk Taiyang suggested that perhaps the problem was that the young Daefeng did not feel challenged with his current curriculum, and that perhaps he could focus the creativity he displays in his acts of rebellion towards a more constructive cause. At first they introduced him to sand painting, showing how the monks would spend hours in silence, pouring and shaping different colored sand on the marble floor to create breath taking portraits. He found the whole thing boring, bland, and ended up using his bending to draw up a crude self-portrait within a matter of minutes. The elders grew angry again but Taiyang had one more idea. He introduced the young prodigy to something that his bending couldn't help him with. Taiyang had happened to be quite fond of the Sitar when he was younger and had p even formed a band with some other monks of his age that had regularly entertained the nomads with their performances. He played one of his older tunes for the young boy and was pleased to find that Daefeng was interested in the musical style. It was more energetic and faster paced than the other music he had been exposed to because Taiyang band had taken some of its musical influence from earth nation drummers performing at a festival. They'd called the style 'boulder music' in honor of this influence, and also because it was so much 'bolder' than other styles.
As the old monk had expected, Daefeng's energetic personality found the sounds very entertaining and wished to learn how to play as well. Taiyang warned the boy that his chi control wouldn't help him here and that learning to play the sitar would be a long and arduous task even for a clever boy like him. Predictably Deafening only became more determined to learn upon hearing this, wanting to prove that he could do anything easily. Taiyang agreed to teach him, and the two started having daily lessons. As the elder monk said, learning to play the chords of the instrument was an entirely different skillset than bending required, and it was slow work for Daefung to learn all his proper finger placements and play even the simplest tunes, but he would not be deterred, and as everyone had hoped the young man's pranking and rebellious nature subsided with his growing interest in the musical arts.
After two years passed, however, Daefeng had made an interesting discovery. After learning to play any song he wanted on the sitar, the young man had moved on to learn to play other instruments and was now in the process of learning to play the flute. Moving from a string to a wind instrument meant starting over from scratch again and Daefeng had finally gotten Taiyang to swallow his words and admit that Daefeng had done a much better job of learning to play the sitar in two years (thought not without effort) than the old monk had in five when he'd begun. Fumbling with his notes on the flute while he was still struggling with the instrument frustrated the impatient young teenager and at one point he used his air bending to blow into the instrument as hard as he could, immediately regretting it when the high pitched squeal that came from the flute. He had expected it to be loud of course, but the pitch had been completely off from what he'd expected. It then struck him that since he was using his bending to affect the air passing through the flute, it only made sense that the sound coming from inside would be altered too. Taiyang's old words came to Daefeng's mind, his warning about bending not being able to help him cheat at music, and Daefeng suddenly became very serious about his musical training. He studied harder and was more focused about learning to play the flute properly, then, once he'd become experienced at that, began incorporating his air bending into the playing. He experimented with altering the airflow in specific ways, feeling the sound pass through the air he was manipulating and making it come out of the instrument different than what it was supposed to.
He practiced this in secret for a year without telling anyone, finding hidden places in the temples where no one would hear him. Then, on his fifteenth birthday, he said he wanted to treat everyone to a musical performance to show them how good he had gotten with his flute. He confused everyone, however, when he stood in front of them, blew into his flute, and played the sitar for them. Which isn't to say that he grew an extra pair of arms and played the sitar simultaneously to the flute, or played the notes to one of the songs he learned on the sitar using his flute. While he was blowing into one instrument, the noise that was produced sounded exactly like that of another. At first everyone assumed this was just another one of his plans and that he'd gotten a collaborator to hide nearby and play the sitar while he pretended to use his flute, but Daefeng quickly explained that he was in fact sound bending (he has clued in about three months into his training that bending the sound itself was a lot more efficient than bending the air it passed through, and had trained the rest of the following year teaching himself to do exactly that and make his flute sound like his sitar). To prove it he placed his lips to the instrument again and this time did actually play the flute, but went though a whole piece without moving his fingers once.
He had expected everyone to be amazed at his genius, but while some of the younger nomads were genuinely impressed, most of the elders and monks met the reveal with derision, chastising Daefeng for not taking his training seriously and making a mockery of air bending by learning how to make silly noises with his flute instead of pursuing greater spiritual maturity and applying his bending talent to mastery of the actual craft. It was apparent that now that he was no longer ten, the elders weren't satisfied with him just being distracted enough to not cause trouble anymore. They had wanted him to start 'living up to his potential' since he had been blessed with such gifts and Daefung, deeply vexed at their reaction to his incredible discovery, began doing exactly that.
Despite Taiyang's attempts to meditate and his personal confidence in Daefung that he believed sound bending to be an incredible discovery, Daefung was a young teen angry at society and his appreciation and affection for his old mentor wasn't going to be enough to outweigh his desire for retribution. The pranks started again and now they were more elaborate. Daefung continued to hone his sound bending to make it more and more intricate, learning to disorient pursuers with music, throw his voice and sounds coming from him to make them seem to come from elsewhere, envelop himself in an aura of silence to move by undetected, and more in conjunction with his creativity and bending abilities to regularly torment the stodgy old elders but rarely get caught in the process.
Things came to an end when a year later Taiyang fell ill. The old music lover's age was finally catching up with him, and in the following months his health slowly deteriorated. Daefung had spent most of his time tending to the old man's needs since he had no family to look after him and felt he owed a debt of friendship to him. He had been by the man's bedside to hear his last request. The old monk had no fear of death but did wish for Daefung to make peace with the rest of the nomads and the elders so he could live a happy life rather than continue on his path and eventually become hated by his own people.
On Taiyang's passing the then sixteen year old Daefeng honored the man by making a formal apology to the elders for every prank he'd ever pulled on them (he listed them off in order). However after his friend's funeral rites the young man also announced his departure. Daefung felt nothing tying him to the nomads now that his mentor was passed, and Taiyang had also asked him to live a happy life, he would go find his happiness somewhere else in the world.
As with any wanderer who leaves home without having any real destination, republic city seemed as good as any destination for him to go learn new things and meet new people, so the young nomad made his way there, changed his clothes, and stopped shaving his hair. In the three years since then Daefung's established republic city as his home base but never sticks around too long. He makes his money both by playing instruments in the street for passers by (he only left home with his flute and sitar but purchased or acquired more once he got settled in the city) and also by engaging in various cons. He rarely ever gets caught because he only sticks around to gather enough case for his next trip before skipping town and going out to see other parts of the world, but living in his part of republic city: if you don't go find trouble it usually comes to you instead. So in these three years he's learned to defend himself with his bending for the instances where running isn't always an option. He's found that if you compress enough sound and release it all in one direction, it can make for a very effective shock wave that can knock others back (especially if you throw some traditional air-bending into the mix) as well as disorient them (more effective if just done with sound bending).
notes: last name and first name mean 'spring' and 'gale' respectively.
