Battle of Ayram Alusìng

The Battle of Ayram Alusìng,Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora — So'lek's Journey also known as the Battle of the Hallelujah Mountains,Avatar: The Way of Water: The Visual Dictionary was a pitched battle that occurred on Pandora on August 23, 2154, and was the final major confrontation in the escalating conflicts between the human mercenaries serving the Resources Development Administration (RDA), and the allied forces of the indigenous Na'vi clans. The conflict followed the Destruction of the Hometree by the RDA and the RDA's refusal to drop their unobtanium mining.
It started as an attempted preemptive strike by RDA's SecOps forces led by Col. Miles Quaritch to destroy the sacred Tree of Souls, in response to the rapidly growing Na'vi military presence led by the newly ascended sixth Toruk Makto, the rogue avatar driver Jake Sully, who had in a matter of days recruited over 2,000 warriors from fifteen different Na'vi clans to fight the RDA. These included the Omatikaya, Olangi, Tayrangi and Trr'ong clans. Sully was informed about Quaritch's plan of assault by sympathizer Max Patel whom he left behind inside the RDA, and the Na'vi alliance set up an amphibious ambush in the floating Hallelujah Mountains and the jungles below to intercept the RDA forces.
Although the RDA's superior firepower initially routed the much larger Na'vi forces with ease, the unexpected intervention of Pandora's ferocious wildlife quickly turned the tide against them. The humans were overwhelmed and suffered heavy casualties, forcing the survivors to retreat to Hell's Gate. The Na'vi quickly reorganized their offensives and forcing the human headquarter to surrender, resulting in the forced withdrawal of all remaining RDA colonists from Pandora.
== Prelude to the battle ==
Following his failed attempt to prevent the destruction of the Omatikayan Hometree, Jake Sully, with the assistance of pilot Trudy Chacón, escaped from Hell's Gate along with Grace Augustine and Norm Spellman. They relocated the Site 26 link shack to near the Tree of Souls. Using his avatar to accomplish tsaheylu with a great leonopteryx, Jake became the sixth Toruk Makto and consequently regained the trust of the Omatikaya clan. He asked the clan's members, who had taken refuge at the Tree of Souls, if they could save Grace, who was dying from a fatal gunshot wound sustained during their escape. The Omatikaya people attempted to perform an emergency consciousness transfer on Grace, but she succumbed to her wounds before the ritual could be completed. Before Grace died, she told Jake that she was with Eywa.
Enraged by the death of Grace and the brutality of the RDA, Jake convinced the Omatikaya to fight back against the humans in defense of their culture. Jake then sent them to liaise and recruit warriors from all other Na'vi clans across Pandora to wage war on the RDA. Within just days Jake had amassed an allied force of over 2,000 Na'vi warriors outside of Hell's Gate — an action that did not go unnoticed by Colonel Quaritch, as RDA satellites noted the activity with growing concern. Quaritch quickly devised a pre-emptive strike to eliminate the threat and deter any future Na'vi resistance. This plan involved rigging a civilian Valkyrie shuttle with improvised daisy cutters made from pallets of mining explosives, to be dropped as cluster bombs on the Tree of Souls. Quaritch expected this demonstration of the RDA's power would dissuade the natives from further resistance. A full mobilization was then ordered across Hell's Gate. 
Warned of Quaritch's war plans by Max Patel, Jake prepared to intercept the RDA airfleet with an ambush at the Hallelujah Mountains, where the strong magnetic vortices among the floating mountains would interfere with radar scanning and render auto-targeting ineffective, as well as the dangers of manual flying in an unfamiliar environment. The Na'vi warrior would also have the advantage of agility, superior numbers and the element of surprise.
The night before the battle, Jake approached the Tree of Souls to plead with Eywa for help, asking her to examine Grace's memories for the polluted urbanized Earth in order to understand what the RDA mining would do to Pandora. However, he was told by Neytiri that Eywa only assists in the balance of life on Pandora and is unlikely to intervene.
==The Battle==
=== Initial ambush ===
thumb|left|250px|Na'vi cavalry (Akwey)
Quaritch's air fleet arrived near the Tree of Souls in the early morning, centered around the Valkyrie shuttle which was loaded with improvised cluster explosives and had Hydra machine gun and M60 Machine Gun emplacements on both the ramp and the roof. Escorting the vulnerable space shuttle were a large squadron of Scorpion gunships led by Quaritch's Dragon Assault Ship (with Quaritch personally overseeing the operation), complemented by dozens of Samson transports armed with door guns and missiles. When came within four kilometers of the Tree of Souls, Quaritch had his Dragon and the Valkyrie deploy ground forces into the forest, which consisted of over a dozen AMP suits accompanied by a few hundred infantrymen, interspersed with hundreds of conscripted civilian mining workers armed and turned into militia, dropped off by the Samsons, the Dragon, and the Valkyrie.
Jake, driving his avatar remotely from the relocated Site 26 link shack, rode his great leonopteryx and commanded the Na'vi aerial forces (made up of hundreds of ikran riders on mountain banshees) along with Neytiri and Tsu'tey. The ikran riders hid among the higher cliffsides of the Hallelujah Mountains and waited for the RDA air fleet to arrive. When the RDA fleet came into view, Jake ordered his riders to start diving and attack from above, with himself serving as a spearhead firing a machine gun from atop his leonopteryx, while other Na'vi riders followed to tear through the RDA fleet by surprise. At the same time, hundreds of Na'vi direhorse riders mounted a frontal forest charge against the RDA ground forces, with Norm's avatar riding alongside them, armed with a machine gun.
The Na'vi cavalry assault turned out to be a disaster. The AMP suits' radars detected ground movements when Na'vi approached within 500 meters, and the RDA infantry and AMP suits quickly formed firing lines to unleash a devastating hail of fire towards the incoming Na'vi warriors. Although the direhorse riders managed to pick off several individual human infantrymen with their battle arrows, the combined rapid firepower from the AMP autocannons and infantry with small arms slowed down their momentum. The Na'vi charge soon collapsed into disarray when Scorpion Gunships arrived to provide air support. Norm's avatar was shot during the chaotic retreat, causing him to severe the avatar link in pain. e abandoned Site 26 and fled into the forest on foot carrying nothing but an exopack.
Despite the Na'vi aerial forces having some initial success in destroying several RDA aircraft - primarily due to the element of surprise - they also quickly succumbed to the SecOps' superior firepower. The RDA Scorpions, despite being put at a disadvantage thanks to the flux vortex, were still effective in pursuing the ikran riders with machine guns and rockets, while Samsons and SecOps troops aboard the Valkyrie acted as aerial gun platforms. Sully's great leonopteryx was targeted specifically by Quaritch's Dragon Assault Ship, and was saved only by the brave actions of Trudy Chacón, who drew the Dragon's fire with her rogue Samson using the floating mountains as cover. However her Samson was no match for the heavily armed Dragon. Just after a few exchanges of fire, it was damaged and destroyed. Tsu'tey made a valiant effort to halt the Valkyrie shuttle's bombing run, jumping off his ikran to board the shuttle's loading ramp and managing to kill several SecOps soldiers before being shot repeatedly and falling to the forest canopy below. Neytiri was also fired upon and pursued through the forest by a hostile Samson, and was shot down by ground fire from an AMP suit controlled by Lyle Wainfleet, sending her crashing hard into the ground. With her ikran dead, she found herself trapped right in the path of the advancing RDA ground troops with no way of escape.
As the battle seemingly turned in the RDA's full favor, Quaritch told the ground forces to mop up the remaining Na'vi warriors with "scorched earth", and ordered the Valkyrie to proceed with its bombing run.
===Eywa Intervenes ===
Neytiri, now surrounded by advancing RDA troops, prepared to make her final stand, though Jake, flying high above, begged her not to. Seconds before she was about to give away her position by shooting arrows, the ground began shaking. Wainfleet, detecting large movement ahead of him, ordered the RDA ground forces to halt and regroup, not long before he and his men were caught completely off-guard by the unexpected appearance of herds of hammerhead titanotheres and sturmbeests charging directly at their lines. Firing in futility at the creatures' immensely thick frontal armor, Wainfleet and the other AMP operators were wiped out by the ferocious stampede, while the surviving human infantry were routed, pursued and torn apart by rampaging packs of viperwolves. Still shocked, Neytiri realized that Eywa had heard Jake's prayer at the Tree of Souls and had summoned the Pandoran wildlife to aid the Na'vi. Suddenly a lone thanator emerged, startling her but did not attack her, and instead offered itself to her as a mount.
Simultaneously, the RDA air fleet was overwhelmed by thousands of wild banshees, which destroyed most of the human aircraft escorts and forced the survivors to flee. Some RDA aircraft were boarded by the creature, causing the surviving troops to panic. An embittered Quaritch ordered the Valkyrie shuttle to press on towards the target, hoping to still destroy the Tree of Souls despite the horrific losses. As the shuttle prepared to start its bombing run, Jake jumped onto its hull, mowed down the crew of the roof machinegun nest and threw a grenade into one of the air intakes, before leaping back onto his toruk. The grenade destroyed an engine, sending the shuttle spiraling into a nosedive towards the ground, where its explosive cargo detonated inside.
After destroying the Valkyrie, Jake attempted to destroy Quaritch's Dragon using the same tactic. However, Quaritch spotted Sully's riderless toruk, pulling the pilot's yoke to the side and rocking Sully off balance. One of his grenades bounced off the Dragon, but the other snagged and detonated on the hull, breeching it and exposing the crew to the toxic atmosphere. Sully, left hanging off a missile launcher, pulled off a missile from its rack and prepared to throw it into a rotor. Quaritch saw him, blew an escape hatch, and emerged onto the hull to shoot him off with his sidearm, but was too slow to save the ship. Despite being shot, Jake still managed to throw the missile into the rotor as he fell into the jungle below, giant canopies and vines breaking his fall, as the out-of-control Dragon floundered and spun groundwards. Quaritch, with his shoulder on fire, quickly entered his AMP suit and jumped out of the assault ship moments before it crashed onto the jungle floor, its unused ordnance detonated in the wreckage landing behind him.
===Jake & Neytiri vs. Quaritch===
An enraged Quaritch pressed on in his AMP suit and searched the jungle, eventually finding the Site 26 link shack containing Jake's human body. As he prepared to fire upon it, Neytiri, riding the thanator, attacked him from behind, but Quaritch saw them through the rear mirror and evaded the pounce. They then struggled violently, and though Quaritch's primary weapon was broken, he managed to kill the thanator by viciously stabbing it in the chest with his AMP's combat knife, trapping Neytiri underneath the beast's corpse.
As Quaritch was just about to kill Neytiri, Jake arrived and the two fought, with Jake picking up and using the AMP's rifle bayonet to deflect Quaritch's knife blows. He eventually broke Quaritch's combat knife, and impaled the bayonet into the AMP's cockpit windshield. The shattered cockpit shield leaked air and interfered with Quaritch's vision, forcing him to don an exopack and eject the cover completely. Now fully exposed, Quaritch taunted Jake, and, with no weapons remaining, turned to attacked the link shack in order to make Jake "wake up". He smashed through the cabin window and crushed Norm's vacant link unit, exposing the human Jake to the deadly Pandoran atmosphere. The avatar Jake attacked Quaritch with his Pandoran dagger, narrowly missing the neck, but his avatar neural link started to black out as his human body began to suffocate from the air leak. Quaritch's AMP then pulled up the avatar Jake by his queue as Quaritch himself prepared to slice Jake's neck with Jake's own dagger, but Neytiri freed herself and shot Quaritch twice with poison arrows, killing him.
The human Jake could no longer maintain the avatar link and was forced to exit his link unit, desperately reaching for an emergency exopack, but lost consciousness before he could grab it. Neytiri, still trying to wake up Jake's avatar, realized that Jake's human body was inside the link shack. She entered the cabin, found the paraplegic human Jake lying down unconscious on the floor, and put the exopack over his face. Jake began to regain consciousness and eventually woke to fully secure the exopack. Neytiri saw that he was alive, and as Jake said the traditional Na'vi greeting "I See you", she began to cry with joy and said the same in return. This was the first time she saw him in his much weaker human form.
== Fall of Hell's Gate ==
Following the decisive defeat of the SecOps, the Na'vi regrouped and a mortally wounded Tsu'tey entrusted the Omatikaya leadership to Jake before dying, legitimizing him as the next Olo'eyktan.
The Hell's Gate facility, now lacking any fighting strength, could do little to stop being overrun by the triumphant Na'vi. The Science Operations crew, most of whom had worked on the decommisioned Avatar Program under the late Dr. Augustine, staged a mutiny. Dr. Max Patel himself commandeered a Shredder and destroyed the RDA command room windows, allowing armed avatars to storm the facility, forcing Parker Selfridge and the remaining RDA personnel to surrender unconditionally.
Under Jake's supervision, the natives forced most of the remaining humans to leave Pandora on the remaining Valkyrie shuttle, which presumably ferried them to the ISV Venture Star and took them back to Earth. A small number of human sympathizers from SciOps, including Dr. Norm Spellman and Dr. Max Patel, were allowed to remain on Pandora. Also remaining was the human infant Miles Socorro, the orphaned son of Col. Quaritch, who was then too young for cryosleep and thus could not be transported back to Earth.
Jake, feeling that the war is over and Toruk Makto was no longer needed, released his toruk into nature, and finished his last video log back at Hell's Gate before returning to the Tree of Souls, where the Omatikaya successfully performed a permanent consciousness transfer from his human body into his avatar body.
== Aftermath ==
The battlefield remained as it was; the Na'vi, apparently, only buried their lost ones in the battle. All their animals and human casualties were left there as they lay. 13 years later, they remained there, undisturbed.Avatar the High Ground part. 1
After the RDA returned in 2168, prompting the Second Pandoran War, the Recombinant Miles Quaritch travelled to the old battlefield, finding his old human body still inside his AMP.Avatar: The Way of Water
==External Links==
* Video of the battle
==References==
==Gallery ==
File:Avatar br 2241 20100627 1068498200.jpg|Jake Sully, as Toruk Makto, gathering all the Na'vi clans.
File:Avatar br 2338 20100627 1641717408.jpg|Jake leads the aerial forces with Tsu'tey.
File:Avatar br 2339 20100627 2028628299.jpg|Na'vi aerial forces riding into battle against the RDA.
File:Avatar br 2343 20100627 1230092004.jpg|Jake and Tsu'tey, ready for battle.
File:Avatar br 2372 20100627 1328345296.jpg|On the ground, Na'vi fight with direhorses.
Battle for the Tree.jpg
War.gif|Aerial fight
File:Avatar br 2409 20100627 1854785922.jpg|Trudy Chacón attacks the Dragon Assault Ship, taking heat off of Jake.
Avatar br 2416 20100627 1899945615.jpg|Trudy dies fighting the Dragon.
File:Avatar br 2435 20100627 1825484851.jpg|Tsu'tey engages SecOps personnel on the Valkyrie shuttle, leading him to his death.
Avatar br 2510 20100627 1675189012.jpg|Jake raids the Valkyrie.
Going in for kill.jpg|The explosion of the Valkyrie and Jake going for the Dragon.
PDVD 4652.JPG|Jake throwing a missile into the Dragon's engine.
Destroyed Dragon.JPG|The Dragon is destroyed.
File:Quaritch escapes dragon.jpg|Quaritch escapes the Dragon's destruction.
File:Neytiri fights quaritch 2.jpg|Neytiri battles Quaritch.
PDVD 4826.JPG|Jake and Quaritch face off.
File:Neytiri saves Jake.gif|Quaritch prepares to slit Jake's throat
File:Neytirisaves.jpg|Neytiri saves Jake.
File:Tsu'tey Dying HD.png|Tsu'tey appoints Jake the new leader of the Omatikaya before dying.
File:Fike with assault rifle.png|Sean Fike on the ground during the conflict
File:RDA valykrie gunners.png|Gunners on top of the RDA Valkyrie
File:RDA secops troops gather during the battle.jpg|RDA SecOps infantrymen gather alongside AMP Suits to take on the Na'vi ground forces
File:Door gunners come under fire.png|SecOps Valkyrie Gunners come under fire from the Na'vi
File:Sean and Lyle.png|Lyle Wainfleet in his AMP Suit moves through the jungle alongside Sean Fike and other SecOps troopers
File:Orbital image.png|an RDA orbital image of Jake Sully's Na'vi forces gathering around the Tree of Souls, just prior to the battle
File:Jake sully on back.png|Jake Sully rides into battle wielding an M60 Machine Gun
File:Norm Battle HD.jpg|Norm Spellman in his Avatar body wielding an M60 Machine Gun fighting alonside Olangi warriors
ru:Битва за Древо Душ
fr:Assaut de l'Arbre des Âmes
pl:Bitwa o Drzewo Dusz
de:Schlacht um den Baum der Seelen
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