Destruction of the Hometree

The Destruction of the Hometree was an incident that occurred on August 20, 2154 on the exoplanet Pandora, and was a pivotal event of the conflicts between the indigenous Na'vi population and the colonial human miners. 
It was an attempt by the Resources Development Administration to forcefully evict the Omatikaya clan from their ancestral Hometree in order to gain access to the large unobtanium mine directly below the settlement. The RDA's private military, the Sec-Ops, destroyed the western root columns of the Hometree, causing it to collapse completely and killing many Na'vi caught in the treefall.
==Prologue==
Following the destruction of the sacred Trees of Voices by the RDA, which Jake Sully attempted to halt by destroying the cameras of an RDA bulldozer in his avatar form, his human form was apprehended after Miles Quaritch raided Jake's link module in the Hallelujah Mountains and punched Jake afterwards. He was brought back to Hell's Gate by force along with the rest of Dr. Grace Augustine's Avatar Program personnel. Quaritch told Jake that he had let him down after showing the footage of Jake destroying the camera on the bulldozer. Despite Grace's attempt to explain the biological importance of the trees to both Quaritch and RDA administrator Parker Selfridge, the latter authorized an operation to forcibly remove the Omatikaya from Hometree after witnessing a video log in which a disheartened Jake bluntly asserted that negotiations would lead nowhere, as the humans had nothing that could tempt the Na'vi to leave their home.
When the clan retaliated for the attack on the Trees of Voices by destroying the bulldozers and killing the human soldiers, Quaritch and Selfridge decided to use this incident to justify their plan to destroy Hometree. Quaritch launched a squadron of Samson and Scorpion aircraft, along with his Dragon Assault Ship, towards Hometree.
At Hell's Gate, Grace and Jake managed to convince Selfridge to give them a chance to talk the Omatikaya out, rather than allowing a massacre that would look very bad for the RDA's record back on Earth. Selfridge reluctantly agreed, granting the pair one hour to persuade the Na'vi. Linking back into their avatars left at Hometree, Jake and Grace warned the clan of the upcoming assault to destroy Hometree and chose to admit to them that he was assigned by the RDA to learn their ways, in order to persuade them to leave their home. The clan was enraged when he revealed that he was aware of the RDA's plan to destroy Hometree. Devastated by the revelation, Neytiri loses faith in Jake and furiously denounced Jake's betrayal by rejecting him from the clan, then she angrily screamed "You will never be one of The People!" in Na'vi and later in English to an ashamed Jake who was branded a traitor to the Na'vi with Grace's persuasion attempts were unsuccessful even though they tried to stop them. Chief Eytukan also lost faith in Jake and ordered both Jake and Grace to be bound outside and paraded at the front line of the assault.
==RDA Forces Strike Hometree==
After binding Jake and Grace outside Hometree, the Omatikaya warriors, prepared to defend their home, awaited the arrival of the RDA fleet. Despite repeated warnings from the two captives to flee into the woods, Tsu'tey ordered the Omatikaya warriors to stand their ground, and Eytukan told him to take some Ikran Maktos into the tree and attack the fleet from above. Quaritch, seeing the restrained avatars with knives held to their throats, declared that diplomacy had failed, and ordered the gunships to launch non-lethal gas canister rounds into the settlement. In spite of the gas attack, the Omatikaya warriors, determined not to abandon their home, stood their ground and, on orders by Eytukan, loosened shots on the RDA fleet with arrows in an effort to pierce the fleet's armored windows, to no effect. An amused Quaritch ordered the fleet to switch to incendiary rounds, causing immense fire damage to the settlement and engulfing Hometree in flames. Eytukan, realizing that his warriors indeed stood no chance against the human weaponry, ordered everyone to fall back into the woods.
Although the Omatikaya were already fleeing, Quaritch, apparently wanting to send some kind of a message, then ordered the fleet to switch to high-explosive missiles, and then target the outer western columns of the tree, recalling the information that Jake had provided to him regarding the tree's structure months earlier. With his order "Bring it down," Hometree was bombarded with a concentrated barrage of missiles, destroying its outer columns and killing scores of Omatikaya. A shard of wood sent flying by the explosions fatally impaled Eytukan, who was evacuating the Na'vi that were still inside Hometree from the flames.
Jake and Grace, still bound, were freed by Mo'at, who begged Jake to help the clan. As the firing commenced, Samson 16's pilot Trudy Chacón, disgusted by Quaritch's methods, broke formation, disengaged and started to go back to the base, claiming that she "didn't sign up for this shit!". Door gunner Lyle Wainfleet was confused and angered by this. Nonetheless, the Hometree, having sustained critical structural damage to its weight-bearing columns, quickly faltered under its own weight and then collapsed, killing yet more Na'vi as it did so, with the Ikran Maktos led by Tsu'tey departing from its branches just in time.
The surviving Omatikaya, along with Jake, Grace and Mo'at watched in disbelief and despair as as their Hometree fell to ground. A distraught Mo'at along with the rest of the clan started screaming and crying in horror due to the RDA destroyed their hometree. Meanwhile, a satisfied Quaritch commended the fleet for their work of the Hometree destruction and ordered them to go back to Hell's Gate in order to celebrate their victory of the destruction.
When Neytiri searched for her father Eytukan, she found him and started weeping as her father was impaled by a sharp piece of wood, much to her misery and shock. Just before Eytukan died, he passed his ceremonial bow to his grieving daughter and told her to protect the people, before succumbing to his wounds. Shortly after, Jake found Neytiri in anguish and crying over her deceased father. Jake tried to comfort her but she immediately rejected him again, angrily demanding him to leave. She pushed him back, yelling at him to never return, before she continued wailing over her father's dead body.
In Hell's Gate, an unsettled Parker Selfridge ordered the security personnel to sever the link to Jake and Grace's avatars. Despite Norm Spellman and the science team's attempts to stop the military personnel from disabling the connection to their avatars, both links were severed. Grace's avatar, who was fleeing with Mo'at, collapsed in the forest. The Na'vi children asked the tsahìk to stop after they saw her collapsing to the ground. Jake's avatar collapsed at the destruction site and was left behind in the ruins of the destroyed place. In the avatar link room, Grace saw Quaritch and called him a murderer.
==Aftermath==
Following the Hometree's destruction, the now homeless Omatikaya clan fled to the Tree of Souls, which was now their only refuge. Jake, Grace and Norm were all arrested for treason and were placed in detention back at Hell's Gate, but were freed from captivity by Trudy who flew them to the Hallelujah Mountains. There, they retrieved an avatar link shack before hiding it in the forest near the Tree of Souls. Grace was mortally wounded during the escape, and despite Jake's attempt to have Mo'at save her through a consciousness transfer after becoming Toruk Makto and regaining the Omatikaya's acceptance, she succumbed to her injury and died.
In sorrow and anguish, Jake swore to defy the RDA and then began recruiting different Na'vi clans and gathering a massive alliance force in just a few days, leading Quaritch to mobilize the Sec-Ops out on a preemptive bombing assault on the Tree of Souls. Sec-Ops' plan was leaked to Jake by Dr. Max Patel, and the Na'vi responded with an intercepting ambush that, with the help of Pandoran wildlife guided by Eywa, led to the RDA's eventual defeat and expulsion from Pandora.
Still, the Omatikaya Hometree was so massive that it was still burning two weeks after the war.Avatar: The Next Shadow, issue 1
==Trivia == 
* Quaritch can be heard saying, "Give me H-E's at the base of the west columns." This has led to a theory that Quaritch was intentionally trying to drop Hometree on the Na'vi by calculating which direction the tree would fall.
* James Cameron says a connection to 9/11 was not purely intentional, and he was looking to deliver an emotional gut-punch and make an explicit link to the damage he believes humans are inflicting on Earth.https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-feb-10-la-en-cameron10-2010feb10-story.html
* The Na'vi do not follow stereotypical gender roles, valuing ability over gender, and this event is a prime example of this. The warriors defending outside consisted of both genders, with about just as many female Na'vi defending as male Na'vi. Meanwhile, there were also plenty of male Na'vi seen taking refuge inside with female Na'vi.
**This greatly contrasts much of human history, where most militaries primarily consist of men who often end up being war fatalities. This is even to the extreme that men were banned from evacuating Ukraine in 2022 simply due to a gender law, regardless if they had no combat skills. Not too long after the Hometree's destruction, Quaritch is seen talking to a nearly entirely male crowd, adding great contrast to how the Na'vi and humans view gender roles.
== External Links==
*Video - Part one (initial bombardment)
*Video - Part two (the falling of Hometree)
==References==
==Gallery==
===Avatar===
By Scale.JPG|Hometree is surrounded by Samsons
Throwing Gas.jpg|Gas rounds are deployed
Tree falls.gif|The Hometree begins to fall
Hometree Fall.png|Hometree falls
Destroyed hometree.jpg|The base breaks
Jake Grace binded.png|Mo'at decides to release Jake and Grace
Jake helping Moat.png|Jake helping Mo'at during the ripple fire
===Avatar: Tsu'tey's Path (issue 5)===
Na'vi run.png
AVATP i5 07.jpg
AVATP i5 08.jpg
AVATP i5 09.jpg
AVATP i5 10.jpg
de:Zerstörung des Heimatbaums
fr:Destruction de l'Arbre-Maison
pl:Zniszczenie Drzewa-Domu
nl:Vernietiging van de Hometree
ru:Уничтожение Дерева-Дома
Category:Events
Category:Avatar
Category:RDA