Genji Yamada

> **"I mean, it's not every day you come across such an extraordinary specimen such as myself. And not just because I'm the Avatar."**
>
>

**Genji Yamada** is a male Sandbender hailing from the Si Wong Desert and the current incarnation of the Avatar, succeeding Avatar Korra. As the Avatar of his time, he is the only person able to bend all four elements: earthbending, firebending, airbending and waterbending.

Genji was initally born in Gaoling to the prestigeous Yamada family and quickly identified as the Avatar as an infant, but was kidnapped by Yun from the Blue Lotus and taken away to be raised in Mao Zheng. Genji grew up blissfully unaware of his origins, living a happy life with Yun who he viewed as his biological father. However, everything changed when he was introduced to Nico, which set off events that revealed his identity as the Avatar.

## History

**Early Life**

Genji Yamada was born to a noble family in Gaoling in 229AG, The Yamadas, whose family crest is the turtle duck. He was born to Asuna and Takeshi Yamada and was identified as the next Avatar by The Order of the White Lotus, using the salvaged Avatar Relics of the Air Nomads. However, one night about a month after he was identified as the Avatar, he was kidnapped by a radical member of The Order of the Blue Lotus and Waterbender named Yun. Yun, along with a small team of six other members of the Blue Lotus, having infiltrated the White Lotus, kidnapped the young Avatar and fled from Gaoling.

Yun brought Genji to The Si Wong Desert, having cast off his former life entirely, and raised the boy in secret in a town called Mao Zheng. Genji was thus raised to believe that Yun found him alone and abandoned on the outskirts of a town bordering the Si Wong Desert. Genji led a relatively normal childhood and attended school (the only one in the Si Wong Desert) with a dozen other children his age, including his best friend, Taeyo, a Sungari Tribe Native.

At the age of twelve, in an effort to better fit in with the natives of the Si Wong Desert, Genji opted to undergo the Sungari Tribe's adoption ritual.

When he was thirteen years old, Genji rescued an abandoned puppy whom he named Takeo. At fourteen, he traveled from Mao Zheng to Ba Sing Se with Malik, a friend of his and Yun's, where he adopted a stray kitten he named Akima. And lastly, he rescued a baby Badgermole from the Beetle-headed merchants, which he named Shen.

At the age of Sixteen, Genji took up a job working in the mines beneath Mao Zheng. It was from Shen and through his work as a miner, that Genji learned the Seismic Sense. That would be Genji's entire life, until the age of twenty, when he had a fateful encounter with an airbender named Nico.

## Personality

Snarky and sarcastic, sometimes lackadaisical and other times energetic. Has an extreme distaste for authority, but also what he deems to be "unjust". When he discovered he was the Avatar, he was content to just do his own thing and let the world solve its own problems. Recent events, however, have inspired him to take his duty as the Avatar a little more seriously.

## Quotes

*"There's nothing more aggrivating than* doing nothin*g. It goes against* *everything I was taught. Yun may not have been the the most upstanding guy, but he always taught me one thing;* *act with wisdom, but* act*."*

*"I only just recently discovered I'm the Avatar! It's only been a couple of weeks! I've only mastered Earthbending, and there's all this pressure to be the Avatar, but... how do I be the Avatar? How do I become something I've never been trained for?"*

## Trivia

* Genji was the first main character to appear in the main contiunuity of the roleplay.
* Genji is the first known Avatar to come from Sandbender culture.
* Genji was born on the 15th of Flower's Bloom.
* Genji's favourite foods is a toss-up between roast duck and spicy fire ramen.
* Genji is renowed in the server for being a 'human vacuum' with food. He remarks this is because he was regularly exposed to multi-cultural foods in Mao Zheng, as it was a massive trade hub.
* The name 'Genji' (元滋) is of Japanese origin, meaning 'source, heal and peace'. The name Yamada (山田) is also Japanese, and means 'mountain rice field'.
	+ His name was chosen because of likability; the similarity to Genji of the *Legend of Genji* comics is pure coincidence.
* Genji is the first known Avatar not to be an only child.
* He has three pets: a dog called Takeo, a badgermole named Shen and a cat called Akima.
	+ All of Genji's pets except Takeo were left behind when Genji was forced to flee from Mao Zheng.
* Genji's name is pronounced 'gen-jee', although some real-life pronounctians decree it as 'jen-gee'.
	+ Fun fact: the first known novel is an 11th century romantic page drama titled 'The Tale of Genji'.
* Genji continues the trend of their identity as the Avatar not revealed to them at the age of sixteen - following from his predecessors Korra (discovered aged 4) and Aang (discovered aged 12).
	+ He breaks the trend of learning at a younger age rather than an older, as Genji learned at 20 years old.