With so much excitement surround the upcoming tabletop role-playing game Avatar: Legends, many fans are gearing up to participate in an Avatar: The Last Airbender story of their very own. The Kickstarter project is already the most successful in the website's history, and part of its appeal comes in promising fans the opportunity to inhabit different eras of the world of Avatar.
The Era of Kyoshi may be one of the most mysterious of those Eras. Primarily fleshed out in the novels The Rise of Kyoshi and The Shadow of Kyoshi by author F.C. Yee, fans looking to play in the sandbox the franchise provides will want to become familiar with a few aspects of the radically different world.
The description for Kyoshi's Era on the game's Kickstarter page hints at a few important details of the Avatar world set centuries before Aang's birth. It reads "Kyoshi's Era covers the events right after The Shadow of Kyoshi novel, as the young Avatar Kyoshi came into her own as a dominant force of change. Play in Kyoshi's Era if you want to fight in brutal battles against rogues and bandits and deal with governmental corruption as the nations defend and reinforce their borders."
Avatar fans unfamiliar with the Kyoshi novels may not be clear on what exactly the period of time following the second book would entail. Broadly, the Era still involved the Four Nations largely as they are in the original series, but in a time before the Hundred Years War threatened them with disharmony. Instead, the world's turmoil comes primarily from the criminal element, as the Earth Kingdom bandits known as daofei plague the main continent and upstart pirates like the Fifth Nation threaten the seas.
As Kyoshi grows into the Avatar, she fights many of those criminal forces, but the corruption of the world's governments often leaks in to her actions. Complicated systems of nobility and tradition infect the upper classes in different ways. In the Earth Kingdom, sages and governors oversee local principalities, as the Earth King stays uninvolved. In the Fire Nation, the clans built around the noble families feud with each other, united by Fire Lord Zoryu, whose conniving machinations hold the archipelago together in a delicate balance.
It is noteworthy that much of what the original series reveals about Kyoshi's Era occurred much later in her life. Kyoshi lived to be 230, and The Shadow of Kyoshi ends only in her young adulthood, meaning there is plenty of breathing room for Game Masters to craft their own details for a story set in this time. One of Kyoshi's most famous conflicts was with Chin the Conqueror, who domineered much of the Earth Kingdom against Kyoshi before his death. Those looking to make this setting their own could explore the political instability that led to his rise in power.
One notable thing for anyone looking to play as a Firebender who bends lightning is that this subskill is extremely rare during the Era of Kyoshi. In fact, it was thought to be no more than a myth prior to Kyoshi's fatal duel against Xu Ping An. The Fire Nation may have extracted the secrets of lightning bending from Xu during his prior imprisonment, making the technique available to the Fire Nation Royal Family by the Era of Aang. Any players looking to toss around electricity themselves would do well to incorporate that connection into their backstory.
Overall, there is a lot of flexibility within Kyoshi's Era. Though the Water Tribe and the Air Nation are seen briefly during the novels, the lack of existing details on them means GMs will have plenty of freedom to come up with their own lore for players who want to stick close to the canon. Avatar Legends will provide the opportunity to meet Avatar Kyoshi -- and that should be enough to excite any fan.