Varija Lin

B A S I C
[Name] Varija Lin
[Age] 22
[Zodiac] Scorpio
[Gender] Female
[Class] C – Advanced Bender class
[Employment] Acolyte to the Fire Sages
[P.O.B] Capital City, Fire Nation
[Residence] Capital Temple, Capital City
[Sexuality] Bisexual
[Relationship status] Single

R E L A T I O N S H I P S
[Family]

+ Katsu Lin (father)
+ Teja Lin (mother)
+ Vidja Lin (sister)

[Other]

+ Fen Zhu (friend, teacher)

A P P E A R A N C E
[Hair] Black and straight, reaching down to the small of her back.
[Eyes] Blue
[Height] 178
[Weight] 58
[Build] Slender, often on the skinny side.
[Style] She is very insecure about her body and doesn’t like to show much of herself to anyone. She wears the traditional sages’ robes most of the time, even when she doesn’t have to, because they cover much of her body.
[Special] Extensive scarring on most of her back and side. They’re usually hidden by her clothing and not many people know about them.

P E R S O N A L I T Y
[Positive traits] Compassionate, perseverant, loyal, resourceful, passionate
[Negative traits] Distrustful, secretive, hot-tempered, insecure
[Alignment] Lawful neutral
[Briggs-Myers] ISFJ
[Temperament] Phlegmatic-Sanguine

H I S T O R Y
[0-6]
Varija was born as the eldest daughter of a wealthy family in Capital City. Both of her parents were capable firebenders, and her father worked as a financial advisor to most citizens. The family was well-respected, if not always loved, and with that came high expectations.
Varija’s father pushed her into training her bending as soon as he could and hired private tutors to teach her in others subjects from a very young age, so that she would be ahead of other children once she would go to school. He made sure Varija would always get what she wanted, so long as the request was reasonable.
Even though he was strict, Varija loved him dearly – much more so than her mother, who was more cautious and tried to make sure Varija took it easy when training her bending. Varija liked her father better simply because he let her experiment and find her boundaries.

[6-12]
As she grew up in a very sheltered environment, Varija didn’t have many friends growing up – and those that she did have, were approved by her father beforehand. Nevertheless, Varija never felt lonely, especially when her younger sister, Vidja, was born when Varija was six years old. Varija doted on her younger sister, staying close to her whenever she wasn’t involved in training or schooling, and was fiercely protective of the younger girl.
The two sisters were very close, even if Vidja seemed to be her mother’s responsibility like Varija was her father’s, and so wasn’t subjected to Varija’s strict training regime. The two sisters saw little of each other during the day, but inevitably sought each other out during dinner and later in the evening, when their time was their own.

[12-16]
Her teenage years were much like any other child’s – in so much as they could be, given who her father was. She trained daily, went to school daily, improved daily. Her father was proud, her sister was there each night to listen to her talk about her day and all the things she’d learned. Life was good.

[16]
Varija’s life changed drastically when she was sixteen years old. Now that she came closer to a marriable age, her father pushed her harder and harder, making her train more. He hosted tournaments in which his daughter was the centrepiece. She duelled firebenders from both within the city and outside of it, whenever they made the trip, and won all of her matches as her father had expected her to.
Until the day came when a master stepped forward to challenge her, and Varija lost spectacularly.
In hindsight, she still doesn’t know what happened. She might have lost focus for just a moment, or the master might have outsmarted her – she couldn’t possibly say. All she remembers is a searing pain on her back and side, which she later realised came from one of the master’s flames, and the sickening smell of burning flesh.
She lost consciousness on the field and woke up in her bed, her torso bandaged completely. Her father was at the foot of her bed, his eyes burning and his mouth set in a thin line.
“Those won’t fade,” he said to her, nodding jerkily at the bandages. There was disgust on his face. “You’ve shamed me.” He said nothing further, leaving the room without a backward glance. It was the last time he would speak to her directly.
Varija was confined to her room. Her training ceased entirely and she saw no one but the servants sent up to bring her food. She healed on her own, feeling embarrassed and despondent.
Eventually, the burns closed, though the scars remained. The day her doctor declared her as healed as she would ever get, a servant came to help her dress and led her to a screened litter where her father was already waiting. The man didn’t look at Varija as she got into the litter, no matter the girl’s efforts to apologise and get him to talk. He was silent the entire way. He wouldn’t even answer Varija’s question as to where they were going.
The servants carrying the litter halted in front of Capital Temple. Her father jerked Varija along by the upper arm, into the temple, and deposited her with one of the Fire Sages. There, he spoke quietly to the Sage, but loud enough that Varija could hear every word.
“She’ll never fetch a decent husband now, with the way she looks. I leave her in your care. At least she won’t shame the family further here.”
With that, he left. It was the last time Varija would ever see her father again.

[16-22]
The first few months Varija spent in Capital Temple were dark ones. She barely ate and slept and went through her daily tasks as acolyte only because of the stern looks of the sages and other acolytes. She felt miserable. What was the point of it all, if her family wouldn’t see her again and if her father was so disgusted with her that he would rather hide her away in the Temple than look at her?
Slowly, though, she began to adjust to her life in the Temple. She found she didn’t mind her tasks when she approached them with an open mind, and that she actually liked helping people and providing them a kind ear for their problems. The loss of her family still stung and she couldn’t bear to look at the scars on her back, but she found herself again, and actually grew to be on good terms with most acolytes and even some of the sages.
She took up training again. Initially, she trained on her own, but when one of the older acolytes, a man in his forties named Fen Zhu, spotted her, he offered to train her. She found that he was an accomplished firebender in his own right, even though he had been serving at the Temple for far longer than she had, and he was kind and patient in a way her other trainers had never been, even when she inevitably lost her temper on occasion.
She has been training with him ever since.