Air Nomad Genocide

"fire"

- With Roku gone, and the great comet returning, the timing was perfect to change the world. I knew the next Avatar would be born an Air Nomad, so I wiped out the air temples. But somehow, the new Avatar eluded me. I wasted the remainder of my life searching in vain. I know he's hiding out there somewhere. The Fire Nation's greatest threat... the last airbender.

The Air Nomad Genocide was an enormous massacre committed by the Fire Nation that resulted in the almost complete extinction of the Air Nomads and the fauna that lived in the air temples with them. The only known survivors were Aang, Momo, and Appa. The effects of this cultural destruction empowered the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribe to arm themselves and declare war on the Fire Nation, leading to the large-scale war that continued for one hundred years.

Prelude
Fire Lord Sozin had his own vision for a "brighter" future of the world: he wanted to share the Fire Nation's state of peace and wealth with the rest of the world, and believed it was time to expand the nation; however, Avatar Roku dismissed this idea and due to the Avatar's interference, Sozin was unable to execute his quest for world domination. Years later, when a dying Roku begged for help from Sozin after having inhaled some toxic fumes, the Fire Lord abandoned his former friend, realizing that his plans would suddenly become possible with the Avatar's demise.

Sozin knew that Roku's successor would be born an Air Nomad, thus he plotted out the possible assault against them. He waited for the power boost the arrival of the Great Comet, later dubbed Sozin's Comet, would give the firebenders in order to execute his plan.

Due to the threat of oncoming war, the Council of Elders told Aang of his identity as the Avatar at the age of twelve, when under normal circumstances the Avatar is told of his or her identity at the age of sixteen. In a private meeting afterwards, the Council decided that it was also better if Aang and Gyatso were split up, so Aang was to complete his airbending training at the Eastern Air Temple. This conversation, however, was overheard by Aang who had been eavesdropping from a secret hiding place. Unable to deal with his destiny and the path the head monks had chosen for him, he ran away with Appa towards the south. Caught in a storm shortly afterwards, Aang and Appa plunged in the ocean; underneath the surface, the Avatar State activated as a defense mechanism and, utilizing both airbending and waterbending, the state-induced Aang encased himself and Appa in a block of ice, unknowingly saving them from the mortal attack Sozin was about to unleash on the Air Nomads.

Genocide


It is uncertain how the Fire Nation's armies managed to reach the Air Nomad temples in the very highly-elevated areas of mountain ranges, as Aang stated that the only way to reach an air temple is with a flying bison. Some temples, such as the Eastern Air Temple, appear to have suffered more damaged than others, like the still relatively intact Western Air Temple.

A small number of Air Nomads escaped the initial attack on the temples and proved too elusive for the Fire Nation to hunt down. Changing tactics, Fire Lord Sozin had relics looted from the temples and had a number of small residences high in the mountains furnished with them, giving these places the appearance of being inhabited by other Air Nomad refugees. Using a number of spies to spread rumors about such places throughout the Earth Kingdom population, Sozin was successful in luring the remaining airbenders into the hands of waiting Fire Nation soldiers, thus decimating what few airbending survivors there were.

Immediate


The only airbender known to have survived the onslaught was the one that the Fire Nation sought to kill in its quest for world supremacy: the Avatar, Aang. By running away from the temple, ignorant of the imminent attacks against the Air Nomads, he saved himself. Aang, however, later felt guilty about fleeing and believed he could have defeated the invading Fire Nation forces and saved his people.

Sozin spent the last twenty years of his life looking for Aang, who by that time had been frozen in an iceberg beneath the ocean for several years, and eventually died at the old age of 102 before he could find Aang. Sozin's legacy to the world was a war that had begun with this first fatal strike to the Air Nomads and would last a hundred years.

General


One hundred years after the genocide, Katara and Sokka freed Aang and Appa from their frozen state, and Aang soon learned of the fate of the Air Nomads. He revisited his former home, the Southern Air Temple, still hopeful that a few Air Nomads would have survived the attacks, but he discovered countless Fire Nation corpses along with Gyatso's frail skeleton.

Later on, Aang and his friends arrived at the Northern Air Temple and discovered that it is now inhabited by Earth Kingdom refugees; forced from their homes by a flood years before, they stumbled upon the abandoned temple and made it their new home. Aang was angry, however, to see the temple vandalized by the mechanist's modifications, but relented after seeing Teo's "airbender" spirit and how the refugees defended their new home against the Fire Nation. Aang stated that just like the hermit crab he saw earlier, they had found a new "shell" to call home and allowed them to stay.

When Aang attended a history class in a Fire Nation school, he learned that the children were taught that Sozin battled the "Air Nomad Army", whereas Aang stated that the Air Nomads didn't have a formal army and that Sozin defeated them by ambush.

Trivia
The Air Nomad Genocide is somewhat similar to the Holocaust like when the Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews from Europe.