Northern Air Temple


 * This article is about the location in Avatar: The Last Airbender. For other similar uses, see Northern Air Temple (disambiguation).

"air"

- Hey, we're almost at the Northern Air Temple! This is where they had the championships for sky bison polo!

The Northern Air Temple was one of the four original temples that belonged to the Air Nomads. Located in the mountains along the northern coast of the Earth Kingdom continent, this temple was one of the two temples that exclusively housed male airbenders, the other one being the Southern Air Temple. Its original population, however, was wiped out at the beginning of the Hundred Year War, during the Air Nomad Genocide. The temple was later inhabited by a group of Earth Kingdom refugees led by the mechanist, who settled there after their own village was destroyed by a flood. The Northern Air Temple was the site where many important technological advancements in the world took place.

History
The Northern Air Temple was built thousands of years before the Hundred Year War by Air Nomad monks, who used the structure mainly as a training ground for young airbenders. The temple was noted for its design, which harmoniously integrated its natural surroundings into the structure; the large hallways would harness the wind and allow air to flow naturally through the building.

The temple was the residence of a legendary guru and poet, Laghima, around 3,829 BG, during which time it is believed he discovered the secret to weightlessness and lived the last forty years of his life untethered to the ground.

After the extermination of the original population, the temple complex was rediscovered by a group of refugees led by the mechanist around 89 AG, after which it was extensively modified from its original state to accommodate the lifestyle of the new residents. As the mechanist added new inventions, the temple underwent many technological upgrades, which often required the destruction or expansion of many original structures. While searching for signs of the Avatar, the Fire Nation eventually discovered the temple's established refugee population and threatened to destroy their new home; however, the mechanist was able to make a deal with the military, in which he would design weapons for the Fire Lord in exchange for letting his people live in peace.

The mechanist used the Air Nomad gliders he found within to make his own gliders and give his paraplegic son Teo a new life in the air. During the years the refugees lived in the temple, some were eventually seen gliding around it by other Earth Kingdom villagers, who came to call them "air walkers". Hopeful to see other survivors of the Air Nomad Genocide, Aang, Katara, and Sokka traveled to the Northern Air Temple, where they discovered that the "air walkers" were just the gliding refugees.



They met up with Teo, who proudly showed them around the temple and its many innovations. Sokka was immediately enthralled by the changes. Aang, however, was angered and saddened by them as they had destroyed part of his people's history; he saw them as a violation of the temple's original sanctity. In an attempt to cheer Aang up, Teo took him and Katara to the inner sanctuary of the temple, convinced that, since it could only be opened by airbending, it was still untouched by the technology. Aang eventually agreed to open the sanctuary. However, inside they found a storage room for Fire Nation weapons instead of ancient Air Nomad relics.

The mechanist explained that the Fire Nation had found the Northern Air Temple about a year after the Earth Kingdom refugees made it their home, and that the Fire Nation had threatened to destroy everything by burning the temple to the ground. In an attempt to save the settlement, the mechanist had offered his services. The Fire Nation had been extorting him to manufacture weapons for them ever since, under the threat of an attack if he did not comply.



After Aang forcefully expelled War Minister Qin, the representative of the Fire Nation, thereby terminating the partnership between the mechanist and the Fire Nation, the latter gave action to the threat and launched an attack against the temple. Although they initially managed to hold the Fire Nation forces at bay with their control over the sky, the defenders were no match for the Fire Nation's tundra tanks. In a last attempt to repel the advancing army, Sokka and the mechanist, piloting the first made hot air balloon, threw their fuel source overboard to ignite the natural gas pocket held in a cave beneath the temple. Their venture succeeded as the explosion blew up part of the mountain, destroying the only path to the temple and forcing the Fire Nation to retreat, thereby protecting it from future attacks. The temple remained unscathed by Fire Nation attack and the subsequent explosion.

The mechanist continued to produce inventions at the temple; however, this time they would be used to help defeat the Fire Nation during the invasion of the Fire Nation.

Some time after the Hundred Year War, Avatar Aang spearheaded the restoration of the air temples. His followers, the Air Acolytes, came to inhabit the Northern Air Temple, while the refugees that had previously lived there moved elsewhere and the technological advancements they had installed in the temple were removed.

After the events of Harmonic Convergence in 171 AG, and the return of airbending, Tenzin brought many of the newly discovered airbenders found throughout the Earth Kingdom to the Northern Air Temple so that they could be trained to master their new abilities and help restore the Air Nation. The area, however, had also attracted the attention of poachers looking to capture the endangered wild sky bison around the temple in order to supply the Earth Queen and her royal courts desire for exotic meat. They would come into conflict with Tenzin and his airbender trainees before being subdued and imprisoned in the cages in which they had kept the captured bison.

Description


The temple was designed to be a part of its natural surroundings and to fit harmoniously with nature — large hallways harness wind and allow air to naturally flow within. It was home to the airbender monks and their students and was used primarily as a training ground for airbenders.

The temple remained a peaceful sanctuary until it was attacked by the Fire Nation during the passing of Sozin's Comet, one hundred years prior to Team Avatar's visit. It was left abandoned until the Earth Kingdom refugees, under the leadership of the mechanist and his son, arrived ninety years later and retro-fitted it for non-airbender living. Everything in the temple is powered by hot air, like elevator-type contraptions to carry people from level to level and the gliders that use the hot air currents outside the temple to help them fly.

Like the Southern Air Temple, it also has an air temple sanctuary, but the mechanist turned it into a workshop. As a result of being built for and by the airbenders, several of the temples' doors and mechanisms are operable only through means of airbending. The temple's architecture looks similar to the Southern Air Temple's, but the Southern Temple has more colorful walls and seems to be more elaborately decorated.

Mechanist's workshop


Located on a quiet wing of the air temple, the mechanist's workshop was a place where he created and experimented with his newest inventions. The room was filled with all sorts of contraptions, ranging from prototypes of the gliders and a hot air balloon to blueprints for various vehicles, among which was a giant drill. It was here that War Minister Qin entered the temple through a secret door, designed by the mechanist. The workshop was also equipped with an alarm that was triggered when anyone entered the temple's inner sanctuary.

Air temple sanctuary
Located inside the air temple, this great hall was originally built as a spiritual place where only the elder monks and the Avatar were allowed. Only a master airbender can open the door to the sanctum. Because of this, Aang thought it was the only part of the temple that was untouched. As it turned out, however, the mechanist ingeniously used physics and clever mechanics to open it, and use it as his secret weapons laboratory. After a confrontation between Aang and War Minister Qin, and seeing the disapproval in the eyes of his son, the mechanist stopped using it for this purpose.

Radio room
Following the temple's restoration by the Air Acolytes, a room in the temple was repurposed to serve as a radio room. The use of a radio allowed the residents of the Northern Air Temple to remain in contact with Air Acolytes living in the other air temples with relative ease, while also allowing citizens from other areas of the world to contact the otherwise secluded settlement. Tenzin used the radio to alert Kya on Air Temple Island that he had arrived with recruits and he later used it to correspond with Korra in Zaofu.

Training facilities
In one of the temple's many courtyards, a field of bamboo poles was erected for the purpose of airbending training, specifically to develop balance through honing an individual's heaven-to-earth connection. Another courtyard features a Bagua Circle for the practice of circle-walking and other movements associated with airbending, while an elaborate obstacle course was also built near the temple grounds to train airbenders in speed and lightness.

Customs
The original inhabitants of the temple were Air Nomads, who once hosted the sky bison polo championships at this temple prior to the genocide. Following the Fire Nation's annihilation of the airbenders, a group of Earth Kingdom refugees came and took residence in the temple, building a new life for themselves in the sky using the mechanist's new inventions, and subsequently further aiding the disappearance of the Air Nomad customs.

Fauna


An animal species that inhabits the air temples is a small, land-dwelling hermit crab. They look quite similar to their aquatic cousins, with a similar shell-switching lifestyle, but are covered in a thick coat of black and white hair. They seem to prefer damp, dark places and are apparently very adaptable, as the specimens in the Northern Air Temple survived a complete refurbishment of the entire complex, spearheaded by the mechanist. It seems fitting and is perhaps not coincidental that a nomadic animal by nature would live among the Air Nomads. Fireflies can also be found in the temple, and are used by the mechanist in large numbers as a natural source of light.

Notable figures

 * Guru Laghima
 * The mechanist
 * Teo

Trivia

 * The murals on the temple's walls, which Aang referred to as "the history of [his] people", depict Air Nomads learning airbending from the sky bison.
 * In the, none of the machinery is present in the air sanctuary, as the mechanist is not referenced.
 * The Northern Air Temple and Whaletail Island were the only known Air Nomad territories that were inhabited around 100 AG.
 * As mentioned by Katara, it takes at least two days for Appa to fly himself and the others from the temple to the Northern Water Tribe.
 * Located in the Earth Kingdom mainland, the Northern Air Temple is the only air temple not situated on an island.
 * Along with the other three ancient air temples, the Northern Air Temple was restored to its former glory by Avatar Aang after the Hundred Year War.