Zhekt Garasu

|BASICS|
Name: Zhekt Garasu
Age: 22 years old.
Birthplace: Zhekt was born in Adeza Territory, Si Wong Desert
Current Residence: There is no more permanence to Zhekt’s life – instead, he wanders and prays to the deity of his people for guidance.
Rank: Zhekt is an incredible sandbender. He may be a master, but he lacks formal teachings. He is able to press sand into glass.
Occupation: When he needs money, food, or a place to sleep away from the storms in the desert, he will sell or trade glass. Figurines, mock-weapons, trinkets of interest – he has even been known to fill specific requests for people whom offer hospitality regularly.
Element: It has been said that a sandbender is an earthbender, but Zhekt could not understand how. Sand was more like air or water to him – the solid stone was impossible to move as a whole, but every small part of it could be. It was micro vs macro in his brain. Sand just makes sense. Sand is as light as air or as heavy as a tsunami. Adeza had given this gift.

|PETS/MOUNTS| Buzzardwasp

Name: Even if it had a name, no one would be able to know it.
Age: Indeterminable
Picture: A seemingly traditional Buzzardwasp, it has a striped thorax, long beak-like face and six eyes. Unlike most Buzzardwasps though, this creature’s eyes were blackened and dark, unable to see. The main body is coloured a dark brown while striped with bright yellow rings around its body. Six powerful wings give this beastly creature flight.
Personality: Being a blind insect-bird, this mount is pretty dependant on its owner.
Brief History: The creature fought for its colony – braving any creature to come close enough to be sensed. Their superior sense of smell was their greatest attribute aside from the advantage of air, but they also had great weaknesses. Fire being one of the greatest among them. This particular creature had fought a firebender and nearly lost. Burning its eyes before trying to destroy its wings, the bender almost killed the beast. A man had intervened and buried the bender alive. Days were spent tracking the creature until it finally stopped, terrified, ready to die. Tending to the beast was not easy – somehow, Zhekt was committed to winning this creature’s respect and trust. It was as though Adeza spoke to the beast through him, and before long they were soaring the sands together.

|WEAPONS|
Name: He could only name them after his loves – Adeza and Avyana.
Picture: Twin glass chakram rest against his shoulder-blades, overlaid to rest comfortably against his shoulders. The odd slips of cloth that held them in place were easily brushed away as they were drawn, making the circular blades quickly accessible. The glass is heavy, thick, and tinted an odd blue-green throughout.
Brief History: There were tomes, a long time ago – ones that showed the goddess Adeza. She was the warrior of the air – the calm centre of the storm, the raging torrent of wind, the deity of his people. She had wielded twin blades like these, forged from metal and twice as large. Learning to bend the sand, to heat it and cause the grains to vibrate against each other and press tightly together until they were no longer individual pieces – he’d decided to wield these blades in her honour and in her name.

|OPTIONAL|
Quirks: Zhekt is most certainly a religious fanatic.
Family: He may have been considered a noble of his clan – an elite. He may have been called the next leader, but he was missing something crucial – something his parents could not give him. Something that would cut him off from people for the rest of his life. And so, he had left them all behind when he turned 18.

|APPEARANCE|
Hair: The startlingly blond mess of hair is bound into a plume above his head. The brown and black cloth ribbon that circles most of his limbs and body is also bound tightly around his face. From his mouth, up over his right eye, and around the blonde crown of hair that becomes lifted from his brow.
Eyes: Though it seems one is only ever visible, it is vibrant. Terrifyingly light blue, it pierces the bleak and dim surroundings of the desert.  The wide eye is penetrating and blunt, despite its owner’s silence.
Height: Zhekt is an average height – 5’8”.
Clothes: Style is completely lost on this man. Wearing cloth, wrapped like bandages over his entire body, he looks like a mummy in the desert. His hips, thighs, stomach, chest and back are wrapped over the bandages with hearty leather. The stitching is crude and the armour is clearly patched together to adjust as he grew taller. There is nothing elegant about this style, but it serves to keep him cool in the sun and warm in the night.
Skin: Sandy brown skin peaks through the ribbon – elbows, toes, and fingers, as well as the right side of his face above his mouth and below his brow.
Body Type: Zhekt is solid but thin. One may think he was malnourished upon meeting him, but the steady control of his body would make them question. It seemed that he rarely gained any weight or mass, but lost nothing he gained either. There was a sturdiness to the way he moved, despite always looking like he was moving slowly. The determination in every action was stoic but fluid. He could be air. He could be water. He could be sand. But he was not a stone.

|CHARACTERISTICS|
Personality: It isn’t like he doesn’t try to make connections – it’s not like people take the time to understand either.  When one lives as an abstract, then only can they be understood by an abstract – someone who can look at the same thing as everyone else and see the difference. Being mute, Zhekt has never had an easy time communicating.
His body and his bending are his tools of speech – they ornate crafting of images with grains of sand has been an asset to his survival. Recalling grand detail in minute form has saved his life and helped him speak in ways only he could understand. Still, he tries to forge connections with people of interest – people who don’t stand out – the ones who watch and wait and listen.
The sandbender had held tightly to his youthful, trusting demeanour – losing himself to the sand had never let him feel lost. Adeza would guide him where he needed to be, as she always had. His faith in her could only be proven over and over. Even during his darkest hours, he would praise her name and ask for her gentle direction.
When people take the time to understand him, he can become excited, pushing them too hard to read the strange myriad of ways he tries to convey his thoughts, feelings, his intimate self that is buried deep. Others simply irritate him. If he were able to speak, he would tell them how infuriating it was to listen to such a waste of words. But, Adeza had been sure to cleanse him of this verbal-curse. Living in silence was gift to those who were whole enough to share it.
There aren’t many people who have spent time with themselves as he had. It was a strange thing – isolation seemed to strengthen his ability to see through people. So, he chooses the ones to interact with carefully, relying on the curiousity that surrounds him to entrance weak people. He is infuriated by people who see through his façade, or those that know his charade for what it is – hiding in plain sight. He would not be recognized or be sent back.

Personal Strengths: Bending is his life, his survival, his livelihood, and his way of speaking. This is his greatest strength and one he dedicates his life to developing. His faith in his goddess gives him a sense of purpose and direction, letting him feel that everything in his life is meant to be exactly as it is. People who can understand him become his strength – his trust in those that stand beside him gives him strength, even when they betray or lie. In his element, it didn’t matter what happened – Adeza would watch over him.
Personal Weaknesses: The fanaticism that Zhekt employs is damaging – he is unable to consider cause and effect, living in a fleeting moment to moment life that has no structure or boundaries. Literally enslaved by his own desires and intrigues, he is selfish and idealistic. He is weak against the element of water due to its ability to change the sand and ruin his creations. Zhekt will follow what he considers to be his fate, reading signs from seemingly random places and circumstances – he creates his own self-fulfilling prophecies and thinks himself a messiah for it. His ego will destroy him.
Hamartia: He would drown in water – this element destroys him very easily.
Personal Hero: Adeza.
Dreams and Ambitions: He wishes to be taken to the Air Temples. He knows his Buzzardwasp would never survive the journey to every temple, but he believes that airbenders could take him.

Likes: Zhekt likes to build with sand, and would welcome anyone who tried to share his visions as he builds them. He enjoys being adored – his ego is never sated, but he has few ways of outwardly expressing that. Instead, he tries to lead people through some abstract and lavish revelation, like he is preaching some forgotten truth. He likes to be a mystery. He also likes people who are blunt and observant. Though it frustrates him at first, and their persistence can leave him feeling exposed and deflated, he comes to rely on their insight. Being able to reshape himself many times was like being sand.

Dislikes: Zhekt hates that the old world is being destroyed. The loss of the Air Temple particularly affected him. Though he’d never seen the place, and only a few people from it over the long years in the sun, he felt connected to it through Adeza. As a result, he dislikes seeing all relics and forgotten pieces of history being sold throughout the world. He has been known to rob caravans and carriers of these items. He has little hesitation in killing people who defy his strict ideals.

Brief History: His people were nomads – wanderers and shapers of the desert. They had built Buzzardwasp hives and cleansed others of over-population. They had found the highest and lowest plains and dunes – they had mapped the impossible, shifting, hallucinating landscapes of the desert. Some say they were descendant from Adeza herself. Some say they were descendant from the monks of the temple that came to the sands in search of truth and knowledge locked away. Whatever the truth, Zhekt’s mother and father held the positions of Chieftain in his clan. Their legacy was to be continued through their children – but they had spent most of their lives failing to produce any. Time was never on the side of mortals, and Adeza would not grant them their wish until the time was right. Their faith was sound - the longer they must wait, the greater their gift shall be. The years passed as grains through the hourglass and their faith hardly waivered and when the time came that they had finally conceived, they felt renewed. They would spend the last of their years shaping this one life from both of their own. Praise Adeza.
The child was restless, causing his mother pain and discomfort. The trial of carrying the child they thought to be their answer was weakening her. Still, she was the embodiment of spirit and would not let her physical body weaken her soul. She was stronger than the years she’d had to wait, Adeza had given her hardships and healing, and she would see this child into its formative years. She was right. He was born a perfect weight, a perfect size, and absolutely silent.
Unnerved by the childs breathy wailing, he made no sound. He saw, he felt, he was everything alive – but there was silence in him. Taking this as yet another sign, the family asked Adeza to show them the purpose of this child without voice – the sound of air.
Years passed, and their question remained a question. Their prodigy had become a problem. Young Zhekt refused to say a word – the more they pressed, the more they were met with anger and resentment and gestures and frustration. He couldn’t show them – a child who could understand everything but express nothing. They pressed and he pulled and they followed and he ran. A child of 10 running into a sandstorm, nearly naked and crying and silent. Adeza watched over the boy. As the elders tried to rush to the boy, he disappeared into the chaos of the sand. Adeza lead the boy.
He would not be afraid of the sand or it’s harsh wind – these torrents were the power of change. These were the forces of his people united together in a way that humans could never be. People were like that from the beginning – eager to understand everything but afraid of the answers that were true. This storm was true. This sand was alive and swallowing him and dancing with him and punishing him – it could strip the flesh from him and let him start over as someone new. Adeza obliged him.
The chaos opened like a breath of air he’d never felt, like an ascension – she spoke to him and he turned his body with her. The sands began to sway with his arms. The world began to swell and shrink around him. She was the sand, he was the sand – he was Adeza, as she was him. She finally gifted him with his purpose.
The village was spared as the child broke the storm in three and sent it away. He didn’t awaken again for three days.
The sand spoke to him in his sleep, called him back, begged Adeza to grant him the foresight to continue. Fever dreams and hallucinated realities broke his reality like a shattered mirror. He could see sound, taste what he heard, and shape anything he imagined. The madness lifted the moment he opened his eyes again. But what would be madness to anyone else was the closing of a third eye to him. It was time to learn what these visions meant.
The next few years were different – he was praised and worshiped, he was adored by his parents, and he was bitter every moment. How could they forget the last decade? How could they pretend they had not spent most of his life expressing disappointment and pain? Zhekt never forgot, and he never let go of the visions in his dreams. He was trained by the best benders in his clan and deemed a gifted student by all. It frustrated him that he couldn’t ask for more direction – simply repeating and drilling and the rigidity of their work was not what he felt that day. For years he tried to recapture the feeling, but felt only the empty routine of his instructors. When they shouted instead of speaking to him, talking like he was deaf rather than mute, placated him with patronizing tones and gestures, it began to erode his stoic core. It was too much, it was cracking his core, it was shattering the images that he was failing to remember. At 16, his reservation shattered, and he exploded in a fury of energy. Attacking his teachers, his tormentors, he released his years of buried rage. The battle was incredible and he swept them from their positions as his preachers in moments. One by two by three they fell before him, crushed under the weight of his power – the madness wasn’t madness, it was freedom again. There was no time to say goodbye. There was no good reason to stay. He’d mastered what he could and endured all he must. Adeza was calling him to the depths of the desert and he would answer. He would follow the voice he could barely remember to the places he’d never actually seen.