The world of Avatar: The Last Airbender is split into four nations, one for each element: the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation and the Air Nomads. In each, some people are benders, born able to move their nation's element with their body. Only one person can bend all four: the Avatar, who is reborn into each nation in turn and keeps the world in balance. The Avatar State is the Avatar's emergency power, the strength and knowledge of every past Avatar at once.
This covers the original animated series (three books, Water, Earth and Fire, 2005 to 2008), not the live-action remakes or the later comics. Every design on the Avatar shelf comes from it. Spoilers for the whole series below.
The four nations and the Hundred Year War
A hundred years before the series opens, Fire Lord Sozin used the power of a passing comet to start a war for the whole world, and struck the Air Nomads first. The next Avatar was due to be born an airbender, so the attack was aimed at him.
The Avatar was a twelve-year-old airbender monk called Aang. Told who he was and that he would be taken from his teacher, he ran away on his sky bison, Appa, was caught in a storm and froze himself in an iceberg. Katara and Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe find him a century later, with the war almost won and every other airbender gone. "Yip yip" is the command that gets Appa off the ground, which is why Yip Yip puts Aang, Appa and Momo, his winged lemur, together.
How bending works, and Toph the Blind Bandit
Each art was first learned from a teacher in nature. Firebenders learned from the dragons, waterbenders from the moon and its pull on the tides, earthbenders from the badgermoles, and airbenders from the sky bison.
Masters push each art further. Skilled firebenders can generate lightning; Iroh invented a way to redirect it by studying waterbenders. Waterbenders can heal, and on a full moon a few can bloodbend, moving the water inside a living body. Firebender has Zuko in his own element.
Toph Beifong is the art's rule-breaker. Born blind into a rich family in Gaoling, she learned earthbending from the badgermoles, who are blind too, and "sees" by feeling vibrations through the ground. She slipped out to win underground earthbending tournaments as the Blind Bandit before leaving home to teach Aang. Locked in a metal box, she senses the specks of earth in the metal and bends it: the first metalbender.
The Avatar cycle and the Avatar State
When an Avatar dies, the next is born into the following nation in a fixed order: Fire, Air, Water, Earth. Aang's past life was Avatar Roku of the Fire Nation, and the Avatar after Aang is born in the Water Tribe. Past Avatars can speak to the living one through the spirit world.
The Avatar State is a defence mechanism: the Avatar's eyes and tattoos glow, and every past life's power and knowledge pours in at once. Early on it takes Aang over when he is frightened or angry. Roku warns him of its cost: if the Avatar is killed in the Avatar State, the cycle ends and there will be no more Avatars.
To control it, Aang must open seven chakras, and the last means letting go of earthly attachment. He breaks off that training early to save Katara, and at the end of Book Two, Azula strikes him with lightning as he enters it. Katara saves his life with spirit water from the North Pole. In the finale, Ozai, now calling himself the Phoenix King, slams Aang into a rock, hitting the scar the lightning left, the blocked chakra opens, and the Avatar State is finally his. He beats Ozai, spares him and takes his bending away instead.
Zuko's scar, the banishment and the Blue Spirit
At thirteen, Prince Zuko sat in on a war meeting and spoke out against a general's plan to sacrifice a division of new recruits. Speaking out of turn meant an Agni Kai, a fire duel. Zuko expected to face the general; his opponent was his father, Fire Lord Ozai. Zuko refused to fight, and Ozai burned the left side of his face, then banished him: he could come home only by capturing the Avatar.
That hunt is the first book. Iroh, his uncle, sails with him. When Admiral Zhao captures Aang, Zuko breaks him out in secret wearing a blue mask and carrying two broadswords, as the Blue Spirit. Later he uses the mask again in Ba Sing Se.
In the final book he turns away from his father, joins Aang and teaches him firebending. After the war he becomes Fire Lord.
Iroh, the Dragon of the West
Iroh was once the Fire Nation's crown prince and a great general. He besieged Ba Sing Se, the Earth Kingdom capital, for six hundred days, then gave up after his son, Lu Ten, was killed. His brother Ozai took the throne.
The name Dragon of the West comes from a story he let the world believe: that he hunted down the last dragon. In the final book, Zuko and Aang learn the truth: Iroh found the last two dragons, Ran and Shaw, was judged worthy by them, and Zuko works out that his uncle lied to keep them safe.
He is also a member of the Order of the White Lotus, plays Pai Sho and opens a tea shop, the Jasmine Dragon, in Ba Sing Se. He is the one who never gives up on Zuko.
On the shelf
Tui and La, the Moon and the Ocean
Tui and La are the Moon Spirit and the Ocean Spirit. On Earth they live as two koi fish, one white and one black, circling each other in the Spirit Oasis at the Northern Water Tribe: push and pull, each keeping the other in balance. Waterbending draws its strength from the moon, so a full moon makes waterbenders stronger.
At the end of Book One, Admiral Zhao leads the Fire Navy against the Northern Water Tribe and kills the Moon Spirit to take waterbending away. The moon vanishes. Aang merges with the Ocean Spirit and wrecks the fleet.
Meanwhile Princess Yue brings the moon back. As a sickly newborn she was saved by the Moon Spirit, so a part of it lives in her; she gives that life back to revive it and becomes the moon. Once the moon returns, the Ocean Spirit lets Aang go and drags Zhao into the water. Spirit Koi has the two fish themselves.
On the back of a tee
All of this is on the Avatar shelf, drawn from canon reference art. Check the size guide before you pick a size.
Why it works on the back: the show's world is built on four elements with four colours and four symbols, so one bender, one fish or one masked prince reads at a glance, the way a good cover does from across the shop.
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