>>96346131
Avatar's story starts with Avatar Roku, the Fire Nation-born Avatar before the main character. Once friends with Fire Lord Sozin, the two drift apart when Sozin starts getting ideas about taking over the world. As in, Roku goes "bitch you better fucking not, I'm the Avatar". In their old age, Sozin comes to Roku's aid as Roku fights an erupting volcano, but then abandons the exhausted Avatar to die. Sozin then bides his time for twelve years, waiting for a firebending-boosting comet. With the comet's arrival, Sozin genocides the Air Nomads, knowing the next Avatar-to-be will have already been born there. He also begins attacking the other two nations.

Except... Sozin missed an airbender. Before the genocide, the elders of the Air Nomads were wary of the Fire Nation's aggressive posturing and told Aang, only 12 years old, that he was the Avatar and he's going to need to save a whole goddamn world. Panicking over the sudden massive changes to his life, Aang runs away with his flying bison Appa, gets caught in a storm over the ocean, and instinctively suspends the two of them in ice when they're about to die. He thus misses the extinction of his people and the next 100 years of war brought on by the Fire Nation.