Akai

The Bamboo Forest of the Eastern Lands is a place of extraordinary peace — ancient trees, drifting mist, the sound of wind through hollow stalks. It is also, as anyone who has spent time there will tell you, the home of Akai, and Akai is anything but peaceful.

He was born the largest cub in a litter of four, a distinction that brought with it certain expectations. The panda clans of the Eastern Lands had a tradition of warrior-monks — fighters who combined the meditative discipline of the forest with the raw physical power of their kind — and Akai was clearly destined for that path. His instructors saw in him the potential for greatness.

What they did not anticipate was the personality.

Akai approached the warrior-monk training with enthusiasm that his instructors found simultaneously inspiring and exhausting. He mastered the physical techniques quickly — the spinning attacks, the body-slam maneuvers, the ability to use his considerable mass as a weapon — but struggled with the meditative components. His mind was too active, too curious, too easily distracted by interesting smells and the possibility of snacks.

He graduated anyway. The instructors agreed that his combat effectiveness more than compensated for his spiritual restlessness, and that having him in the forest was, on balance, better than having him somewhere else causing problems.

Akai left the forest to see the world, which was exactly what his instructors had feared. He has since become one of the most recognizable figures in the Land of Dawn — a massive, cheerful panda who hits things very hard and seems to be having the time of his life doing it. His enemies find this deeply unsettling. His allies find it reassuring. Akai himself finds it perfectly normal.