Powers and Abilities
May. 2nd, 2014 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Wan comes from a world where a large portion of the human population is able to control one of the four elements in a manner that, long after his lifetime, comes to be known as 'bending'. Wan is the only human of his time who is able to bend all four elements. Bending is channeled through very distinctive martial arts forms that have been passed down over the ages. In Wan's time, Wan learned Firebending from a dragon, and the other bending forms from a combination of his own experimentation and Raava's aid, but they are the same forms that are used in the time of Avatar Aang and Korra.
All 'Avatar Level' bending is usually done in the Avatar state.
Firebending has a couple 'special' abilities that particularly strong firebenders are able to learn. Creation and redirection of lighting, and 'chi reading' are shown in the series, but Wan was never shown to use them. Due to Fire being the first element he learns, it's possible he could be trained in these forms by someone who knows how, but at current it is is best to assume he does not have that knowledge.
Avatar Level Firebending includes the ability to bend lava (as a combination of fire and earth bending rather than just earthbending alone) and multiple fire whips. Wan was never shown to do either of these, but they are theoretically possible for him due to his status as the Avatar.
Airbending 'special' abilities that are common to Wan's time include cloudwalking and air funnels. Wan is shown to use both of these as well as many other more minor airbending techniques including enhanced movement and speed.
Avatar Level Airbending includes the ability to create an Air Sphere to contain someone or something, wind strikes strong enough to shatter or crack stone, and full-blown tornados. The first two Wan has been shown to do during the fight with Vaatu, and the last he has been seen doing in a smaller, more localized way when he creates an air funnel to lift him over battlefields that doubles as creating a barrier between combatants.
Waterbending 'special' abilities include healing and bloodbending. Neither of which Wan has been shown to do and it is not likely he will ever learn them. In the case of the second, he would refuse to learn due to being utterly repulsive to his entire outlook on life. As far as healing with water goes, because water comes easily to him, he is likely to be able to learn it if he is provided with a teacher, but he is unlikely to be able to heal much more than minor cuts and bruises.
Avatar Level Waterbending includes the ability to create tsunamis and compress large amounts of water into almost impossible spaces. Wan was not definitively shown to do either of these in canon, but creating the Elemental Sphere usually involves a lot of water compressed into a much smaller circle for it's part of the binding.
Earthbending 'special' techniques include metalbending, sandbending, and minor polarization of the body. All of these techniques are shown to be done after Wan's time. While it's likely he could learn the last of those due to how often it is used by earthbenders to help them stick to rock walls, it is not likely that Wan will ever learn the first two unless put in a situation that forces him to just to survive. Metalbending in particular is a technique only a small percentage of Earthbenders are able to master and was not even thought possible until the time of Avatar Aang when Toph Beifong invented it. With Earth as his weakest element, even he would have trouble attempting to master Sand- and Metal- bending and it is my personal headcanon that he will never be able to metalbend.
Avatar Level Earthbending includes the ability to 'levitate' even larger chunks of rock than even master Earthbenders can and Tectonics - the moving of entire landmasses. Wan has shown the former in his fight against Vaatu, so it is very likely he could perform the latter.
The Avatar State for Wan is somewhat different for him than it is for the Avatars that come after. Wan has no past lives to call on for advice or to channel their knowledge. He has only Raava, the Spirit of Light he merged with, to aid him. They work in perfect harmony and he is able to speak to her if he needs to. Other Avatars have had the Avatar State trigger as a defense mechanism, and it is possible that it will do so should his life be in danger and he is not able to act on his own, but the times we are shown Wan using the Avatar State, he has complete control. He can enter and exit the state at will.
Wan is able to merge his body with spirits when he is in the Avatar State. Speaking to them and also greatly enhancing their own power to allow them to act with greater effect. This is shown when Aang merged with the Ocean Spirit and created Koizilla. This is an ability that all Avatar's have and is noted as 'Spiritual Link-up' under the Avatar State on the Wiki.
((Headcanon related to being the Spiritual Bridge:
Wan can also sense the presence of spirits and a general feeling of their emotional state for those that are feeling particularly strong emotions that are effecting a given area. It is not a particularly strong spiritual sense. This is based on Aang's spiritual ability to do the same in the first series/comics and Wan being just as spiritually open as Aang. Korra, who is still developing her spiritual abilities through most of the series, is not as sensitive to the spirits as her previous incarnations. This is an ability that all Avatar's have, but must be developed. He is no where as spiritually attuned as Jinora.
Wan is capable of Astral Projection (sending his spirit into the spirit world), but is not yet trained to do so because the portals have only recently been closed and he is used to spirits being reachable in the Material Plane. He can learn to do this with time and practice.))
Within Wan, bonded to his soul, is the Spirit of Light and Peace. Despite their souls being bonded, their minds remain somewhat separate. Her personality is still there and distinct from his. Though she allows Wan to speak and act for the both of them most of the time, Wan can hold conversations with her. When Wan enters the Avatar State, he can allow her personality to be dominant so that she can have conversations with others outside of themselves. He is the only Avatar shown to be actively aware enough of Raava's presence to converse with her outside of the spirit world in this manner. Raava did at one time break her 'silence' to speak to Korra in a future life outside of the spirit world, so it's possible for her to do so with any of the Avatars. But Wan is thus far the only one she is shown to have any kind of extended conversation with that was initiated by an Avatar.
Raava has a very harsh personality and is focused almost entirely on her duty to maintain balance in the world by keeping Vaatu under control. She is quick to judge humans in particular and even quicker to dismiss them outright. They are beneath her concern until they interfere and even then she treats them like small children who should listen and do as they're told. During her time with Wan she learned that she was wrong to judge humanity so quickly and harshly and came to care for Wan very deeply.
For an All-Powerful Spirit of Light and Peace, she is pretty damn violent. Despite such an aggressive temperament, she really does care about the continued existence of humanity along with the spirits. She is there to protect them and maintain balance in the face of Darkness and Chaos. While this means she has a very inhuman perspective on pretty much everything, it also means she is willing to risk her existence for the beings that are 'less' than herself. It is core to her role in the universe.
His body has also been physically altered by Raava having passed through him so many times before their final bonding at Harmonic Convergence. Spirits, when they possess a human, enact a permanent physical change. For most spirits (particularly creature spirits) this comes in the form of changing the physical appearance of the human and staying too long with kill the human. Since Raava possessed Wan on many, many occasions (via both passing through him to exchange the elements and when she actually possessed him) and she is not a creature spirit, but rather more of a 'concept' spirit, the changes to Wan's body were not as obvious. He grew tougher, able to withstand more pain and to tolerate physical damage that would break a regular human (as shown by his resilience during the Vaatu fight vs his younger self's fight against the hunters; also how long he could withstand the pain of her possessing him during the Vaatu fight vs the intervention between Jaya and Aye-Aye).
The difference between his bending power pre-bonding and post-bonding is also significant. The fight with Vaatu before the line 'We are bonded forever' took roughly 4 minutes and 20 seconds. The fight with Vaatu following the line 'we are bonded forever' and Vaatu being put in the tree of time took roughly 20 seconds. For comparison, the first fight between Korra and Vaatu after he was released from the tree of time (between when Korra first hit Vaatu with fire and when she encased him in an elemental sphere) took roughly 1 minute and 30 seconds, and Korra was born bonded to Raava.
Wan