| By Neo Bahamut | Part of the Republic City Renaissance continuity. |
Overview
Dr. Avici was meant to explain how the Purists develop their weapons, who tends to their injuries, and the medical advances that led Amon to discover how to sever bending. He draws from controversial 1920's scientific practices, mostly as the Avatarverse equivalent of "Dr. Lobotomy", but also things like forced feeding and secret experiments. I try to refer to him by his surname as much as possible, to avoid confusion with the aforementioned bloodbender.
Background
Born to a pair of immigrants from the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se, Dr. Avici spent the bulk of his early life working in industry jobs. Though poor at physical labor, he was adept at understanding systems, such as electrical grids, chemicals, and the like. Realizing this, he pushed to be recommended to the Republic City University at age 16, where he studied the burgeoning fields of biology, chemistry, and engineering. Soon after, his parents died of lung disease. By 20, alongside classes, he was working in medical research, though he had difficulty getting the grants necessary to pay for his endeavors.
Book 0
Goes into hiding after realizing that the RCPD is on to his stealing from his employers and supplying the Purists. Takes Aroma on as an assistant after she's captured, tasking her to observe his lobotomized Agni Kai "patients" and perform other unethical acts. Escaped when the hideout was raided, ordering low-ranking Purists to kill his specimens and burn his makeshift clinic to cover his tracks.
Personality
Dr. Avici is a real piece of work. He was known as being quiet and introverted while working in medicine, and would react curtly if anyone tried to communicate with him for anything other than work. He also had a reputation for being arrogant, accused of arguing with his superiors over methods and filling his writing with jargon just to make readers feel intellectually inferior. Since his funding was cut and he went to work with the Purists full-time, he has only gotten worse, prone to mood swings and aggressive outbursts.
Dr. Avici believes that most statistical abnormalities, including bending, are diseases which need to be purged. So devoted was he to this theory and his feelings of his research being constricted by the petty whims of society that he was already designing anti-bending weapons before the Purists even contacted him. But it is unlikely that he would have made it very far on his own, due to his lack of influence and preference to stay shut in doing experiments.
Though he has many, many, many faults, lacking scientific knowledge cannot be said to be 1 of them. He is known to be quite brilliant, publishing in several fields. He has a strong distaste of ethical guidelines, feeling they hold back progress, and whether or not his research benefits anyone is more of an afterthought, but he never fails to obtain results—even if he should have to experiment on himself.
Origin
Aamon was conceived as a mad scientist, originally working under Senthose, who in this story is the head of the Red Monsoons. "Aamon" is a spelling of a servant of Astaroth, which by odd coincidence could also be spelled "Amon". "Avici" is the lowest hell in Buddhism, where the most evil/impure go to be purified. He had a prematurely aged appearance, the result of experimenting on himself. In Book 0, his health can be seen rapidly deteriorating as he performs research in increasingly unsanitary conditions.
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For the collective works of the author, go here.