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The culture of the Sun Warriors is primarily based on civilizations from ancient pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, including the Aztec, Incan, and Mayan empires.[]

Where's the evidence for this? Even though at first glance it looked mesoamerican from what other people have said it's inspiration is more from south east asian cultures.Anonymius (wallcontribs) 12:19, February 9, 2018 (UTC)

I think it's quite apparently based on Aztec, Mayan and Incan cultures, but it is weird there is no ref showing when any official Avatar people said that it was. Mako-probend-c890 degree Wall ContribsKorra-probendersprite 18:05, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Time of withdrawal[]

Just double checking something, but looking at recent article updates, I saw that the RPG said the Sun Warriors withdrew from society in the era of Roku, and the "thousands of years" from Zuko in 313 was changed to "people were taught this now" to explain it. How much substance does this have from the RPG? I ask because this is a rather big change to FN history in general, which we already had to put some effort in making sense over the history bits from Smoke and Shadow. Omnibender - Talk - Contributions 00:25, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

I am going to quote the RPG here: "Since the Sun Warriors live in isolation, from the era of Avatar Roku onwards, the world believed that both the dragons and the warriors were extinct [...]" (p. 25). This is pretty clear-cut. This is also part of the background section, i.e. the part of the book on which Bryke & Avatar Studios had the most input per the creators of the RPG. I would also argue that this is no typo either, as the RPG actually includes a Sun Warrior among the example player characters, see p. 166-169 (the character has no background, but the art design is 100% Sun Warrior). It would be pretty weird to give a Sun Warrior as recommended player figure unless they were not completely isolated during at least some of the covered eras.
I would also like to note that the book does not try to suggest that the Sun Warriors were part of the "regular" Fire Nation by Roku's time; as far as I understand it, they were probably more like an autonomous community which limited its contacts before completely cutting them off (for example like some modern monastic orders which limit their outside contacts to a minimum, but which are still known to the public).
Btw: An entire civilization existing in hiding in the ruins of their city makes no sense anyway - after all, archeologists and tourists are confirmed to exist in this world, yet we are supposed to believe the Sun Warriors are still hidden during Korra's time? I would say that this is one of those cases where we have to suspend our disbelief either way and just try to get it to work as good as possible. DyingFlameTsui (wallcontribs) 00:49, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
What drew my attention was the "this is what people were taught" rationalization, which I believe was added to account for Zuko's claim the Sun Warriors went extinct thousands of years ago instead of during Roku's lifetime. This isn't quite Suki Alone in terms of ignoring canon, but changing when they were believed to become extinct potentially requires some fine-combing to make it everything tracks in Fire Nation history, specially since we already had to do it before, and having that settled, making sure all relevant articles are update. Omnibender - Talk - Contributions 01:06, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
That is sadly true. As of now, the sources would support this:
- The Sun Warriors were the first ones to learn firebending from the dragons after humans left the lion turtle cities. They were gifted the Eternal Flame by the dragons, and kept it for "thousands" of years. While based on the old sources, this is also confirmed by the new RPG (also p. 25).
- Per Zuko's statements in the show, the Sun Warriors were probably quite influential in Fire Islands at some point, probably before the Fire Nation's unification. This influence seems to have been reduced by the first Fire Lord's time, as none of the factions mentioned/shown in the unification wars appeared to be directly linked to the Sun Warriors.
- At some point, the Fire Nation was united under the first Fire Lord, probably with support by the Bhanti tribe. We have no idea how the Sun Warriors featured into this foundation period, but as of now, it seems likely that they acted like the Bhanti - they influenced stuff, but never became a formal part of the Fire Nation. In fact, most people in the Fire Nation believed that they were already extinct (possibly just as most Fire Nation citizens believed the Bhanti to be a myth even when interacting with Bhantis - for example, Hei-Ran thought that Nyahitha was lying about being a Bhanti).
- Regardless of their exact status, the Sun Warriors were independent enough from the Fire Nation and the remaining world to cut off contact during Roku's lifetime.
That's all, I would say. DyingFlameTsui (wallcontribs) 01:40, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
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