High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender and its live-action film adaptation, The Last Airbender, feature an extensive cast of characters created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino. Taking place in a fictional universe composed of four sovereign nations, the series deals with a war started by the belligerent Fire Nation as an attempt to conquer the world. The Avatar, a being who represents the spirit of the Earth itself and alone holds the power to counter the Fire Nation aggression, has been mysteriously missing for the past 100 years, plunging the world into a century of war. The first phase of war ended with a genocide of the Air Nomads, near extinction of the Water Tribes, and extensive colonization of the Earth Kingdom, thus setting up the world in which the characters of the series live.