avatar fact file

Grace augustine

Dr. Grace Augustine was a xenobotanist in charge of the . She was a legend to the scientific personnel as the author of a comprehensive book on plants. She helped on the Avatar Program until she died due to a gunshot wound inflicted by .

Arriving on Pandora several years before Jake Sully, Dr. Augustine was reluctant to accept him on her team due to his lack of training and qualifications for the program, but had no choice. When Jake was lost in the forest, she presumed his avatar dead but later found out that his avatar had been taken in by the. Due to Jake's presence, in successive months relations with the clan improved and Grace was allowed back into the village, until the was . Grace, Jake, and escaped in an effort to help the Omaticaya, but not before Quaritch fatally wounded Grace while firing at the that they were escaping in. Jake brought her form to and at the , in the hope that they could into her form, but she was rendered too weak by her wounds and the transfer failed. Before she died at the foot of the Tree of Souls, she told Jake that she was with .

Arrival on Pandora

Grace arrived on Pandora in , 15 years before Jake and Norm. She explored the plants of Pandora, and literally wrote the book on the unique botany that she discovered. She was considered a living legend in the Terran scientific community. Grace also created a to teach the English and human culture, until it was shut down after a massacre by the where many children were killed, one of them being the clan leaders' daughter, . She continued to keep pictures of her students, one of them being Neytiri, on a cabinet fridge door in a camp stationed in the .

Arrival of the new avatar drivers

Several years later, in, the deployed shuttles to Pandora, carrying soldiers, technicians and new additions to the avatar team. Among these were Norm Spellman (anthropologist) and Jake Sully (stand-in for his twin brother, , who was killed by a mugger on ).

Grace was sharp with the newcomers, particularly so with Jake, whom she saw as incompetent and an attempt by the military to hijack her program. She made it clear that she was displeased and that she considered Jake's brother, Tom Sully, to have had skills far more valuable than those Jake had. Bringing Jake up-to-speed required a tremendous amount of effort on her part and that of , the technical support officer.

Grace also made her feelings about RDA administrator, , abundantly clear for the benefit of her team. She not only disagreed with Selfridge's principles and agenda, but also his impatience and methods regarding negotiation or pacification of the native Na'vi.

Grace and Jake's first avatar encounter took place in the outdoor recreation area, shortly after Jake took control of his avatar for the first time.

First Expedition with the avatar team

Grace took Norm and Jake out on a routine expedition to gather samples of Pandoran plant life. She expressed anxieties about Jake's twitchy and overzealous soldier mentality. It was whilst testing Norm's research and sampling abilities that Jake slipped away to examine the area further, which led to a freak encounter with a group of followed by a prowling. In the ensuing chaos, the thanator pursued Jake's avatar while Grace and Norm managed to escape back to their Samson. Jake was separated from the team when he jumped off a waterfall to escape the thanator. The team - by Grace's insistence - remained for as long as possible attempting a search and rescue. Although bitterly determined, Grace and the others had to call off the search and leave him behind due to Quaritch's order that there would be no night-time flights, which forced them to abandon their search until morning. Grace was convinced that Jake's avatar wouldn't survive the night.

The three months and the Destruction of Hometree

When Jake woke up, much to the relief of the avatar team, Grace was astonished when Jake told her that he managed to infiltrate the Omaticaya clan, and that Neytiri would be personally mentoring him. From then on, her disposition towards Jake improved steadily, offering advice to him, and showing acts of kindness (being concerned over his eating habits and helping to move him into his bunk when he falls asleep while creating a new video log). She acted almost like a mother to him during the team's time at Site 26.