Svayyah

Svayyah was a water naga who lived in the Nagaflow in the mid–14 century DR. She acted on behalf of her people and made an agreement with the Cormyrean engineer Ivar Devorast when he planned to build a canal between the Lake of Steam and the Nagaflow.

Description
Svayyah was a water naga with a head that resembled a human's and a serpentine body.

Personality
She was more comfortable in water than on land. Like many of her kind, she tended to look down upon humans and other races as inferiors.

Abilities
Like most of her kind, she was adept at casting spells and could swim.

Relationships
She had some admiration for Ivar Devorast, even though he was a human. Devorast trusted her to keep her side of the agreement that they made with the nagas and this trust was well placed, as she took her commitment to her own word very seriously. She found him very puzzling and intriguing, as she normally saw humans as being motivated by gold, but Devorast seemed to want to build his canal without any purpose other than the fact that it hadn't been done before.

History
Svayyah met Ivar Devorast in the while he was walking along the banks of the Nagaflow near the Nagaflow Keep, a fortress he had previously built for the city-state of Innarlith. When Devorast saw her head come out of the water, he immediately thought she was a human woman and asked if she needed any help or if she needed him to move his camp away from where she was bathing. Svayyah referred to him as a 'dista'sarra'. He asked what it meant and when she explained the translation, he immediately realized she was a naga. Svayyah learned from Devorast that he was the one who had built the keep, and she said that she found it beautiful and wanted to learn more about him. He agreed and decided to meet with her by the water to converse with her.

She learned from Devorast about his idea of building a canal from the Lake of Steam to the Nagaflow, which would thus connect the Sea of Fallen Stars to the oceans of Toril. The Nagaflow and the Nagawater were both bodies of water controlled by nagas and any attempt to create a shipping lane through these waters was going to need their agreement if it was going to occur peacefully. She went back to discuss the idea with her tribemates in the Nagaflow and they came to a consensus that they liked the idea, but they expected to have some profit from the enterprise themselves if the plan came to fruition. She questioned Devorast and tried to make it clear to him how difficult this enterprise was going to be. She greatly surprised Devorast with the amount of knowledge she had of the rest of Faerûn and she anticipated that a number of factions might oppose him, including Thay, the sahuagin and aboleths of the Inner Sea, the druids of Turmish, and the Zhentarim.

Later, once Devorast received a commission from the Ransar of Innarlith to go and build the canal, she and most of her tribemates kept their side of the agreement faithfully. Devorast reported that he had conversed with the nagas to the authorities in Innarlith as well, who didn't entirely trust the nagas. One of Svayyah's tribemates went behind the backs of the others to attack the canal site because he disagreed with the decision of the rest of the tribe. He appeared to show detest to Svayyah when Devorast mentioned her name to him. Devorast and others fought off the naga and then went to summon Svayyah to understand what happened. When Svayyah learned from Devorast what her tribemate had done, she summoned a council underwater among the water nagas with Ivar Devorast suspended in a magical air bubble to pass judgment. Svayyah was enraged by what her tribemate had done by violating their agreement and with the consent of the other nagas, she killed her tribemate and sent Devorast back to his canal project.

As Svayyah predicted, various factions did try to disrupt the project to build the canal. Some of these factions attempted to frame the water nagas of the Nagaflow for their own attacks on the project. Nyla, a Zhentarim agent in Innarlith, hired a banelar naga to attack the canal site. Devorast summoned Svayyah again, who personally teleported herself to the canal site to see for herself and she proceeded to defend Devorast from the banelar and killed him herself. Svayyah explained to Devorast that it was a banelar and not from their tribe and urged him to try to take more care in defending himself against those who might attack.

In another incident, Insithryllax, a black dragon who worked as an ally of the Red Wizard Marek Rymüt killed one of the water nagas by diving from a high altitude onto the creature as they were swimming in the Nagaflow. The dragon, along with some of his black firedrake children, then went to ambush the ambassador of Arrabar, which was a city that would have been on the northern end of the canal route in the Vilhon Reach, as he was traveling on the road to Innarlith, killing the ambassador and all witnesses, but purposely without using his acid breath weapon. He then dumped the body of the dead naga at the site in an attempt to give the impression that Svayyah's tribe was responsible for the attack.

Marek Rymüt later attempted to use a Maurezhi summoned from the abyss to assassinate Ransar Pristoleph after the latter had reinstated Devorast as chief builder for the canal. Marek got the Maurezhi to disguise himself as Svayyah while making the assassination attempt. Pristoleph's bodyguards fought off the Maurezhi and wounded it during the failed assassination attempt by cutting off its polymorphed ear. Pristoleph then went to the canal site to demand answers from Devorast about what happened to his agreement with the nagas. Svayyah then appeared and told Pristoleph that she had nothing to do with the attempt on his life and revealed that both of her ears were still intact, which led Pristoleph to doubt that it was really her behind the attack.

Appearances

 * Whisper of Waves
 * Lies of Light