Ran Ai Yu

Ran Ai Yu was a Shou merchant who traveled from Tsingdao in Shou Lung by sea. During her voyages, she arrived several times in Innarlith on the Lake of Steam to do business in the mid–14 century DR.

Description
Ran Ai Yu spoke Common but not very well and struggled with it. She distrusted magical means of travel and preferred to sail long distances, even if the possibility of magical portals was offered to her.

Possessions
She possessed a finely crafted non-magical longsword as a family heirloom.

Relationships
Ivar Devorast was an engineer whom Ran Ai Yu respected and found to be very unique.

Lau Cheung Fen was an important official from Ran Ai Yu's province who accompanied her on her trip to Faerûn in 1365 DR.

History
Ran Ai Yu arrived in Innarlith in 1362 DR, after her ship sunk in the Lake of Steam, causing her and her crew to be stranded in Innarlith. She approached Ivar Devorast to hire him to build her a new ship, and he agreed. He built a unique ship that had never before been made, which used cut stone and ceramic tiles on its hull, the Jié Zuò.

While Devorast was building the ship, Ran Ai Yu was contacted by the clandestine Red Wizard Marek Rymüt, who offered to transport her and her crew back to Shou Lung via magic. She declined his offer, which enraged him and caused him to issue her a veiled threat about what might happen if she rejected his help.

Three days after this meeting, the ship that was under construction was attacked by giant demonic fish, which Marek had transported to Innarlith harbor from his pocket dimension, the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen. Ran Ai Yu, Ivar, and a dwarf named Hrothgar fought and killed the giant fish.

Several months later, the ship was completed, and she departed from Innarlith.

Years after this, in 1365 DR, Ran Ai Yu returned to Innarlith again. Shortly after arriving, she got into a fight with some dockworkers in the first quarter over a dispute related to payment while she was docking her ship. While she was fighting them, Devorast arrived and knocked out the last of them with punches. She introduced Devorast to her compatriot Lau Cheung Fen.

Ran Ai Yu learned that Devorast had begun construction of a canal that would link the Lake of Steam to the Sea of Fallen Stars. She gave her support in favor of the project as a representative of the Shou merchant fleet and spoke in its favor both to Ransar Osorkon and to the senators of Innarlith. She successfully persuaded Devorast, who had little social skills, to make the effort at joining parties held by the elite in Innarlith in order to get noble support for this project.

In 1367 DR, Ran Ai Yu was in Innarlith again and spoke in favour of Ivar Devorast to the Senate of Innarlith, when they were holding a hearing questioning whether he should continue as the master builder of the canal.

She brought Devorast to visit the Grand Canal of the Second Emperor in Shou Lung in 1369 DR aboard her ship and believed it would help teach him something to see it.

Ran Ai Yu returned to Innarlith one more time in 1374 DR during the time when Ransar Pristoleph was in an openly violent struggle for control of the city with a faction of senators under the influence of the Red Wizard Marek Rymüt. Lau Cheung Fen accompanied her. The two of them supported Pristoleph in the conflict. After Pristoleph's faction became victorious, he ordered the canal to be completed under Devorast's leadership and Ran Ai Yu was appointed as his new seneschal. She thus came to permanently reside in Innarlith.

Appearances

 * Whisper of Waves
 * Lies of Light
 * Scream of Stone