Name: Eyan Mah (EH-yan MAH)

Age: 29 (at the start of Goda’s Slave)

Ethnicity: Middlelander

Native Tongue: Middlelander (Southern Dialect)

First Appearance

Eyan Mah first appears at the end of Chapter 37 of Goda’s Slave, but is first mentioned in passing by Jaya Hadd in Chapter 9. She is the uniformed engineer who forces Goda into submission and replaces her cuff, though Kanna does not learn her full name until later.

She is the Head Engineer in Charge of Infrastructure at Suda, as well as the former director of the Chainless Cuffing Program (a job she was forced to give up). She is also the co-inventor of Goda’s special master-slave cuff, co-inventor of several other “corrective” and communications technologies, and co-inventor of the batteries used in regular slave cuffs (but not in master-slave fusion cuffs such as Goda’s).

She is considered a prodigy and a genius by other Middlelanders, but her abrasive personality has limited her professional advancement to highly technical roles.

Bio

Eyan Mah was born in the Southern Middleland to a fertile woman (her higher mother) and a robust woman (her lesser mother). Though Eyan was birthed by her higher mother, her lesser mother did much of her raising and offered the most guidance, since Eyan had unambiguously robust traits as a child (much like Goda Brahm; they are both on the extreme side of the spectrum). Eyan Mah has a fraternal twin brother whom she is fiercely protective of.

Eyan’s lesser mother was a mechanic in the military. Her higher mother (who gave birth to her and her brother) was a soldier who worked in accounting at first, then moved onto “abstract engineering,” a role that deals with pure mathematical calculations and is shrouded in secrets. (Those performing the calculations are never told what it’s all for. Eyan’s mother never ranked high enough to know anything about the projects she worked on and so she could never answer Eyan’s questions about it. This instilled a lifelong curiosity in Eyan about the government’s engineering projects.)

A socially awkward young woman with a lanky frame, Eyan’s early childhood was marked by much bullying, which her mothers ignored. Her lesser mother especially frowned upon her displaying overt emotion, which she thought of as weak, and she encouraged Eyan to address personal issues on her own. As the child quickly grew in size, though, she was able to become pushier, and so the bullying diminished…and Eyan became a bully herself.

Eyan Mah is only four years older than Goda Brahm. It was during childhood when she first met Goda and spent an overlapping year at the same technical school with her (which Middlelanders attend between the ages of around 10 to 14). They did not get along, as Eyan picked fights with the passive and quiet (but larger) Goda, in part because Goda took a liking to Eyan’s brother. Eyan is distantly related to Goda (a sixth cousin) and their families were vaguely acquainted.

Largely because of her family’s background, Eyan was expected to join the military by her mothers and enlisted for her first year-long contract at the age of 14, after finishing her schooling. She was given a position in crowd control initially, and because of her size and forceful nature, she found early success in this. However, due to her anger issues—which eventually resulted in her getting into several fights with civilians—she was bounced around from position to position for about a year, until there was an opening in the cuffing room of the tower (built at the time for the fledgling Chainless Cuffing Program). Since her rampaging could be contained to just one room–and her anger could be directed towards slaves who had committed violent crimes–she was placed there as a guard by the time she was 16.

Though originally placed in the cuffing room just to help restrain slaves, Eyan took an interest in the technology used to cuff the prisoners, and the head engineer at the time noticed Eyan’s natural aptitude for troubleshooting and problem-solving. She was quickly taken on as an apprentice, a role she took very seriously and maintained for five years before being promoted to a regular engineering position. She eventually took over her master’s role.

About four years into her apprenticeship (at age 20), Eyan found herself face-to-face with Goda again. In their time apart, Eyan had advanced quite far in her career and was on track to become a highly-respected engineer, while Goda had become a hated criminal.

At first, Eyan was happy to restrain her old rival, but the practice took its toll on her emotionally. She did not want to fight Goda, and over time came to blame the situation on Goda herself, seeing her as an obstacle to advancement in her career, an annoyance that made her job more frustrating. This culminated in a serious injury after Goda struck Eyan in the head during one of their struggles, which continued to affect Eyan years later.

Relationships

By the time of the events of Goda’s Slave, Eyan Mah is married and has a toddler-aged daughter (birthed by her wife). At first excited to become a mother when her daughter was first born, Eyan’s tunnel vision and obsession with her work made this new responsibility stressful.

She was also unable to help feed the baby. Sharing feeding duties through induced lactation is common in the Middleland among fertile women (who can consume immature yaw root for this purpose), but robust women often have a difficult time inducing lactation artificially through traditional methods. This made Eyan feel like a failure and she developed intense imposter syndrome associated with being a parent. Like most of her feelings of inadequacy, she suppressed it and took her frustration out on coworkers, which made her increasingly unpopular.

Out of all her coworkers, Eyan gets along best with Lila Hadd, who tends to ignore her outbursts and whose presence Eyan finds soothing (though she would never admit this). Lila maintains a casual friendship with Eyan’s wife as well, but after several years of sharing late nights at the tower (both Eyan and Lila tend to overwork for their own respective reasons), they developed an ambiguous emotional connection.

As a result, Eyan is terrified of Lila.

As is typical for Middlelanders, she deals with her feelings for Lila by projecting a cold and detached air with her in public, and oscillates between ignoring Lila for weeks at a time and visiting her house regularly during the nightly waking hour. In spite of having slept in Lila’s bed multiple times (and being attracted to her), their relationship is still awkwardly platonic by the time of Goda’s Slave.

Eyan is vaguely aware of Lila’s acquaintance with Goda Brahm, and knows that Lila’s wife Jaya is related to Goda, but does not realize the extent of Lila and Goda’s friendship.

Over the years, and in spite of the resentment she carries from her injury, Eyan has developed something of a mutual sense of respect with Goda. As she slowly healed (partly due to Lila’s presence), her feelings became less personal in private. This is partly because she has certain traits in common with Goda (such as their robustness and their sheer tenacity) and because Eyan, like most bureaucrats in the tower, does not actually believe that Goda is guilty.