Samnang

Samnang is a popular industrialist and businessman, and the founder of Dyo Motors, a fast-growing company that develops mecha. Despite his company's exploitative practices, he received extensive positive publicity and was generally regarded as a very principled businessman.Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game. Republic City, Version 1.0, 2023, p. 24.Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game. Republic City, Version 1.0, 2023, p. 27.
== History ==
Samnang is the son of rich landlords who made their fortune by exploiting tenant farmers, before selling their land to a growing Republic City for a handsome payout. Samnang founded Dyo Motors using his inheritance, a mecha construction company pioneering new means of motor control and movement. The company focused on civilian applications of the mecha concept, such as mobility aids and prosthetics, as well as construction equipment and transport vehicles made for the sort of rough terrain that precluded Satomobiles. However, Dyo Motors exploited and mistreated its workers, which Samnang concealed through coercive contracts, armies of lawyers, and through intimidation.
During his rise to prominence, he obscured his wealthy upbringing, claiming that he pulled himself up by his bootstraps. He started to have frequent newspaper op-eds and radio interviews, where he explained that he was not like other rich industrialists, but was instead a man of the people, creating technology to help rather than harm and treating his workers with dignity and respect. He started to sell designs to the police and the military, believing that this was where the real money was. While it became known to the public that he was beginning to sell designs to them, he justified this as something to naturally be expected after General Kuvira's invasion and Tokuga's insurrection. The positive press coverage around Samnang soon established him as the most principled businessman in Republic City to many of its citizens, as well as the most eligible bachelor in town.
Samnang soon became interested in exploring spirit vine energy, despite a general ban on research having been placed by President Zhu Li Moon.Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game. Republic City, Version 1.0, 2023, p. 14.Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game. Republic City, Version 1.0, 2023, p. 25. He proposed including a new spirit vine energy exhibit sponsored by his company at the Four Nations Fair downtown. Avatar Korra and her allies were immediately against any such demonstration, and Samnang gave in, but started looking for a way to slip spirit vine energy into the exhibition to help his company earn the right to legally continue the research. He saw the Spirit Wilds as an opportunity for capitalizing on the energy, and thought he could even scavenge pieces of the Mecha Giant scattered in the Wilds.Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game. Republic City, Version 1.0, 2023, p. 44.
One day, during a big presentation at the Four Nations Hall, Samnang and Dyo Motors revealed that they had been working on a portable, safe spirit vine battery, usable in mecha and in automobiles. He explained that he could not definitively prove the efficacy of the battery without a "special" section of spirit vine, but that all the company's mathematics and research indicated that it should work. In actuality, Samnang knew that the battery would not work, but was simply trying to be provocative and create public support for spirit vine energy by promising how incredibly and wonderfully it would improve life in the city. It was all the better for him if Dyo Motors could look like the leading researcher in the field. However, the other corporations did not know he was bluffing, and neither did the corporate spies and saboteurs. A team of ex-triad operatives led by Fukyo of the Agni Kai Triad planned to steal the battery from the company display. Samnang would not be upset if such a theft went ahead, thinking that it would "prove" that it was worth stealing, although he ignored the potential consequences of the company's shares tanking if the battery ended up being exposed as useless.
Around the same time, mercenaries hired by Samnang began to close in on Ceba, an intern at Fire Lord Zuko Library who had an eidetic memory and could recall certain texts that had been lost in Kuvira's attack. There were plans to abduct her and make a significant profit on the knowledge she could recall, hoping to either ransom the texts to Republic City University or sell them to interested relic collectors.Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game. Republic City, Version 1.0, 2023, p. 43.
== Personality ==
Samnang is an extremely charismatic person. He is easily able to wow people with gifts, flattery, and promises of a better work environment, and has extensively used mass media to build his public image.
== Appearances ==
=== Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game ===
* Republic City
== References ==
Category:A to Z
Category:Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game characters
Category:Characters
Category:Merchants and businesspeople
Category:Minor characters (Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game)
Category:United Republic characters