BayanReport
English：Bayan · Characters
Advisor to Esata, queen of the Shek Kingdom: a Shek whose Toughness is too low for him to plausibly be alive — and yet the only person in the nation whose job is talking, and the player's sole channel for an alliance with the Shek.
Bayan is an advisor to Esata, queen of the Shek Kingdom, and is normally stationed at the Faction HQ in Admag — unless a world state has moved the Shek headquarters elsewhere.
The Stone Golem saves her energies for the art of combat. Not the art of gum flapping, as my lady describes it. And that's why I'm here. What do you want, outsider? And make it quick, I'm a busy man.
A Shek whose survival is itself an anomaly
In a society that seats people by Toughness, Bayan's stat block reads like an argument that he should not exist: Toughness of just -2.4–4.8, Dodge at essentially zero, and a personality flagged as Fearful. Yet his Strength is 62.7–69.3, his Melee Attack 68.4–75.6, and his six weapon skills and Martial Arts all sit at 57–63 — he is not weak, he simply cannot take a hit.
He also carries no weapon. He fights every battle with his fists.
One widely accepted reading holds that it was Bayan who talked Esata into making peace with the United Cities, so that the slowly bleeding Shek population might have a chance to recover. The game never spells this out, but the kingdom's whole pragmatic turn overlaps closely with his presence.
Why the player has to see him
Bayan is the Shek Kingdom's diplomatic interface. Allying with the Shek means talking to him, and the conditions are strict:
- The player must be an enemy of the Holy Nation, or must already have brought down the Bugmaster or Holy Lord Phoenix.
- If relations with the Shek Kingdom are already above 50, he will simply declare that you earned their camaraderie long ago.
- But you cannot simultaneously be at 50 or more with any of the following: the Holy Nation, Slave Traders, the Traders Guild, the United Cities.
He doubles as the bounty desk. Targets that can be hauled to him for money and relations include the Bugmaster, Holy Lord Phoenix, High Inquisitor Seta and High Inquisitor Valtena. Seta, for example, is worth 40,000 Cats when handed to Bayan, plus +70 relations with the Shek Kingdom and -75 with the Holy Nation. Besides Admag, he may also turn up in Stack or Bad Teeth to take deliveries.
The price of touching him
Bayan has exactly one world state: being killed or kidnapped by the player.
Once it fires, Esata leads the punitive force in person — several of The Five Invincibles in tow, plus a large body of Hundred Guardians. It is one of the very few top-tier reprisals in the game set off by an "advisor".
A whole row of events is locked out as a knock-on effect: Tribute Round, Return For Blood, Return for Tribute and Shek Challengers all stop firing; at the same time, so long as the player is not a Shek ally, Stone Golem's Revenge becomes available.
Trivia
Natalie, Kenshi's lead writer, once wrote a short story about Bayan. The piece is not canon, but it circulates widely in the player community and is often used to read the "sword and scabbard" quality of his relationship with Esata.