Ameiko Kaijitsu

A beautiful but somewhat irreverant woman of Tian descent who runs Sandpoint's Rusty Dragon tavern and happens to be a member of one of Sandpoint's founding families. Her parents and older siblings have met unfortunate ends over the last sevral years, leaving the young woman as the sole remaining Kaijitsu in town. Ameiko may be among the towns nobility, but she's never really cared for the aristocracy--she's always had an urge to explore and loves hearing stories of adventures and daring deeds. While she has a lot of friends and admirers in town, Amieko has never accepted anyone as anything more than a friend, although that appears to be changing since Jag and his friends returned from their defeat of Ripnugget, Tsuto, and Nualia. She's a talented singer and samisen player, and if she wanted, Ameiko could probably lead a comfortable life in Sandpoint, but she's growing increasingly bored and impatient with having a "safe life" in a "safe town." If the chance to go on a grand adventure presents itself, she'd sell the Rusty Dragon in a heartbeat to seek her fortune.

History
Ameiko was born in 4689 AR to Lonjiku and Atsuii Kaijitsu. Although she was Atsuii's of Lonjiku's first child, she was the first legitimate child from that marriage. Ameiko had a lonely childhood. Her father strictly controlled who she could keep as friends, and filled her days with lessons in music, diplomacy, magic, and academic subjects. He kept a close eye on her, nu Ameiko still managed to sneak into town to play with her friends, explore old buildinds, and visit her half-elven brother Tsuto at Sandpoint's Turnandarok Academy every chance she could.

When she was 13, Ameiko tried to reconcile the bad blood between her father and brother, but the attempt backfired. Tsuto struck her in a fit of rage, and Ameiko was so betrayed and distraught by this that she ran away from home to Magnimar for several months. When she learned of her mother's death in a fall from the cliffs near her house, Ameiko returned to Sandpoint. She found life at home more unpleasant than ever, but when another family argument broke out at her mother's funeral and Tsuto left town, Ameiko resigned herself to staying in Sandpoint to care for her father.

Ameiko left home for the second time at age 16, after life in the house alone with her father and the help grew too depressing to bear. She joined an adventuring group, and became particularly good friends with the groups priest of Shelyn, a handsome young Varisian man named Alder Vhiski. But in 4706, the group was captured by a degenerate family of backwoods cannibals living in an old mine in the southern Fogscar Mountains. The group was within a hair's breadth of being eaten, abused, and worse by the degenerates, but Alder led a heroic attempt to escape. The resulting flight from the mine was nightmarish, as members of the group were picked off one by one by the pursuing cannibals, who were led by a spry druid who favored snakes as his pets. As the group neared the exit, only Ameiko, Alder, and Alder's brother Sandru remained alive, but as they prepared to scramble into a rickety rowboat that would take them to safety, Ameiko was attacked by the druid's animal companion, a viper of prodigious size. Bitten twice, Ameiko would have died had Alder not pulled her to safety, and in doing so Alder was himself biten. Already weakened from the fight, the snake's venom killed him. The last Ameiko saw of Alder, he was being torn apart by the degenerates. With Sandru's help, the two survivors eventually made it back to Sandpoint, but they never spoke of what they had endured in that old mine. Some months later, Ameiko got a tattoo of a snake on her left arm and shoulder, a sort of memorial to Alder, then cashed in most of her earnings from her adventures and purchased an old tavern in downtown Sandpoint called the Rusty Dragon. Since then, she's run the Rusty Dragon as a place for adventurers to gather and relax.

The last few days have been hard on Ameiko, with the violent deaths of her brother and father at the hands of the goblins that attacked Sandpoint. Ownership of her father's Glassworks and Manor have passed to her, although she is currently looking for a buyer for her mansion.