occupation

raiah works as a freelance fishery regulator. what exactly that means is explained in the next section:

what is a fishery regulator and why does it need to exist?

fish has traditionally been a central part of the eorzean people's diet. therefore, the procurement of fish has been made into a vocation, independent at first, but as time progressed, conglomerated into larger and larger enterprises, to the point at which fishing could be considered an industry of its own. the collective term for industrial fishing is called fishery.

the places with the largest fishery industries in eorzea are: limsa lominsa, ul'dah, (imagine a huge drop in the graph here) ishgard, gridania, and ala mhigo. ul'dah's fisheries are almost completely unregulated, whereas limsa with admiral merlwyb's regime has started to enforce stricter rules regarding the conservation of natural marine habitats (in no small part due to raiah's doing)

however, it hasn't always been this way. in limsa specifically, pirates once controlled almost all fishing activities. while the pirates have/had some form of behavioral code, this didn't extend to respecting the environment, and multiple overfishing induced food shortages would end up inevitably happening. after merlwyb outlawed piracy, the balance shifted much more towards the individual fishers, and towards the fisher's guild as a whole. although larger orders of seafood are still handled by ex-pirate crews due to their sheer advantage in manpower, illegal fishing and overfishing hasn't died out simply by de-monopolizing the seafood supply from the pirates.

what does she do as a fishery regulator?

"fishery regulator" is really just an approximate job title, since i don't really think there's a real-world equivalent to what she does. her job is essentially any of the following:

1. she gets hired (by people, organizations, or governments) to deal with a source of disturbance to the natural environment of fish. this is usually the simplest type of job because it just involves either convincing or getting rid of someone
2. she gets hired to plan out sustainable and respectful fishery practices, this can take weeks to years to fully implement
3. she gets hired to prospect a new fishing site (be it a fishing hole or a site that hasn't yet been used for fishery purposes) to essentially figure out stuff like the fish populations, their habitats, and other info that could be helpful for fishing. usually coupled with #2 since most times she gets commissioned to do this is when some government wants to establish new fishery business somewhere. the only real exception is commissions for this from the fishers guild, to prospect a fishing hole for recreational fishing

fun facts

• raiah worked a lot with the lominsan authorities on securing a steady fish supply immediately after the calamity without overfishing, which would cause a famine and countless deaths
• she is widely known, even beyond vylbrand, to be quite ruthless and to go to extreme lengths in order to finish her jobs. rumors have it that she once massacred the crew of an entire ship that was refusing to stop fishing in an area specifically deemed as having a habitat that was recovering from overfishing. pirates especially oftentimes do not listen to rules, so it's easy to see where this comes from. however, if you don't cross her in terms of fishing, you probably have nothing to fear 😇
• she's fairly well travelled as well. in the aftermath of the failed revolt in doma, she secretly travelled there upon one of carvallain's ships and taught fishers in yanxia techniques to conserve fish and stash it in places where the garleans wouldn't find it (a technique she learned from her childhood in the peaks)
• she actively refuses to accept permanent employment by any single city-state or other organization (funnily enough, the scions have never tried to recruit her - probably because they know this). one of her political beliefs, especially in the aftermath of stormblood, is that shackling a newly liberated nation to the economic system of the nations who helped liberate it (this is best illustrated with ala mhigo during the events of patch 4.1). this leads to her distrust of the grand companies and city-states of eorzea, as well as towards the scions for enabling this

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