Shan

Shan is an elderly woman marked by the years and hardships she has endured. She wears a patch over one eye and leans on a cane, the bearing of a priestess who has weathered war and displacement while keeping watch over those who follow her.

She carries the calm authority of a revered elder and answers cruelty with gratitude rather than grudge. Though her people have every reason to hate Amestrians, she refuses to let old wounds override a debt of kindness, and her wish is simply to live out her days in peace. Her sense of honor is plain in the sorrow she feels at having been unable to protect the doctors who once helped her.

She first appears when she orders her fellow refugees to stop their disgraceful attempt to seize Edward Elric as a hostage. Asked why she would spare an Amestrian, Shan explains that during the Ishvalan civil war she had been treated by the physicians Yuriy and Sarah Rockbell, and she recounts their tragic deaths at the hands of a mysterious bandaged Ishvalan warrior, the man who would become Scar. Unable to identify the attacker, who fled quickly with his face wrapped, she and the other patients then had to flee a raid on their makeshift hospital led by Solf J. Kimblee, barely escaping alive. When Edward departs, she asks him to visit the Rockbells' graves on her behalf, to convey both her thanks and her regret at failing to defend them.