Banh Do Trang was a Nyueng Bao merchant who became a longtime affiliate of the Black Company. He was a trader, moving and selling "everything from rice to crocodile skins" between the city of Taglios and the Nyueng Bao's home in the swampy delta where the great river meets the ocean. His family handled all trade with the world outside the Nyueng Bao's home, exposing him to far more foreign influences than most other members of his race. By the time of Water Sleeps, the wheelchair-bound elder was the owner of the Company's secret base of operations and had become the group's unofficial patriarch.
Bleak Seasons[]
Banh Do Trang delivered a very cryptic message to Murgen in Bleak Seasons, but Murgen, completely fed up with Nyueng Bao "goof-ball sybilline pronouncements", had him summarily removed from his presence. It turned out to be a code from Ky Sahra who was attempting to reunite with Murgen, her husband.
She Is the Darkness[]
In She Is the Darkness, Banh Do Trang dutifully took Murgen's private letter from the Company messenger Sleepy to Sahra after she had been kidnapped from him by her own family. Trang took on the disguise of a wandering Gunni mendicant to hand-deliver the letter to Sahra at the Vinh Gao Ghang Temple of Ghanghesha. Secretly, at night, he had to read and translate the letter for her because it was written in the Taglian language. The old man was moved by Sahra's plight because he had also loved a foreigner, a Gunni woman, in his youth. He had struggled against the same racial fear of outsiders which characterized most other Nyueng Bao. And, unlike seemingly all other Nyueng Bao, he respected the prophesy of Hong Tray, Sahra's grandmother, who foresaw and approved her union with Murgen. Trang's reading of the letter to Sahra was witnessed by Murgen in his ghost-walking form. The old man even realized that the Company mighthave been spying on him, given the content of the letter. Murgen spooked away a temple priest who almost barged in on them.
Water Sleeps[]
After the Company lost the Kiaulune wars, Do Trang donated his warehouse in Taglios, which become their headquarters after the Company was forced to transform into an underground movement. It was the setting for many of the early events of Water Sleeps. Confined to a wheelchair, he fell ill and Sleepy wept for the first time in her adult life when she realized he would die. The day Banh Do Trang died, Sleepy departed Taglios with the first wave of Company members and allies, headed south, toward the Shadowgate.