Browse wiki

Daughter to the captain of the Kennex corsairs, Naomi idolized her father. He was a hero to her, and she wanted to follow in his footsteps. This was before women were allowed to fight, but her father was captain, so Naomi dressed as a boy and called herself Nathan, and everyone looked the other way. Eager to prove herself, Naomi worked ten times harder than everyone else (which wasn't really all that hard, as the corsairs were an undisciplined bunch at the time). She had to fight every day to prove to everyone that she deserved to be where she was, but she earned the grudging respect of her peers. Her father's death sent her into a freefall. He died in the chaos that followed Denholm's death, slain by Jakric Hullman while trying to protect Renatta Kennex. Naomi was so devastated that even though she knew Ford had violated guest right to extract retribution, she didn't care; in her mind, his revenge was justice served. Then she learned that Hullman wasn't among the dead, and that knowledge created a festering wound that wouldn't heal. She stayed in the corsairs as Nathan until the ban on women in the military was lifted. Out of respect for her father, Ford was ready to make her captain of the corsairs... until his cousin Jan came home with a small army of battle-hardened sellswords and demanded the position for herself. Still, there were moments. She was responsible for Evander Kennex's escape from a mob of former thralls in the dangerous days after the liberation, and saw combat in Setarco, where she faced monsters beyond her worst nightmares. She might never be the hero that her father was, but she was starting to feel like she was becoming someone he would have been proud of. Then Ford died. Naomi was part of his security detail on the day that the Undrowned Sons ambushed him. She fought with everything she had, but it wasn't enough, just like it had never been enough, and she had never been good enough. She was swarmed under while trying to fight her way to the Marquis, and lay bleeding in the mud. There, on the edge of death, she used the last bit of fight left in her to roll into a ditch, there to hide from the men who moved through the ranks of the fallen, slitting their throats. Naomi lived, but she lived because of what she felt was an unforgivable act of cowardice, and endured a long, painful convalescence under the cloud of her own failure. Now, mostly recovered in body (if not in mind), Naomi has been pulled back to her duties with the Kennex corsairs by Jan, who has tapped her to command the Kennex Kay's house guards.

The kind of woman who can part crowds like the sharpest of keels, she's tall and imposing. The mohawk of dark hair certainly doesn't help soften the image either. Almost always seen with a permanently affixed scowl, though she's known to have a brilliant smile when in comfortable company. Athletically built and proud of her physique, as she worked very hard on it, she's not without curves. Though if you take notice of them, she'd probably punch your nose through the back of your head.

Gruff and swaggering, always ready with a sarcastic joke or for another drink, Naomi is, on the surface, one of the guys. She was her best self in the days when she was calling herself Nathan, and she's more comfortable in that masculine role now, compensating for her sex by being more of a man than most of the men around her. Like most from the Isles, she hides her sense of failure and her insecurities behind thick armor, and has a hard time letting people in. Those insecurities are slowly devouring her from within; she thinks she has a lot to prove, and might go as far as to take suicidal risks just for a chance to redeem herself... even if she dies doing it.