Sunrider, Nomi

Sometimes, it isn't the Jedi who chooses the way of the Jedi and to follow the Force, it is the other way around...

(Taken from The Star Wars encyclopedia, based on Tales of the Jedi by Dark Horse comics)

The unprepossessing wife of a Jedi 4,000 years before the Galactic Civil War, she became one of the great Jedi Knights of her time, though the path was not of her choosing. It seemed as if circumstances conspired to make her a powerful Jedi. Nomi Sunrider, with rusty brown hair and blue-green eyes, was the wife of Andur and mother of newborn Vima when her adventure began. She was accompanying her husband on a mission to take some Adegan crystals, used to construct lightsabers, to Jedi Master Thon in the Ambria system when Andur was cut down by several henchmen of Great Bogga the Hutt. Urged on by his spirit, she picked up his light-saber and slew two of the thugs before continuing with his mission.

On the planet Ambria, Thon convinced her to stay and train to be a Jedi herself. Once, she saved her daughter from an attack by a dark-side monster by creating a vision of the beasts attacking one another through the use of Jedi battle meditation, and later used the technique to defeat a band of pirates on a mission from Bogga. Her training took her to the planet Ossus, where she apprenticed with Master Vodo-Siosk Baas and learned to make her own lightsaber. She was then drafted to join a Jedi team to battle Dark Siders who were taking over the planet Onderon and to rescue Master Arca Jeth and his students. She devel oped strong feelings for her team member Ulic Qel-Droma. Nomi stayed to train with Arca in the Force mind technique known as Jedi battle meditation, gaining in both physical strength and self-confidence.

Arca assigned Nomi and QelDroma to lead a joint peacekeeping force of the Galactic Republic and the Jedi Knights to defeat the challenge of the dark-side Krath cult and the dark magicians of the Sith. After a pitched battle, Qel-Droma told Nomi that he would infiltrate the Krath and learn their dark-side ways, even though Nomi urged him against such action. Her warning was prescient. She and two other Jedi later tried to extract Qel-Droma from virtual imprisonment in the Empress Teta system, but he had been injected with Sith poison that led to an explosion of anger and his loss to the dark side. With resignation, Nomi knew that she had to leave him to his dark fate.