Nomi Sunrider, born Nomi Da-Boda, is a human woman who becomes a Jedi Master and eventually Grand Master of the Order in the era of the Old Sith Wars. She was designed by artist Janine Johnston, whom Tom Veitch specifically wanted because he wanted a woman to create the character, and she first appears in Tales of the Jedi 3 in 1993.
The Stenness ambush
Her introduction is brutal and efficient. She is travelling with her husband Andur, who is training as a Jedi, and their infant daughter Vima, carrying a shipment of Adegan crystals. Thugs working for Bogga the Hutt kill Andur in front of her. She picks up his lightsaber, and the whole rest of her life follows from the fact that she did not want to.
Thon
She completes the delivery to the Tchuukthai Master Thon on Ambria and stays as his apprentice. Her reluctance is the point: she dislikes the weapon, she is not a natural fighter, and what she turns out to be extraordinary at is battle meditation — the ability to raise an entire allied fleet's morale and collapse the enemy's. In a comic full of duellists, the most powerful person is a woman who would rather not draw.
Against Ulic
Sunrider is the moral centre of the Great Sith War and the one person who tells Ulic Qel-Droma the truth about his plan before he executes it, and again while he is executing it. When he is finally beaten it is she who severs him from the Force rather than kill him — a judgement she passes on somebody she loved, in front of everyone.
Grand Master
She presides over the Conclave at Exis Station and leads the Order through the rebuilding. Later fiction traced her line forward: Vima Da-Boda, the broken old Jedi Leia Organa meets in Dark Empire, is described as her descendant — which is how a 1993 comic character ended up load-bearing for the 1990s novel line.
The Bastila connection
There is a good piece of trivia here. The character who became Bastila Shan in BioWare's Knights of the Old Republic was originally going to be Vima Sunrider, precisely because of the battle-meditation inheritance; the name was changed, reportedly over trademark concerns, and Bastila kept the power.
Why she matters
Because in 1993 the Expanded Universe's women were mostly Leia, Mara Jade and a short list of pilots, and Veitch and Johnston built a lead who is a widow, a mother, a reluctant soldier and eventually the head of the Order, in a comic aimed squarely at readers who had come for lightsabers. She holds up.
