Nami

Nami Kontona

Nami is an X-Factor among the Nine. She often sits back from cosmic events and just watches quietly until surprising everyone with a spontaneous act intended to foment major change to the status quo.   Nami's primary followers are often called the "Rovers on the Wind" or more commonly referred to by their short-form Rovers.   The Rovers are relatively few in number compared to the other major priesthoods, and they are unsurprisingly very decentralized. They are able to cover a wide area dipropionate to they are often consummate travelers. Rovers are going to rove. Nami's priests and priestesses have few full holy warriors among them but life on the road means most of them can look after themselves reasonably well.  

Accomplishments and Failures

  Of all the Nine, Nami is probably the most content. Nami is better than most of her siblings at her accomplishing her goals because her goals are fairly simple. Her heart's desire is for Scarterra to be interesting and avoid stagnation and this more or less happens on itself without Nami needing to interfere much, not counting her creating Free Will which set mortal affairs as we know it into notions and eventually prompted the rest of to bestow mortals with their own Gifts.   Nami can flit around the rest of the Nine and help or hinder them as she sees fit and her siblings cannot really regulate her behavior which is exactly how Nami likes it.   One might consider Nami's small and politically weak priesthood a failure, but since Nami doesn't particularly need or want her followers to meddle in politics, this is not a big deal. Nami's biggest failure is still political in a way.  
by me with Midjourney
Nami's command to her followers to live their own truth by their own rules backfires often. Nami's core followers are especially prone to bitter infighting, and Nami does not need or want this, unlike Maylar who practically commands his followers to fight amongst each other and Greymoria and Phidas who low-key support this in-fighting as a meanings to forge stronger leaders.   Most outside the Rovers are unaware of the The Nami Civil War because most of the conflict is via Cold War tactics and what little actual fighting occurs usually occurs in very remote places given that the Rovers are few in number and prone to traveling long distances. Also, the Rovers don't like to invite outsiders into their internal struggles.
  Gratutious Meta details on Nami's Nomenclature  
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Fun fact, in my early drafts, Nami went through a couple name changes. The The rest of the Nine I pegged down names very quickly, but I waffled on Nami's name a lot.   For a long time, her name was going to by Phyra (based on her being something of a pyromaniac), but that was too similar to Phidas, so even I was getting confused. That and the more I developed the Nami, the less important setting things on fire became for her.   Nami is a based on a bad pun/da joke on tsunami. Her full name is "Sue Nami".   I live in the Midwest region of the United States where weather changes on a dime and seasonal trends in weather are mere suggestions. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to make my weather deity male or female, but I knew I wanted to make my weather deity Chaotic Neutral.

Divine Domains

Nami’s Portfolio includes but is not limited to: Weather, freedom, prophecy, creativity, madness, arson, theft, travel, merriment, chaos, unorthodox wisdom, warlocks, humor, orcs   Nami the Portfolio Thief: Nami challenges the monopoly of many of her divine siblings. She moonlights as a foe to the undead, music patron, magic goddess, nature goddess despite the fact that these things are officially the domain of someone else. At some point she has dabbled in nearly everything that another deity considers their exclusive territory.   The primary domains of Nami's theurgists and favored souls are Divination, Purification, and Weather. A great many of Nami's spell casters choose to focus on Weather.

Artifacts

Nami's symbol of power and her Divine Trophy is a magic sack woven out of Turoch's hair that she keeps the weather in. Believed to be the original prototype of mortal Bags of Holding.

Divine Symbols & Sigils

Usually weather related.  Commonly her followers use wind motiffs more often than not, but icons for snowflakes, rain clouds, rain drops, rainbows, ocean waves, and others are hardly unknown.

Tenets of Faith

-Embrace your passions, do not restrain them.   -Be like the weather: Don’t be predictable but don’t be completely random either.   -Embrace change in all its forms.   -Prevent others from taking themselves too seriously and expose the lies and hypocrisies they try to hide behind.

Holidays

Nami's Zodiac month roughly coincides with mid-Spring in Scarterra. All the Nine have their own Zodiac and traditonally the beginning, midway point and end of the month are marked as Zodiac holidays on reigious calendars, for Nami these are Dawn of Nami, Nami's Zenith, and Nami's Solace. Nami's primary followers, the Rovers don't normally make a large deal out of this.   Almost every culture in Scarterra has some sort of annual holiday in Nami's honor. Some cultures have two such festivals per year. Nami Annual Celebrations seldom occur at the same time in disparate places allowing Nami Circuit Priests and Priestesses to be able to preside over many Nami festivals every year.

Divine Goals & Aspirations

Mainly, Nami's stated goal is to keep things interesting. Nami likes to watch the mortal plane in Scarterra the way a modern real world human likes to what TV dramas.  
Nami has compassion for others, but she also has a fair bit of schadenfreude in her too. She doesn't want people to suffer needlessly but she likes to watch arrogant people's (or deities') complex schemes fall apart.   In some ways I view Nami as a less malicious version of Heath Ledger’s Joker. “It's the schemers that put you where you are. You were a schemer, you had plans, and, uh, look where that got you. I just did what I do best. I took your little plan, and I turned it on itself.”
by me with Midjourney
  The difference is Nami normally stops short of killing or maiming the schemers. She generally wants to embarrass and humiliate the schemers. She might believe that complex schemes are bad for people in general but admittedly she likes to cause disruptions because she is bored.   Nami doesn't just foil arrogant people's schemes. She also likes to give random people a leg up. All the Nine have some ability to read the weavings of fate and accurately forecasting events but Nami is arguably better at than most if not all of her siblings. When she notices lowly and ordinary people seemingly at the nexus of destiny, she will give destiny a hand by helping said ordinary person have access to knowledge, magic, or items to start them on their way to greatness...or tragedy. Having Nami's favor is often equal parts blessing and curse. May you live in interesting times, indeed.

Social

Contacts & Relations

Nami’s basic modus operandi is to sit quietly for a long time, then do something completely unexpected to shake up the status quo. When the Ten drew up the Compact to establish how the Nine would overthrow Turoch and then rule the world that survived afterwards the Compact included an intricate battle plan to defeat Turoch down to the smallest detail. Nami ignored this plan completely. When the Traitor tried to warn Turoch of the Divine Rebellion, all the Traitor information looked fake, so Turoch shook off the Traitor's warnings until it was too late. In short, she thwarted the Traitor betrayal by thwarting Khemra's battle plan.   Nami said this was all according to her plan, but few believe her.  
Composite Display of the Nine's portraits by Zeta Gardner
After the Divine Rebellion  was over and Turoch’s corpse was picked apart for trophies by the Nine, Nami disrupted the status quo again. Originally each god or goddess was allotted exactly one ninth of all worship from all mortals. Nami was the first of the Nine  to impart a Capital “G” Gift  upon the mortals. She bestowed mortals with free will and this let mortals worship as they choose or not. This prompted the rest of the Nine to bestow their own Gifts  to mortal kind to win favor. Some of the Nine gained worshipers and some lost worshipers. Nami actually walked away with fewer worshipers than she started with, but this didn’t seem to bother her.
  Sometimes she and her followers opt not to interfere when someone is trying a hair brained scheme but they are standing by to laugh at it when it fails. The rest of the Nine don’t always agree with her on this, but Nami sees herself as more of a frenemy to her rivals than as true mortal foe.     Nami gets along well with Zarthus and Maylar. Both of these gods generally want simple short term things and Nami can get behind this. As much as Nami and her followers claim to be individualists, they are susceptible to being influenced by those around them. When Nami and Zarthus are getting along or when Nami’s Rovers are working with Zarthus' Lanterns, Nami’s minions seem to become a lot more benevolent. When Nami and Maylar are getting along or when Nami’s Rovers are working with Maylar's  Testers, Nami’s minions seem to become a lot more malevolent.   Admittedly, Korus' management of nature itself requires a lot of planning and work. Nami does not normally interfere with Korus'  plans and schemes. Korus is creative and adaptable and Nami respects him for that.   Nami believe misses the forest for the trees and becomes overly focused on saving one person or small group instead of managing larger issues. Nami doesn’t poke a stick at Mera very often, but she doesn’t really respect her sister much.   Nami views Greymoria's petty vindictive streak as childish for a deity of Creation but Nami finds the spillover effect of Greymoria's godly tantrums amusing. She doesn’t proactively poke a stick at Greymoria very often, but she is usually quick to mock her failures.   Nami is mostly a thorn in the side to the three Lawful deities. She finds Hallisan the most tolerable. At the very least he is the least hypocritical one. When the Compact was drafted, the Void did not exist. When the Void  sprang into being the Nine had to hastily create the the Barrier and Phidas was assigned to shore up the Barrier. Originally Phidas was supposed to have dominion over the minerals of the Earth. This got passed to Hallisan. Originally Hallisan was going to regulate the seasons but by accident The Void sort of imposes seasons. Sometimes when Nami creates unseasonal weather this is said to mocking Hallisan but after thousands of years of this, Hallisan doesn’t care as much as he did before.   Phidas his Masks love to explain why Phidas deserves more than a ninth of all worship because of how much he suffered. Phidas' schemes are mostly to get what he thinks he is due. The rest of the Nine proverbially roll their eyes at this, but Nami and her followers go further. “You think you deserve a bigger share? Just admit you want everything, that’s more honest.” Nami and her Rovers love to unmask the schemes of the Masks.   Nami claims to bear Khemra no ill will, but she finds it inexcusable that Khemra still wants to reinstate the Compact in full. Even Phidas and Hallisan have acknowledged that the world has changed too much for it to apply now orginally as written.

Scaraqua

  In Scaraqua Nami is commonly referred to as Kontona and is often associated with storms and unexpected change.     I have yet to figure out what Kontona's role in Scaraqua is going to be exactly, but she is credited with bringing water to land by "stealing" rain from the Sons of the Sky, reputedly this involved seducing Dalgari and then breaking his heart at one point much like Taedi once did.   Kontona is likely going to be an unpredictable trickster, a bit more malevolent and selfish when she meddles in Scaraquan events while Nami is usually good intentioned when she meddles in Scarterran events.   Kontona's mortal followers are a bit more bloodthirsty than Nami's mortal followers. The Storm Thief, a pirate without a ship, is one especially infamous priestess of Kontona.

Scarnoctis

  Scarnoctis is still very much a work in progress.   On Scarterra, Nami is a goddess of the winds and the sky, that’s something that means she probably would be a bit player underground.   On the other hand, Kontona favors a light touch in Scaraquan Currents so she has a lot of mystic power to spare, mystic power which could be used to influence Scarnoctis.   My roster of underground humanoids and monsters as of yet does not include anything that feels appropriately Nami-friendly to me. At least not yet.

Articles under Nami



Cover image: Nami, plain background by Zeta Gardner
Character Portrait image: Nami, plain background by Zeta Gardner

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