Nona

Nona from the Nona the Ninth book cover illustrated by Tommy Arnold.

**Nona** is the person who wakes up in Harrowhark Nonagesimus's body almost six months before the start of Nona the Ninth.

## **Biography**

### **Background**

Nona is the name given to the amnesiac soul who inhabited the body of Harrowhark Nonagesimus following the attack of the seventh Resurrection Beast, and the attempted murder of the Emperor.

Some years before, Harrowhark had invaded the Locked Tomb and developed an obsession with the interred body of Alecto. Following the battle with a Resurrection Beast, Harrowhark’s soul fled back to the tomb; Alecto — soul of the dead planet Earth — flipped over to Harrowhark’s body, and awoke screaming “No no no no,” and went on to experience six months of life in the modern era under the name Nona.

## **Personality and Abilities**

Nona, though in the body of a mature woman, had the intelligence and personality of a precocious child. She had an uncanny ability to read body language, knowing when a person was truth-telling or lying, and could read people’s manifestations of real or feigned sexual attraction at a glance. She could gain fluency in foreign languages within a few minutes of exposure, and sketch anatomically correct drawings of animals she had never seen from description and first principles.

As the soul-linked cavalier of the god-emperor, Nona had healing abilities beyond even those of Lyctors. She enjoyed swimming in jellyfish-infested waters, whose stings were little more than tickles, and even shrugged off some gunshots.

During the events of *Nona the Ninth*, she is having difficulty keeping down food (but sometimes she eats some inorganic food), and her health is gradually deteriorating, as her body rejects the foreign soul.

## **Relationships**

### Family

Nona lived with Camilla Hect, Palamades Sextus (sharing the body of Camilla), and Pyrrha Dve (inhabiting the body of her late partner, Gideon the First).

### School

Though Nona was too old to be a student at the local school, she managed to find a place for herself as a teacher’s assistant for the science teacher known as The Angel. Her responsibilities included caring for The Angel’s dog, Noodle.

Nona was drawn in to a “gang” of classmates, consisting of Honesty, Born in the Morning, Beautiful Ruby, Kevin, and their leader, Hot Sauce.

### Blood of Eden

The rebel organization Blood of Eden hoped that Harrowhark’s abilities would eventually manifest in Nona, giving them their own “pet Lyctor,”

Coronabeth Tridentarius, serving under the codename Crown, was one of Nona’s handlers. Nona was somewhat infatuated with Crown, who in turn cared for Nona but was unnerved by her ability to see through her pretenses.

Nona claimed to like the cell leader We Suffer, who takes Nona seriously. She has difficulty with We Suffer’s bodyguard Our Lady of the Passion, who distrusts Nona and believes the Lyctor Project should be terminated.

## **Trivia**

* Editor Carl Engle-Laird describes Noodle as *"a dog [Nona] knows."*
* Cover artist Tommy Arnold confirms that Nona's hair is black and that her eyes are *"bright gold."*

## **References**

1. ↑ @EngleLaird, Twitter.com.
2. ↑ @TommyArnoldArt, Twitter.com.