Wake (comics) - Protagonist

Protagonist

The protagonist of the series is Navee (Nävis in the original French), a young human female who was shipwrecked and orphaned on an alien planet. She was raised from infancy by one of the ship’s robots, Nsob, and has never met another human being. The series uses Navee as an outside viewer of the Wake convoy as she adjusts to life in this alien civilization.

The first volume of the series depicts the adolescent Navee topless. As a prerequisite for publication in the United States, the American publisher covered her breasts with a black felt marker in the American edition.

Navee is the only living example of humanity known to Wake. She is also unique in being neither a "psi active" nor a "psi passive"; that is, she has no telepathic abilities, but her mind cannot be read either. This lack of psionic talent of any sort comes in handy at times during the series.

Navee has white rectangular tattoos on her body. There is evidence to suggest she is not a true human being and these markings has something to do with it (Wake Vol 3;Nävis Vol 2&4).

As the series begins, Navee has survived into adolescence and all the technology on her wrecked ship has finally failed. She lives a primitive life in the jungle of her world with her companion Houyo, a sentient tiger-like being. Her idyllic life ends when agents of Wake, a traveling civilization of many different alien species, arrive to Hotta-form (equivalent of terraform) her planet for Hottard colonization. Prior to encountering Navee, Wake had extremely limited contact with humanity.

After some first contact friction, Navee is awarded salvage rights to her wrecked spacecraft and joins Wake with enough money to pay for her education and to commission a custom spacecraft for her to live in. When her money runs out, she goes to work for the Wake government as an agent and explorer within the Wake convoy and on technologically primitive worlds.