Sedna/Nereid was born Una Robinson in England in 1896 to upper middle class parents. In 1906, when she was ten, she, her four siblings and her parents sailed to Canada, where her parents took over a business left to them by a distant relative. By 1912, the company was successful enough that her parents decided they could afford to return to England for a few months to see their family there. As they had made a considerable amount of money out of the company they booked passage for themselves and their children on the new unsinkable liner the Titanic.
Unfortunately, off Newfoundland the Titanic hit an iceberg and started to sink. Due to the lack of lifeboats Una and her family along with many other people, were left on board. Rather than jump overboard and risk drowning they stayed on board until the last moment, hoping for rescue. When it didn't come and the ship started to finally go down, they all jumped and tried to swim away, but they had left it too late and panic ensued as the suction of the Titanics descent dragged them all under. She remembers being separated from her family, and starting to drown, then going unconscious as she was hit by debris.
Some time later she regained consciousness. Thinking she had been rescued, she opened her eyes to find herself floating, alone, about twenty metres below the surface of the sea. Expecting to be drowning she immediately struck out for the surface and found herself moving at incredibly high speed through the water then out as her velocity carried her high into the air. She braced herself for impact with the water, but it didn't come. Opening her eyes she found she was flying!
Then she noticed how pale she looked - almost white in fact, and her hands were webbed as well. She realised she was an Overman, but a freak as well. She had to find her family - they'd tell her what to do, but she had no idea where they were, or where she was. She flew around for a while, noticing icebergs in the water and realising she should be freezing to death. There was no land or any boats in sight. She landed in the water again, to rest, and realised again that she was feeling no cold, but was hungry, very hungry.
But there was nothing around she could eat. Perhaps if she could catch some fish? Taking a deep breath she dived below the surface. Again she found she could swim at great speed and easily caught a fish, but as she held it, overcoming her squeamishness, she found she was reading its mind! In shock she let it go and forgetting she was underwater, gasped in surprise, only to discover that she could breathe the water! Her hunger soon overcame her shock - it felt like she hadn't eaten in days - and she quickly caught another fish and ate it and several others before she was full, finding that raw fish wasn't so bad after all. Tired out she hardly noticed when she drifted off to sleep, still underwater.
When she woke in daylight she found herself being nosed by lots of fish, and quickly caught some for breakfast before resuming her hunt for her family. About halfway through the day she discovered that she swam much faster than she flew, so stayed underwater near the surface, but again found no sign of land or anything.
The next day as she searched more and more desperately Una heard strange noises off in the distance, and swam off to see what they were. After a while she tracked the noises to their source - a pod of whales. She was hearing their sonar and songs and watched entranced until the whales noticed and came over to investigate her. They let her touch them and she read their minds. They were each curious about the other and as she got an idea of how big the ocean was from the minds of the whales she realised she had no chance of finding her parents on her own, and broke down (not really in tears, since she was underwater). The whales tried to console her and she travelled north with them as she slowly recovered from the shock.
While they travelled Una learnt a lot from the whales about the sea, and found she could generate powerful stunning shockwaves and manipulate water currents when the whales were attacked by orcas. In the arctic the whales were once again attacked, this time by Eskimos in kayaks. She flew up to drive them off, but as soon as they saw her they bowed down in terror and paddled off. Bidding farewell to the whales she flew after the Eskimos, the first people she had seen in weeks, and soon came to their village. When she appeared, in the tattered remains of her shipboard dress the entire tribe prostrated themselves before her, to her confusion. One old man, who spoke a little English, talked to her and reading between the lines she saw that they thought she was the goddess Sedna returned, and wanted her to stay and bless their village with her presence.
Torn between flattery and feelings that this was blasphemy she stayed.and learnt about the Eskimos and their culture, fitting more into their idea of a goddess as she learnt more about them. In return for her staying the Eskimos taught her about hunting and life in the arctic, and she learnt to participate in the hunts, even of whales because much as she loved the whales she realised how much the Eskimos depended on them for survival. Soon members of other tribes started to arrive to see the returned goddess, and her following grew, especially when she visited other tribes at other places along the coast, but when the US and Canadian governments came to investigate she made sure the Eskimos told them nothing as she was sure they'd take her away if they found her.
As time went by and the white mans lifestyle began to intrude more and more on the Eskimos she made sure that they kept up the old traditions and did not abandon 'her' ways.
In 1925 one of her tribesmen found out the fate of her family, at her request - they all died when the Titanic went down. She was devastated, as she had always entertained the hope that she would eventually be able to return to them, and threw herself into helping and protecting the Eskimos, as they were now the only real family she had. She also began to make long trips away from the tribes, exploring other parts of the northern oceans, and it was here that she came across a fishing boat in trouble. She rescued the crew and flew them to the shore, giving them the name Nereid rather than Sedna to protect her life with the tribes. From this time on she kept a lookout for ships in trouble in bad weather, and occasionally provided people with rescue.
In the early 1930's she began to notice how few whales there were around, and investigated. She found the reason - large scale factory ships killing huge numbers of whales for meat and oil. She, as Nereid, tried to get them to stop peacefully, but the crews of the ships would not listen, and even threatened her. She was left with no choice. She started attacking whalers to make them stop, at first just by disabling the ships and throwing the crews overboard, but the whalers learnt, and after she was injured several times she was forced to kill the crews of the whalers, and sink the ships, even when naval forces were along to protect them. She doesn't like doing so, but she will kill to protect the whales. By the mid-1940's the whalers had learned, and had moved many of their operations to the southern hemisphere while WWIII raged around them.
By this time she had noticed that she wasn't getting older, but didn't think too much of it, just accepting it as another part of her powers.
At first she was pleased that she had stopped the whalers, but was enraged when she learnt they had merely moved to the antarctic instead. She bid her tribes farewell, and implored them to keep to their old ways until she returned, then set out for antarctica. She slowly made her way south through the tropics, where she fascinated by the different types of life there, finally reaching the antarctic during 1945. There she again started to destroy whalers, exploring the antarctic continent while she did so. Eventually the whalers got the idea, after she made their operations totally uneconomic, and many whaling operations were shut down. A few still survive out of her sight, as she is only one person and can't be everywhere at once.
Sedna returned to her tribes in 1951, to great rejoicing, only to find that while almost all the Eskimos had adhered to their ancestral practises, oil exploration companies were trying to push many of the Eskimos off their ancestral lands in order to exploit the oil reserves there, and were using unscrupulous methods to do so. Sedna sabotaged many of the oil companies efforts, being careful to make it untraceable to the Eskimos, until the companies were forced to deal fairly with them, giving them a fair share of the profits made and repairing any damage they caused to the environment. Also during this time she began to notice increasing pollution of the seas, but until the oil companies were dealt with there was little she could do.
Once this situation was dealt with however, Nereid began to hunt down waste dumping ships, forcing them back to port without disposing of their loads, and also causing damage to arctic and antarctic settlements until they cleaned up their local environments. She continues to do this to this day, as well as helping out in marine disasters and accidents.
Her loyalty is to 'her' tribes first, and the whales second.
Una is 5'7" tall, slim and pretty despite her bizarre appearance, which consists of very pale bluish-white skin and blue-green hair and eyes (her hair is almost metallic in appearance), along with webbed fingers and toes, slightly enlarged canine teeth and slightly claw-like finger and toenails. Her eyes are somewhat larger than normal.
As Sedna she wears a vaguely swimsuit-like costume made up of fragments of skin and furs, with various items of Eskimo bone and ivory jewelry. Her hair is worn loose and wild, with ornaments in it and she carries an Eskimo spear.
As Nereid she wears the torso of a wetsuit and short gloves, and she carries two large knives. Her hair is bound back in a tight bun.
Back to the Overman 1994 Biographies Index.
See Wikipedia for more on the goddess Sedna.