Nox

L'nihilus "Linus" Nox was a Romulan who became the first to serve onboard a Federation starship.

Youth
Little is known about Nox's birth or childhood. He was native to Romulus, and lived there most of his life. It is believed that his father L'tonius was involved in a scandal with the Duras family of Qo'noS. L'tonius was killed by Azetbur, the then Chancellor of the Klingon Empire. In vengeance, Nox slew her himself, but not until her daughter, K'hallA, swore a blood-oath to find and kill Nox.

Nox wanted to return to Romulus and become a member of the Empire's military. But his chance ended when his mother was captured by the USS Enterprise-B. From what he could gather, she was placed under a mind-meld by a Vulcan named T'Mar, which had caused her - his mother - to die. Nox came after T'Mar, but she returned to Vulcan for kolinhar, and he lost her there.

Piracy
In 2320, Nox stole a prototype Romulan warbird, the Kalryhha, and, with a band of Romulan rogues and several allies and friends he had made, began raiding Federation outposts and colonies. Nox was 20, a rather young age for a Romulan, so he elected one of his older comrades to the position of captain while he commanded the helm.

During one of their raids, they encountered a wormhole which took them back in time to the year 2000. Their ship came out of the wormhole near Earth, and Nox and a few others beamed down to investigate. Though the temptation to conquer the Earth before the Federation was even formed was great, Nox restrained himself. Instead, he took with him a souvenier: a 20th century style shot-gun. The wormhole reopened shortly and they returned to the 24th century.

While commanding the Kalryhha, Nox became familiar with a "young" Romulan named Y'Radu. Both were equally infatuated with each other, and they declared their intentions to be bound in matrimony...as soon as their careers in piracy were concluded.

In 2324, the Kalryhha attacked a Federation passenger liner. The security on board put up no resistance, and all were slaughtered. However, while killing a middle-aged man and his woman, Nox stopped before killing their nine-year-old son.

This would prove to be advantageous for Nox, because that child grew up into Edward Shield.

With the increased pirate actions on Federation ships, sub-space routes used by Federation ships became top-secret. In order to continue his raids, Nox gave command of the Kalryhha to Y'Radu while he, disguised as a Vulcan, infiltrated the Enterprise-B and transmitted the sub-space routes to the Kalryhha. Nox would later comment, when asked about the death of a Vulcan at his hands, that it would not have been the first time he killed a Vulcan.

Capture and Imprisonment
But Nox's command wouldn't last long. He was caught by the Enterprise-B shortly before its decommissioning and imprisoned as an enemy of the Federation. Rather than get the Romulan Star Empire involved, the Federation decided to hush up the fact that they had captured a Romulan. The official story they released was that the Kalryhha was destroyed and all aboard were killed.

Nox was incarcerated in the Federation concentration camp on the oceanic world of Typhon III.

Serving Aboard the Admonitor
When Edward Shield took the Enterprise-C to Typhon III for repairs after Narendra III, he discovered the concentration camp here. When he asked the foreman about this, he learned, to his horror, that this was common-place among the Federation. Shield stood up for Nox, and this gave the Romulan the boldness to attempt to kill the foreman. His efforts ended in him being brutalized by the guards. Refusing to watch, Shield stunned the guards with his phaser. He tried to get the foreman to release the prisoners, but she was defiant. Seeing his chance, Nox took the phaser from Shield, turned it to maximum setting and vaporized the foreman.

Nox recognized Shield as the child he had spared. He felt that he owed nothing to him, now that he, Shield, had saved him. So instead of killing him, Nox let Shield go. When Shield was about to be killed by the commander of the concentration camp, Nox came to the rescue of the human who had saved him.

Shield offered Nox a position aboard his ship, since they were all rebels from their own respective groups. Due to his previous encounters with the Federation and the Enterprise-B, Nox refused to even set foot on the Enterprise-C, but chose to serve under Captain Young aboard the USS Admonitor.

Katra Dominance
While onboard the Admonitor, Nox encountered T'Mar. He recognized her instantly as the one he had been hunting all of his life. He choked her to death, but not before she implanted her katra within him. Admitting this to any of the ships' surgeons would mean admitting that he had killed a Starfleet officer. Later, he learned that this person had been close to Edward Shield, which made him even more nervous about telling, since it would jeporadize his place among them. So he kept the knowledge to himself.

Since Nox kept the katra within, it acted as a second-conscience as well as a store-house of knowledge. At certain times, the katra would take almost complete control, during which times Nox would make statements and calculations far beyond the capacity of Romulans, as well as perform mind-melds and the Vulcan nerve-pinch. These he turned to his own will by concentrating all of his will-power to control the urges of katra dominance: the results were that he could make mind-viruses in his melds, which would cause his victims to be insane; another such thing was turning his nerve-pinch into a kind of torture device by generating an electrical charge created by the katra dominance into the point of attack.

The only visible sign of his katra dominance was that his eyes would glow red while he was under the influence of T'Mar's spirit.

Y'Radu
Once a member of the Kalryhha's crew, Nox's childhood "sweet-heart" became a member of the Romulan fleet after his capture. Y'Radu eventually found her way back to him, and the two were reunited. But an encounter with Commodore Gardner ended in her death.

Rookwood
Lieutenant Rookwood is the only human that Nox has ever come close to in all of his years. She is intrigued by him, due to the fact that she never met Romulans in her universe. If this connection is any deeper, however, remains to be seen.

Trivia

 * Nox owns a shot-gun, which he picked up as a souvenier from 21st century Earth. He has modified it to expell its frag-discharge using a 24th century gas unit rather than the normal spark-ignition. This allows it to be used even in the vacuum of space.
 * Though Nox hates most things about Earth and Humans, he has a strange liking for chocolate chip cookies.
 * Nox hates Klingons, but he hates Cardassians just as much.
 * Though Nox shows disdain for most non-Romulans, he once befriended a Gorn, who would later join him on the Admonitor.
 * Though Nox hates humans, he is somewhat partial to Lieutenant Rookwood of the Enterprise-C, regardless of his hatred for that ship and its name.
 * Not much is known about Nox, since he is very secretive about his past. All that can be spoken about him is from what others have known from their encounters with him.
 * When asked why some of his race lacked the V-shaped brow ridge, Nox stated that it was part of a religious scarring that occured millenia ago when they first split from the Vulcans. According to the legend, the Romulans considered themselves "under the raptor's wings", and therefore surgically carved a V-shape on to their foreheads to represent that they were marked and protected by their defiance of Vulcan logic. Not all were so inclined, and they remained "unmarked". Such unmarked ones continued to exist, and they were considered to be of a lower caste than the marked (some of the unmarked even shaved their heads, which made them look more like Remans, a class even lower than unmarked in Romulan society). During the Federation-Romulan War, however, the "unmarked" were called into the service of the Empire to act as spies. Their Vulcan-appearance made them the perfect spies.