Jonah T. Barnham
07-07-10, 02:53 PM
Name: Jonah T. Barnham
Age: 26
Race: Human
Hair Color: Brown-black
Eye Color: Green-yellow
Height: 5'10”
Weight: 154 lbs.
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Current Occupation: Paleontologic Arcanologist.
Former Occupation: Slave
Personality: Jonah is a socially awkward young man, not good at conversations or likely to ever be the life of any party. He has a tendency to be suspicious when he encounters situations he is unused to, making him difficult to get along with. He’s impulsive and temperamental, flying off the handle at complete strangers, or jumping into problems without thinking things through. He also has a habit of focusing all his attention on a task, reacting negatively when drawn out of said task – and when he’s not focused on that one task he’s generally flitting from one distraction to another without completing anything.
On the plus side, however, once you get past his absent-minded cranky shell, he is a (mostly) brave, adventurous, intelligent and sweet young man (he doesn’t mean to be a jerk, and he usually feels bad about it afterward) – but it takes a lot of work to see it that side. He is determined, it takes a lot to get him to give up, and he’s willing to fight to defend what he sees as right. Granted, the whole concept of right and wrong is a bit of a hazy subject for him…
Appearance: Jonah is five feet, ten inches tall, and looks more like a thief or a street rat than a scholar or mage. He is wiry, muscular without being ripped, built for speed over strength. His face is narrow, his tawny, yellowish-green eyes are slightly deep-set and usually ringed with dark circles behind his spectacles, and his lips are strangely delicate, quick to quirk in smirks or scowls. His body is scarred – he’s missing the top of his right ear, has a set of jagged bitemarks on his right thigh, and his back is a latticework of long-healed flogging scars. His fingers are slightly crooked, as if they’d been broken and set incorrectly, and he has a wide slashed scar beneath both sides of his rib cage.
Jonah is tanned, most of the time, and his hair (which falls on the blacker side of brown) has red tinges in the right lights. He wears it shaggy, and tends to have to push it out of his eyes, though he keeps it from growing past his shoulders. He doesn’t ever have a full beard, but his tendency to forget shaving means he generally looks rather scruffy. He dresses in layers of green and grey: denim trousers held up with suspenders, wool and cotton shirts and a denim vest beneath a flowing, green canvas trenchcoat.
Skills
Anatomy (Skeletal): Jonah can usually rebuild things from their skeletal components. The work he has done on various skeletons has given him a working idea of places that may be weaker, sensitive or more vulnerable in combat. This skill, however, does not take things like muscle strength, individual flexibility, or the other combatant’s reflexes into account.
Archaeology: Jonah knows how to get stuff out of the ground without breaking it and can likely identify the items origin, as well as give an approximate date of creation with increasing accuracy as his knowledge of the history increases; he could estimate a Raiaeran sword within ten years, but would miss a Fallien sword from the same time period by anywhere up to five hundred years. He knows his stuff, except when he doesn’t. He is persona non gratia in Scara Brae after misidentifying some rare artifact in a rather embarrassing manner…
Fighting: Jonah spent a large part of his life as a slave. Once he was freed, he never ever wanted to return to feeling so close to helpless. He has actively sought training – both formal and informal - over the years since he’s been freed. He is above average in knife fights and average in hand-to-hand combat, though if he’s expected to fight fair his hand-to-hand skills drops to below average. He can successfully defend and attack when fighting someone of his skill level, but a pure warrior would have little problem defeating him, and he hasn’t the attention span to fight more than one combatant at a time.
Knowledge (History): Jonah was bought and raised to be the next host-body of a body-hopping madman (see Character History). Brains are easier to reshape if they have some of the patterns in shape before the true reshaping begins. He was meant to be tutored in the complete history of the main nations of the world, though he tried to show some of his rebellion in what he chose to focus on.
Alerar: Medium, last 300years or so.
Corone: High. Ancient through current, well-rounded.
Fallien: Low. Ancient, urban legend and hearsay.
Raiaera: High. Ancient through current, well-rounded.
Salvar: Medium, last 700years or so, mostly well-rounded.
Scara Brae: Non-existent.
Other: Dheathain (hearsay), Kiberas (urban legend), Haida (out and out lies)
Magic (Chronological Conjuration): Jonah is not an awesome magician. He is incapable of mastering any of the typical parlor tricks that any self respecting Mage, Wizard or Sorcerer could do in their sleep, causing many to call him a complete failure. His knowledge veers off into strange, not always useful places. He seems to have developed a mixture of the Conjuration that others would use to summon allies from other planes and the Chronological skills that others can use for time manipulation. Simply put, he can call animals from the past to aid him. See Spells below for details.
Psychometry: If he touches organic things (plants, bones, skin, hair, fur, etc) he can tell what they used to be, usually accompanied by a flash-vision of the being as it was when it lived (if the being was dead), and what the being is/will be (if the being is alive), though the future-flashes are generally fluid and unreliable. He is not always fond of this ability, though it has given him the insight to "rebuild" several critters from nothing but jumbled up bones. This ability does not apply to cured, cooked or otherwise prepared tissue.
Spells
Jonah’s talents, as mentioned previously, are erratic and almost non-existent. He is still trying to master the basics he feels every magician should know, but at the moment he can only perform two spells: Essence and Summon. Both spells utilize the same basic principal, but their application is vastly different.
Essence: Jonah can partially shapeshift, gaining physical traits from the creatures of the past. Currently, he can only gain traits from one creature at a time, and those creatures are limited to those he has seen in psychometric visions. In a RP setting, these traits can be used for up to an hour at a time before they fade. In a battle setting, they last two rounds (Jonah posts twice, opponent posts twice) before they fade. Furthermore, once the traits have faded Jonah must wait at least a full hour to reuse this spell. Essence is an instant-cast spell, but he must be able to touch the appropriate focus (see Equipment) with his hand. This spell cannot be cast through accidental contact.
Ankilasaurus: utilizing the Ankilasaurus essence increases Jonah’s natural defenses to 1.5x his normal, making it more likely for damage taken to be less severe than it may have otherwise been. In addition, he gains leathery armor plating up the outside of his arms, legs and down his back over his spine. This essence decreases Jonah’s speed to 0.5 his typical speeds, as his frame isn’t quite built for armor plating. While it is active, Jonah’s skin turns a dusky, reddish-brown with visible ‘plates,’ and is typically dry and rough to the touch.
Petranodon: utilizing the Petranodon’s essence increases Jonah’s natural senses to 1.5x his standard rate. This essence lowers his reaction speed to threats to 0.5, as the human body is not generally meant to sense things so clearly and tends to find it a bit overwhelming. While it is active, the only change in Jonah’s appearance is webbing between his fingers, and his eyes go oddly bright.
Smilidon: Utilizing the Smilidon’s essence increases Jonah’s agility and stamina to 1.5 times his average abilities, as well as granting him the Smilidon’s teeth and claws. This essence lowers both Jonah’s speed and defenses significantly. While it is active, Jonah’s skin is covered with short, coarse, leopard-spotted fur.
Vylokiraptor: utilizing the Vylokiraptor’s essence increases Jonah’s speed to 1.5x the average mortal’s speed, and gives him the natural weapons of the raptor: razor sharp claws (four per hand) and teeth. This essence lowers Jonah’s natural defenses to 0.5 of his typical defensive abilities, as his skeletal density is changed to compensate for the speed increase. While it is active, Jonah’s skin takes on a greenish tinge and his eyes look more yellow than green.
Summon: Jonah can summon creatures from the distant past to current times to fight for and with him. Essence’s limits and caveats apply: one creature at a time, limited to those Seen, lasting up to an hour until dismissed, killed or otherwise destroyed, two rounds in battle and Jonah must wait an hour or longer to re-summon. Summon requires a magic circle be drawn with chalk or charcoal (blood doesn’t work; he’s tried), and takes two minutes of complete concentration; if Jonah becomes distracted or is interrupted, the spell must be restarted, complete with a new circle. Jonah must destroy the circle in order to dismiss a summon.
Ankilasaurus: Summons a smaller version (about three feet at the shoulder) of an Ankilasaurus, an armored dinosaur formerly native to Alerar. This creature serves as ‘tank,’ distracting combatants from Jonah and onto itself.
Ability: Taunt. Has a 50% chance of capturing the attention of up to three combatants equal or below Jonah’s level, a 25% chance of capturing the attention of up to two combatants one level above Jonah’s, and decreasing by 50% per level of difference afterward, with a limit of one combatant. Taunt lasts for one round of battle, or until the Ankilasaurus is slain. Petranodon: Summons a small Petranodon (six foot wingspan), an ancient flying creature formerly native to Fallien. This creature serves as a scout, viewing things that Jonas would not see otherwise.
Ability: Second Sight. Has a 50% chance of passing on what it is seeing to Jonah’s eyes. The Petranodon is summoned for two rounds: the first round is spent scouting, the second is spent transferring what it saw. If Second Sight should fail, Jonah loses his sight for the next round of posting.
Smilidon: Summons a Smilidon, a cat-like creature (three feet at the shoulder), formerly native to Salvar. This creature is full-out offensive oriented.
Ability: Frenzy. The Smilidon goes into the animal equivalent of a berserk rage, rampaging for a full round of posts unless stopped. However, there is a 50% chance that the Smilidon won’t recognize Jonah, and attack him instead. Should this occur, all of Jonah's attention would be on destroying the summon or circle, not on the fight.
Vylokiraptor: Summons a Vylokiraptor, a vicious yet small (three feet at the head) dinosaur formerly native to Corone. This creature is also oriented towards attack.
Ability: Ambush. The Vylokiraptor spends one round hiding, and attacks in the second round, going for the limb or neck of the nearest enemy combatant. There is, again, a 50% chance that the raptor won’t recognize Jonah, leading to havoc instead of victory.
Weaknesses
Distracted: He has a section of his brain always wrapped around the borked spell that got him stuck with Thighbiter (see Familiar). He believes he has to focus on said spell, or Thighbiter’s collar will stop working (it won’t, but he doesn’t know that), and as a result he’s usually operating at a lower mental capacity than he should be.
Insatiable: A non-psychosomatic side effect of having Thighbiter stuck in this time is that Jonah is always expending energy. As a result, he’s almost constantly hungry. If he has gone any considerable time without eating, it adds to his general cranky, sullen behaviors. 95% of what he eats is sweets or meat. He'll eat bread, fruit or vegetables if he's starving, but if he has a choice he's likely to bypass anything remotely healthy or balanced.
Nearsighted: Jonah is nearly as blind as a bat without his glasses. He cannot read things unless they are about six inches away if he loses them.
Phobias: Jonah has a crippling fear of the dark, not something that is entirely desirable in someone whose career of choice revolves partially around going deep under ground and digging things deeper. He is also terrified of Warlocks and Necromancers, and cannot function at anything close to a civilized, adult human’s level when near them.
Equipment
Archaeologist’s Kit
An assortment of useful brushes, tracing papers, charcoals, sketchbooks, chalks, chisels, a lantern-style helmet, a lighter, a magnifying glass, a pair of goggles big enough to fit over his glasses, a sieve tray and a rope ladder, all bundled up in a handy leather messenger bag. Don’t worry, there’s no whip.
Focuses
Two bone fragments (Ankilasaurus, Petranodon), a claw (Vylokiraptor), and a tooth (Smilidon), fixed to leather lanyards and worn under his shirt. He also wears a thin piece of agate (required for Summon) and his glasses (required for Essence). If he loses any of these bone focuses, his casting time for Essence jumps to five minute, while the casting time for Summon jumps to ten. Furthermore, losing the glasses would increase the casting time for Essence to ten minutes, and losing the agate would increase Summon’s casting time to twenty minutes. Needless to say, he rarely ever takes off his focuses. And, in the off chance he should loose the focuses after he has a summon active, that summon would become permanent, though their loyalty to him would fade dramatically with every second they remained in the wrong time…
Hook and Talon
Hook and Talon are two sickle-shaped knives, made of steel and leather-bound oak. Hook’s blade curves down and inward towards the hilt, while Talon’s blade curves out and upward.
Pick Axe
The typical tool of miners and archeologists, this pick-axe is made from iron and oak, and all Jonah knows what to use it for is breaking up earth. He would view using it in combat as barbaric and wrong – which is not to say he wouldn’t use it that way if his life depended on it. He’d just feel bad afterward, and likely make a dog’s dinner of it in the process.
Familiar
Thighbiter, a young Dynonychus. She stands three and a half feet at the shoulder, and is still growing. She has long, curving claws, serrated teeth, and super-powerful jaws. She is colored rather like a tiger, dusty orange with pewter grey stripes, and her eyes are yellow. She wears a black leather collar with a cat bell around her neck. If the collar was ever removed, her first act would most likely be to eat Jonah’s face off. Needless to say, Jonah is very touchy about that collar.
As long as the collar is intact, however, Thighbiter is loyal to Jonah – bordering on being as devoted as a hound – and behaves as he has attempted to train her. She doesn’t attack unless provoked or ordered to, though it is obvious to anyone who sees her (including Jonah) that it takes her an awful lot of effort not to kill most anything that comes near her. For some strange reason, Thighbiter hangs back - or all out flees - when Jonah works with his summons. If he's using one of the summons, she won't fight. Jealousy, perhaps? Furthermore, she will not be used against other PCs without the writer's consent.
History
Jonah was born to a prominent Scara Brae businessman named Jonas Barnham and his wife Juliet. Both, however, were unprepared for the rigors of raising a rambunctious child – Jonas had no patience, and his wife was rather delicate. They muddled along for four years before Jonas made a rather foolish business mistake, and lost everything. Creditors practically beating down his doors, Jonas made an equally foolish fathering mistake, and sold his son to a visiting Corone noble – Nate Bentham - for several thousand crowns, never looking back.
The boy spent the next eight years of his life in Underwood as Nevin Bentham’s whipping boy. Nevin was an exceptionally obnoxious child, and so Jonah’s childhood was spent with sore hands, a bruised face and a back whipped raw. When Nevin wasn’t misbehaving, Jonah still worked, cleaning and helping in the gardens, caring for the Bentham’s estate and other servant-like responsibilities. He became fairly good friends with the whipmaster’s son, which is how he survived when Nevin outgrew the concept of whipping boys. He was sold, again, instead of being killed.
Jonah’s next owner was Koveyus the Wise, a magician obsessed with immortality. His abuses stayed mostly in the psychological realm rather than the physical, though Jonah always went to bed hungry, and was still averaging a beating every two weeks – though the abuses were more at the hands of Kove’s groundskeeper. Old Kove believed that he had found a spell that would allow him to transfer his mind and soul into a younger body. However, he also believed that this transfer would go much more smoothly if Jonah’s mind was already trained in his interests. He began to teach Jonah about his own personal passions – history and archaeology – and tried to teach him several domains of magic (though most failed miserably). Jonah never found out if the magician could have possessed him. The old man died, ironically, in his sleep, and all his possessions were auctioned off: magic books, estate – and Jonah.
Jonah was eighteen – as near as he can figure – when he was sold to an Elvish Warlock named Héra Boneweaver. He hadn’t liked any of his former owners, but the Boneweaver showed him just how good, comparatively, he’d had it until then. The Warlock took him to his citadel somewhere in Alerar, and Jonah never saw so much as a sunbeam for the next two years. He was locked away in a cage – one of fifteen – and kept as an ongoing donor for many of the Boneweaver’s dark spells, ranging from having blood drawn to hair stolen through one ritual that ended with him being strapped down and having his bottom two ribs removed. The Warlock used those bones to raise some sort of arcane creature with Jonah’s face from Somewhere Else. Jonah remembers the thing’s name – Yaelgin – but nothing else from the event, other than pain.
Boneweaver kept him alive after that, though Jonah will probably never know why. He survived two years in the citadel before a roving band of adventurers led, jointly, by a wizard and a paladin defeated the warlock and freed his slaves. The wizard, Isa Twoclaws, took Jonah into her home back in Corone, where she and her husband nursed him back to health and helped him adjust to life on the outside. Isa gave him his first pair of glasses, giving him his first clear view of the world ever. She sponsored his entrance into an Archaeological Society of some note, and helped him defend himself when his past threatened; like when Jonas Barnham – twenty-two years older but none-the-wiser – reared his head to accuse him of slander, or when encountering Kove’s groundskeeper again.
With Isa’s backing, he began to experiment with his own interests and proficiencies, accidentally discovering the one way, it seemed, for him to access magic. These experiences were not without mishap. His first summon after he figured out the spell was a Dynonychus – said Dynonychus overpowered him and managed to eat her own focus before chomping down on Jonah’s leg. If Isa hadn’t interfered, locking her down with a spelled collar, it is likely that Jonah’s first summon would have been his last. As it is, neither he nor Isa have figured out a way to permanently banish Thighbiter, as Jonah’s magic seems intrinsically linked to the creature. Isa fears that killing Thighbiter off might strip Jonah of his powers (best case) or kill him (worst case).
Accidental disasters aside, Jonah grew to become pretty pleased with his life. He was often commissioned to identify various historical pieces, and spent much of his time in ruins and deserts, digging up new things and trying to figure them out. Recently, however, he’s begun having strange dreams. Dreams about the Black Steppe, and a strange thing wearing his face…
Miscellaneous Notes: the writer would like to state that the prehistoric critters’ names are misspelled on purpose, don’t confiscate her dinosaur fanclub card please! The summons will always be a mixture of Real Prehistoric Critters and Patented Fantasy fluff, and the numbers in the Summons descriptions will be adhered to and rolled for via a dice roller site (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dice/dice.htm), as they make life amusing and unpredictable for all involved. Jonah’s theme song is Dinosaur Bones (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFL1Vi8cQR4) by Showbread.
Age: 26
Race: Human
Hair Color: Brown-black
Eye Color: Green-yellow
Height: 5'10”
Weight: 154 lbs.
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Current Occupation: Paleontologic Arcanologist.
Former Occupation: Slave
Personality: Jonah is a socially awkward young man, not good at conversations or likely to ever be the life of any party. He has a tendency to be suspicious when he encounters situations he is unused to, making him difficult to get along with. He’s impulsive and temperamental, flying off the handle at complete strangers, or jumping into problems without thinking things through. He also has a habit of focusing all his attention on a task, reacting negatively when drawn out of said task – and when he’s not focused on that one task he’s generally flitting from one distraction to another without completing anything.
On the plus side, however, once you get past his absent-minded cranky shell, he is a (mostly) brave, adventurous, intelligent and sweet young man (he doesn’t mean to be a jerk, and he usually feels bad about it afterward) – but it takes a lot of work to see it that side. He is determined, it takes a lot to get him to give up, and he’s willing to fight to defend what he sees as right. Granted, the whole concept of right and wrong is a bit of a hazy subject for him…
Appearance: Jonah is five feet, ten inches tall, and looks more like a thief or a street rat than a scholar or mage. He is wiry, muscular without being ripped, built for speed over strength. His face is narrow, his tawny, yellowish-green eyes are slightly deep-set and usually ringed with dark circles behind his spectacles, and his lips are strangely delicate, quick to quirk in smirks or scowls. His body is scarred – he’s missing the top of his right ear, has a set of jagged bitemarks on his right thigh, and his back is a latticework of long-healed flogging scars. His fingers are slightly crooked, as if they’d been broken and set incorrectly, and he has a wide slashed scar beneath both sides of his rib cage.
Jonah is tanned, most of the time, and his hair (which falls on the blacker side of brown) has red tinges in the right lights. He wears it shaggy, and tends to have to push it out of his eyes, though he keeps it from growing past his shoulders. He doesn’t ever have a full beard, but his tendency to forget shaving means he generally looks rather scruffy. He dresses in layers of green and grey: denim trousers held up with suspenders, wool and cotton shirts and a denim vest beneath a flowing, green canvas trenchcoat.
Skills
Anatomy (Skeletal): Jonah can usually rebuild things from their skeletal components. The work he has done on various skeletons has given him a working idea of places that may be weaker, sensitive or more vulnerable in combat. This skill, however, does not take things like muscle strength, individual flexibility, or the other combatant’s reflexes into account.
Archaeology: Jonah knows how to get stuff out of the ground without breaking it and can likely identify the items origin, as well as give an approximate date of creation with increasing accuracy as his knowledge of the history increases; he could estimate a Raiaeran sword within ten years, but would miss a Fallien sword from the same time period by anywhere up to five hundred years. He knows his stuff, except when he doesn’t. He is persona non gratia in Scara Brae after misidentifying some rare artifact in a rather embarrassing manner…
Fighting: Jonah spent a large part of his life as a slave. Once he was freed, he never ever wanted to return to feeling so close to helpless. He has actively sought training – both formal and informal - over the years since he’s been freed. He is above average in knife fights and average in hand-to-hand combat, though if he’s expected to fight fair his hand-to-hand skills drops to below average. He can successfully defend and attack when fighting someone of his skill level, but a pure warrior would have little problem defeating him, and he hasn’t the attention span to fight more than one combatant at a time.
Knowledge (History): Jonah was bought and raised to be the next host-body of a body-hopping madman (see Character History). Brains are easier to reshape if they have some of the patterns in shape before the true reshaping begins. He was meant to be tutored in the complete history of the main nations of the world, though he tried to show some of his rebellion in what he chose to focus on.
Alerar: Medium, last 300years or so.
Corone: High. Ancient through current, well-rounded.
Fallien: Low. Ancient, urban legend and hearsay.
Raiaera: High. Ancient through current, well-rounded.
Salvar: Medium, last 700years or so, mostly well-rounded.
Scara Brae: Non-existent.
Other: Dheathain (hearsay), Kiberas (urban legend), Haida (out and out lies)
Magic (Chronological Conjuration): Jonah is not an awesome magician. He is incapable of mastering any of the typical parlor tricks that any self respecting Mage, Wizard or Sorcerer could do in their sleep, causing many to call him a complete failure. His knowledge veers off into strange, not always useful places. He seems to have developed a mixture of the Conjuration that others would use to summon allies from other planes and the Chronological skills that others can use for time manipulation. Simply put, he can call animals from the past to aid him. See Spells below for details.
Psychometry: If he touches organic things (plants, bones, skin, hair, fur, etc) he can tell what they used to be, usually accompanied by a flash-vision of the being as it was when it lived (if the being was dead), and what the being is/will be (if the being is alive), though the future-flashes are generally fluid and unreliable. He is not always fond of this ability, though it has given him the insight to "rebuild" several critters from nothing but jumbled up bones. This ability does not apply to cured, cooked or otherwise prepared tissue.
Spells
Jonah’s talents, as mentioned previously, are erratic and almost non-existent. He is still trying to master the basics he feels every magician should know, but at the moment he can only perform two spells: Essence and Summon. Both spells utilize the same basic principal, but their application is vastly different.
Essence: Jonah can partially shapeshift, gaining physical traits from the creatures of the past. Currently, he can only gain traits from one creature at a time, and those creatures are limited to those he has seen in psychometric visions. In a RP setting, these traits can be used for up to an hour at a time before they fade. In a battle setting, they last two rounds (Jonah posts twice, opponent posts twice) before they fade. Furthermore, once the traits have faded Jonah must wait at least a full hour to reuse this spell. Essence is an instant-cast spell, but he must be able to touch the appropriate focus (see Equipment) with his hand. This spell cannot be cast through accidental contact.
Ankilasaurus: utilizing the Ankilasaurus essence increases Jonah’s natural defenses to 1.5x his normal, making it more likely for damage taken to be less severe than it may have otherwise been. In addition, he gains leathery armor plating up the outside of his arms, legs and down his back over his spine. This essence decreases Jonah’s speed to 0.5 his typical speeds, as his frame isn’t quite built for armor plating. While it is active, Jonah’s skin turns a dusky, reddish-brown with visible ‘plates,’ and is typically dry and rough to the touch.
Petranodon: utilizing the Petranodon’s essence increases Jonah’s natural senses to 1.5x his standard rate. This essence lowers his reaction speed to threats to 0.5, as the human body is not generally meant to sense things so clearly and tends to find it a bit overwhelming. While it is active, the only change in Jonah’s appearance is webbing between his fingers, and his eyes go oddly bright.
Smilidon: Utilizing the Smilidon’s essence increases Jonah’s agility and stamina to 1.5 times his average abilities, as well as granting him the Smilidon’s teeth and claws. This essence lowers both Jonah’s speed and defenses significantly. While it is active, Jonah’s skin is covered with short, coarse, leopard-spotted fur.
Vylokiraptor: utilizing the Vylokiraptor’s essence increases Jonah’s speed to 1.5x the average mortal’s speed, and gives him the natural weapons of the raptor: razor sharp claws (four per hand) and teeth. This essence lowers Jonah’s natural defenses to 0.5 of his typical defensive abilities, as his skeletal density is changed to compensate for the speed increase. While it is active, Jonah’s skin takes on a greenish tinge and his eyes look more yellow than green.
Summon: Jonah can summon creatures from the distant past to current times to fight for and with him. Essence’s limits and caveats apply: one creature at a time, limited to those Seen, lasting up to an hour until dismissed, killed or otherwise destroyed, two rounds in battle and Jonah must wait an hour or longer to re-summon. Summon requires a magic circle be drawn with chalk or charcoal (blood doesn’t work; he’s tried), and takes two minutes of complete concentration; if Jonah becomes distracted or is interrupted, the spell must be restarted, complete with a new circle. Jonah must destroy the circle in order to dismiss a summon.
Ankilasaurus: Summons a smaller version (about three feet at the shoulder) of an Ankilasaurus, an armored dinosaur formerly native to Alerar. This creature serves as ‘tank,’ distracting combatants from Jonah and onto itself.
Ability: Taunt. Has a 50% chance of capturing the attention of up to three combatants equal or below Jonah’s level, a 25% chance of capturing the attention of up to two combatants one level above Jonah’s, and decreasing by 50% per level of difference afterward, with a limit of one combatant. Taunt lasts for one round of battle, or until the Ankilasaurus is slain. Petranodon: Summons a small Petranodon (six foot wingspan), an ancient flying creature formerly native to Fallien. This creature serves as a scout, viewing things that Jonas would not see otherwise.
Ability: Second Sight. Has a 50% chance of passing on what it is seeing to Jonah’s eyes. The Petranodon is summoned for two rounds: the first round is spent scouting, the second is spent transferring what it saw. If Second Sight should fail, Jonah loses his sight for the next round of posting.
Smilidon: Summons a Smilidon, a cat-like creature (three feet at the shoulder), formerly native to Salvar. This creature is full-out offensive oriented.
Ability: Frenzy. The Smilidon goes into the animal equivalent of a berserk rage, rampaging for a full round of posts unless stopped. However, there is a 50% chance that the Smilidon won’t recognize Jonah, and attack him instead. Should this occur, all of Jonah's attention would be on destroying the summon or circle, not on the fight.
Vylokiraptor: Summons a Vylokiraptor, a vicious yet small (three feet at the head) dinosaur formerly native to Corone. This creature is also oriented towards attack.
Ability: Ambush. The Vylokiraptor spends one round hiding, and attacks in the second round, going for the limb or neck of the nearest enemy combatant. There is, again, a 50% chance that the raptor won’t recognize Jonah, leading to havoc instead of victory.
Weaknesses
Distracted: He has a section of his brain always wrapped around the borked spell that got him stuck with Thighbiter (see Familiar). He believes he has to focus on said spell, or Thighbiter’s collar will stop working (it won’t, but he doesn’t know that), and as a result he’s usually operating at a lower mental capacity than he should be.
Insatiable: A non-psychosomatic side effect of having Thighbiter stuck in this time is that Jonah is always expending energy. As a result, he’s almost constantly hungry. If he has gone any considerable time without eating, it adds to his general cranky, sullen behaviors. 95% of what he eats is sweets or meat. He'll eat bread, fruit or vegetables if he's starving, but if he has a choice he's likely to bypass anything remotely healthy or balanced.
Nearsighted: Jonah is nearly as blind as a bat without his glasses. He cannot read things unless they are about six inches away if he loses them.
Phobias: Jonah has a crippling fear of the dark, not something that is entirely desirable in someone whose career of choice revolves partially around going deep under ground and digging things deeper. He is also terrified of Warlocks and Necromancers, and cannot function at anything close to a civilized, adult human’s level when near them.
Equipment
Archaeologist’s Kit
An assortment of useful brushes, tracing papers, charcoals, sketchbooks, chalks, chisels, a lantern-style helmet, a lighter, a magnifying glass, a pair of goggles big enough to fit over his glasses, a sieve tray and a rope ladder, all bundled up in a handy leather messenger bag. Don’t worry, there’s no whip.
Focuses
Two bone fragments (Ankilasaurus, Petranodon), a claw (Vylokiraptor), and a tooth (Smilidon), fixed to leather lanyards and worn under his shirt. He also wears a thin piece of agate (required for Summon) and his glasses (required for Essence). If he loses any of these bone focuses, his casting time for Essence jumps to five minute, while the casting time for Summon jumps to ten. Furthermore, losing the glasses would increase the casting time for Essence to ten minutes, and losing the agate would increase Summon’s casting time to twenty minutes. Needless to say, he rarely ever takes off his focuses. And, in the off chance he should loose the focuses after he has a summon active, that summon would become permanent, though their loyalty to him would fade dramatically with every second they remained in the wrong time…
Hook and Talon
Hook and Talon are two sickle-shaped knives, made of steel and leather-bound oak. Hook’s blade curves down and inward towards the hilt, while Talon’s blade curves out and upward.
Pick Axe
The typical tool of miners and archeologists, this pick-axe is made from iron and oak, and all Jonah knows what to use it for is breaking up earth. He would view using it in combat as barbaric and wrong – which is not to say he wouldn’t use it that way if his life depended on it. He’d just feel bad afterward, and likely make a dog’s dinner of it in the process.
Familiar
Thighbiter, a young Dynonychus. She stands three and a half feet at the shoulder, and is still growing. She has long, curving claws, serrated teeth, and super-powerful jaws. She is colored rather like a tiger, dusty orange with pewter grey stripes, and her eyes are yellow. She wears a black leather collar with a cat bell around her neck. If the collar was ever removed, her first act would most likely be to eat Jonah’s face off. Needless to say, Jonah is very touchy about that collar.
As long as the collar is intact, however, Thighbiter is loyal to Jonah – bordering on being as devoted as a hound – and behaves as he has attempted to train her. She doesn’t attack unless provoked or ordered to, though it is obvious to anyone who sees her (including Jonah) that it takes her an awful lot of effort not to kill most anything that comes near her. For some strange reason, Thighbiter hangs back - or all out flees - when Jonah works with his summons. If he's using one of the summons, she won't fight. Jealousy, perhaps? Furthermore, she will not be used against other PCs without the writer's consent.
History
Jonah was born to a prominent Scara Brae businessman named Jonas Barnham and his wife Juliet. Both, however, were unprepared for the rigors of raising a rambunctious child – Jonas had no patience, and his wife was rather delicate. They muddled along for four years before Jonas made a rather foolish business mistake, and lost everything. Creditors practically beating down his doors, Jonas made an equally foolish fathering mistake, and sold his son to a visiting Corone noble – Nate Bentham - for several thousand crowns, never looking back.
The boy spent the next eight years of his life in Underwood as Nevin Bentham’s whipping boy. Nevin was an exceptionally obnoxious child, and so Jonah’s childhood was spent with sore hands, a bruised face and a back whipped raw. When Nevin wasn’t misbehaving, Jonah still worked, cleaning and helping in the gardens, caring for the Bentham’s estate and other servant-like responsibilities. He became fairly good friends with the whipmaster’s son, which is how he survived when Nevin outgrew the concept of whipping boys. He was sold, again, instead of being killed.
Jonah’s next owner was Koveyus the Wise, a magician obsessed with immortality. His abuses stayed mostly in the psychological realm rather than the physical, though Jonah always went to bed hungry, and was still averaging a beating every two weeks – though the abuses were more at the hands of Kove’s groundskeeper. Old Kove believed that he had found a spell that would allow him to transfer his mind and soul into a younger body. However, he also believed that this transfer would go much more smoothly if Jonah’s mind was already trained in his interests. He began to teach Jonah about his own personal passions – history and archaeology – and tried to teach him several domains of magic (though most failed miserably). Jonah never found out if the magician could have possessed him. The old man died, ironically, in his sleep, and all his possessions were auctioned off: magic books, estate – and Jonah.
Jonah was eighteen – as near as he can figure – when he was sold to an Elvish Warlock named Héra Boneweaver. He hadn’t liked any of his former owners, but the Boneweaver showed him just how good, comparatively, he’d had it until then. The Warlock took him to his citadel somewhere in Alerar, and Jonah never saw so much as a sunbeam for the next two years. He was locked away in a cage – one of fifteen – and kept as an ongoing donor for many of the Boneweaver’s dark spells, ranging from having blood drawn to hair stolen through one ritual that ended with him being strapped down and having his bottom two ribs removed. The Warlock used those bones to raise some sort of arcane creature with Jonah’s face from Somewhere Else. Jonah remembers the thing’s name – Yaelgin – but nothing else from the event, other than pain.
Boneweaver kept him alive after that, though Jonah will probably never know why. He survived two years in the citadel before a roving band of adventurers led, jointly, by a wizard and a paladin defeated the warlock and freed his slaves. The wizard, Isa Twoclaws, took Jonah into her home back in Corone, where she and her husband nursed him back to health and helped him adjust to life on the outside. Isa gave him his first pair of glasses, giving him his first clear view of the world ever. She sponsored his entrance into an Archaeological Society of some note, and helped him defend himself when his past threatened; like when Jonas Barnham – twenty-two years older but none-the-wiser – reared his head to accuse him of slander, or when encountering Kove’s groundskeeper again.
With Isa’s backing, he began to experiment with his own interests and proficiencies, accidentally discovering the one way, it seemed, for him to access magic. These experiences were not without mishap. His first summon after he figured out the spell was a Dynonychus – said Dynonychus overpowered him and managed to eat her own focus before chomping down on Jonah’s leg. If Isa hadn’t interfered, locking her down with a spelled collar, it is likely that Jonah’s first summon would have been his last. As it is, neither he nor Isa have figured out a way to permanently banish Thighbiter, as Jonah’s magic seems intrinsically linked to the creature. Isa fears that killing Thighbiter off might strip Jonah of his powers (best case) or kill him (worst case).
Accidental disasters aside, Jonah grew to become pretty pleased with his life. He was often commissioned to identify various historical pieces, and spent much of his time in ruins and deserts, digging up new things and trying to figure them out. Recently, however, he’s begun having strange dreams. Dreams about the Black Steppe, and a strange thing wearing his face…
Miscellaneous Notes: the writer would like to state that the prehistoric critters’ names are misspelled on purpose, don’t confiscate her dinosaur fanclub card please! The summons will always be a mixture of Real Prehistoric Critters and Patented Fantasy fluff, and the numbers in the Summons descriptions will be adhered to and rolled for via a dice roller site (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dice/dice.htm), as they make life amusing and unpredictable for all involved. Jonah’s theme song is Dinosaur Bones (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFL1Vi8cQR4) by Showbread.