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Name: Jonah Irniq
Age: 28
Gender: Male
Talent: Animal communication - Jonah has a telepathic means of communication with most animals. He has also become extremely good at reading body language and understanding vocal cues through his work in veterinary medicine, but that hasn't got anything to do with his powers. He cannot force an animal to speak with him, nor can he force the animal to feel a certain emotion - he merely has the ability to speak with it. Whether the animal actually wants to talk is another matter entirely. (Think Dr. Dolittle. or Eliza Thornberry!)
Stage name: The Polar Bear King (Though also occasionally called "The Polar Bear tramp", "That idiot with the big white bear", and "Doc")

World: Type-B modern Alaska. A world where tribal magic and modern technology exist side by side.

History: Jonah grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, and while his family is of Inuit ancestry, his parents had moved into the city in pursuit of high-paying jobs and he spent most of his childhood isolated from traditional culture. He was a generally happy child, and had no siblings so he was always the center of attention, but also somewhat lonely at times. He liked pets as a way to help alleviate some of the loneliness he felt at home, and kept a cat, a dog, and at one point an aquarium of goldfish.

Jonah's closest friends were from similar backgrounds, and the group found themselves in an odd position during high school, torn between the magical awareness that adulthood in their world granted them and the science that their teachers preached. They began experimenting with recreational drugs during their Sophomore year, and it all went pretty well until one of their friends committed suicide. Eager to give her a proper send-off, someone got ahold of LSD. While under its influence, Jonah found himself having a conversation with someone's pet malamute. He thought it was a side-effect of the drugs, but when the trip was over and the ability persisted, he realized it was permanent.

Around the same time his parents, not knowing what to do with him and his terrible behavior and dropping grades, shipped Jonah off to live with his grandparents in Barrow (The "entirely opposite side of the universe," as he called it at the time). The remoteness happened to be a good thing. Jonah's traditional grandparents and the thriving Inuit community provided the sort of reassurance he'd been looking for but never found in Anchorage. It also lacked the drugs he and his friends had been playing around with, forcing him to sober up. Jonah focused on his grades again, along with honing his newfound animal communication abilities.

After graduating from high school in Barrow, Jonah attended University of Alaska Fairbanks on government scholarship and majored in biology, and later went on to study veterinary medicine. Once he received his certification, he returned home to Barrow and began working with the town's animals, primarily sled dogs, and also with an orphaned polar bear cub, who he named Nanook and allowed to live first in his house and then in his tool shed.

Jonah's social life is fairly average - he is generally known and respected around town as a good person and better veterinarian, and is on good terms with most of the residents. He doesn't have any particularly close friends, but he doesn't have any enemies, either. As for a love life, there have been a few girlfriends over the years, but nothing has really clicked, and while he acknowledges it would be nice, it's not a top priority of his.

His arrival at the cirque involves a football field, some spooked polar bears, a flying caravan, and a gimp husky. I'll have to type it up sometime.

Ethnicity: Alaskan Native/Inuit (Specifically Inupiat)
Hair color: black, worn short
Skin tone: brownish reddish, and a sort of light olive undertone. A fairly standard Alaskan Native color.
Facial structure: Oval, somewhat weak chinned. His nose is straight and sharp but a bit too narrow for his face. His cheekbones are high and well defined.
Eye color: dark brown, almond shaped, wears thin-rimmed rectangular glasses for myopia and mild astigmatism
Height: 5' 11"
Physical build: wide shouldered, but thin-limbed and thin bodied. He has a somewhat frail look to him when clothed, but is actually very muscular in a wiry fashion.

Personality: easy-going and humorous. Jonah enjoys laughing, loves a good joke of any sort, and has an overdeveloped sense of sarcasm and irony. For fun, he solves math problems and chemical equations. He picked up a skewed sort of spirituality and perpetually sways back and forth between superstition and cynicism. At times he can be driven into such religious fervor that he has actual conversations with the spirits of his Alaska, and at other times seriously questions if he is just making it up in his head.
Personal quote: "It's ********' cold in Barrow, man, and the spirits howl at you all winter long."
Jonah speaks English and a small amount of Inupiaq, though he's not particularly good at it since he didn't start learning it until he was sixteen.

Nanook: Nanook is Jonah's polar bear. The two met after Jonah's neighbor shot Nanook's mother, and they've been fast friends ever since. In many ways, Nanook is like Jonah's son and, as a result, has picked up a similar personality. Though he is particularly intelligent for a polar bear, he cannot speak english and only communicates through Jonah.

Nanuq: Nanuq is the Inuit god of polar bears. He visits Jonah from time to time in Alaska, and intends to keep doing so no matter where the young man goes. He claims to have given Jonah his powers in the first place, and takes the form of an elderly Inupiaq man dressed in an odd combination of white furs and modern clothing.

A bit more about Jonah's world...

Before leaving with the Cirque, Jonah has almost never left his native Alaska. Presumably the rest of the world exists, and he has certainly seen it on TV and in movies and studied it in school, he has visited parts of Canada with school, and his parents took him to Seattle once for a few days when he was really little, but other than that, the rest of the world isn't too much of a concern to him.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
-Robert Service

The Alaskan wilderness of Jonah's world is populated by myths, legends, and nightmares straight out of folklore. There are odd stories passed around about huge creatures lurking in the mountains, or odd spirits on the breeze. While most of the world exists just as it does in modern times, the Inuit and Eskimo peoples of Northern Russia and America are still visited by the spirits and magic of their ancient times, though the experience ranges from an occasional prophetic dream to perpetual spirit guides to powers such as Jonah's. While in traditional society it's nothing bizarre, those who find themselves torn between the science of the modern world and the magic of tradition and bloodlines often have extreme difficulty coping.

The city of Anchorage, where Jonah was born, is on the southern coast of the state. It is reasonably warm, reasonably wet, and reasonably populous. (The population of the Anchorage metropolitan area is roughly 50% of the whole state.) The majority of the population is white.

The town of Barrow, where Jonah lives now, is on the northern coast of the state. The summertime high for the town is rarely out of the 50s, and it holds the distinction of being one of the northernmost towns in the world. It is 350 miles north of the arctic circle, and the sun doesn't rise between November and January. A majority of the population is Native Alaskan.


"It's a little town on the top of the world, or pretty damn close to it."

And I guess I am now begging for critique.

Silver... I like it.

^_^

I'm not entirely sure about his 'power' though. You explain that he did some drugs in school and that during a particularly depressing bout with LSD he discvoers that he can talk to malamutes. This is all fine and dandy, but then you go on to refer to his ability. xd it seems to me that if I was on LSD and talking to animals I'd figure that I was high on LSD xd ... did his ability come about because of the LSD? or was it always there in spite of his drug abuses. How did he deal with the fact that he could suddenly talk to animals? did if freak him out? while on LSD? when's the first time he talked to animals outside his drug use? How did he feel then? Does he let people know that he can comunicate with animals? or is it a secret for the most part.

Also, you say Barrow is on the "entirely opposite side of the universe," in his own words, but I can't remember where you said how geographically different and far away it is from Anchorage. I assume that it's still in Alaska since what you refer to as Barrow's climate seem similar...

Also, was he already living in Barrow when he found Nanook? or did that happen before...

And just for my curiosity... O.o Does Nanook stay at his house with him? Do other people know that he has a polar bear for a friend? xd

heart I like it Silver... I really do ^_^

Wow! This is a really neat concept! You might want to explain more about how this ability is mental. Like, describe how he can hear actual voices in his head, not understand them when they growl or something. That's my only advice.

I. Love. Water for Elephants.

(And I'll edit this with an actual critique soon.)