Tribe

It started with a whisper.
An itch in the back of his mind he could quite scratch. Voices that urged him to give into his baser instincts. To hunt. To hurt. To avenge. And then there were the others. Urging him to forgive. They say everyone has a devil and an angel on their shoulder? Jasper Wyatt had a dozen of each.

And it was like that as he matured. He thought it was normal. That everyone experienced the same feelings. Until he learned that no, not everyone hears voices. In high school he assumed he was mentally ill. Until his father sat him down and told him the truth. It was part of their bloodline. Jasper’s father taught him meditation techniques to quiet the voices until they were little more than feelings as he revealed more of their family's history. Their tribe, the Ochachke, loosely translated to ‘skinwalker’, a reference to a Native American legend that some humans can shapeshift into animals.

Legend has it that long ago one of his ancestors angered a witch. As revenge, she’d turned him into a wolf and cursed their bloodline. Every generation would be cursed with animalistic urges and the voices of their ancestors. The vengeful and unforgiving. The virtuous and the righteous. All chattering away in the back of their minds. It was just a legend of course. But there’s always a little bit of truth weaved into legends.

The truth was that his ancestor and his descendants were cursed with the traits and urges of various prairie and woodland animals. Bears, wolves, hawks, etc. But over time they learned to adapt. To suppress those urges and call upon their totem’s powers and traits when necessary. This was Jasper’s inheritance.

Jasper's main power is the ability to selectively imitate, either consciously or unconsciously, the various physical traits of mundane animals. He is capable of manifesting these traits one at a time, or up to several at the same instance. The intensities of each trait may vary anywhere from granting peak potential, to feats defined as beyond human capability.

Jasper has an apparent rapport with Earth's creatures, to the extent that he is able to subliminally communicate and otherwise associate with them. While he cannot directly control their actions, animals in close proximity to Tribe tend to act tamer and may appear to defer to him as they might an "alpha".

• Dark and Troubled Past - Jasper's past is long and tragic. He rarely talks about the things he's done or experienced in life.
• Berserk Button - Jasper has few triggers, but hurting innocents or the ones he cares about are one of them. Once enraged, he's a force to be reckoned with.

• Hyper-Awareness - Thanks to his abilities Jasper is constantly aware of his surroundings.