Indiana Jones' Journal

I've got a lot of fond memories of that dog...
NAME: Dr. Henry Walton Jones Jr.
NICKNAMES/ALIASES: Indiana, Indy, Junior (only to his father)
AGE/DATE OF BIRTH: 39 /July 1, 1899

POWERS: Nothing super-human. He's just a man.

HANDICAPS: Near paralyzing fear of snakes.

APPEARANCE: Indiana Jones is six foot one, and he looks equally at home in a suit and bowtie, glasses on his face, teaching a college course on the Neolithic tombs, as he does in a leather jacket, fedora, and unbuttoned shirt. He is in very good shape (good enough to outrun boulders and angry Havidos tribesmen), but he looks his age. (As Indy would say, "it's not the years. It's the mileage.") He has a good poker face--most of the time. There is a horizontal scar on his chin that stands out, white against the rest of his face. Indy is good looking--rugged-- and a number of his female students stare at him. He's good at blending into situations that others would not be able to stomach; sometimes this requires changing his appearance in minor ways (like by donning a Nazi uniform or full Arab gear). When not teaching, Indiana is rarely seen without his hat.

PHYSICAL QUIRKS: The story behind the scar: 13-year-old Indiana decided a group of men in the desert who recovered the Cross of Coranado shouldn't have the cross, because it belonged in a museum. After sneaking down into their dig site and nabbing the cross, he ran, intending on taking the cross back to the police so that it could be placed in a museum. The men saw him scrambling away and chased him. Eventually this chase landed Indy on a circus train, full of animals-- including rhinos, giraffes, snakes and a lion. While grappling with one of the men, Indy fell into the lion's car. As it stood there, looking at him and growling, he took the whip behind him off the wall and cracked it once, twice, three times. The lion backed up, but Indy cut his chin open in a line that bled.

Indy smirks when he knows he's right. His entire demeanor changes around his father-- including his posture. And while wearing his beloved fedora, he's very apt to run his fingers over the brim. (He has also been known to fall asleep with the hat covering his face).

SPECIAL ABILITIES: Indy is incredibly adept at using a whip, and can swing across casms using one, knock weapons out of people's hands, and generally fight with one better than with any other weapon. He is a decent boxer and can certainly hold his own, if not beat, someone in a fist fight. He can read and translate several languages, including Aramaic, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Latin. He speaks Mandarin, Spanish, German, Hebrew and some forms of Hindi-- at least enough to carry on a conversation and get where he needs to go. He's also incredibly good with women (the exception to that is Marion).

RELATIVES: Father, Henry Jones, is a literature professor that the kids "don't get." Mother, Anna, is deceased. Indy had a younger sister, named Suzie, that died as an infant. He has a son, whose mother is Marion Ravenwood, but he doesn't know it.

OCCUPATION: Professor of archaelogy at Barnett College and field archaeologist; adventurer and world-saver.

EDUCATION: Boarding school in England; public school in Utah; undergraduate work, University of Chicago; Graduate work, linguistics, the Sorbonne; Ph.D., Archaeology.

TELL US SOMETHING WE DON'T KNOW: I grew up on these movies. (And when I say that, I mean it in the way that some people say they grew up in a certain religion.) I know them inside and out, and I'm probably more attached to Indy as a character than any book or movie character out there. I know him quite well. We go back.

Aside from that, much in the way that Henry Jones (Sr.) kept a diary about the Grail and his search for it, Indy keeps one about his discoveries--something I plan on turning into character-written journal entries.

HISTORY:
Henry Jones Jr. was born in Princeton, NJ, where his father was a professor at the famous Ivy League university. As a boy, he travelled to England, Cairo, and other places with his parents, meeting famous explorers like Howard Carter and other important figures along the way.

His mother contracted scarlet fever when he was 11 and died soon after. Indy and his father returned to the US after her death, and his father was lecturing on the east coast. Eventually they settled in Utah.

Indy was a boy scout and he listened to his father, much to his chagrin. After trying his hardest to defend the honor of the Cross of Coronado, Indy continued his pursuit of artifacts that he might put them where they belonged-- in museums. He has hardly spoken to his father in the last 20 years because his father's focus on studying the Holy Grail and the amount of importance that he places on "people that have been dead for 500 years in other countries" was too much for Indy to take. He spent a great deal of time in Europe, and as a teen had innumerable adventures with WW1 as the backdrop.

He studied with Abner Ravenwood, a foremost authority within the archaeological circles, and while a favorite student of Ravenwood's, managed to alienate him by starting a love affair with his daughter, Marion. It ended messily, and for ten years the pair didn't see each other.

In 1935, Indy went to Beijing to recover a very large, very valuable diamond for a man named Lao. Once he got it, Lao tried to dupe him out of it and drugged him, heavily, saying he would get the antedote for the powerful poison when he gave him the diamond for free. After a serious fight over this at Club Obi-Wan, Indy and Willie, a lounge singer at the club, escaped the fray and got in a getaway car driven by Short Round, Indy's child side kick.

The three didn't plan their escape very well, though, and ended up on a plane owned by Lao. The pilot abandoned the plane and let it crash, and the three jumped out of it just in time to survive, landing in a river on an inflated raft and floating for days until they reached anything recognizeable.

They ended up in India, near a village that desperately needed help.

A village elder told Indy that not only were its children missing, but someone had taken the Sankara stone that acted as the village's charm. He told Indy to go to Pankot Palace and recover the stone and the children, and Indy, Willie and Shorty went.

They discovered that the Thuggee cult was operating again, and worshipping Kali-- offering live sacrifices to her and also using the children as slave labor. After many strange adventures, Indy recovers the stones (there are three, altogether, and only one belonged to the village) and sets the children free. (Initially, he wanted to keep the stones because they would be worth a fortune if he could sell them, but Indy had a change of heart).

After recovering a golden idol in South America in 1936 and having it stolen from him by a much-despised archaeologist named Belloq, Indy got a visit from two government officials who told him that the Nazis were looking for the Staff of Ra, and would be searching out Ravenwood. The Staff, or more importantly, the piece that went on top of it, would point out the location of the Well of the Souls, long thought to be the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. Obviously, the Nazis could not get their hands on that, and Indy went to work. He flew to Nepal to find Ravenwood and instead found Marion, who still had the piece he was looking for. But the Nazis found her, too, and the bar she ran was burned to the ground.

Marion said that until she got her money back, since she lost it in the fire, Indy had more than he bargained for: he had a "goddamned partner."

The two went to Cairo and sought help from Sallah, a friend of Indy's who knew about the work the Nazis were already doing in the desert. Indy discovered the location to the Well of the Souls before the Nazis did and with Sallah's help found the Ark. Unfortunately, Belloq and his team noticed the digging that was going on and sealed Indy and Marion into the Well, leaving them for dead. They escaped and went after the Nazi entourage, which was en route to an island where they planned to open the Ark and test its power.

They did open the Ark. And Indy and Marion were there when it happened. He told her to keep her eyes shut and not look at what happened, no matter what, and clamped his own shut.

They were the only two survivors.

The US government took the Ark and said they were going to study it, that they had 'top men' working on it. Indy wasn't happy with that, not at all. Something that powerful should not be toyed with.

A few years later, Indy finally sees the Cross of Coronado put in a museum. Someone comes to see him about Grail Mythology-- a man named Walter Donovan, with a lot of money and a lot of backing. Indy tells him that while the information that he has is interesting, he's got the wrong Jones. Donovan tells him he knows: he'd already hired his father and his father had gone missing.

Not suprisingly, Indy takes the offered job-- finding more information so that the Grail can perhaps be found. He goes to Venice in seach of his father's colleague, Dr. Elsa Snieder, and with her discovers catacombs under an old church, unraveling part of the Grail mystery. It doesn't take long to realize the Nazis are involved, and Indy finds out that his father is being held at a castle on the Austrian-German border.

He adopts a stupid disguise, wearing a beret and a trench coat and speaking with an exaggered Scottish accent to get in the door with Elsa. But once inside, once through another door, Indy isn't where he expected at all...

PERSONALITY: Indiana Jones is incredibly intelligent, and he loves being a professor. More than that, though, he loves getting artifacts for the museum run by the university where he is on staff-- a museum run by his friend and colleague Marcus Brody. His intellect is readily apparent when speaking to him, even if it's only for a few seconds. He can be mean and he can use comments to cut, but Indy is witty and, especially when in the field, smiles easily.

Indy has a tendency not to have long relationships with women. He does care about them, it just doesn't really work out because most women don't go for traipsing around the world, through jungles and deserts, almost dying all the time. But there have been quite a few women.

His relationship with his father is a strange one, due in part to the circumstances of his upbringing and his mother not being in the picture the entire time.

When he's working, Indy is incredibly focused and gets excited about every discovery he makes. There's very little that can stop him, even if enemies get in his way; often, he will bargain with them and even give them information they need as long as he can continue his work. He finds a way to come out on top afterward.

No matter what else, Indiana tries his hardest to do the right thing, no matter how difficult it is.

MISC: I'd love to see Indy teaching alongside Bruce Banner. I'd love to see him teach Hannibal or River. I'd love to see him meet Anita Blake.