The Sentinel
Captain James J. Ellison was serving in the Special Forces when his unit was sent on a covert ops anti-drug mission in South America. Unbeknownst to him, his immediate superior had set up his unit for a fall. Sent out into an ambush, the men
in the unit had no chance. Their helicopter was shot down and the entire team written off as lost by the U.S. military. The fact that the area then became quiet, with little or no drug activity simply slipped past everyone's attention.
Until the helicopter crash, Ellison had been repressing his innate abilities. The mixture of the crash, the deaths of his men, the isolation brought his latent abilities as a sentinel to the forefront. A sentinel is a person with a distinct genetic advantage. Their senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch (and possible psychic senses too*) are enhanced. These senses became his salvation, giving the local tribe, the Chopec, a reason to adopt him into the tribe. The Chopec Shaman, Incacha, aided the Sentinel in controlling and using his senses for the good of the tribe. With the help of the Chopec tribe, Ellison fulfilled the mission outlined by his
superiors, holding the Chopec pass against guerillas and drug lords for eighteen months.
At the end of that eighteen months, the army discovered that he had survived and retrieved Ellison. Upon returning to civilization, he resigned his commission and returned to his home, Cascade, Washington. There he joined the police force,
working his way from Vice to Major Crimes. Once out of the jungle, Ellison manages to repress both his abilities and his memories of the jungle.
The advent of the show is during the Switchman case. A brief stakeout in the Cascade National Forest re-awakens Ellison's abilities. Only this time, there is no local tribe who understands what he is becoming. Nor is there a local shaman to help him control them. Thinking he is either going crazy or being drugged, Ellison goes to the hospital for testing. There, he is advised that he is normal, no drugs, no allergies (yet).
Enter one Blair Sandburg. Sandburg has, until now, been the quintessential graduate student. To quote Ellison, he is fits into the "neo-hippy, witchdoctor punk" type. A brilliant, quirky and dedicated anthropologist, Sandburg has already made his mark in the field. Working on his doctoral thesis, he needs only one thing to finish his degree, a full fledged sentinel. He is one of the few people in the modern world who believe that sentinels are fact and not fiction.
Armed with the only (as far as fandom has been able to discern) text on the subject, Sentinels of Paraguay by Sir Richard Burton (the explorer not the actor), Sandburg has made himself an expert on tribal sentinels. He knows their strengths, their weaknesses and their possibilities. Within
minutes of meeting Ellison, he saves the detective's life.
With the reluctant agreement of the police detective, Sandburg sets out to help Ellison relearn how to control his abilities. Thereby begins their adventure. Want more information? Hopefully, soon I'll have more up, including the links that will
lead you to more exciting places.
Blair Sandburg & Dt.James Ellison
My Sentinel logo was created at Flaming Text
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