Iona Niu was born on the island of Tutuila in American Samoa in 1990. He was a wild child, who spent his days outside of school swimming and surfing. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2008, and spent the next five years serving his country in the Iraq conflict. While serving, his squad was hit by an IED and he suffered a traumatic brain injury and was discharged back home.
Suffering from both muscle tremors and migraine headaches, he had a hard time finding work on the island. It was a long, difficult couple of years for him (he spent part a year staying with friends until his grandfather came to get him). In 2015, at the side of his grandfather, he spent a lot more time with the Ocean, and deepened his connection with the culture of his people.
One night, after a very long week studying and meditating, Iona was called out to the water. He heard the siren call and choose not to resist that lure. He swam down, deeper than he had swam before and found himself in a deep, dark water that tried to engulf him. He started to panic, started to lose control of himself. He stifled that thought and accepted that moment, and let the water wash over him, and fill him. The last thing he saw as his eyes closed were a pair of curious eyes studying him.
He washed up on shore the next morning a different person. Gone were the migraines and the tremors. His vision had cleared, his health was perfect again. He could hear the sounds of the waves crashing against the beach on all the islands...and he knew he was different. Stronger than anyone would have believed, capable of swimming great distances very quickly and other amazing feats, Iona reveled in his new abilities. The most impressive ability Iona displayed was control over the sea and sky.
His abilities drew the attention of people from around the world, and he suddenly found himself pulled into the middle of a political debate he had no comprehension of. The U.S. Government wanted to put him back to work as a super soldier, but when it was again brought to the attention of the world that American Samoans were not considered citizens, Iona declined the return to active duty.
This caused a lot of tempers to flare around the islands and in the U.S., and it might have been more of a problem if The Society hadn’t shown up. Web, acting as the spokesman for the group, offered the young Samoan a place on the team, if he was willing. It took some wrangling and conversations, but finally Iona took the name Wave and became the newest addition to the Society’s ranks.
He moved to Port Fontaine and has since spent most of his time in Callow’s Field, finding a small neighborhood of Samoans living along the coast. Since his journey to America, he’s seen a lot more of the world, but in many ways is still the wide eyed island boy who loved to play in the water and go swimming as a child.
Wave has a host of enemies, mainly those who pollute the sea and the sky. He spends a lot of his time traveling around the world attempting to clean both, and while his efforts help, they are not a solution to the problem. There are dozens of entities and forces that want to pollute the world, and all of them are enemies of Wave. There is also the Lemurian crisis.
Lemuria, like it’s counterpart Atlantis, was a forerunner civilization of advanced power and capability. They managed to prevent their destruction in the same cataclysm that destroyed Atlantis, but the experience left them xenophobic and angry at the surface dwellers who had survived the cataclysm unscathed. The Lemuria’s xenophobia is a mix of paranoia and jingoism, and they have attacked the surface on more than one occasion.
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