ShadoWraith is an enigma. Cold-blooded, yet I have watched him on numerous occasions treating an animal with a gentleness he would never show to a human or metahuman. Unemotional, yet I have seen him literally shaking with passion as he recounted the story of his experience during the Night of Rage. A loner, yet I have observed first-hand his loyalty to the few he considers worthy of his friendship.

Yes, ShadoWraith is one of the more interesting individuals I have had the chance to know and work with. Also one of the oddest. He is the oldest member of our team (although I have no idea how old he is, I do know that he is older than I), an albino Elf whose best friend, as nearly as I can determine, is his sniper rifle. I am usually reasonably adept at reading people's characters, but with 'Wraith I admit to being somewhat stumped. He guards his secrets jealously, and I am not one to pry.

'Wraith joined our team a few years ago, after the abrupt departure of our resident oddball samurai, Moto. Harry located him when we let it be known that we were seeking someone who was fast and very good with small arms.

I was a bit reluctant at first to trust this quiet, intense individual, but he did nothing to lead me or the rest of the team to believe that he could not be trusted. As time went on, 'Wraith proved himself to be one of the finest shots I had ever encountered, in addition to being an expert on other deadly arts such as poisons. His primary asset, we came to find out, was his speed. 'Wraith is obsessed with being fast. Though he didn't say so, I'm convinced that he has on at least two occasions gone under the knife to receive experimental cyberware that serves to increase his already frightening speed. It is comforting to know that, except in very specific situations (for which one can often prepare oneself), it will be a member of one's own team who will react the fastest in a combat. Tends to skew the odds a bit in our favour, and I'll take that any time.

Time went on, we successfully completed a few more runs, and I had just about gotten myself convinced that there wasn't anything significantly more to 'Wraith than he was showing, when he did something that surprised me more than anything had in years. Namely, he appeared at my door one night, clad in his underwear, raving on about dreams. When I invited him in, he proceeded to trip over my sofa in an attempt to leap over it (an activity which he had accomplished many times in the past with full success). It seems that 'Wraith had had a dream, and it had disturbed him. "What kind of dream?" I had naturally asked. No, he had replied, he had had a dream. He didn't do that. Ever. So when he had awakened from this dream, he had run in terror down the street (our Seattle apartments are only five minutes' walk from each other) to tell me about it.

That dream started a whole series of weirdnesses that I shan't discuss here, but my curiosity about 'Wraith was once again piqued. It was clear that there was more going on behind his impassive features than I had imagined.

It was on a later run, an ill-fated foray into Chicago for an extraction, that our team found out more of the motivations behind ShadoWraith's shadow career. We had been on the run for several hours, pursued by insect spirits and some of the more undesirable human denizens of the Chicago Containment Zone. We were exhausted, injured, and demoralized, certain that we would never make it out of Chicago alive, when we received aid from an unlikely source. ShadoWraith, his paranoia and vigilance having forced him to remain at heightened reaction speed for most of those hours, finally couldn't take any more and had his own version of a breakdown. During this time, he told us the story of his past in New York, experiencing the Night of Rage as he struggled to help many of his friends escape from the wrath of the anti-metahuman forces who sought to kill them. Despite 'Wraith's best efforts, only he survived the night. Though he didn't say in so many words, I think that event was what drove him over the edge and into the shadows.

Despite his reticence and secretiveness, I have no hesitation about trusting 'Wraith with my life. Our relationship, I think, can best be described as mutual respect, though I do take pleasure in attempting to break his stoic unemotionalism with my odd sense of humour. I have gotten him to crack a smile on numerous occasions, and he has, at least up until the events in Chicago, even been known to make a joke every once in a while. Rarely, admittedly, and his jokes are generally of quite a strange bent, but one takes what one can get. I hope that ShadoWraith can, at some point, exorcise his inner demons. If he does not, I fear that one day everything he has kept bottled up for so long will rise to the surface in a most explosive fashion, and probably at a highly inopportune time. Either that, or he will leave our team at some point and we will never see him again. I do not find either of these options appealing.

ShadoWraith's player is Steve Rosenau.