Born in 1901, Ray was raised in a hardscrabble family in the  Midwest. The Blackwoods suffered through the death of their father in the Great War, the Dustbowl and the Great Depression. Their parents passed on, and the Blackwood children continued to run the family farm together until it was foreclosed on by the bank. Until then, the eldest, Ray, had been a law-abiding and upright man, but faced with the weight of misfortune and the callousness of the banks and courts something snapped in him.

Ray began working with bootleggers, using the family farm as a waypoint for alcohol smuggling, which brought him into contact with the criminal underworld. When G-men tracked the liquor shipments to the Blackwood farm there was a shootout between the gangsters and the feds, with his younger brothers and sister killed in the crossfire. Ray went off the deep end, mad with rage, guilt, grief and loss and fell deeper into the company of evil men. He became a counterfeiter, a smuggler, a button-man and a bank robber, taking back by force what he felt had been taken from him by the government and big business, and getting payback for his family.

After a daring daylight robbery that left him labeled Public Enemy No. 1 and with the G-men closing in, Ray realised he needed to get out of the country for a spell. He fled overseas and got drawn into the fighting against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. The baptism of fire he received cooled his hunger for revenge, showing him there were bigger things to fight for than money and revenge, an evil loose in the world that needed to be opposed. Ray was recruited by British Military Intelligence - they had uses for a man who knew how to move quietly, kill efficiently, understood criminals and could operate in the shadows outside the law.

Now that the war has been over for some years, Ray has made his way back to the US under an assumed name, counting on the fact that the wanted posters will have been forgotten in the ten or fifteen years since he was No. 1 with a bullet.

Ray stands at 6'2", and farmlife gave him a big, strong frame that fighting toned and hardened. Long of limb and well-muscled despite his 50 years of age, he bears a number of scars from a long and dangerous life, and moves with an easy, relaxed gait that can turn into a steel spring of rattlesnake-readiness at a moment's notice. His blue eyes sit in a weathered face with equally deep crow's eyes and laugh lines, and his dark brown hair is mingled with numerous grey threads that make it seem like burnished chestnut. Working with British spies gave him an appreciation for bespoke Saville Row suits, and he cuts an impressive figure in the well-tailored outfits he prefers.