Edgar Morris, who would eventually go on to become the masked vigilante known as Stormshadow, is a born and bred native of City Nouveau. A child of the slums, and with parents that amounted to nothing more than a speakeasy waitress and a has-been pugilist, most assumed he would become just another thug common to poor areas of the city. But fate had other plans for the young man. Despite his squalid surroundings, Edgar always possessed a keen mind that thirsted for education. And while his parents could not afford to send him to school, he often scavenged the trash bins outside of private schools for text books, once his mother taught him basic letters and numbers. This self-teaching was unorthodox, but effective.

His impromptu education allowed him opportunities that might otherwise been beyond his reach. At age ten, he began working for Postal Telegraph Company, and did so for many years. However, this steady income made him a target for the residence of his neighborhood, and he quickly had to learn how to defend himself from the predators of the world. For years, Edgar survived by both brains, and his fists.

Life might have gone on like this, had not a call gone out for volunteers to secure Nouveau's alliance with America in the Great War. Having more of a mind for machines and electricity than most, Edgar volunteered for the Air Service as a combat pilot. And he was good at it. For years, he flew against the enemy and was one of the few lucky enough to never have been shot down. However, during one particularly savage aerial battle, Die Fliegertruppe deployed experimental chemical weapons against Edgar's squadron. It was certainly devastating, as more than half the squadron was overcome. The weather was most treacherous as the battle raged, which turned out to be a blessing. Just as the insidious chemical cloud engulfed his biplane, the storm-clouds rolled in and struck his craft with simultaneous lightning strikes.

Edgar does not remember what happened next. But he presumably crashed, as he woke up amongst the wreckage of his craft. He quickly discovered that his body had been changed in strange and inexplicable ways. Not wanting to end up in some kraut scientists lab, Edgar kept this fact to himself. He spent the rest of the war in a POW camp, hiding his new electrical powers the entire time. When finally released, he returned to City Nouveau. Much to his dismay he discovered that both of his parents had died in a tenement fire while he was away at war. For a long time, he had no direction, and was a drifter in the city slums. But his newfound power kept tempting him to intervene in the crimes he witnessed daily, until he could stand it no longer. War had turned him into a man of action, and he could not sit idle by any longer.

Still distrustful of revealing himself to the world, he adopted attire that would conceal his identity before setting about the city as a vigilante. Due to the inexplicable blackouts that follow him, in conjunction with his electricity powers, the papers dubbed him Stormshadow. Wanting a profession that would allow him to stick close to criminal activity, but wanting no oversight to discover his secret, Edgar became a Private Investigator. It is curious how no one has put together that Stormshadow seems to show up an awful lot at sites that are usually involved in cases that have been brought to Penumbra Investigations...