Foreshadow

Even as a boy, David Sloane had a gift, the ability to sometimes know what was going to happen before it did. His visions were rare and he learned not to talk about them because they made people uncomfortable. After all, there were certain things a child wasn’t supposed to know, especially when he always seemed to know them accurately in advance.
As a teenager, David continued to hide his gift in order to fit in and be considered normal. Then he had a vision of his parents getting into a terrible accident. He tried to ignore it at first, tried to pretend it wasn’t true. When he begged his parents to be careful on their way to a dinner party, they promised they would be, but it didn’t matter. A drunk driver hit their car head-on and they were both killed. David blamed himself, thinking he should have done something more to prevent it from happening.
His parents had a substantial estate and life insurance policy, which gave David money to live on as he finished high school. When he graduated, he sold his parents’ house and most of its contents, invested the majority of his money with a friend of his father’s at Rath & Stromberg, and left the United States to travel the world. It seemed the like the act of newly-legal adult who’d suddenly come into money, but David actually went looking for ways to learn about his gift and how to control it, or perhaps, how to rid himself of it.
He traveled through South America, India, Tibet, China, Japan, and Australia, seeking out seers and gurus to learn more about his foresight. Over time, he learned how to control it and focus it, and he also learned that his gift came with a responsibility to help others. Along the way, he learned and mastered a number of other skills, including martial arts, infiltration, meditation, and criminal investigation. David returned to Freedom City nearly a decade later. He bought and fixed up a run down Victorianera house on the Southside/Bayview line and began to put his plans into action. Southside had gone downhill considerably since he left, and crime was rampant. He could see where thing were going, and he intended to prevent them. So David created the costume and identity of the mysterious Foreshadow, and burst onto the Freedom City scene by thwarting a number of crimes.
Foreshadow became renowned for his amazing ability to be in the right place at the right time. He has never revealed his precognitive powers; most people think Foreshadow is “merely” an amazing detective, athlete, and unarmed combatant. Over time, he put a serious dent in criminal activity in Southside and throughout Freedom City. The Freedom League extended an invitation for Foreshadow to join them, but he declined, saying that he works best on his own. In truth, he was tempted, but one of his visions suggested that joining the League at that time would be disastrous.
Organized crime in Freedom City has always been Foreshadow’s greatest foe, although he has tangled with various super-criminals, particularly mercenaries working for The Mob and small-time villains looking to make a quick buck. One of his longest rivalries was with Boss Driogano and the crime-lord’s mysterious “advisor” known as Tarot. Her insights seemed to rival Foreshadow’s in many regards, allowing Driogano to remain at least in-step with the heroic vigilante, if not a step ahead. Eventually, Foreshadow learned Tarot was Driogano’s daughter, possessed of insights much like his own.
Their dance became one of mutual attraction, and Foreshadow worked to free Tarot from her father’s influence, convinced he could save her. He was certain that he was close to succeeding when he experienced a mysterious “timeslip,” nearly a day of missing time. After that, Alicia—Tarot—not only turned her back on David, but took a far more active role in organized crime in Freedom City, becoming the true power behind Boss Driogano’s criminal empire. Foreshadow has seen the possibility that he will be forced to put the woman he loved—and still loves—in prison for life, or worse, and hopes to find a way to change the course of events, if it can be changed.

Physical Description

Special abilities

Foreshadow’s superhuman power is precognition: He receives intermittent visions of future events, sometimes in dreams or waking visions, more often in the form of powerful “hunches” or spontaneous insights. He has proven his visions are only one of many possible futures, having changed many of them. Foreshadow’s visions tend to involve disasters, violent crime, and similar incidents in his general geographic area, which he takes steps to prevent. His power also gives him a preternatural sense for immediate danger.

Specialized Equipment

Foreshadow is a well-trained athlete, acrobat, and unarmed combatant, able to rely on his precognitive insight to give him almost superhuman levels of ability in evading attacks. Among other things, Foreshadow can fight in complete darkness or against unseen opponents using his foresight and avoid attacks by sensing where they are going to land. He is also a skilled investigator and student of human nature with years of experience dealing with criminals.

Mental characteristics

Intellectual Characteristics

Foreshadow is a man with a heavy burden of responsibility. He still feels guilt over his failure to save his family, so he tries to redeem himself through crime-fighting. He knows the things he foresees will come to pass unless he does something to prevent them, so he has devoted his life to righting wrongs or, more accurately, preventing them. His precognition has not made him fatalistic. “I’m living proof that the future can be changed,” he says. In fact, Foreshadow believes no situation is hopeless.
David Sloane is a loner. He has difficulty getting close to people, since he fears he’ll foresee something terrible for them, as he did for his parents. Being Foreshadow is when David feels the most alive, but even then he prefers to operate alone. He loves Tarot, but cannot become involved with her so long as she works for Boss Driogano and the Mob, and he remains bewildered as to why she has turned away from him, dedicating herself further to aiding and running a criminal empire.
Always looking towards the future, Foreshadow has contemplated the possibility of taking on a student or apprentice of sorts (perhaps even more than one), something friends like Claremont Academy headmaster Duncan Summers encourage. Foreshadow feels that he’ll receive guidance and insight, if it is meant to be.