Thorinn, real name unknown, is a male dwarf, 125 cm tall, weighing 56 kg. He has dark brown hair salted with gray, and a swarthy face weathered by the wind and sun. He has no clear ethnic background apart from his metahumanity, and speaks with whatever accent happens to prevail in the port of call he's in. His chosen occupation is smuggler, and he regularly makes runs between Seattle, Vladivostok, and ports along the Cal Free coastline.

The first reliable report of Thorinn is nine years old, and places him as part of a successful water pirating operation going on along the Big Sur coast of Cal Free. Unconfirmed reports place him in one of the Desert Wars earlier that year, but any records detailing his participation cannot be located. What is known is that after a year lifting corporate water, he joined a land smuggling team that made the run between Los Angeles and New Orleans regularly. It was also during this time that he began to recruit operatives for a business endeavour that remained secret for eighteen months. Exclusively dwarves, they all hailed from either the shadow community itself, or the support network that supplies the shadows. Further information is available, but was not deemed necessary for this report.

What is known is that five years ago Thorinn and his group, numbering thirty strong by this time, carried out a hijacking and theft of an eighteen year old Maersk-Jorgenson Fast Freighter from an import/export company called Horizon Enterprises. Coordinated with this theft in a twist of fate that seems too convenient is a hostile takeover bid by another transport company, Darzeil Carriers, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Leviathan Technical, a division of Ares Macrotechnology. In the legal scuffle that followed, all traces of the Maersk freighter were lost or destroyed.

Utilizing a floating dry dock run by smugglers off the coast of the Aleutian Islands, the freighter was refitted and renamed the Whirlwind. Taking an idea from the British Navy during WWI, the Whirlwind is outfitted with several modular deck structures and a series of replacement bulkheads and derricks. This allows the superstructure of the ship to be altered quickly to a different configuration in order to confuse visual identification procedures. Additionally, a self-defense armament was added consisting of a single autoloading 80mm mortar in a rear pop-up turret, a pair of internal missile cells loaded with anti-ship and anti-missile missiles scavenged from wrecked Russian warships, and a forward pop-up turret mounting a rotary autocannon lifted from the foredeck of a Coast Guard cutter.

Thorinn and his crew are dedicated smugglers, charging a 15-20% fee on cargo, personnel, and gear transported between the ports of Vladivostok, Seattle, and the Cal Free Coast. They number only twenty one now, including their captain, as a result of natural and man-made accidents. They are reliable and honest, and will carry just about anything, no questions asked, although they are loath to engage in any activity which poses undue risk to the vessel. The Whirlwind is an old, cranky vessel, requiring constant maintenance and repair to remain seaworthy. Thorinn and his first mate are often at odds as to whether or not repairs will be completed in time to effect the contracted transfer of goods. Despite their differences, though, the dwarves have over an 80% success rate in delivering on time and intact.