Shadowclaw is the illegitimate son of an Immortal Elf and a human druidess. During her pregnancy, his mother was forced to leave the newly created state of Tir Na Nog in order to save his father from the political repercussions of a bastard son born of a human mother. The Tir needed a strong, pure elven leadership with no human entanglements. Even the vague possibility of a human child had to be avoided at all costs, especially the bastard son of a human druidess. Nathan's mother raised him by herself with difficulty in the outskirts of the London sprawl. When Nathan was born with decidedly elfin features, a man from the British government arranged for Nathan and his mother to become wards of the state. His education and medical requirements were taken care of in return for early studies on metahuman physiology conducted by a Fuchi researcher named Hidoshi.

During his teenage years, Nathan became part of a joint experiment by Fuchi corp. and the British government to create a new breed of 'super soldiers' / agents. As an elf, the British government felt that they would have the perfect agent to infiltrate Tir Na Nog, whose proximity made the much weaker British government very nervous. The Fuchi researchers were attempting to meld magic and cyber technology through the use of highly experimental nanite systems.

After his mother died trying to escape, their personal hold on him was removed and he escaped to Wales where Druids who had trained his mother removed the cyber from his body using ritual magic and, with the help of a Great Form Free Spirit, healed him of his essence. Unfortunately, the ritual was not completely successful. To much alteration had been done to his body and his aura for his missing arm to be regenerated, even magically.

After the ritual was completed, three elves burst into the room where he was resting and abducted him. Unknown to everyone else, a third party, in the form of Nathan's mother's legitimate sister, had taken an interest in Nathan and tracked him to his location in Wales. The elves took Nathan back with them to Tir Na Nog, where he met his aunt, Lady Sylvia Denumarra, for the first time.

Denumarra contacted her long time friend Ehran in Tir Tairngire to sponsor Shadowclaw for immigration to Tir Tairngire and to take her nephew under his wing as a member of Ehran's Paladins. And this is where we find him now, in the service of the Tir as a trained infiltration specialist with a magically summoned ally spirit arm replaceing the one that he had lost.

You remember that the character concept started out as a cyber-soldier... created by Fuchi, similar to Bladerunner, in an attempt to meld magic and machine which didn't really work.

After escaping from Fuchi, Shadowclaw was abducted by three cloaked elves who took him into Tir Na Nog.
He discovered that his mother was the illegitimate child of an IE...
his grandfather was the IE. His grandmother was probably human, and his mother would have been a spike baby.
In any case, his mother's legitimate sister felt some responsibility, especially after she found out that her sister died...
for political reasons, her sister--shadowclaw's mother--never entered Tir Na Nog but stayed in England living quite anonymously.
The Brits tried to force shadowclaw to become an agent for their intelligence bureau, with the help of Fuchi researchers.
After his mother died trying to escape, their personal hold on him was removed and he escaped to Wales where Druids who had trained his mother removed the cyber from his body using ritual magic and, with the help of a Great Form Spirit, healed him of his essence.

This all takes place in background...so the character starts off with most of his essence....
they weren't completely successful, he's had the prosthetic limb for so long and Fuchi has done so much tampering in an attempt to force an aura to accept cyberware as a natural part that his aura doesn't completely remember what was there, so they can't give him back his hand or restore the essence from the lost limb...
Again, for political reasons, his aunt sends him off to Tir Tairngire, to rest, recover and serve the Tir in whatever capacity they find for him. The free spirit....whom shadowclaw has taken for his totem--a remarkably catlike free spirit who is calling herself Pasht--decides to tag along and see what this elf gets himself into.
So there are a lot of interested parties watching him, but he's not getting any help from any of them....
Fuchi is still hunting for him, the Tir Tairngire elves would like to make use of his abilities and eventually get him to join their paladins, and the free spirit just wants to have fun...
She's definitely the corrupting influence on the young man...