Born on California Minor, with dad running an equipment shop and mom assisting efforts of terraforming on geothermic pyramids maintenance, John's childhood was quite uneventful. As a child, he preferred his father as a role model: observing his rather non-standard among the merchants intimidating speeches and "the goal justifies the means" kind of making business.

Until the age of 16,when his father's store was destroyed in a blink of an eye by a raid of local thugs, who as well killed the shopkeeper for his defense attempt. In a burst of vengeful wrath, the young man took of on a stolen shuttle to pursue those for whom it was a quick smash&grab. Sadly, he didn't have enough flight experience at the moment, nor the sufficient amount of fuel and with engine trails that led him into Tahoe nebula, he eventually found himself lost and got rescued by a Navy patrol from Willard research station two days later.

The local police department back on surface was more interested in a ship theft than in a case with untraceable heisters, and so John was awaiting trial that eventually concluded quite forgiving - sympathetic judge sentenced him for two years of community service with a small salary. Which in the end was enough to buy himself a ticket out of California, leaving right after scandalizing with mother about how he could benefit the community that raised him rather than seeking revenge.

The youth was spent in the second way, with John picking the "Crow" surname and being a successful freelancer for quite a while: sometimes delivering small packages of goods to stations, or gunning down vilified pilots across border worlds, with the belief that eventually his lasers will meet his dad murderers. But instead,one day that lasers disrupted an imminent boarding by marauders on an EMPed lonely kusarian freighter, destroying their ship before the crew was dispatched, and that's how he met his only friend - Takai Ayako. Being a descendant from an honor-praising family, Takai as a sign of gratitude to his savior decided to serve the life debt, accompanying John in his travels.

With Takai's mind for logistics and John's, inherited from father, negotiation techniques, the two got out from freelancing to become respectful caravaneers, running supplies trough Houses to Border Worlds and Independent systems for two decades. The small caravan company became the John's existence so much that he abandoned his avenging pursue of thugs. Even more, money swayed him to sometimes make deals with them, so he ran operations from the hauler "Bloemfontein" , modified as his and Takai's headquarters, ordering and delivering themselves.

That fact turned out as a grim backbone, when rivaling traders beheaded successful caravan company in a quick assault on that vessel by hired guns over planet Atka in Hudson system. Right before ship's fate was marked by numerous hull breaches, Takai's debt was completely repaid by sealing John within escape pod that left before Bloemfontein's clinging to life hull was deorbited in a final blow.

After a month of recovery spent in Manhattan clinic, Crow was met with the rude awakening of Takai and his headless organization, quickly dissolved and once full of credits accounts drained by his previous agents and employees. Yet there was still enough money for ship recovery attempts and using connections to find at lest some leads on those who ordered the assault, but it yielded no fruit. Broken and miserable, once well-known trader went on a downward spiral of boozing himself out in every bar he reached, descended to drug abuse and sometimes out of grief scared freelancing traders on which he stumbled upon, seeing the destructors of his caravan in them.

John emerged a completely different person from the last five years, having questionable existence of shielding himself from past by narcotic haze and violence on his "Mourning Hour" fighter. The Sirius had forgotten "old" him long ago, but he hadn't forgotten how Sirius had treated him.