"As we already know Team RAINBOW are sent in against terrorists who are recreating acts of terrorism from the past. New intelligence suggests that the leader of this group is infact an ex-RAINBOW member! Kicked out of Team RAINBOW by John Clark for torturing a captured terrorist, the madman has vowed vengeance and formed a new well-armed and motivated group of terrorists - Black Thorn!"

Aggression also is conducting a poll where you can vote on the identity of the nasty traitor! After reading the bios for each character, I think I can make a good guess at who would be a likely candidate ...

CR6's Little Editorial
A solid story in a game is critical in my books. The Rainbow Six series has already used modern-day hot topics like bio-warfare and rogue nukes as the basis for their major releases. Although some have complained about the lack of a large story arc in the expansion packs, I didn't think it was necessary for EW/UO/COE. You can't realistically expect to ALWAYS have a sinister mastermind behind multiple terrorist attacks. The mission packs had Team RAINBOW doing what they do best: tackling unrelated but realistic meat-and-patatoes high-stakes scenarios that call for the best CT team in the world.

For Black Thorn, it looks like its time again for a larger story arc through multiple missions. Although we hope that RAINBOW has a rigorous selection process asking for the highest in professionalism, sooner or later, any group will have members disagree and fall out of line. With Rainbow operating since 1999 to 2004 (latest date of the missions in COE) it's amazing that the 30 operatives from around the world got along so well for so long ;-)

The plot device of having a traitor in the group is not new by any means, but has promise to be quite intriguing as this operative will know the inner workings of the (still?) secretive RAINBOW team. It will be interesting to see how the story plays out ...