Shapeshifter is a huge man with grey hair and thick beard. He is dressed in ragged red clothes and carries a staff in the form of a beautiful female body. There is a rumor that she is a real woman imprisoned by his magic. The Black Company meets him for the first time in Oar. They help him to organize a trap for his enemy the Limper. Shapeshifter stuns the other Taken with magic and buries him alive under a collapsed building.
Shapeshifter is also responsible for the death of Harden. He transforms himself into a horse and immobilizes the rebel general, while Stormbringer's soldiers are killing him. He is supposedly killed in the Battle of Charm, but emerges once again when the Black Company heads south. He helps them on a few occasions. In the Battle of Ghoja Ford he creates some fog to conceal a trap prepared by Croaker.
At Battle of Dejagore he takes the form of a forvalaka and attacks the Shadowmaster Stormshadow, who happens to be one of the Taken under a new name. One-Eye recognizes that it was Shapeshifter who killed his brother Tom-Tom in Beryl disguised as a forvalaka. As both are wounded and weakened, One-Eye knocks them unconscious and burns them to ashes. They only spare the life of Shapeshifter’s apprentice Lisa Daele Bowalk.