Shadow Triad: three lieutenants loyal only to Ghetsis

No name, no face, no battle style to tell them apart. The Shadow Triad is the quietest and most effective weapon Team Plasma has: three lieutenants who appear, carry out their orders, then fade away. They serve N, they obey Ghetsis, and the reason fits in a single sentence — that man saved their lives.

Contents

• A Debt, and Its Endless Repayment
• Black and White: Team Plasma's Invisible Hand
• The Marvelous Bridge: Three Orbs and No Explanation
• Two Years Later: Force Instead of Conviction
• Pawniard, Absol and a Liepard That Isn't Theirs
• Anime, Manga, Card: Three Other Versions
• The Shadow Triad at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

A Debt, and Its Endless Repayment

It all starts with a rescue. Ghetsis pulled them back from death, and in return they swore him a loyalty that admits no reservations. Their allegiance is to the man, never to the doctrine: when he vanishes without a trace after they've spirited him out of the castle, he forbids them from looking for him, and they leave it at that.

The same refrain comes back with every lost battle. Disappointment doesn't touch them, and neither does their Pokémon's pain, as long as their master, for his part, comes out on top. One Pokémon falls, the next takes over; feelings, they explain, don't cling to them.

The three members are interchangeable even in other people's eyes. Colress, who worked alongside them in the organization, admits he still can't tell which one is which. They appear around the player and vanish again in the blink of an eye, without a single first name to set them apart.

Black and White: Team Plasma's Invisible Hand

Their first move is a discreet act of sabotage. At Chargestone Cave, they stretch a Galvantula web across the entrance on N's instructions: the path is cut off before the player has even seen who cut it.

In Icirrus City, they act as messengers and summon the player to Dragonspiral Tower, where N is waiting to test them and send them off to find the Dark Stone or the Light Stone. Gym Leader Brycen flushes them out before they deign to show themselves, which the trio salutes as the mark of a true Gym Leader, in front of Bianca and Cheren.

At N's Castle, they switch roles and act as the player's guides from one room to the next. They're also the ones who rescue Ghetsis at the moment of his capture, by distracting Cheren long enough for their master to slip away.

The Marvelous Bridge: Three Orbs and No Explanation

The most baffling scene of their story plays out on the Marvelous Bridge. There, the three men hand the player the Adamant, Lustrous and Griseous Orbs, one item per member, on Ghetsis's express instructions.

They know no more than the person receiving them. Where their master found these items, what he meant to do with them, why he would give them to his opponent: they have no idea, and wonder aloud whether it's a test or a manipulation. The doubt doesn't make them stray a single step.

Once the adventure is over, the trio becomes a fixture on the calendar. They take up position in Icirrus City, on the bridge spanning Route 8, once per season, and the three members let you battle them back to back. Their stated motive hasn't changed: seeing the player bite the dust would, in their view, be the only way to restore their master's will to live.

Two Years Later: Force Instead of Conviction

The organization's return shows them stripped of any ideological veneer. They say it themselves: where N won hearts, they force people to bend. In the mobile game Pokémon Masters EX, the same logic leads them to hold a girl named Tina hostage to wrest a Hoopa from Paulo, who came alone and without backup, just as they demanded.

A flashback set shortly after the end of the first game shows what they're worth in battle. Sent against the three Striaton City Gym Leaders, they crush them — and Cilan, Cress and Chili give up their titles, shaken by how little experience the duel revealed they had.

Their methods don't bother much with the internal chain of command either. They manipulate Sage Zinzolin into revealing where the DNA Splicers are kept, hidden in the Gym run by Drayden, a place whose door you can only get through by battling its occupant. Once beaten, one of them even reveals he never had anything on him: his job was simply to buy time, and he kept at it right up until he could report to Ghetsis that Kyurem was ready.

❄️ Kyurem and the Unova dragons have their own section: check out our Legendary Pokémon.

Pawniard, Absol and a Liepard That Isn't Theirs

Their documented roster isn't limited to the two most visible species, Absol and Pawniard. Each of the three members fields two Pawniard on the Plasma Frigate, replaced by two Bisharp in the Icirrus City battles, and an animated trailer also gives them a Bisharp.

The Liepard is a different story. One of them battles with a Pokémon stolen five years earlier in Aspertia City, from Hugh's sister, and rubs it in Hugh's face when he recognizes it: the creature, he says, now obeys only its captors.

The argument he draws from it echoes Team Plasma's rhetoric exactly — a Pokémon shut inside a Poké Ball belongs to whoever holds that ball, whoever they may be. Once defeated, he nonetheless gives the Liepard back on the grounds that Ghetsis has no more use for it, and Hugh gets it back for good after the organization's defeat at the Giant Chasm.

Anime, Manga, Card: Three Other Versions

The anime gives them only a handful of seconds, at the end of a short promotional film, in an ice-bound Opelucid City. One member is chased there by Nate and his Lucario; the Aura Sphere meant to stop him shatters against a Bisharp's Protect, and the thief gets away with his loot.

The manga hands them a large-scale operation: getting their hands on the Dark Stone in Nacrene City. The Forces of Nature do the heavy lifting for them, and they capture the Gym Leaders, all except Brycen and the three Striaton City Gym Leaders, who come to challenge them at the P2 Laboratory, where the trio is overseeing Genesect's development.

The battle goes their way at first, until the Swords of Justice fly to the Gym Leaders' rescue and knock them down. In a sorry state, the trio releases Genesect, which immediately turns on the very people who freed it. Finally, on the tabletop, the Shadow Triad makes its debut in the Trading Card Game with the Black & White—Plasma Freeze expansion, released in France on August 21, 2013.

The Shadow Triad at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who are the Shadow Triad?
  Three Team Plasma lieutenants serving N and Ghetsis. They have no names or distinct identities, appear and vanish around the player in an instant, and act only on orders.
• Why do they obey Ghetsis?
  Because he saved their lives. Ever since, they have sworn absolute loyalty to him, to the point of obeying him even when he forbids them from searching for him after his disappearance.
• Where can you battle the Shadow Triad?
  You face them over the course of the adventure, then they return to Icirrus City once per season, on the bridge overlooking Route 8. The three members then battle you one after another.
• What Pokémon does the Shadow Triad use?
  Each member fields two Pawniard on the Plasma Frigate — Bisharp in Icirrus City — and stands out through a third Pokémon: Absol, Banette or Accelgor. The manga also gives them a Lilligant, a Basculin and a Larvesta, and the anime a Bisharp.
• What happens to the Liepard stolen in Aspertia City?
  Stolen five years earlier from Hugh's sister, it battles for one of the trio's members before being returned. Hugh reclaims it after Team Plasma's defeat at the Giant Chasm.

In short

The Shadow Triad is the only cog in Team Plasma that never had an ideal. No conviction, no personal ambition: a debt, and its never-ending repayment. They sabotage a cave entrance, escort the player through a castle, lie to buy time, hand over three Orbs they know nothing about, then come back every season to a bridge in Icirrus City to lose all over again. It's loyalty pushed to the point where it stops meaning anything.