#so Geno fills yhat role too!

[spotaus]

Woah!!! Ec-4o.Verse reference?? Bringing you Geno! (With a bunch of notes that are intelligible off to the sides-)

Cropped versions for easier reading/zooming! But to be more fun about it, here's a Lore Recap for each design! (I'd say these designs are from... hmm, a hundred years or so? He's a Boss Monster so he lives a lot longer.)

(Tw: Mentions of Death, Self-Loathing, Mental Illness, and I feel a few other things)

Pre-War:

Geno was a normal guy, had a dayjob, but was beloved by his friends for being a Programmer. He was lazy, had awful work ethic, but would pump out amazing quality work for cheap as long as he was given the time to do things at his own pace. He has a passion for Psychology, but was awful socially, so he designed programs that mimicked mental illnesses in Test Ectos (ectos not embedded with personalities or magic) so people could research mental health without risking patient wellness. He made A.Z. too, the first real mimicry of mental illnesses in children. Geno got attached and kept A.Z. himself, the last prototype of the code. The finalized ones can be found anywhere, but he kept A.Z. around, and even though A.Z. wasn't sentient it was such a good mimicry, Geno practically treated him like a son.

Geno was known for his work, and was contacted by the government of his country to come and work on a big nation-wide upgrade they were planning to improve ecto functionality. Again and again Geno simply ignored their letters, emails, chats, and attempts to call. It wasn't his field of study, so he could care less. So, all that led to the government sending people to confiscate A.Z. from Geno and shut down his workshop under the pretenses of 'unethical programming methods'. He was forced to relocate, and A.Z. was basically held as blackmail to force Geno into working. (Since A.Z. wasn't sentient, he was simply property, and therefore there was no legal issues with the government taking him.)

Before/During the War:

In this time, Geno was among hundreds of other talented people from all across the country who were 'recruited' to work on this project. People who didn't comply with orders went missing, loved ones were "lost" and life projects destroyed. Geno was part of the Programming team (there were also Medical, Bio-Enhineering, and Engineering teams) and he was initially supposed to just shut off the programs within an Ecto that gave them emotion protocols, even the ones infused with magic.

But, as things went on, he was told to do more and more. He was involved in more marketing and branding and announcements. He was made to be on screen, be the face of the change. His background was good for publicity (man who studied ways to harmlessly study mental health) and he was supposedly trustworthy. By day he'd stand up beside someone and listen to them implore people to bring their ectos in for this quality of life upgrade to their nearest government office. By night he'd be slaving away infront of code, being forced to find a way to make these robots kill people. Just enough people. To nullify themselves when it was all over. I'm his despair he tried to make it so that their emotion drives would at least register these events as something positive, so they felt no distress if they were sentient. He tried so hard to stop but any backlash did nothing. So he kept his head down and worked quietly.

And then he was transferred locations. Somewhere closer to the heart of the operation. He met Sci, a man unaware of the Culling Orders or the heartache, because they government had been treating him well. He was a bio-engineer, and his project (nicknamed Fresh) was like if a self-healing code was a living thing and could slow, or even heal, wounds. The government wanted it, in the case that it could unlock immortality. Sci was getting funding and a cushy life. Geno realized Fresh was the best way he coukd possibly end all of this war that was in the works. For good.

So he poured hid heart and soul into finishing that code. "A change of heart prompted by wanting so desperately for his prized project, AZ, to be saved" He claimed. There were a few useful bots that filled through the office. He offered to install code that would prevent the Culling Order from activating inside them since they were going to be preserved. While adding code he added failsafes and kill codes and important information from his and others work he wanted saved. He added the names of every researcher he knew had been drafted into this unwillingly. He did it in secret, so entrenched in code only another programmer would notice.

And then the war started, and Sci learned the truth, and people started dying. Geno had to convince Sci to help him after that. Sci feared being killed. He feared not being able to finish his work. He feared not being protected from the pain and destruction outside. It was a long plenty of *years* that Geno had to configure just the right plan, just the right way to ensure that Sci abd Fresh would survive it. That the rest of the base would be no threat and that it'd stop the Ectos and the Culling Code.

And then he did it. He put an end to the war, at the price of all the power on the continent running to every piece of tech, and at the price of his own arm and eye.

Post-War:

Geno was disfigured. He knew that to make an EMP large enough to cut off all electricity, he would need to overload his own master consol to the point of battery meltdown. An explosion. He didn't tell Sci. Only mentioned he'd need Fresh on-hand. So when it exploded, his left arm (non-dominent just like he planned), his chest, and the right side of his skull (his left eye was better) were demolished in the blast and dusted near instantly. Sci and Fresh managed to save his life, and Sci, resident Bio-Engineer, was able to replace his missing limbs and his wounds with spare ecto parts over the course of a few weeks.

Geno was slow to recover, nearly on the verge of falling down during recovery (He didn't know where they'd stored A.Z. if he was even still in-tact, he had been the reason so many humans and monsters had died, and now to reverse his mistake he'd taken out the electricity the country had been relying on for the past thousands of years.) But he pushed through. He was Determined. He needed to get to the four robots he embedded information and failsafes into. But they were scattered across the country for aafe-keeping. Incase he'd failed. So he has to hunt them down.

As soon as he can he leaves. Sci stays. Geno promises he'll come back (he doesn't). Geno takes a medical uniform, packs the supply belt with programming tools, and moves out. He enters the main story while on this trek to hunt down his Ectos. Not a single one is where they should've been, and he can't help but be furious, praying to a non-existant God that they weren't scrapped by heathens out for parts or destroyed in a rage by scared survivors.

Looking for the four? One day their trackers finally Light up again. One by one. All in the same location. And Geno follows it like a moth to the flame.