The Genocide

"For honor. For truth. For the One Way. Because it was our *duty.* We were born to the blade. So it was written. So we chose. Free will is a curse unless given to a greater purpose. Our purpose was given to us by the Underspine, given to the Underspine by our ancestors, who found it and crystallized our essence forever."

 is a character in Torment: Tides of Numenera. His real name is Ogesti tel Kotu, and he was a Tabaht warlord.

Background
This burly, armor-clad figure stands almost motionless as you approach. He regards you silently through his singular eye. The studs on his arms and the blades on his shoulders are stained and pitted with age. When he speaks, his voice is muffled and artificial, a hollow grumble that emanates from the entirety of the helmet.

The Genocide was Ogesti tel Kotu, the Firm Hand of Tradition. They called him one of the Black Three and enemies did not understand him. They took his name to mean death in a dozen extinct tongues, called him Orphan-maker, Hopesmasher, Death's Child. His armies blackened the earth and the skies, dragoliths scoured the land. Domination was his duty. That is, until he and the Tabaht attacked Sagus Cliffs, only to be repulsed by The Changing God. His fellows, Kalaghat Anvor, He Who Shares Truth and Understanding, and Vostuleh Lo, the Blinding Light of Reason, were destroyed, the Underspine has fallen. His people are destroyed utterly, and their servant god speaks to them no longer.

The Tabaht
The Tabaht, according to Ogesti, were great warriors who owned this land, serving the Underspine, and it served them. They sought truth in victory, allegedly pure, incorruptible, indivisible even in disunity. They found strength in one another, and proved it with bloody blades. Their final conquest sent them reeling into despair, until they found the human nations. Elated by the new foe, the Tabaht drove them to the Forge of the Night Sky, to the valley of M'ra Jolios, to the dangers of the Black Riage. But Sagus resisted, time and again. And so they e brought constructs and deadliest warriors to the bay outside the city. A mighty siege ensued that allowed them entrance into the city.

But the Changing God was clever. He found old knowledge and created defenses that the Tabaht could not penetrate. Most telling, most effective were the shield generators, creating three barriers around the heart of the city, and the last unmoored the city in time. When Tabaht constructs touched it, they flashed to stasis. The warriors could not reach the city... But it could reach them. Warriors that entered the barriers found themselves cut off from supply lines and communications support, surrounded. They were cut down, but officers - and especially Ogesti tel Kotu - were brought in chains before their court. The crowd judged and mocked him, while the nano, the God, passed terrible judgment on Ogesti. Castrated of his violent impulses, he was sentenced to pacifism and passivity.

The Tabaht invading Sagus fell. So did their leaders and the Underspine. Centuries later, Ogesti is a shadow of his former self, an ancient statuesque decoration of Circus Minor, painfully aware that he is the last of his people, until death.

Memories

 * By talking to the Genocide, you can relive the moment when The Changing God activated the shields that saved Saugus and doomed the Tabaht to extinction.

Behind the scenes
Cut content: The Genocide is secretly the leader of the Jagged Dream cell in Sagus Cliffs. He will never give out any Jagged Dream quests, but a respected leader of the cell will be mentioned by other members, and the player has a few ways finding out who it is. Once he does, he can talk to the Genocide about it and may have an option to 1) infect the Genocide (and all the other members) with a mental virus that alters their personalities or removes all memory of the Jagged Dream from their minds, or convince the Genocide via dialogue and/or Tidal Surges that his philosophy is flawed.