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Professor Denim is the lead weapons researcher overseeing the Gotanenks Armor development program at RD10-003—the Sun Jin Empire black-site where Forza Ninetails was held and used as a living test platform.
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Professor Denim is a Bethian and functions as the “science face” of the RD10-003 living-weapon trials: a program framed as weapons R&D, but operationally driven by coercion, sedation, and mind control. Denim’s work centers on attempting to refine and (eventually) mass-produce Gotanenks Armor, the prototype weapon-system originally designed by Sun Jin Kaisara.
The RD10-003 testing regimen is not limited to inert lab evaluation. The program uses a drugged and mind-controlled Forza to perform live “performance trials,” including killing other Caistealian—often civilians/innocents—so that combat output, compliance, and survivability can be recorded as engineering variables.
Because Caisteal is not a high-tech society and much of the violence leaves few (or no) surviving witnesses, the civilian population tends to interpret the killings as the work of a rogue murderer rather than an imperial weapons program. Over time, that misunderstanding curdles into a boogeyman legend: a half-seen predator story that spreads by rumor and word-of-mouth rather than documentation.
Compounding this, the planet is under Sun Jin Empire occupation; Sun Jin outposts are common enough that locals have no reason to assume a specific R&D purpose behind RD10-003. The truth—that the “outpost” is a living-weapon facility—remains compartmentalized inside Sun Jin channels.
Forza is abducted by Skithix and delivered directly into Denim’s custody for weapons testing. Denim requests an ideal test subject specifically because the Gotanenks system is built around Kaisara’s close-quarters style, and Forza’s combat profile is a near-perfect match.
During the RD10-003 Incident, Rio Narro learns the true nature of the trials from Denim (and the program records he controls). Rio responds by killing Professor Denim and the lead researchers in the room with them, severing the program’s command layer and triggering the broader facility collapse that leads into the escape chain.
Although the program’s goal is to mass-produce Gotanenks as a fieldable system, it is suspected that the only functional full prototype is the one that ultimately ends up with (and is stolen/kept by) Forza Ninetails.