Dr. Seigen

Seigen's Sprite

**Dr. Seigen**was the Director of the Research and Development of Reploids Bureau until 2182 and an important character in Mega Man X: Unit 49's backstory.

## **Personality**

Personally, Seigen seemed to be a very kind and apprehensible person, who was always disposed to give support to his employees. He could easily perceive the potential of prodigies and sometimes willed to take them as his own apprentices (maybe to guide them to his "right path").

In fact, Seigen was much more sinister behind the curtains. After losing all his friends and his lifetime project due to the destruction of the Trailblazer by Cosmos, he became a severely disturbed man who wanted to impose limits to the scientific development inside the RaDoRB. Even though he seemed to not care anymore, Seigen never stopped thinking in his masterpiece, **Omicron**.

Because of that, Seigen rarely hesitated to commit obscure crimes against those who kept defying his limits and threatened the organization and his image as the director responsible for all of the researchers. At the same time, the enthusiastic Seigen from the past was still alive and manifested in moments of weakness, making Seigen go easy on his own rules sometimes and incentive groundbreaking and innovative changes. As revealed in *Berserk*, even though Seigen disposed of many researchers fearing they could go Maverick and use their technologies for evil purposes or bring problems to RaDoRB, Seigen could not truly destroy the all the effort made by those people and kept all the data stored in his personal terminal.

## **History**

### **Before RaDoRB**

*To see about Seigen's past, read Trailblazer.*

### **Research and Development of Reploids Bureau**

In the year of 2171, Dr. Seigen was appointed by the Council to be the director of the first official Reploid research institute called RaDoRB. The institute would not only enhance the new generations of Reploids, but also produce new kinds of technologies that could be used in other areas.

Soon after, Seigen made sure to introduce several restrictions to the fields of research of the institute, requiring that every new technology should pass through very strict exams dictated by his guidelines. By doing that, Seigen could silently arbitrate what kind of technical knowledge could be a potential threat and use his influence to make the project be discontinued. The fields involving nanotechnology were severely restrained and all the technologies involving independent nanomachines were banned, except for the projects requested by the government.

In 2174, a boy named Henry Snacman was arrested for illegal weapon possession in the streets of London. The weapon in case was adapted from an arm cannon stolen from a defective policial robot. The scientists of the RaDoRB were impressed with Henry, since he had not any academic study and managed to do that with common tools. Amazed, Seigen saw himself in his early days when looking at Henry, and thought the boy had the same potential he once had. Then, Seigen invited Henry to the Junior Researcher Team.

However, just because Henry had the same potential of Seigen, the director feared he could try going in the same path of the Trailblazer and adviced him early about what happens when people go off the boundaries, even partially revealing him the story about the space station. Seigen wanted to exempt everyone from those abominations, so the scientific progress could follow a secure path towards evolution. However, that advice was not enough to stop Henry from researching the powerful Encorium years later in secrecy, hiding the true data about the gems and infringing the limits imposed by his master.

As the years passed, some researchers developed Reploids with great potential, although their advent could become disastrous should they be used for evil purposes, such the Erasure caused by the former researcher Berkana, which made Seigen fear the several unpredictable and dangerous outcomes of Reploid DNA researches. The **Red Wing** of the Earth's Government also did not have good eyes on them, and so, to prevent sanctions and keep his position as the chairman, Seigen always found a way to somehow revoke the researcher's title or destroy their creations, in the worst cases, order their assassination. He felt that it was better to sacrifice those people than allow world threats to emerge under his own organization. One of those researchers was Gate.

After the fall of the space colony Eurasia, the government required the RaDoRB to develop the Amorphic Matter, which would allow Reploids to become immune to viruses and morph into many forms. Despite the pressure from the authorities, Seigen influenced the procedures to slow down the research, as he feared a hurried and uncautious research with Reploid DNA would cause another disaster like the Erasure or the Nightmare.

### **Death**

*Recommended reading: Berserk.*

In 2182, Saturn, one of Seigen's apprentices, used a breach in the internal security and breaked the very strong encryption protecting Seigen's personal terminal with a key he had stolen from him years before. Saturn learned the truth about the Trailblazer and all the crimes commited by RaDoRB, since Seigen still kept some data about the cases. Angered, Saturn betrayed the RaDoRB and made justice with his own hands, facing Seigen alone and accusing him of condemning other people to failure because he could not prevent his own. Seigen was thrown into a wall and killed with a headshot from Saturn's plasma rifle.

Months later, the truth about the late director would be leaked to the entire world, staining the reputation of RaDoRB forever and causing several reforms in the administration of the institute.

## **Trivia**

Dr. Seigen is based in the scientist Carl Sagan. There are a few other references to Sagan related to the character.

* In Troublemaking Prodigy, Dr. Seigen calls Earth a "Pale Blue Dot" as a reference to Carl Sagan's famous Pale Blue Dot speech and book.
* In *Berserk*, Saturn refers the society as a "demon-haunted world". This is a reference to a book written by the person in which Dr. Seigen was inspired, Carl Sagan. The book's name is *The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark*.
* The mysterious entity *Cosmos* that destroyed the Trailblazer can also be related to Sagan's 1980 TV show called *Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.*