Lore

## Background & Narrative

The events of GTFO are viewed through the experiences of Prisoners; a group of four prisoners (a *quad*) who undertake a series of expeditions throughout The Complex infested by strange lifeforms referred to as Sleepers. Before and between expeditions, prisoners are suspended in Hydro-Stasis Units (HSUs), devices that can keep a human being in a near-death state for a prolonged time. They receive cryptic orders from the Warden, the team's unseen handler, through Cortex Neural Interface grafted into their brains. The four playable Prisoners are Woods, Dauda, Hackett and Bishop. The four characters are the same throughout all Rundowns. The game is set around the year 2063, about a decade after the Complex was abandoned and overrun by Sleepers.

In the early missions, the prisoners work to restore the Warden's control over the facility and beyond it. The Complex is revealed to contain alien technology and equipment making it possible to travel to other dimensions, which are turned to be also infested by Sleepers. Later, the Prisoners are contacted by John Schaeffer, a lone survivor who is antagonistic towards the Warden and seeks to bring the Prisoners to his side and to destroy the Warden and the entire Complex.

According to the Dual Reality Theory, there are two different worldlines or variants of the story set in parallel universes. The original worldline represents the game's early access' Rundowns and the alternate worldline corresponds to the "replacement" Rundowns (ALT://) from the game's final version. The original worldline's prisoners and Schaeffer succeed to rebel against the Warden and defeat him. Their alternate worldline's equivalents learn about the Collectors and seek to escape to a safe dimension ("clean membrane"), untouched by Sleeper infestation. In Rundown 8.0, the alternate group of Prisoners and alternate Schaeffer travel to the original worldline, where the Warden was destroyed but their doubles still present. To escape, the two teams of characters have to interact with each other.

## The Complex and the Inner

The Complex is owned by a corporation called Santonian Industries, also referred as Santonian Mining Company (SMC). The facility is located in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, in the asteroid impact crater Chicxulub. The crater was left by an ancient asteroid that hit Earth 66 million years ago, causing an extinction level event that killed the dinosaurs.

Santonian Industries initially started building the Complex in 2049 as a mining enterprise. They sought to extract the rare element iridium, supposedly brought to Earth by the asteroid. Their surveys revealed a massive underground iridium-containing object, thought at the time to be a massive iridium ore vein, 1.5 to 2 kilometers wide and at least 4 kilometers deep. The mining was plagued with strange happenings, miners becoming sick, disappearing or inexplicably killing themselves..

The underground object, latter dubbed "the Inner" or "the fossil", turned out to be not a mass of iridium ore but an artificial structure of extraterrestrial origin, built from an alloy the researches called Cretasium 77a. It was an ancient spacecraft equipment, apparently belonging to an alien race dubbed the Collectors. Humans also contacted living creatures (Sleepers) somehow surviving inside the Inner for millions of years. With heightened security and growing presence of Sleepers, the company shifted its interests to researching the Inner and the Collectors' legacy. This research was handled by another subsidiary of Dreyfus corporation, Project Insight.

Between 2053 and 2056, the Complex and the outer world experienced a series of apocalyptic events linked to the Inner. The virus NAM-V escaped from the Complex in 2052 and ravaged the planet in a global pandemic, killing most or all of the world's population over several years. In November 2053, a massive power surge coming from in the Inner, supposedly caused by drilling operations breaking into sensitive power systems of the alien spacecraft, devastated parts of the Complex and created multiple blast tunnels to the surface, the same the Warden uses in game to deliver the Prisoners to the lower levels. As Santonian's management was killed in the explosion, the Project Insight's scientists seized power. Project Insight built the Matter Wave Projector as means to travel to other dimensions, particularly the Destination. They were also continuing the Rise Project, a KDS human cloning program initially seeking to replace prisoner recruits with even more disposable clones. Two years later, in November 2055, Biocom stopped answering to human commands, resulting in complete loss of control. The Complex was abandoned and overrun by Sleepers, albeit with thousands of humans still cold-stored in HSUs.

## KSOs, HSU, Schaeffer and the Warden

Security services at the Complex were provided by Kovac Defense Services (KDS), a private military contractor with an army of Kovac Security Operators, stored in HSUs and supervised by an artificial intelligence Biocom. HSU, or Hydrostasis Storage Unit, was a technology initially developed by Kovac Research for space exploration as anabiosis chambers that would store lifeless human bodies without the need of food, water or oxygen and safely resuscitate the stored person on arrival. The technology was turned out to affect human brain, leaving the resuscitated person without memory, confused about his or her own identity and increasingly aggressive. This resulted in a catastrophic failure of the Red Alpha mission to Mars. As part of Project Legion, Kovac repurposed the technology to military application and improved it by fitting prisoner or volunteer subjects with neural implants telling them what to do. Over time, Santonian also made recourse to using the HSU and implant technology to control their civilian workers, effectively turning everyone in the Complex into obedient KSO equivalents. The four game characters are KSOs, though only Woods and Bishop were actual prisoners that were sent to the procedure by force. Hackett joined the program voluntarily.

The Warden, or WRDN, is the entity that gives the Prisoners their orders over their implants and sends them on expeditions. Initially, the computer Biocom was built by Kovac Defense Services to supervise and direct their KSO forces. Santonium and later the Project Insight had relied on Biocom and KSOs as their life-critical security force, but, as the Warden wrested control over the system in 2055, the Complex was left defenseless and ultimately fall to Sleepers. The scientist Dauda, middle-rank manager Schaeffer and engineer Henrikkson were all civilian specialists who survived the fall by entering HSUs. As everyone in the Complex were fitted with implants, the Warden treats every living human, including Dauda and Schaeffer, as a KSO who can be awoken from a HSU and put to tasks according to the Warden's goals.

By the time of ALT://Rundown 4.0, John Schaeffer came to think about the Warden as a "program", a rogue AI that somehow hijacked the system. In the original worldline, Schaeffer and his allies were successful in introducing a trojan into the mainframe computer, thus defeating the Warden once for all and returning the control into the hands of humans. In the alternate worldline, in ALT://Rundown 6.0, Schaeffer get into contact with the Collectors' conscience through the Conduit. The aliens revealed themselves as the force behind the Warden ("The Warden is of us") and informed Schaeffer of their benevolent goals. As this world and all other world previously visited by the Collectors were infected by the virus and Earth is apparently lost as well, the Collectors intended for the surviving humans to escape to a "clean membrane", a safe world unaffected by the virus.

## NAM-V, Parasites and Sleepers

NAM-V is a virus that had been lying dormant in the Inner for millions of years. Together with the parasites is responsible for the birth of Sleepers and other environmental hazards within the Complex. It is also found in the Destination, and, according to the Conduit, in all membranes previously visited by the Collectors. The Collectors themselves were troubled by apparent omnipresence of the virus across multiple worlds. It became "the primary life force" of every membrane it infected. In 2050s, the virus escaped Garganta and spread across the planet. It is extremely infectious and lethal, with multiple ways of being transmitted and infecting other lifeforms. While there is no vaccine or cure outside the Complex, HSU works as a form of treatment, effectively killing both the human and the virus in their body and bringing the human back to life.

The parasites are a species from the Collection, the number of lifeforms from various worlds gathered by the Collectors as part of their journey across the multiverse. Unlike humans or other alien species, the parasites are not killed by NAM-V but form a symbiotic union beneficial for both organisms: the virus keeps the parasite alive for an indefinite period of time, and the parasite ensures the virus' survival and propagation. They both seek to infect any other lifeforms.

Sleepers are a product of this symbiotic relationship. Their bodies are made of parasites infected with the virus and typically quickly decay and disappear if killed. Nonetheless, research teams found some Sleepers that do not dematerialize after death. Analysis of those bodies show traces of human DNA, with speculations that these abnormal Sleepers might have once been Garganta staff. Sleepers form simple hive-like communities that can stay dormant for millions of years without the need for food, with highly specialized forms of Sleepers like the Scout taking various roles in the survival and defense of the species. While Sleepers found in the Complex are curiously human-like, their kin on the Destination like Flyers or the Kraken look completely alien, apparently based on local extinct lifeforms.

## Sub-plots

There are a number of sub-plots throughout GTFO which either expand on the main story or offer insight into the state of the world before and after the NAM-V pandemic. They are told in a series of text and audio recordings found on various terminals across the game.

* **Daylight Mission**, an expedition by the World Health Organization (WHO) to uncover the origin of NAM-V virus that doomed the world. In 2057, at the peak of the pandemic, the Daylight Mission identified "patient zero" and traced him back to the Complex. The team descended to the facility and tried to download medical records but was destroyed by the Warden.
* **EF01**, an attempt of the Project Insight's scientists and KSOs, including Dr. Durant and Bishop, explore other worlds using the Matter Wave Projector. In the original worldline, the team arrived to the Destination, a barren planet infested by Sleepers. In the alternate worldline, the team arrived to a vibrant jungle world apparently devoid of any Sleeper threat.
* **Mambo Media Services**, a news group serving as a source of information on the outside world, from the Red Alpha and the increase of iridium prices to the apocalypse caused by the NAM-V pandemic.
* **State of Truth**, a radio show hosted by Mr. Truth, a fringe conspiracy theorist from a town of Pahrump, Nevada. Mr. Truth received information about the Chicxulub Complex, Santonian and NAM-V and attempted to raise awareness about various secret operations and cover-ups.

## Frequently asked questions

The lore of GTFO includes many inter-twined narratives and stories. These are documented on the Frequently asked questions article.

## References

1. ↑ ALT://Rundown 6.0 Logs#BKS-BTP-FD9
2. ↑ ALT://Rundown\_4.0\_Logs#KAL-P48-7FR
3. ↑ ALT://Rundown\_6.0\_Logs#D34-4HG-8AE
4. ↑ ALT://Rundown\_6.0\_Logs#WPL-464-BAC
5. ↑ ALT://Rundown\_6.0\_Logs#MQQ-792-B8L
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Rundown\_8.0\_Logs#QSW-EQW-S99
7. ↑ Rundown 6.0 Logs#XCEP-THEM-365
8. ↑ ALT://Rundown\_6.0\_Logs#ADD-JP2-FFW
9. ↑ Rundown 6.0 Logs#FFW-HYY-6FL
10. ↑ Rundown\_6.0\_Logs#WRU-TYR
11. ↑ ALT://Rundown\_4.0\_Logs#6J8-9NK-8YT
12. ↑ ALT://Rundown\_4.0\_Logs#4HB-6UR-YTE
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 ALT://Rundown\_6.0\_Logs#8AA-FEE-EDD
14. ↑ Rundown 8.0 Logs#60F-056-HNK
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 ALT://Rundown 1.0 Logs#834-786-873
16. ↑ ALT://Rundown\_3.0\_Logs#21M-CEW-49B