Gene is adapted from a character I played when me and my dad played a very simplified version of D&D 3.5 when I was a little kid.
Originally the character was a stock human fighter. At the age of 22, I'm invited to play with another group and I adapt the character to 5E.
Tragic backstory: a peasant conscripted as a squire to a local aspiring warrior, helped found a guild and had the whole thing attacked and destroyed by an unknown force. Gene is left inexplicably as the only survivor, believes the viscount of the region did it, tries to assassinate him, captured and sold into slavery.
Escapes during a shipwreck, joins another guild and is exposed to a substance that unlocks latent magic abilities (so I could play Eldritch Knight), during a fight with the BBEG, a magic-wielding man wearing a plague mask called the Silver Masque.
Whole series of misadventures, from accidentally burning down half of a village during an investigation (Not Gene's fault, but could've stopped it and didn't), traveling to the Elemental Plane of Air, adopting a baby water elemental.
The group at this point devolves and stops playing. Four of the six players (yeah) were dating each other, and their relationships were so thoroughly toxic that they'd all begin arguing during the session, leaving me and the only other single person (and the DM, a former lover of one of the players) sitting awkwardly.
I join another group, none of whom are dating, so less arguments. Play Gene again, somehow transported across several thousand miles to another continent without knowing why, only to occur his last living relative, his cousin (another Eldritch Knight who uses ice magic as opposed to my fire magic).
A lot of shit happens. Accidentally release a starspawn from its containment, somehow have my gender swapped, get massive burns on my face, develop gills that let me breathe underwater, have my eyeball possessed and torn out twice by said starspawn, have both my legs chopped off by a demonic entity, take on an apprentice destined by her goddesses to kill the starspawn..
That's what Gene has been up to most recently. A very tragic sort of life. One who has been changed and scarred and distorted in so many ways, missing an eye and both legs, sporting gills, no longer biologically either gender. A very tragic sort.