Editing Genius The Transgression/Chapter Two: Character Creation (section)

====Obligation:====
A genius' flesh is mortal, but her mind is something greater, and the Inspiration enhances more than just her intellect. It somehow redefines her moral system, elevating her to a position of guardianship or stewardship over humanity. Though a genius might loathe the common man, she is charged with protecting and guiding her fellow human beings.

Many of the Inspired have an ideal in their minds: the cool watcher of humanity, aloof from its everyday affairs but concerned with its development as a whole, not passionate but acting out of compassion for those teeming masses that deserve the benefits of the genius' work. During the Breakthrough, the genius' mortal Morality is superseded by this new, stronger sense of Obligation.

Ridiculed by peers and despised by common people, many geniuses nonetheless realize that to abandon their Obligation to humanity entirely reduces them to cruel and inhuman manipulators, utterly alone and willing to interact with others only as victims, lackeys, and test subjects.

Optionally, a Storyteller may allow players to trade dots of Obligation for experience points during character creation. This may reflect some sin committed before the Breakthrough, but more likely represents a grave transgression that the genius committed in her first days as a mad scientist. This transgression taught her something important (hence the extra experience points), but may have already begun her downward slide toward brutality and callous indifference. A dot of Obligation can be cashed in for five experience points. The genius' Obligation can drop to five this way, earning ten experience points. This does result in the genius gaining his catalyst's Derangement. The Derangement appears if the genius reduces his Obligation to 6; reducing his Obligation to 5 does not risk further Derangements.

Dropping one's Obligation before play does not yield Larvae.