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

===Storytelling the Prelude:===
''A burning lab smells worse than you'd expect. Scorched rubber, melting chemicals, and the sickening aroma of burning flesh. Now you're sure that not everyone got out. The flames―orange and red and chemical green―leap into the night sky, the hellish glow reflecting off the low clouds and illuminating the pine trees that lead away from Applied Cryonics to the main street. Looking that way, you can just see regular red-and-blue geometries cutting into the surrounding forest, the approach of police cars as they drag themselves up the steep hill.

''One cruiser stops and a young man with 70s aviator shades and a mustache that only cops wear gets out. He puts his hand on his gun when he sees the sharp thing you're holding, but doesn't draw it. From a safe distance, over the roar of the flames, he shouts, "What happened here?"

''What happened here?''

Try to view your prelude as a shakedown cruise: it's a rough cut, and rules and causality are not as important as making sure you and the Storyteller are on the same page about your character. During or after the prelude, you may need to make adjustments to your character: you might realize that her underlying anger is based on a deep resentment of her friends' success, and switch catalysts from Grimm to Neid. Don't see this as a chance to fine-tune your character's effectiveness, but as an opportunity to shake out the conceptual kinks. The Storyteller might justify these changes, or justify his own narrative tricks and scene manipulation, because the prelude takes place around the time of your character's Breakthrough, where he's probably half-crazed anyway and unlikely to remember the details of events, but mostly the prelude is there so everyone at the table can fine-tune their characters in order to optimize their experience in play.

In general, try to do as much as possible during the prelude. That will help you figure out how your character interacts with the world, how he behaves, what he likes, and how his madness manifests. Get into the head of your character, and don't get upset if the Storyteller glides over events like combat, reducing them to a single throw of the dice or ignoring the rules entirely in favor of description. Oh, and don't try to avoid becoming a genius. Doing that wastes everyone's time.

====The Before-Time====
''"What the hell are you doing in here?"

''It's not one of the security guards. Worse, it's Jim...excuse me, Dr. James Elliot Neill, Director of Preservative Research. You wanted to get a closer look at what they were doing. Those big regulatory computers seem to call to you over the long nights here. You've felt your thoughts getting crisper, cleaner, and recently the curiosity has been eating you alive. But Dr. Neill is always watching the computers, and now he's pissed off that a janitor has wandered into a restricted zone.

''You need this job. What are you going to tell him?''

Storytellers can begin a prelude by focusing on what life was like for a genius before the Breakthrough. In this first stage of the prelude, you'll need to figure out what sort of person you were before you became a mad scientist. Keep in the back of your mind whether you will remain this way once you are Inspired, or whether the Breakthrough changed some or all of your personality. Were you already a respected scientist? A failure as a grad student? A gifted technician without the money to afford college? Were you brave or cowardly, acquiescent or combative, charming or a huge nerd?

Some of these everyday scenes may focus on events leading up to your Breakthrough. Others might be entirely mundane: watching a co-worker beat the high score on the Galaga game in the canteen, or chatting with an old friend about what it was like in Afghanistan after five years without contact.

If dice rolls are needed, remember that at this point you are a regular mortal, lacking Inspiration, Mania, or wonders.

====The Eureka Moment====
''They're using you like some sort of drug-sniffing dog, it seems. Half of the researchers are in awe; half think you're just crazy and lucky. But you know when one of the machines needs replacing. You know what they need, how to keep them running, and so you spend your days in the freezing-cold room, monitoring them. You have to hold a mop, though. Damn regulations.

''What's this? Someone has left an open company laptop on one of the work tables. On the ground near it they spilled a can of Dr. Pepper, as if they had to get out in a hurry. And they think they've locked the laptop, but you know all the company codes now, and even if you didn't...

''"The Resurrection Consortium." That's what it says behind the login screen. What's that? It would be so easy to...no, but you couldn't...

''What do you do?''

Though there is rarely a single moment when a regular person transforms into a mad scientist, the Storyteller may wish to offer one or a few vignettes about your genius' transformation.

The actual Breakthrough is often a traumatic, frightening experience, made all the more terrible by the fact that a new genius almost certainly knows that she can walk away from it all, can shut it all down...but that she wants to go forward anyway. Hallucinations, visions, and deranged thinking afflict a genius in the midst of her Breakthrough, bits of animated Mania or simple insanity caused by the pressure of the experience warping her perceptions and reasoning.

The Breakthrough is an opportunity to define what matters to your character: what motivates him, what he loves and fears, and what will continue to matter to him once he is a genius. What your genius does in the midst of his Breakthrough can establish plot hooks for future chronicles, giving the Storyteller dangling story-threads that can be resolved at some future time. Since most Storytellers like it when their players do the work for them, try to lay the seeds for future excitement during this part of the prelude; it might yield more focus on your character's story-arc in the future.

As the Breakthrough progresses, your genius will get access to Inspiration and Mania, though he may not gain Axioms and a foundation until much later.

====The Wider World====
''"I'm impressed that you found me so easily," Dr. Layota says. She sits down and steeples her fingers to prevent them from shaking. "At this point you could probably turn me over to the police. Fraud, criminal conspiracy, and of course, that unfortunate incident with the piranhas...

''"But where would that get you?" The doctor stands up and opens her briefcase. You can't see what she's pulling out, which sets you on edge. "A head full of crazy and no way to get it out. You're going to burst like a grape if you keep that up. Let's instead cut a deal. A year ago you would've wanted money. Now I know what you want."

''She holds up a three-ring binder labeled The Axiom of Exelixi.

''"All this can be yours," she says, "for the low, low price of not picking up that telephone."

''What do you do?''

By the end of the vignettes surrounding the Breakthrough, you should have a firm understanding of how your genius catalyzed and how that has changed her life. The rest of the prelude is picking up the pieces and putting things back together. The Storyteller here can include details about how your character learned about the Axioms, about the foundations, the Peerage, and Lemuria. Toward the end of the prelude, you will also need to address how your genius continues to interface with the rest of the world, if at all. Vignettes covering whether or not your character continues to hold down a job, how her family, friends, and loved ones react to the change in her personality, and how a new mad scientist interacts with regular people are as important as mini-stories about learning how to build robots.

At this point in the prelude, the Storyteller will likely introduce the other player characters, if it has been a cooperative prelude. If that's the case, a bit of role-playing should allow your characters to form a collaborative, if that is your goal. Otherwise the Storyteller can introduce other major characters, such as antagonists, potential mentors, or fellow geniuses. How your character interacts with these figures during the prelude can color relations during the chronicle.

====A Few Questions:====
If your character is finished but you still want to add more meat to the bones, you can try answering some of the following questions. Feel free to answer some or all of them.

=====What Do You Look Like?=====

''What is your ethnicity? What fashions do you favor? Do you have a separate "mad scientist" wardrobe, or do you wear regular clothes in the lab? Or do you walk around "in character" when interacting with normal society? Do you look like a scientist, mad or otherwise, or would be people be surprised if they found out you have a death ray in your briefcase?''

=====How Hard Was Your Breakthrough?=====
''Was it a process of gradual revelation, or a sudden thunderbolt from the Heavens that burned out most of your normal-person circuitry? Did you lose your job, your friends, or your mind, or did you manage to hide the madness? Are you trying to rebuild, trying to hide what has happened, or happy to let your old self disappear?''

=====How Much of "You" Is Left?=====
''Do you view yourself as basically the same person as you were before your Breakthrough, or do you see yourself as an inhuman mentality inhabiting a mortal body? How certain are you of that assessment―do you feel comfortable relating the disparate parts of your higher and lower thoughts, or are you tormented by your new, warped identity?''

=====Who Matters To You?=====
''Are any other geniuses your friends, or just co-workers? Are you married? In love―perhaps unrequited? Do you have a beautiful daughter? (If so, be careful―if you turn evil she'll probably betray you to the hero and let the monster eat you.) Do you have an extended family, or a network of friends that care about you, or are you alone in the world except for your fellow geniuses? Do you have a home, or just a workplace where you spend the night?''

=====What Are You Working On?=====
''What are your long-term mad science plans? Do you have a half-built time machine that you lack the expertise to finish lying around the lab? What sorts of wonders do you want to build, once you master the necessary Axioms? Do you have ambitions in the mortal world―in politics, in finance―or in the weird halls of power created by the Inspired?''

=====Names and Titles:=====
''Geniuses are physically human and most stick with their regular name. If "Jane Conant" is fine for a regular scientist, it's probably fine for a mad one. Others alter their names to reflect their fields of study, often using puns and wordplay. "Jane Chronos" has a nice ring to it, after all. Plenty of geniuses like having "Doctor" or "Professor" in front of their name, and those that don't have a degree figure that being a genius entitles them to one. (Few among the Inspired dispute this point.) Some geniuses prefer entirely fanciful names, with or without a title, like Doctor Tempest, Mr. Syntax, or The Calculatrix. These nicknames are becoming more common with the rise of Internet use among the Inspired. Asking if a mad scientist really has a degree is considered as polite in the Peerage as asking if a mad scientist has a problem with drug addiction.''