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

====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.