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

====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.