Editing Genius The Transgression/Chapter One: The Cosmos (section)

===Breakthrough:===

A Neid's Breakthrough often begins with a scientific marvel: a cold fusion generator, a cloned human, a car that runs for days on a teaspoon of gas. They're not quite wonders, but they're incredible. Of course, they're also held together with Mania, which is notoriously unstable, and the inevitable collapse is often enough to bring a proto-Neid right over the edge into screaming, cackling Inspiration.

Even those Neids who do not arise from the breeding pool often create something new and extraordinary, which might be anything from a get-rich-quick scheme to a perfect plan for reinvigorating the parish. But madness comes just as quickly, followed by jealousy, suspicion, and the scorn of others. It's the alienation, not the technology, that makes a Wyrm: the realization that people will take what the genius has created for their own selfish ends, or worse, that they'll laugh and call the genius a fool for what she's done. The device, the creation, is not a true wonder―usually. It's merely a prop around which a Neid spins a narrative of deceit and contempt that will bind her, forever, to the rest of humanity in a sick, abusive relationship based on exploitation and betrayal.