Genius The Transgression

"They all laughed at my theories! They called me mad! But now I'll have my revenge!"

If only it were so simple. They laughed because you WERE mad. They laughed because your inventions crumbled when unveiled and your theories turned to gibberish. You wept when you saw your equations riddled with childish errors. But you know what you accomplished: you broke gravity's spell; you programmed a computer to dream; you banished death! These weren't delusions or lies!

Maybe they were right.

Or maybe just one more experiment will show you the truth. You can do everything you said. There's a price to pay, but you can do it. And you're not mad. The things you do...maybe they're not right. Maybe your peers would recoil in horror. But you're not mad. And you'll show them all.

Genius: The Transgression is a fan-made role-playing game for the New World of Darkness. In it, players take on the roles of mad scientists and wonder-workers, driven to the brink of insanity by the secrets they have uncovered. Version 1.1 of the rules is available for free download as a .pdf file:[1]

Table of Contents

Chapter One: The Cosmos

"Nothing is going on and nobody knows what it is.

Nobody is concealing anything except the fact that he does not understand anything anymore and wishes he could go home."

-Philip K. Dick

A cosmos is not just a universe. It is an ordered universe, one bound by coherent laws and systems. These are the laws the Inspired use; these are the laws the Inspired betray. A genius is not born ex nihilo. All have some great motivation for what they do, that defines how they view the world―their catalyst―and most have a unique way of seeing the world and surviving the ravages of Mania―their foundation.

First Principles

Behold My Genius

A genius is a mortal man or woman gifted with extraordinary insight and technical brilliance. A genius is also a concept, an extra-worldly thing, a muse, an eidolon of imagination and beauty, something that alights for a time upon mortals or, sometimes, buries itself deep in the soul of a person and does not leave.

This double-truth follows a genius through life: are they extraordinary individuals gifted with a touch of the impossible, or are they mere conduits for a greater and inhuman power? This question torments many of the Inspired, and they pore over the accounts of their predecessors and propose monstrous and baffling philosophies in order to learn what they are: gifted mortals, or mere shells for the idea of genius? Every genius must ask herself, at some point, am I real? And they must discover for themselves the origin and true nature of their ideas. Are they Inspired, or are they Inspiration personified? Where do the terrible, beautiful ideas come from, if not from their own mind? Are they, in some sense, worthy of the wonders they make, or are they mere midwives for things more beautiful than they―things in some sense, more real?

As a genius grows in power and experience, traditional notions of causality and responsibility can break down, stripping that question of meaning, but many Inspired fear such a fate. Something burns brightly within them, and it can burn away who they are entirely, eclipsing their own minds with a shining thing, a divine thing, that can hollow them out and use them for their own ends. A genius instead clings to those human questions, those not-transcendent concerns. For every young genius who rails at the chains raised around his ambitions, who spits at the world for denying him respect, equipment, peace of mind, there is a seasoned wonder-worker who has discovered that those pitiful mortal frustrations, the tedium of paying the utility bill, of deflecting accusations from one's unInspired friends, of just getting out of the lab for a night and talking to frail, grubby little humans about frail, grubby human things, is all that limits the luminous thing within from burning through the back of their eyes and pouring out into the world.

Some never learn that lesson. They become Inspiration. Their fate is sad, and sometimes beautiful.

The Breakthrough

At Last I Understand

A genius' Breakthrough―the moment she stops being a normal mortal, however naturally gifted, and becomes Inspired―is often a traumatic experience, though it is rarely sudden. Over the course of weeks, months, or even years, a mortal's perspective begins to change. Ideas that once made sense become dubious, unintuitive, even suspicious, while new notions seem to leap unbidden into the person's mind. These might be dismissed as madness, if the ideas don't work, or unexpected leaps of intuition, if somehow they do, but the nagging suspicion remains that the ideas are coming from Outside, that somehow they are not one's own.

Most reasonable people, at this point, retreat from the strange revelations: they shut themselves down, force themselves to go about their day-to-day lives, and if they're lucky or determined, they won't experience a Breakthrough at all. They will live out their little lives like the rest of us. But some rush headlong toward these new experiences, while others cannot or will not escape them, perhaps seeing answers there that have eluded them before. This is how a genius is born.

The first few months after the Breakthrough are traumatic and infuriating: Inspiration, for all its brilliance, fears the light of day. Answers that seem so obvious as the genius labors by night in rented laboratory space turn to nonsense when shown to one's fellows. Many geniuses think they are going mad. Their friends almost certainly think so. Isolation and madness set in as the Breakthrough drags on: the genius is Inspired, but lacks any ability to produce something. He is not yet a maker of wonders.

The First Axioms

Pinning the Butterfly

Eventually things must change. Some remain isolated. Some Inspired are picked up by the Lemurians. There they are told the great Lemurian truth: that they are right, that everyone else is wrong, and that they are the natural leaders of the mortal world, gifted with genius to redefine the world in their image. Others go completely mad, becoming Illuminated, devoured by the light within.

The rest join that loose organization called the Peerage, the society of independent mad scientists. An established peer, or a whole collaborative of researchers, might find a lone genius and teach her how to channel her Inspiration. Others make their own independent discoveries by reading scientific and mathematical texts that are gibberish to the sane but how-to programs for the Inspired. Regardless of how he learns, most geniuses who do not go mad stumble upon the Axioms: "channels" of mad science that apply some modicum of order to the genius' chaotic thoughts, and which can be used to create wonders.

The Axioms are not reliable, by any means, let alone consistent. A genius can imagine them as knots of cohesion floating in a vast illuminated sea of Idea, little islands where things almost make sense, though the shoreline shifts fractally with every passing second. Even if a genius doesn't know the names and histories of the Axioms, she sees something solid there, a foundation upon which she can build the scaffolding of something wondrous. She is no longer a flailing half-genius whose equations are gibberish and whose projects sublimate before the eyes of her peers. She has laid claim to a system. She is now a genius in full.

Mad Scientist Population Demographics

So Who Here Is A Genius?

The Inspired really are good at statistics. So, who becomes a mad scientist?

According to Genius: A Complete Psychological Breakdown, published by Ayako Von Schreber and Bob "Doc" Sandwich in 2005, the Inspired are primarily drawn from the scientific, academic, and educational fields. It should come as no surprise that almost nine in ten Inspired work or worked in such fields: they are or were scientists, researchers, philosophers, sociologists, professors, mathematicians, engineers, technicians, medical doctors, or computer experts. Many others are drawn from related fields: Inspired populations boast many librarians, historians, field guides, teachers, explorers, mechanics, architects, and all-purpose scholars. This is what geniuses call the breeding pool, the usual "spawning ground" for new geniuses.

Of those geniuses with their origins in mortal science, about 60% came to Inspiration naturally, in the course of independent study. The rest were deliberately guided and spent time as beholden. Either this was a period of apprenticeship before the inchoate geniuses were allowed to embrace their full power, or they were intended to remain as mere servants and technicians, but grew Inspired of their own accord.

About 12% of geniuses become Inspired though they possess no particular scientific or technical background, nor formal training time under another genius. The old term for such a person was a raudus, a raw "lump" of genius. They possess no training, but they have raw talent and some kind of frantic drive that pushes them into a Breakthrough. The beat cop who sees one crime too many and decides to mess around with an armored suit, the mother whose children are menaced by mysterious underground machines and who ransacks libraries to find out how to stop them, the laborer who watches a loved one wither of untreatable cancer, and who starts asking around about "impossible" cures...all these people are geniuses for whom the Breakthrough comes first and mundane knowledge comes later.

One genius in three has a PhD or equivalent. (Two geniuses in three will claim to have a PhD or equivalent, or will put "Doctor," "Doc," or "Professor" in their names and not feel guilty about it.) This means that the Inspired population is an educated one. However, not every genius comes to her new life in the "traditional" manner of being a scientist and then going mad. Many, perhaps most, are hobbyists and come to Inspiration through those hobbies: amateur astronomers who see something they can't explain and are consumed with obsession, computer geeks whose machines start doing things that don't make sense, or graphic artists who stumble upon a color palette that produces impossible effects.

Many Inspired do not know what they are. It is estimated that between 30% and 50% of all geniuses have no idea that they are geniuses. Though many of these are noticed and introduced to the Peerage or Lemuria within a few years of their Breakthrough, some might go their whole lives entirely unaware of the larger communities in their midst. These are called lonesomes, and a genius is likely to encounter a few during her career. Most work alone; a few form isolated groups disconnected from the Peerage or Lemuria. Lonesomes are becoming increasingly rare in an increasingly connected world.

Of those geniuses who have connected with their colleagues, 45% belong to Lemuria, though that number is dropping, as Lemuria today sees few replacements. 35% are peers and belong to one of the foundations (or are rogues belonging to a collaborative made up of peers). The rest are rogues or belong to an unaffiliated program, either operating independently or in groups that have no connection to or interest in the politics of Lemuria or the Peerage.

There are a lot of Inspired, a fact that startled the Peerage when it was first discovered. Estimates are as high as one person in five thousand being a genius, though many are lonesomes with no idea of what they are. More conservative estimates make Inspired rarer, but there are still a good number of them in any major metropolitan area.

According to the available demographics, the Inspired are 56% male, 40% female, and 4% not answering to either gender identity, with those numbers equalizing slowly but steadily; male-female parity should occur around 2030 according to projections. This is an astonishing change from a 1913 questionnaire that indicated 71% of the Inspired population was male. This disparity is usually explained by the larger numbers of men in the technical sciences and other traditional sources of new geniuses. Among the different foundations, the Navigators are the most male-dominated (at 62%), while Directors, who draw more often from the humanities or "soft" sciences like sociology and psychology, have slightly more women (58%).

"Kid geniuses" aren't as common as many people think. (Though they are often as annoying as people think.) Minors make up 14% of the Inspired population, with one genius in 50 being under the age of 13. These "Wesleys" show a slight proclivity for computer science, with dimensional research also being popular.

Geniuses skew toward higher income levels, with few poor people or people in the Third World capable of affording the equipment and education level necessary even to begin the process of a Breakthrough. There are exceptions, however, to this grim economic determinism: sometimes people in desperate straits manage incredible Breakthroughs and escape their former lives in a burst of Inspiration.

Other than a touch of madness and a burning desire to create, though, geniuses today have less and less in common with one-another. They are no longer drawn from the traditional demographics of educated upper-class white males that dominated the Peerage in the 19th century. Even the traditional spawning grounds of the physical and computer sciences are growing proportionately thin. Breakthroughs now come from almost anywhere, and with the world more connected than it ever has been, a loose international community has formed among the Peerage, joining together people from all over the world and from entirely different walks of life.

Obligation

From Up Here They Look Like Ants

A genius' Breakthrough, once she has mastered his first Axioms and created her first wonders, is often accompanied by a godlike feeling of invincibility and of escape from the fetters of the mundane world. But a genius cannot escape humanity, at least while keeping his humanity intact.

Instead, a genius is bound to humanity by ties of Obligation. The genius can never again be part of everyday humanity, or return to his old life. He can never again walk among his former peers as equals, at least not without danger to himself and to them. But the genius cannot simply be a watcher. Instead he must become a monitor, a guardian of his world from both his own wonders and horrors and those unleashed by others. Often dispassionate, but never disinterested, the genius becomes a protector of common humanity.

That's the ideal, and few Inspired live up to it. Even peers are willing to use mortals as subjects, servants, and pawns, while Lemuria sees itself as their natural rulers. Those Paragons who retain their sense of Obligation are rare, especially as the pressure of finding test subjects, grant money, and a place to work grows more fierce as a genius grows in ability and Inspiration. Powerful geniuses often see themselves more as conduits for the raw stuff of Inspiration than as people who happen to be Inspired, and behave accordingly. Those acts that violate a genius' sense of Obligation are called transgressions. Too many, too often, with too little regard for their consequences, can drive a genius into true madness.

Types of Insanity

I'm Not Mad!

"Involvement with Bizarro transcends words producible by mere tongue, teeth and lips. If my lumbar ganglia could talk, maybe you'd have your answer, Barry. As for my 'position,' well, I'm not sure if such simplistic polarities as hither and yon obtain in our peculiar quadrant of hypospace. But the address of my bungalow is somewhere on the opposite side of Bizarroville from Speculative Boulevard, and diametrically across from Irreal Avenue. Sometimes late at night they sneak across the tracks, infiltrate my neighborhood, and make unusual mouth noises outside my window. It's taxing emotionally."

-Tom Bradley

A genius should get used to being called mad. Most that don't crack in their first few months learn to take it in stride, for unlike regular researchers, many mad scientists know exactly how insane they are. But a genius can slip and fall to true madness. These become the unmada. Too much Maniacal activity, too fast, can result in the genius cracking as Inspiration overrides parts of her thinking mind. When this happens, the genius becomes an unmada: the raw energy of Mania echoes her own thoughts, confirming her prejudices and beliefs. Those beliefs then reinforce her Inspiration, which produces more bent Mania, producing a hall-of-mirrors or echo-chamber effect where the genius' own subconscious continually validates her opinions while wiping away contradictory data. Some geniuses escape this fate; others revel in it.

The term "maniac" (as a slang term for the unmada) is thrown around rather casually in mad society, but it has a very specific meaning for the Peerage, and there are three sorts of unmada that generally concern the Inspired.

The first are the independent unmada, sometimes called echo doctors. Most are lonesomes or isolated rogues, vulnerable to the phantasms generated by their own Mania because they lack a model to explain their wonders. Others belong to the Peerage and are tolerated despite their eccentricities. These lone madmen are often pitied by the Peerage, and attempts are made to reach and rehabilitate them.

The most common unmada are the Lemurians, who insist that they are quite sane, thank you. But Lemuria is based on the idea that a genius' own Inspiration provides a totally accurate view of the world―that everyone else is peering through their scanners darkly, not the genius. Lemurians rationalize the obvious contradictions in different members' interpretations of the world by invoking the Archweltanschaaung of Lemuria, which states that each Lemurian's worldview really is true, but that a "higher" truth maintains them all...or perhaps will maintain them all at some future point, when the Lemurians' work is completed. The details of the Archweltanschaaung are unclear to all but devoted students of Lemurian epistemology.

Many Lemurians spend their lives, like Aquinas reconciling Aristotle and the Church, finding "occult" compatibilities among different Lemurian philosophies. The Lemurians, in the end, are thoroughly cracked, but they have created a system that allows them to function, for all their cruelty and madness. Most geniuses who become Lemurians join them―or more accurately, are recruited by them―within the first few months after their Breakthroughs, Some seek them out so that their broken visions might receive validation; others are granted the "truth" by a Lemurian who discovers a lonesome teetering on the edge of dangerous madness. There is the occasional trickle between the Peerage and Lemuria, but this is negligible: most Inspired remain on one side of the fence or another for life.

The Illuminated are not fooled by Mania: they are Mania. The Illuminated have been consumed by their own Inspiration. That alien light burns away their personalities, leaving nothing but a swirling vortex of Mania and alien logic. It's estimated that about 20% of all fall to Illumination eventually: 10% more or less immediately and 10% over the course of their lives. Most of the latter are Lemurians, but no one is entirely safe. An Illuminated becomes "genius," rather than remaining an individual genius. As a mad scientist succumbs to Illumination, raw Inspiration swallows up the genius' personality. He becomes something amazing and terrible, entirely devoid of human feelings or thoughts, a mere conduit for the deranged energy of genius as it floods into the world. The Illuminated are dangerous and magnificent, transcendental mathematical intellects wrapped in the guise of mortal flesh, their actions unpredictable and dangerous. Whatever motivates the Illuminated, they are often as beautiful as they are cruel, capable of composing grand and monstrous projects, as Maniacal light from another world spills from their eyes.

The Consensus

I Still Remember The Scorn of My Peers

Two geniuses in every three come from some kind of "scientific" background, and one of the first things they learn is that, after their Breakthrough, they can never return to their former lives. Their mere existence disrupts research, clouds statistics, and makes a mockery of the scientific method. A genius is not a scientist; a genius is a wonder-worker whose miracles are technological in nature. Because of this, the life of a genius is a lonely one. Other Inspired can be allies, but are more often competitors for the same meager resources. Mortals can turn a wonder into a pile of scrap with a moment's handling, and the insightful nature of those mortals geniuses most want to associate with―fellow scientists and thinkers―merely hastens the process of disintegration. Those mortals who have embraced the genius' worldview, her beholden, embrace it with such feverish devotion and faith that, whatever their other merits, they are no more than echo chambers for the genius' thoughts.

So the Inspired walk a lonely road, isolated from their assistants, often conspiring against their fellows, and risking ridicule from the general public, unable to return to their own lives; sustained, it seems, by the burning light of Inspiration alone.

Collaboratives

I'll Trade You "Buy Groceries" for "Clean The Zombie Trap"

About half of all members of the Peerage are independent, working on their own or perhaps with a few beholden. They are not necessarily hermits, but they lack the ability or interest to cooperate with other geniuses. Some are engaged in work that is too esoteric or dangerous for anyone else, while others are just not very sociable. Their connections to their foundation is through correspondence and the transfer of money, research data, and resources.

Other geniuses band together in groups of three to ten, pooling their resources in a collaborative. This grants them a measure of protection against both the dangers of their chosen careers (orphan wonders, pissed off Lemurians, the Illuminated, furious mobs) and from the moral, psychological, and economic dangers of being a lone researcher. Funding for non-mad science is cutthroat enough, but trying to scrounge up money for wonders is a tangled mess, as Inspired draw on their trust funds, struggle to find regular jobs to pay for laboratory space, and plead for grant money from the foundations and fellowships that hold the purse strings of the Peerage. It's vicious business, and a collaborative allows its members to trust at least a few of their fellows.

Collaboratives are usually metropolitan in extent, though modern technology and super-science has resulted in the appearance of entirely digital collaboratives. Feuds between collaboratives are considered poor form in the Peerage, but they can get vicious, especially if two collaboratives lay claim to the same mundane source of funding and neither will back down.

No One Is In Charge

Much of Earth's scientific history is due to subtle manipulation by Lemuria. It is unclear how much control this group had, and it has become increasingly obvious that Lemuria had far less influence on the development of the mortal world than they often boast. But what is clear is that for centuries―millennia, perhaps―they kept a rein on the progress of science, mad and otherwise. Their program for the development of humanity, the Race History, stamped out innovation and development wherever it appeared, replacing it with developments spoon-fed to humanity by the Lemurians. Free geniuses were converted or killed.

This system never worked perfectly, and by the 17th century it had begun to unravel. Lemuria took centuries to die, and it fought for every second of life, crushing intellectual revolutions that threatened to destroy its hegemony. But new ideas swept across the world, and the Lemurians could not hold them back. Their techniques grew more severe and unyielding, their philosophy more intransigent, and when they moved to "set back the clock" in a series of wars that would have left humanity a burned-out shell, the free Inspired were moved to action: they confronted the Lemurians in open battle, chased down and killed the Secret Masters that controlled them, and ruined the careful planning behind the Race History. By the middle of the 20th century, humanity was free...and no one was in charge.

No one is in charge now, either. That, say many Inspired, is why we didn't get the future with the flying cars and the "televisors" and the moon bases: those things were in the works, all set for the Lemurians to hand them down to us like manna from heaven, and we were supposed to accept them and let our betters maintain them while we lived our happy, comfortable lives. But Lemuria got its ass kicked, and has your life ever been comfortable? It hasn't, say many in the Peerage, because humanity is off the rails, free from control or intellectual extortion.

So no one is in charge of humanity, mundane or Inspired. We've been forging our own path for fifty years―or 500 years, depending on how you count it. It's been a terrible mess, but it's been our mess. There are no Secret Masters, no answers hidden by centuries-old secret societies―well, not anymore―no Golden Age in the past, no Utopia in the future, no free rides, no easy answers, and no one at the wheel. It's just humanity, some of whom can create fifty-foot-tall robots, trying to get by.

And No One Has Any Money, Either

But Lemuria didn't just curl up like an entomologist and die. One of the bitterest truths of mad science is that Inspiration doesn't pay the bills, and even as the nastiest parts of Lemuria―the eugenic breeding programs and the deranged race theories and the monstrous power games―were being put to the sword, the Peerage realized that Lemuria offered an invaluable service: it provided a screen for mad scientists. The Lemurians had entire networks and cartels dedicated to keeping geniuses safe and supplied.

Even after the destruction of Lemuria, these organizations remained, and the Peerage lacked the personnel and expertise to replace them with its own people. So the Lemurians persisted as administrators and support specialists for those rickety networks.

Picture the Registry of Motor Vehicles. Not the real one; picture it like something out of a caricature of a Libertarian's most fevered nightmares. Now add Stalinist-level paranoia, the bitterness of a lost war, and staff it by people who believe―literally believe―that the Earth is flat, or something equally bizarre. And many of them can whip up a pack of flying monkeys to tear out your eyes inside fifteen minutes. That's Lemuria today. And they hold the purse.

Want to hold down a job better than "sales rat at the electronic store"? Do you want to teach? Do you want grant money? What about―Fermat help you―tenure? Then you need to talk to Lemuria. Foundations and collaboratives can help a little, but when things go wrong and a genius' need is dire, for the "I need five kilos of selenium right now" and for "I need an advance or they'll cut my power and spoil the cryonics," there's Lemuria. It's a rotting hulk riddled with bitter failures dreaming of past glory, but its supply catalog is second-to-none.

And it's not easy to escape Lemuria. A few geniuses make do in their parents' basements, cobbling together whatever they can from stolen components. A few have trust funds or other forms of wealth that might last for a time. The lucky ones can manage a steady supply of resources, such as tenure or a lucrative government job, but even then, one slip and the genius is revealed as a lunatic, a crank with crazy ideas whose inventions break down every time they're tested. Lemuria is always waiting.

The Monorail of Broken Dreams

Mania is the energy of Inspiration; if Inspiration is the generator, Mania is the electricity. But Mania is a strange phenomenon. It is not generated by geniuses alone. Instead, all kinds of mortal thought can generate low amounts of Mania, with scientific or mathematical thought generating more, and the sort of thought one might call "revolutionary" (politically, scientifically, ethically, it doesn't matter) generating the most.

Mania windfalls occur during times of revolutionary scientific development, especially when an old idea is rejected and supplanted by a new one. These "Maniac Storms" have two effects. First, they birth new geniuses, as regular scientists (or just normal people with a touch too much curiosity) grow obsessed with the new revelations about the world. Second, they generate manes, which are places, things, and even creatures birthed from pure Mania.

When dreams, plans, and revolutions appear, or when they break down in neglect and failure, Maniac Storms sweep across the world. The twentieth century was practically one big Maniac Storm, and no one knows if it's over. (Brief periods of peace, such as immediately after World War Two and the Vietnam War, were shattered by events as momentous as Sputnik and the computer revolution.) These storms leave the world littered with bardos, false realms brought into existence by their own disproof. Bardos and the manes within them feed on Mania, and even the most hopeful, Utopian bardo either decays into nothingness or finds some way, however brutal, to steal Mania from the real world.

Genius in History and Legend

"3. And Jesus made of that clay twelve sparrows, and it was the Sabbath. And a child ran and told Joseph, saying: Behold, thy child is playing about the stream, and of the clay he has made sparrows, which is not lawful. And when he heard this, he went, and said to the child: Why dost thou do this, profaning the Sabbath? But Jesus gave him no answer, but looked upon the sparrows, and said: Go away, fly, and live, and remember me."

-The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Roberts-Donaldson Translation (Second Greek Form)

The history of Inspiration is shrouded in myths, tall tales, and botched attempts at time travel. What is clear is that there have been geniuses for nearly as long as there has been civilization. The oldest orphans―wonders whose creators have disappeared or died―were found in Irem in the 1980s and dated to around 2500 BCE, and rumors of even older Egyptian orphans and ones of unknown origin are common. Wonders have been found from ancient Egypt and China, Babylon, Mesoamerica, and the Indian subcontinent. The remnants, no longer functional, of Greek, Roman, Persian, and Medieval Muslim wonders are common collector's items among the Inspired, and many orphans from the Renaissance and early industrial period are still in working order, and treated as status symbols by powerful geniuses.

It is also clear that very few of history's great philosophers, savants, and scientists were geniuses. The Inspired are characterized by an inability to express their ideas in universal and comprehensible terms that shape the technological development of the world. Of history's great scientists and thinkers, only Leonardo da Vinci, Nikola Tesla, and Robert Hooke were certainly geniuses. (If reports are to be believed, da Vinci was a rogue who opposed Lemuria, Nikola Tesla was an Etherite, and Hooke belonged to the Invisible College.) Cases have been made for a number of other thinkers having been Inspired (or beholden), including Hero of Alexandria, Paracelsus, Gottfried Leibniz, Benjamin Franklin, Lady Ada Lovelace, Josef Mengele, Amelia Earheart, Philip K. Dick, and countless others, but evidence for these claims is spotty at best. No one involved in the Manhattan Project was a genius or a beholden, almost certainly: the Peerage and Lemuria both watched every scientist involved very closely for fear of what horrors contamination with Mania could cause. In general, history's greatest scientists, from Lavoisier to Darwin to Einstein to Turing, were defined by their ability to communicate universal concepts about the world in clear and unambiguous language to the majority of interested and educated human beings, a feat that very few geniuses are capable of replicating, and a task that would not interest most of them even if they could.

History before the Italian Renaissance―Inspired scholars favor the arbitrary date of 1452, the year of Leonardo da Vinci's birth―is largely obscured by Lemurian propaganda. Early history appears mostly to have been one of relentless Lemurian control, with independent geniuses being either entirely local or, if they made contact with their far-flung peers, suffering destruction at the hands of Lemuria. Tantalizing hints of exceptions to that rule, such as rumors of the Syntaxis League during Alexander the Great's Empire, and the Scholars of Contradiction who were said to have spread across and outside the Muslim world during the 8th century AD, remain elusive. Lemurian records during ancient Rome are extensive, but contradictory, with clear and believable accounts of everyday life mixed with impossible nonsense and murky parables. Many peers consider Rome the origin of Inspiration, but this is incorrect. If Inspiration has any single origin point, it is India; the traditions of genius likely spread from India westward shortly after the death of Alexander the Great. The East may have had a separate Inspired tradition originating in China, though many scholars cite ancient trade in secrets and technologies between Egypt and China as evidence of a fundamentally Mediterranean origin for all Inspiration.

Due to this murkiness, history (as opposed to legend) really starts with the Renaissance. The rapid spread of knowledge resulted in too many mortal mechanics, philosophers, and experimenters for Lemuria to monitor, and countless Breakthroughs. Improved roads led to better communication, and in no time, it seemed, there was a community of Inspired chattering eagerly with one-another, and not interested at all in Lemuria's promises or threats. A similar thing happened in China at nearly the same time. The Lemurians, fearing an ascendant and organized Inspired population in China, ruthlessly annihilated almost all traces of that society.

Their work was so thorough that by the mid 17th century, not even their name was known.

But Lemuria had neglected (comparatively backward) Europe, and geniuses had spread everywhere―and worse, mortal thinkers had gotten all sorts of ideas into their heads, something that had not happened as extensively in the East. Attempts at repairing the damage with promises or violence proved futile, and Lemuria was forced to activate the next phase of its Race History early.

The result was several centuries of failure for Lemuria, interspersed with spasms of genocidal violence: every time Lemuria focused its efforts on eradicating the Peerage, mortal thinkers made new discoveries; every time they tried to drive the clock back in the mortal world, free geniuses spread and prospered. The loose alliance of free Inspired continued to grow in power, despite constant pressure from Lemuria, until, in the 20th century, Lemuria began an open war that resulted in its near-total defeat.

The last half-century has been bewildering for geniuses, whatever their political allegiance: there used to be something to "push against," a plan that could be embraced or ignored or even harmed, but there isn't a plan now. The Peerage flailed about for a time, directionless. It took the development of the Internet to change that.

Estimates of the genius population before 1990 or so guessed that one person in a million was a genius, giving a total world genius population of a few thousand. That was wrong: once the Inspired got online, superior communication allowed for a revised estimate: there were, probably, at least a million geniuses out there, and many of them wanted to talk to one-another. The Internet was a revolution, and it continues to be so: there are now a million Inspired online (though many probably have no idea what they are), with estimates of the total genius population being anywhere from twice to ten times that. Since the arrival of the Internet, the life of a genius has changed considerably: the days of laboring in isolation are over, unless a genius chooses to live that way, and while funding and lab space are always at a premium, a genius now knows that a community of peers is no farther away than the nearest connection. How this will ultimately change Inspired society is still uncertain.

Fundamentals

Sometimes it seems like the modern world is all about brand identity. The ancient one was, too.

Even if it doesn't matter―especially if it doesn't matter―it's important for humans to have tribes, to divide themselves into us and them, and to maintain nested dolls of familiarity and distance. A genius might be walking around with an entire universe in his head, but he's still a human being and possesses the same needs and impulses as any other.

But the foundations―the divisions of the Inspired―do more than just give geniuses a team to root for. They provide a set of core assumptions that a genius needs to not go mad. Foundations provide axioms as well as Axioms, setting the genius on the path to understanding Inspiration, Mania, Obligation, and the wider world into which she has emerged. Further, each foundation offers a clear focus and identity. This is part of a deliberate effort by the Peerage to help a new genius quickly find a place and a purpose before she succumbs to one form of insanity or another.

The Artificers are the tinkerers, the kitbashers, and the compulsive builders and fiddlers. They focus on mad engineering. The least likely of the peers to possess a formal scientific education, Artificers are nonetheless gifted mechanics, architects, roboticists and (increasingly) computer hackers. Anything that can be torn apart and rebuilt delights the Artificers. An old but loosely-organized group, Artificers are united in seeing the creation of the new wonders as primary: theory and application are secondary concerns to the unfettered joy of creation.

The Directors see themselves as the peers' organizational head; the other foundations' opinion on this matter are mixed. Directors study mad psychology. Among their numbers can be found Utopian visionaries, malevolent hypnotists, techno-voyeurs, diabolical masterminds, benevolent despots, and powers behind many thrones. This foundation possesses a sinister air―other geniuses imagine smoke-filled back rooms and secret meetings―but newer Directors are more interested in managing research teams than ruling obscure foreign nations.

The Navigators are travelers, explorers, and adventurers, as willing to use wonders as to create them. They are students of mad physics, producing hideous energy weapons, vehicles of all sizes and purposes, and dimensional gates. Navigators might be soldiers of science, crime-fighting guardians, or twisted researchers who explore the far reaches of space and time. Their origin in the fires of the Last Invisible War gives them a militaristic cast that can trouble the other foundations.

The Progenitors are the youngest of the foundations, having recently undergone a bloody and horrific purge. Their focus is on mad biology: transplant surgeons, cloners, animal uplifters, toxicologists, and genetic researchers make up their ranks. The organization preceding them was annihilated after the rest of the Peerage discovered the extent of their corruption; the reformed group is intrigued by self-transformation and by becoming the philosophies they embody.

The Scholastics are philosophers and questioners, as interested in what Mania is than what it can produce. The oldest extant foundation, these proud descendants of Europe's Invisible College focus on mad philosophy, from cutting-edge mathematics and experimental philosophy to the darkest, most ancient secrets of long-dead occultists. Younger Scholastics view themselves as trickster-figures and take on the guise of Loki, Coyote, Prometheus, Lucifer, or other light-bringers, demiurges, or riddlers. Older Scholastics find the younger generation's penchant for riddles and games insufferable, twee, or even blasphemous.

The organization for each foundation is loose and non-hierarchical, which was the intent of the original organizers of the Peerage: they wanted to escape the cliquishness and power-jockeying found in the Inspired salons of Europe and replace them with egalitarian orders that anyone could join.

Instead of ranks and hierarchies, each foundation instead offers an organon: a book (or, nowadays, a series of downloadable files) that contains useful information about the foundation. This is enough for a new genius to master his first Axioms. It also provides valuable information about regular science and technology, and―most importantly―how to convert that information to the development of wonders. The foundations are intended to give the genius a loose sense of belonging and gives him a go-to point for questions, while not stifling him with protocol and an oppressive sense of membership and obligation.

Despite this loose organization, each foundation is riddled with internal divisions between young and old, tradition and revolution. Even mad scientists have their traditions and their customs, passed down from the earliest days of the Peerage, and as the generation that cast down Lemuria gives way to a new, mercurial group, raised in a technological landscape that 20th century peers could only imagine, the tranquil edifice of the Peerage is starting to crack. Lemuria's baramins are structured differently, with a stricter hierarchy and more ideological trappings. Their groupings―Atomist, Etherites, Mechanists, Oracles, and Phenomenologists―are based on when and where the genius thinks mortal society went wrong. They offer no organon, but rather direct tutoring in the philosophies and doctrines of the baramin.

"The Word EARTH indicates One, Entity or Singularity, but Earth is not an Entity, for the Half of Earth seen from Space cannot exist without the Opposite Half NOT SEEN - existing only as opposites with a plus & minus zero existence. As an Entity, the Opposites will cancel each other out to nothing. Teaching that Earth is an Entity equates to a Doomsday induced by Educaters upon Humanity. Earth is not a Singularity, it is composed of Opposites."

-Navigator Organon: "Introduction to Skafoi" (aka "Time Cube Volume 1 of 36")