Genius The Transgression/Chapter Two: Character Creation

There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learnt to separate them. Desire, the strongest thing in the world, is itself all future, and it is not for nothing that in all the religions the motive is always forwards to an endless futurity of bliss or annihilation. Now that religion gives place to science the paradiscial future of the soul fades before the Utopian future of the species, and still the future rules. But always there is, on the other side, destiny, that which inevitably will happen, a future here concerned not as the other was with man and his desires, but blindly and inexorably with the whole universe of space and time. The Buddhist seeks to escape from the Wheel of Life and Death, the Christian passes through them in the faith of another world to come, the modern reformer, as unrealistic but less imaginative, demands his chosen future in this world of men. -J.D. Bernal, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil

Creating a fully-developed genius character requires an understanding both of the genius' Inspired dreams and her mortal origins. Geniuses, for all their extraordinary power, are still mortal men and women, and their human obsessions and beliefs guide their Breakthrough and much of their subsequent life. A genius must be more than a collection of dots optimized to fulfill a strategic niche; the Inspired are creatures of human passion and mundane ambition as well as transcendent understanding. Try to use the interaction between the genius' new and old personas to create a dynamic, interesting character.

Translating a genius into "dots on the paper" can be difficult. First, accept that you may be frustrated by a beginning genius' limited abilities. New geniuses begin play with a few Axioms and a handful of wonders, but they are not super-scientists; not yet. See this as an opportunity to view life through your character's eyes: he might be just as frustrated as you are at his abilities, which are potent but not yet world-breaking. Imagining how your character developed―from the first thoughts of "something is weird here" to the Breakthrough to learning his first few Axioms―can help you understand where your character has come from, allowing you to turn goals already accomplished into Skills and Merits, and goals yet to be achieved into plans for the future.

Your genius will probably belong to a collaborative made up of the other players' characters, so you may want to meet with the other players, not to optimize everyone's genius as part of an elite combat team (seriously, it never works), but to make sure no one is stepping on anyone else's conceptual toes. Some negotiation about who gets to be "the guy with the robots" or "the brooding crime-fighter" may be in order. Other players can also provide new perspectives on your genius that you haven't considered. The Storyteller may also have important input and advice about what sort of game she is planning to run, allowing you to fit your genius into the chronicle.

Step One: Choose Concept

Mad scientists are complex creatures, but many can be described with a few well-chosen words: "Death-obsessed biochemist," "experimental vehicle pilot," "visionary psychic researcher." Using either images of mad science from media or your own unsupported imagination, try to call an image to mind and summarize your character.

Your concept allows you to quickly describe your character to other players, and can give the Storyteller clues about what sorts of stories you want your character to experience.

At the beginning of the chronicle, most geniuses in the collaborative will be new to the whole "mad science" thing, with at most a few months of experience on the job. However, some characters have had previous brushes with Inspiration that they avoided, preventing a full Breakthrough. This is usually linked to a genius' starting Inspiration: a genius with only a single dot in Inspiration has been touched for the first time, while one with more dots has probably fought off the wonders and horrors of becoming a genius before.

At this point, you might want to consider the nature of your genius' Breakthrough, which determines her catalyst. Your genius' personality can also help determine which foundation she joins. You should also consider an aesthetic, what your mad scientist's inventions will look like. Does she slap machinery together from discarded circuitry and engine blocks stolen from junk yards? If so, her inventions will look very different from a genius who builds his wonders out of the finest brass and dark wood, then hand-polishes them until they shine with care and devotion.

Step Two: Select Attributes

Your genius' Attribute dots determine his raw capabilities. Use the genius' life before the Breakthrough as a guide to determining his Attributes. Try to imagine how the genius' Attributes would influence his personality, and vice-versa.

All Attributes begin at one dot. Divide your Attributes into primary (five dots), secondary (four dots), and tertiary (three dots). The fifth dot in any Attribute requires two dots to purchase.

When you add the genius template (step five), you will add an additional dot to Intelligence, Wits, or Resolve. This does not cost two dots to purchase if it raises an Attribute to five dots.

Though the Inspired vary considerably in talents and temperament, many possess a few common traits.

Intelligence is prized above almost all other Attributes in the Inspired community, and understandably so: only the smartest can reliably build wonders. Wits, however, is invaluable when a wonder is needed right now, not just after three days in a laboratory. Geniuses who focus on travel and adventure need high Dexterity to control the strange vehicles they build and Stamina to survive the rigors of hostile and alien environments. And not all of the Inspired are shut-ins: many are naturally charming, almost magnetic, and others hone their Social Attributes so that they might rise to positions of power as laboratory directors or executives in the private sector. Presence gives a genius the raw strength of personality to bend others to his will, to amaze, delight, and terrify, while Manipulation is less glamorous but no less useful.

Despite their tenacity, many Inspired lack Resolve and Composure and are psychologically vulnerable when taken out of their narrow environments. Many are temperamental, unstable, even gullible despite their brilliance. Those that do not suffer from this weakness, however, can be as relentless as they are smooth, able to travel from boardroom to farthest uncharted land while keeping a level head.

Step Three: Select Skills

Divide your Skills into primary (eleven dots), secondary (seven dots), and tertiary (four dots). A fifth dot in any Skill costs two points to purchase.

A genius' Skills often determine what approach he takes to his Inspiration. Mental Skills are often primary, but which Skills receive the most attention can tell a person much about a mad scientist. Experts in Computer research artificial intelligence and networks beyond the dreams of MIT or Tokyo Tech, while Inspired who take up Academics are super-psychologists and philosophers. Students of Medicine are not just doctors, but biologists, surgeons, and biochemical engineers. Geniuses who focus on Crafts can master everything from aerospace engineering to transatomic metallurgy, and experts on the Occult can catch amazing glimpses of worlds far removed from this one. The Science Skill serves as the one field tying these disparate branches of knowledge together, but some geniuses specialize here, too, becoming renowned theorists among the Peerage.

The mortal Skills a genius gained before his Breakthrough can also determine his foundation. Psychologists and people with high Social Skills are likely to become Directors, while experts in Medicine look toward the Progenitors. High-energy physicists and explorers often end up as Navigators, as do scientists with high ranks in Drive and/or Survival, while Academics, Investigation, and Occult are important to Scholastics. Fiddlers, hackers, and craftsmen often join the Artificers and focus on Crafts or Computer. Conversely, a genius may take the opposite approach, getting picked up by a foundation first, and then fleshing out the most useful Skills with the help of a tutor.

Step Four: Select Skill Specialties

Even the Inspired, who often are or strive to become polymaths, find need to focus on specific areas of study. Geniuses often focus on strange and seemingly-useless specializations that are too narrow to be useful anywhere except mad science. Others maintain hobbies or interests from their previous lives, or can call upon the hyper-focused exploration that often precedes a Breakthrough.

Choose three Skill Specialties. You may choose more than one Specialty for the same Skill.

Step Five: Add Genius Template

When a genius experiences her Breakthrough, she is redefined as a creature of Inspiration and Mania. While still human, she is also something more, and gains powers and suffers drawbacks unique to her new condition.

Note that templates cannot overlap. Geniuses will not experience the First Change and become a werewolf, nor Awaken as a Mage. Attempts to Embrace a genius result in a dead genius. If taken to Faerie she will not become a Changeling (if she survives the experience). Her corpse, if turned into a Promethean, is just that: a new Promethean.

Attribute Bonus:

A genius receives an additional dot to one Mental Attribute, representing the increase in mental capacity granted by the Breakthrough. Meticulous, thoughtful, theoretical mad scientists often gain a bonus to Intelligence, while creative, artistic, intuitive ones can gain a bonus to Wits, and determined, practical, and stubborn geniuses usually receive a bonus to Resolve. Select whichever Attribute seems most appropriate.

A genius' Mental Attributes are still limited by her Inspiration.

Foundations:

When a genius first experiences his Breakthrough, he flails about, struggling to find his center while figuring out exactly what has happened to him. Provided he makes the transition smoothly and does not become a Lemurian, echo doctor, or one of the Illuminated, he may gravitate toward one of the five foundations that dictate a genius' approach to his work.

Each foundation offers favored Axioms, natural areas of specialty for all members of that foundation, as well as a grant, a unique talent that all geniuses in that foundation have mastered. But more than that, a foundation offers a shared approach to mad science that breaks across boundaries of culture and mundane philosophy, giving the genius a community within the community of peers, a group that shares a common approach, style, and terminology.

Examine the five foundations and decide which one best fits your character. If none seems to apply, your genius may instead be a rogue: she has either never encountered the foundations until recently, or wants to join none of them. Rogues are welcome to join most Peer collaboratives, but they are often viewed with suspicion and disdain.

Catalysts:

The foundation is a considered choice, based on how the genius approaches mad science. The catalyst is more internal and more visceral, an emotional stamp that remains with the genius forever and echoes the feelings that drove her to catalyze. Sorrow, obsession, jealousy...some strong feeling guides a genius and governs her behavior and Obligation.

All Inspired belong to a catalyst, whether they know it or not and whether or not they can articulate a philosophy behind their Inspiration. Members of the same catalyst do not form "communities" around their shared feeling; these divisions are more personal. Still, they impact the genius deeply, swaying how she learns Axioms and helping to define how she approaches her Obligation to humanity.

A genius' catalyst determines one of her favored Axioms, as well as her first Derangement. Should the genius receive a Derangement as a result of Obligation loss or almost any other reason, the first Derangement received is always based on her catalyst. Subsequent Derangements are determined normally.

Inspiration:

The Inspiration Trait measures how brightly the genius' inner light glows. As a genius' understanding increases, so does Inspiration, which is a prospect as terrifying as it is magnificent. On the one hand, greater Inspiration means more wonders and more powerful wonders, as well as a greater understanding of exactly what a genius is and what she is doing. On the other hand, the blinding light of Inspiration can devour a weak-willed genius, hollowing her out and taking up residence in her brain.

A new genius possess one dot of Inspiration for free. Geniuses who have flirted previously with mad science may begin the chronicle with two or three dots of Inspiration. Additional Inspiration dots cost three Merit points per dot, so your genius may spend three Merit dots to begin with Inspiration 2 or six Merit dots to begin begin with Inspiration 3.

Axioms:

A genius builds wonders based on Axioms, which are the branches of mad science. Each Axiom covers a general effect or approach―Katastrofi covers all instruments of destruction, for example―and each is ranked from one to five dots, with higher ranks granting more and greater effects. Geniuses must purchase dots from an Axiom in order, from the first dot to the fifth. However, a genius can often build many different types of wonders with each dot in an Axiom. Just one dot in Prostasia, the Axiom of Protection, for example, allows a genius to build an armored suit, a deflector screen, a protective ward against robots, or a forcefield cage to hold enemies.

A genius' catalyst gives her one favored Axiom. Her foundation offers two possibilities, of which she may choose one as another favored Axiom. The final favored Axiom can be anything; it is up to the genius to decide, but once chosen, it cannot be changed.

A rogue receives one favored Axiom from her catalyst and two other favored Axioms of her choice. These also cannot be changed.

A favored Axiom costs fewer experience points to increase. Further, a genius receives a +1 bonus to all attempts to build a wonder from one of her favored Axioms. Finally, a genius can buy her favored Axiom up to any level. Non-favored Axioms can be no higher than the genius' Inspiration.

A beginning genius has three dots worth of Axioms. All dots must be from one of her three favored Axioms.

Axiom Ranks:

Within the Peerage, the "dot" ranks in Axioms are sometimes given names:

●: Student

●●: Scholar

●●●: Doctor

●●●●: Implementor

●●●●●: Master

These terms vary by region, foundation, and sometimes even by Axiom (Implementors of Apokalypsi are usually referred to as "Professors of Apokalypsi," for example), but the five divisions of talent are generally recognized across the Peerage.

Geniuses refer to wonders made with different ranks of Axioms as a wonder's class, mark, or grade: a class-4 matter relocator, a mark-III death ray, a grade-2 scanner. Different collaboratives use different terms.

Step Six: Select Merits

A newly-catalyzed genius has seven dots worth of Merits that can be spent on general Merits or genius-only Merits in any combination you desire. Merits should reflect the genius' nature and personality: recluses are unlikely to stock up on Social Merits, while a rough-and-ready fighting-genius will probably have a good selection of Merits useful in a brawl.

The Storyteller may disallow certain Merits, require certain Merits, or even pass out certain Merit dots for free (such as requiring or giving out one dot in Laboratory if he expects the player characters to share a Lab), in order to shape his chronicle.

Step Seven: Determine Advantages

Genius are more than human, and some mortal Advantages change when applied to a genius. The Inspired also get their own unique Advantages.

Willpower:

Spending a Willpower point adds three dice to a roll, which can often make the difference between life and death when a genius is caught without her wonders or the protection of beholden or other allies. Geniuses often eagerly burn Willpower during the creation and use of new wonders.

A genius can spend Mania in the same turn in which she spends Willpower.

Obligation:

A genius' flesh is mortal, but her mind is something greater, and the Inspiration enhances more than just her intellect. It somehow redefines her moral system, elevating her to a position of guardianship or stewardship over humanity. Though a genius might loathe the common man, she is charged with protecting and guiding her fellow human beings.

Many of the Inspired have an ideal in their minds: the cool watcher of humanity, aloof from its everyday affairs but concerned with its development as a whole, not passionate but acting out of compassion for those teeming masses that deserve the benefits of the genius' work. During the Breakthrough, the genius' mortal Morality is superseded by this new, stronger sense of Obligation.

Ridiculed by peers and despised by common people, many geniuses nonetheless realize that to abandon their Obligation to humanity entirely reduces them to cruel and inhuman manipulators, utterly alone and willing to interact with others only as victims, lackeys, and test subjects.

Optionally, a Storyteller may allow players to trade dots of Obligation for experience points during character creation. This may reflect some sin committed before the Breakthrough, but more likely represents a grave transgression that the genius committed in her first days as a mad scientist. This transgression taught her something important (hence the extra experience points), but may have already begun her downward slide toward brutality and callous indifference. A dot of Obligation can be cashed in for five experience points. The genius' Obligation can drop to five this way, earning ten experience points. This does result in the genius gaining his catalyst's Derangement. The Derangement appears if the genius reduces his Obligation to 6; reducing his Obligation to 5 does not risk further Derangements.

Dropping one's Obligation before play does not yield Larvae.

Virtues and Vices:

A genius possesses the normal mortal Virtues and Vices. Some Virtues, such as Fortitude and Hope, and some Vices, such as Pride and Envy, are particularly well-represented among the Inspired. These Virtues and Vices are not always perfectly reflected in a genius' catalyst: not all Neids focus on the Vice of Envy and not all Hoffnungs define themselves by their sense of Hope.

Arch-Madness:

Storytellers may choose to let players play more advanced geniuses. To do so, allocate additional experience points that are spent before play begins. Due to the complexity of creating and managing wonders, this option is only recommended for a group of experienced players.

Just Catalyzed: 0 experience points Known Scholar: 35 experience points Senior Researcher: 75 experience points Legend of Mad Science: 120+ experience points

Step Eight: The First Wonders

A new genius is allowed five rolls in order to his first wonders. These wonders are constructed normally. There are a few conditions that apply to these wonders:

• They cannot be kitbashed, nor can they benefit from extra time spent on their creation.

• The genius cannot spend Willpower or Mania.

• The genius can internalize or graft these wonders to himself automatically with no additional rolls.

• If a "failure" result is obtained at any point, the genius loses the roll but can immediately try again to create the same type of wonder.

• The genius can benefit from Beholden Ability, but cannot receive aid from anyone else or anyone else's beholden. • The Assembly Line Merit does not apply to these wonders. • The genius gains the full benefits of her Laboratory Equipment or the collaborative's shared Equipment. • The genius must finish construction of at least one wonder. If he has failed to construct a wonder