Genius:At a Glance

"I still think it has to be in the real dictionary to count," she groused, dumping the tray back into the box. Mell was obviously still bitter about my scoring on the word "adrenoleukodystrophy". God, I love Boggle. "How conventional," I said. "It's quite unlike you." "I can be conventional if I want!" she protested. "Not convincingly," I said. "Conventional people don't carry light anti-tank weapons to high-school band concerts." "I like to be prepared, okay? You never know when you're going to come up against heavy armor." Mell narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously. "Wait a second. How do you know about that?" I have my ways.

Definitions

 * An Inspired (Genius) is a human with a metaphysical 'light' shining within themselves. This Inspiration allows them to bring wondrous and impossible things into the world. A Genius who does not cling to human concerns and morality can find the light eventually eclipses their minds. They become Inspiration. Their fate is sad, and sometimes beautiful.
 * A Breakthrough is the process wherein a normal mortal becomes Inspired. It is often a traumatic experience, but rarely sudden. Over weeks, months, or years, old and solid ideas make less sense than before and new ideas leap, unbidden, into the person's mind. This madness persists until the human accepts it and a new Genius is born. Inspiration fears the light of day, however, and they find that their new ideas make little sense to their friends and colleagues. The new Genius is not yet a maker of wonders.
 * Geniuses who do not lose their minds stumble on Axioms. These are 'channels' of mad science that apply some loose order to the Inspired's thoughts and allow him or her to create wonders. Claiming an Axiom is what finishes the process of a breakthrough and allows the Genius to emerge from a sea of helpless insanity to a state of empowered, potent madness.
 * The Peerage are the player-character faction of Genius. They acknowledge that they're insane.
 * Lemurians are Inspired who believe they are not mad and that mortals have an incorrect view of reality. They are a better source of money and resources than the Peerage.
 * Bardos are false realms brought into the world by their own disproof.

Catalysts

 * Grimm
 * "You will pay for what you've done."


 *  Emotion: Rage
 * Nickname: Asuras
 * Planet: Mars
 * Favored Axiom: Katastrofi
 * Derangement: Irrationality
 * Hoffnung
 * "We won't have these problems when I...RULE THE WORLD!"


 * Emotion: Hope
 * Nickname: Principalities
 * Planet: Jupiter
 * Favored Axiom: Metaptropi
 * Derangement: Narcissism
 * Klagen
 * "No, you fools! You'll doom us all!"


 * Emotion: Sorrow
 * Nickname: Cassandras
 * Planet: Venus
 * Favored Axiom: Exelixi
 * Derangement: Depression
 * Neid
 * "Scoff at me, will you? I'll show them! I'll show them all!"


 * Emotion: Jealousy
 * Nickname: Wyrms
 * Planet: Saturn
 * Favored Axiom: Epikrato
 * Derangement: Suspicion
 * Staunen
 * "Oh, the things I have seen..."


 * Emotion: Curiosity
 * Nickname: Grigori
 * Planet: Mercury
 * Favored Axiom: Apokalypsi
 * Derangement: Fixation

Artificer
aka: [Makers, Tinkers, Artisans]

Mad Engineers

Favored Axiom: Automata or Prostasia


 * "Artificers were―sometimes still are―compulsive builders and designers who create because they need to create, indifferent to the needs and wants of the outside world, blithely unconcerned with the suffering they unleash. The Artificers once built for the sake of building; now, just as many build to claim what they see is theirs."

Conversion Skill: Computer and Crafts

Grant: Reduce the time needed to build or fiddle with any wonder by one step (to a minimum of one day for non-kitbashed wonders) w/no penalty.

Director
aka: [Overlords, Disputers, The Loud]

Favored Axiom: Automata or Epikrato

Mad Psychologists
 * "Each Director burns with ambition, with vision, with a terrible yearning for more: more power, more wealth, more control, more safety, more revenge. It doesn't matter what it is, but all Directors live lives of restless dissatisfaction. An individual Director might be afraid, or uneasy, or ambitious, or merely curious, but all want the same thing: to accumulate power, at nearly any cost. It's the naked ambition that shocks people, more than what the Director plans to do with all that power."

Conversion Skill: Persuasion and Socialize Grant: Spend Mania to enhance a Social Attribute (Presence, Manipulation, and Composure), and lose penalties for low Obligation, and Jabir.

Navigator
aka: [Daredevils, Guardians, Fire Bait]

Favored Axioms: Katastrofi or Skafoi

Mad Physicists

Conversion Skill: Athletics and Drive
 * "Navigators are the test pilots, the dangerous-environment explorers, and the people-who-make-power-suits-and-fight-crime of the Inspired, as comfortable using their equipment as they are designing it and promulgating the theories behind it. Rather than send minions or automata to confront obstacles, they go themselves, armed with death rays or transformed by the experiments that they have performed on their own bodies."

Grant: Can spend Mania to enhance their Physical attributes (Strength, Dexterity, or Stamina).

Progenitor
[Breeders, Gardeners. Old Breeders are called Demiurges.]

Mad Biologists

Conversion Skill: Medicine or Occult

Favored Axiom: Automata or Exelixi
 * "Even in their reformed state, they are the most "mad" of the Peerage's mad scientists. Iconoclasts and eccentrics, Progenitors reject false morals and manners and forge ahead to study forbidden, horrific, and unnatural secrets. To mortals, the Progenitors represent the nightmare of unchecked creation. They are the fathers who care nothing for their children, the false lightbringers who blight the world with unwelcome radiance, the blasphemers who seek to steal God's power and use it without responsibility or sanity."

Grant: No penalty for Size 1 wonder, -1 penalty for a Size 0 wonder. Wonders that use different default Sizes (like most vehicles and automata) are unaffected by this grant. Gain a bonus equal to Dex dots when fiddling with a wonder.

Scholastic
aka: [Bookworms, Invisibles, Collegiates]

Focus: Mad Philosophy

Conversion Skill: Academics or Investigation

Favored Axiom: Apokalypsi or Metaptropi
 * "If anyone symbolizes the quest for what Man Was Not Meant To Know, it's the Collegiates, who have accumulated forbidden secrets and ripped open the mathematical code of the universe for almost five centuries. Their focus on theory should not imply that Scholastics are inactive: no group of mad scientists is more dedicated to the truths underlying this world, and in that hunger for knowledge lurks the true horror of the College. These geniuses rip down the walls of reality, stare into the voids between creations until empty things stare back at them, and blur the line between what is thought and what is real."

Grant: Always know their wonder's faults immediately upon handling it. Can select a fault from two offered by the Storyteller with a regular Success rather than an Exceptional Success, three faults on an exceptional success.

Peerage Guidelines

 * Don't Hurt; Don't Steal; Don't Lie
 * Help Out; Chip In
 * Stay Low
 * You Enlighten It, You Buy It
 * Eff Lemuria

Apokalypsi
Any attempt to detect, analyze, or communicate.
 * 1) Reveal Data
 * 2) Direct Scanning
 * 3) Spatial Analysis
 * 4) Possibility and Probability
 * 5) Reveal Truth
 * 6) * Variables: Active Scanner, One-Medium Communicator, Goggles, Land Line, Narrow Focus, Onboard Storage

Epikrato
Any wonder designed to dominate, suborn, or manipulate some aspect of reality, that is not covered by some other Axiom.
 * 1) Control Objects
 * 2) Control Forces
 * 3) Mental Control
 * 4) Probability Control
 * 5) Control Identity
 * 6) * Variables: Epikrato Ray, Invisible Effect, Long Range, Many Minds, No Range, One-Purpose Manipulator, Weather Manipulation

Exelixi
Any wonder that improves, heals, restores, or increases a property
 * 1) Basic Repair, Healing, and Curing
 * 2) Mechanical Upgrade
 * 3) Biological Upgrade
 * 4) Regeneration
 * 5) Resurrection and Life Extension
 * 6) * Variables: Autonomous Regenerator, Exelixi Ray, Flexible Upgrade, Focused Restoration, Focused Mechanical Upgrade, Greater Effect Only, Increased Range, Monitored Regeneration, Sarcophagus, Self Only

Katastrofi
Any wonder built to cause injury
 * 1) Agonizers, voltaic stunners, and energy-draining rays
 * 2) Ultra-sharp swords, ray guns, heat rays, and other instruments of death
 * 3) Annihilating force and concussive devastation
 * 4) Atomic fire, neurotoxins, and space-warping Armageddon
 * 5) Long-range city-devastators and monster-busters
 * 6) * Variables: Adjusted Range, Armor Piercing, Artillery, Attribute Damage, Autofire, Bleeding, Blinding, Continuing Damage, Defensive, Disintegration, Explosive Weapon, Explosive Accuracy, Extradimensional Attack, Good Balance Weight, Immobilizing Attack, Knockdown, Lingering Area Damage, Melee Weapon, No Visible Effect, Only Against Certain Materials, Orbital Gun, Railgun, Returning, Thrown Weapon, Variable Damage, Variable Explosion

Metaptropi
Used whenever a physical thing needs to be changed, transformed, polymorphed, or shapeshifted
 * 1) Change Appearance
 * 2) Change of Substance and Free-Standing Illusions
 * 3) Growing and Shrinking
 * 4) Changing Shape
 * 5) Irrational Transformations
 * 6) * Variables: Attached Transformation, Increased Range, Limited Illusions, Metatropi Ray, Self Only, Specific Transformation, Transmutation Booth

Automata
Required by any wonder that acts on its own, without need for input.
 * 1) Triggered Devices
 * 2) Zombie Intelligence
 * 3) Animal-like Intelligence
 * 4) Human-level Intelligence
 * 5) Transcendent Intelligence
 * 6) * Variables: Automatic Repair, Biological, Brain Backup, Cannot Move, Contact Trigger, Control Surface, Craniac, Decentralized Anatomy, Dexterous Limbs, Durable, Dynamic Factory, Extra Manipulators, Free Roaming, Increase Manipulator Range, Limited Battery Life, Looks Human, Low-Light Vision, Mute, No Fine Manipulators, Normal Power Source, No Senses, Onboard Storage, Only One Manipulator, Low Intelligence, Night Eyes, No Manipulators, Remote Control, Size, Smartification Node, Strong Limbs, Uplifts, Wheels

Prostasia
Any wonder that guards, shields, protects, or defends
 * 1) Personal Defenses
 * 2) External Defenses
 * 3) Unusual Defenses
 * 4) Dimensional Shielding
 * 5) Impenetrable Defenses
 * 6) * Variables: Ablative Armor, Ballistic/General Rating, Barrier, Bulletproof, Cage, Expandable, Heavy Armor, Invulnerable, Limited Protection, Opaque to Air, Reflection, Targeted Deflection, Vest.

Skafoi
Any wonder designed for mobility.
 * 1) Travel in 2 Dimensions
 * 2) Travel in Air or Beneath the Earth or Sea
 * 3) Beyond the Horizon
 * 4) Space Redefined
 * 5) Time Redefined
 * 6) * Variables: Clinging, Exposed Canopy, Increased Range, Extreme Acceleration, Hovering, Increased Bouncing Range, Increased RAnge, Legs Instead of Wheels, Maniacal Speed Boost, Off-Road, One Location Teleporter, Remote Control, Self-Sealing Mole Machine, Skafoi Ray, Rails, Slow Acceleration, Speed and Handling, Transporter.

Mania Summary
Can Spend 1 point to:
 * +1 to any mental attribute for one turn
 * Power mundane technology
 * +1 bonus to any technology in the genius's possession for 1 turn
 * Understand the function and nature of any technological items (requires 1 turn physical contact and exploration)
 * Roll Dex + Crafts as an attack roll to dismantle technology. Dex + Medicine to dismantle manes/organic wonders. Ignores Durability.
 * Use/Activate wonder

Can Regain when:
 * Waking up in the morning. +1 per day
 * Researching. +1 per hour (up to 6 hours without unmada check)
 * Ranting to unwilling captive. Number of Mania recovered = Inspiration + Presence. Triggers unmada check
 * Transferring from other sources.