Tailslide

(Author’s note: For those who haven’t [yet] memorized the 400+ page Genius: The Transgression rulebook, it can be a little hard to keep the vocabulary straight. And for those who have, the usage of terms in this comic might deviate somewhat in places for the sake of readability and artistic license. If you need a quick debrief on a term, this is the place to find it.)

Key Terms: 

The Inspired/”Geniuses” –

The desire to create is extant in everyone –  scientists, engineers, tinkerers, artists, and more dedicate their lives to it. It’s part of being human. But sometimes, in a stressful situation, it can turn into something… more. A person might start building things that should be impossible – cold fusion, time machines, a truly new way to slice bread. They might become obsessed with a debunked field of science, or untestably wild ideas, things dismissable as crackpot stuff – right up until they work.

These are the Inspired (or, more colloquially, known as ‘geniuses’) – people suddenly gifted with the ability to build incredible, impossible wonders, and the burning compulsion to use it. But it comes with a cost – the ideas of the Inspired become incomprehensible to the rest of the world. Their time machines and ray guns behave erratically and dangerously when interacted with by anyone without that ‘gift’. And Inspiration, the madness that lets someone ignore the mundane boundaries of the physical world, can take its toll on the rest of their mind. 

Unmada –

The Inspired can be grouped loosely into two sects – those who know they’re insane, and those who don’t. The Unmada make up the latter category – Inspired who see their research and creations as beautiful truths not yet recognized by the rest of the world. That belief is strong enough to self-reinforce by warping the world around them to match their theories within the radius of an “unmada field”, with strange, and sometimes dangerous effects. 

Havoc – 

When someone not Inspired fiddles with, probes, or otherwise too-closely examines a piece of Inspired technology, whatever force of Inspiration holds it together goes haywire. If you’re lucky, it’ll just explode. But havoc also risks causing Inspired tech to behave in dangerous, unpredictable, and uncontrollable ways.

“Mere Mortals” –

Cheeky slang for ‘everyone else’. Most will never interact with the Inspired world, and most of those that do, don’t know it. Which is well enough – mortals who interact with Inspired technology can cause havoc, risking damage to everyone and everything in the vicinity.  

The Illuminated –

For those Inspired who give up on their connection to humanity entirely, there’s no coming back. They lose themselves and their minds, starving in pursuit of their research, mutilating themselves or others, or cause mass destruction in pursuit of some alien goal. It’s not an uncommon fate, and one that weighs heavily on the minds of most Geniuses. 

Known Groups: 

The “TLA” –

A government agency buried so deep in the black world, only a few ever knew it’s official title. What was once a tongue-in-cheek moniker is now the only name anyone remembers – thus, the TLA as we know it was born. Founded in the mid-20th century to deal with an ever-growing epidemic of  ‘irreproducible phenomena’ in government research projects, today the TLA has amassed quite a bit of intelligence about the Inspired world. When a particularly concerning mad invention or inspired group poses a threat to national security, their job is to step in, shut it down, and clean up the mess afterwards. Impressive for a group that, until very recently, was staffed entirely by mortals unable to even safely interact with the phenomena they encountered (and done on a government budget, too). Impressive enough that they’ve started to attract attention.

Lemuria –

All Geniuses are insane, but some are more insane than others – and like it that way. Lemuria is one of the two main governing bodies among the Inspired community, and is defined by the conviction that Inspiration is the ability to see a truth beyond mundane science, one that can offer direction and enlightenment to the mortal realm through their theories and creations. How that conviction manifests is… highly variable. Modern Lemuria is eccentric, passionate, and (much to the annoyance of its enemise) incredibly well-resourced. But it has a dark history – the old Lemuria committed travesties in the name of shaping humanity’s future, until it was crushed by the Peerage in the Invisible War in the mid-20th century. Lemuria is divided into five ‘baramins,’ each with their own philosophical core.

• The Atomists – Believers in a better tomorrow, who see technology as the solution to humanity’s problems, and progress as non-negotiable.
• The Etherites – Constantly building towards a perfect, unified theory, and willing to edit a few things out of existence to get there.
• The Mechanists – Compelled by the idea of predestination, and accepting, to a fault, of its consequences.
• The Phenomenologists – Disown the idea of objective truth in favor of ever-shifting worldviews and identities.
• The Oracles – Fascinated by systems of division and classification, and their enforcement.

The divide between the Peerage and Lemuria has never been complete – cooperation between individual Geniuses has always been possible, and has become more normalized of late. Still, most are at least wary of Lemuria, whose favored schemes tend seep dangerously into the mortal realm, and who could lay a violent claim to their former glory at basically any time. The détente persists. The Peerage accepts that Lemuria isn’t going away anytime soon, at least, and the blurring of social boundaries, especially among the younger generations, is begrudgingly tolerated (Helped by the fact that Lemuria throws *way* better parties.)

The Peerage –

The other of the two governing bodies in the Inspired realm. The Peerage wants its members to know three things: that they’re crazy, that the science they do isn’t real, and that they’re better off limiting the exposure the mortal world gets to it. After organizing to strike down Lemuria’s hold on ‘scientific’ progress in 1957, the Peerage is now the dominant power among the Inspired. It’s tedious compared to Lemuria’s flashiness, sure, and riddled with its own conflicts, but it provides structure and community for tens of thousands of the Inspired. It’s formed of five Foundations, each loosely centered around a different common interest, and with their own internal structures:

• The International Union of Artifice (the “Artificers”) – Makers and builders of all kinds.
• The Fellowship for Manifest Direction (the “Directors”) – Schemers and executives with a thing for social engineering.
• The Center for Circumferential Navigation (the “Navigators”) – Formerly the peerage military – now a home for explorers and daredevils.
• The Reformed Society of Progenitors (the “Progenitors”) – Transhumanists boundary-pushers, recently purged of those too comfortable with atrocities in the name of science.
• The College of Scholastic Theory (the “Scholastics”) – Scholars and Philosophers with a fondness for theories and puzzles.

The OLT –

The Office of the Seventh Treasury (formerly the “Office of the Lost Treasury”, thus the acronym) used to serve as Lemuria’s intelligence network, maintaining connections in every major government, research institution, and corporation in the world. It was all but destroyed during the Invisible War – most of its assets scattered or killed, and most of those connections crushed. What remains today mostly serves to facilitate trade: the one thing Lemuria still has going for it. They’re what keeps the flow of plutonium rods and human kidneys going to Geniuses who need them under the mortal world’s radar.

…Most of the mortal world, at least. The TLA has a long-running grudge. And as of six months ago, a good reason to suspect someone in the OLT has been trying to revive its previous role.

The Nine Vertex Devils –

A Peerage-affiliated racing league, mostly propped up by the Navigators. Members make and race their own vehicles. It’s stupid, and dangerous, and very fun – and a decent outlet that keeps the things so-inclined Geniuses build far away from mortals. Carol Sykes has retired from any position of formal authority in the Navigators, but still runs a Devils division in the Eastern US.