(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 found everywhere –  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. Working on debunked science, or untestably wild ideas, dismissable as crackpot stuff, right up until it works.

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. 

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. 

Clockstoppers –

Just like the Inspired seem to have some extra spark of manic creativity that allow them to work wonders, there are some who seem to lack it entirely. They make enemies of technology and progress in many forms, but particularly the Inspired and their creations.  Those who lean in to the power of this emptiness wield it deftly, causing mechanisms to havoc and unmake themselves at a distance, or turning mortals against those that create them. 

“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.  

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.

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’, 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).

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 the Inspired can see a truth beyond mundane science, and can offer direction and enlightenment to the mortal realm through their theories and creations. How that conviction manifests is… varied. Modern Lemuria is eccentric, passionate, and (much to the annoyance of its detractors) 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 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 – it’s traditional at this point for their members to attempt to double-cross and cheat each other in the name of coworking. But most are still wary of Lemuria, whose twisted bureaucratic structures have a knack for spawning conspiracies and secret societies eager to tangle with the mortal realm. That’s not to mention the dangers at hand if a thoroughly cracked genius decides they need to gift their latest theory of cross-species augmentation on the local populace. But social boundaries between Lemuria and the Peerage have been blurring for years, especially among the younger generations (who know Lemuria throws better parties). Any grand plans for Lemuria’s return to its former glory seem currently defunct to the watchful eyes trained upon it, so this blending is begrudgingly tolerated. 

The Peerage –

The other of the two governing bodies in the Inspired realm. The Peerage wants its members to know they’re crazy, 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 grand conspiracies in 1957, the Peerage is now the dominant power among the Inspired. It’s tedious compared to Lemuria’s flash, sure, and riddled with it’s 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, embracing their humble backgrounds.
  • 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 fiercely egalitarian 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.