Mad Science

Agatha Heterodyne: Thus, I have created this combination mechanical taxidemist and tailor!
Robo-tailor: bzzt. Bonjour, Mistress.
Zeetha: Good grief! How did you construct something so complicated?
Agatha: Please. I always carry a Swiss army knife and a coil of wire.
—"Revenge of the Weasel Queen, Part 2," by Phil and Kaja Foglio
GirlGeniusOnline.com

Mad Science is magic that looks like technology. (Mad "scientists" are really more "mad inventors.") It is generally done by people with a strong Cainite spiritual strain. Because their productions are really magical in nature or origin, they cannot be duplicated by the non-Mad. Sometimes, they cannot even be used by the non-Mad.

Mad scientists are not necessarily evil, but they are always eccentric, obsessed about something; this obsession is the channel through which their genius and their magic flows, and it means that their moral judgment can often be skewed. A dose of humility is the best corrective for this, but it is hard to deliver to someone who knows that they are, obviously, superior to ordinary people in matters of the intellect.

Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science.
—"Fairy Tale Theater Break: Cinderella," by Phil and Kaja Foglio
GirlGeniusOnline.com

Mad scientists can do many feats besides creating miraculous technology:

Automatic:
use Mad Science as a backup or substitute roll for any scientific, technical, or medical skill. It's the Power of Science!
Very Easy:
turn in prosaic work within your field (see "Field of Science" below) that is amazingly good, fast, or cheap (done with scant resources)
Easy:
- turn in prosaic work within your field that is any two of amazingly good, fast, or cheap
- use any tool as well as the best previous user did (Knack of Tools) (1 Psi pt + 3 Nerve pts)
- spend 1 to 5 Nerve points to increase your chances, at 10% per point (thus working yourself toward a nervous breakdown)
Moderate:
- turn in prosaic work within your field that is amazingly good and fast and cheap
- use the Gift of your field, but with some necessary equipment to hide the magical nature of this from onlookers and from yourself:
  - social sciences: Gift of Tongues, but applied only to writing ("Well, but I know cuneiform, and this Rodentine script looked a lot like it.") (1 Psi pt + 3 Nerve pts)
  - biological science: Gift of Healing – transfer hit points from self to patient ("I was happy to find one can use toilet paper for a tourniquet, if you twist it into a cord first.") You attribute your own loss of hit points to exhaustion. (3 Nerve pts)
  - physical science: Gift of Repair – like Healing but applied to machinery ("It was a bit tricky, gluing the integrated circuit chips back together, but it started right up.") You attribute your own loss of hit points to exhaustion. (3 Nerve pts)
Tough:
- mad repair: fix a product of Mad Science that could not be fixed by prosaic means, so long as this does not need re-invention or reverse engineering (3 Psi pts + 3 Nerve pts)
- turn in Mad work that is amazingly good, fast, or cheap (3 Psi pts + 3 Nerve pts)
Hard:
- mad invention: the central feat of Mad Science – invent something that strains but does not quite break credulity that this could be accomplished in the current local technical level (unless the audience is trained in the field, in which case it becomes more unbelievable the longer they think about it) (5 Psi pts + 5 Nerve pts)
- turn in Mad work that is any two of amazingly good, fast, or cheap (4 Psi pts + 4 Nerve pts)
Very Hard:
- mad reverse eningeering – copying another's mad invention (7 Psi pts + 7 Nerve pts)
- turn in Mad work that is amazingly good and fast and cheap (5 Psi pts + 5 Nerve pts)

Field of Science

Mad scientists are always total polymaths, good at everything, but they do have a bias toward one of three fields:

Physical sciences: physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, all forms of engineering
Biological sciences: biology, chemistry, all forms of medicine
Social sciences: history, linguistics, ethnography, archeology

"Ah-Hahahahahahaha!"

Mad Science is a form of Thematic Magic, and even more than other forms, it needs to be role-played. Mad scientists should be played with at least a couple of good solid quirks. More than four or five is probably too hard to keep track of and maybe unpleasant to other gamers. Suggestions:

Marked tendency to return to favorite (technical) topic of conversation.
Impatience or irritation with doubters.
Excessive bluntness and indescretion.
Great willingness to explain things, especially The Project, though often at such a technical level as to be little use.
A tendency to forget the social consequences.
"Yes, I suppose there might be a great deal of gravitic turbulence behind the ship. Well, if we must point it away from Brazil..."
"I had no idea you might resent being fitted with a prehensile tail. But think how useful it'll be!"
Absentmindedness about anything other than The Project.
"Have you eaten?" "I don't know, have I?" (Actual conversation between Isaac Newton's servant and Newton.)
Manic energy, at least when at work.

Sometimes, the mad-scientist attitude comes in fits, when they work on The Project; at other times, they are relatively normal.

Mad science burns Nerve points just as fast as it burns Psi points. If mad scientists run out of Nerve points, they don't freeze or panic as normal people do; they go off into an extended rant, even if fighting a pitched battle (actually a rather common time for a rant).

If a mad scientist runs out of either Psi or Nerve points, or if they roll a perfect failure (99) on Mad Science, they acquire a new mental, psychic, or spiritual problem. Examples:

Loses Psi point or Nerve point capacity (but not PSY or NRV attribute) by one point, making it easier for this problem to recur.
Acquires a phobia, such as acrophobia, claustrophobia, fear of darkness, knives, drowning, spiders, rats, thunder, multiples of seven, the color pink, etc. The phobia should be role-played. If it is resisted, this costs 1 to 5 Nerve points and may require a NRV roll, depending on the severity of the phobia.
Acquires amnesia for events relating to the exhaustion trauma. This may be what happened when they became exhausted or it may be the horrible mistake that lead up to it, or a similar earlier event.
Acquires a sleeping disorder, which would interfere with regeneration of Psi and Nerve points. The GM may call for a PSY roll to see how well you sleep each night.
Acquires an eating disorder, which could cost Hit points. The GM may call for a PSY roll each day to see if you are able to eat properly; more than three days of fasting starts costing 1d6 hit points per day.
Becomes bipolar (instead of just manic); on a schedule devised by the GM, you must make a PSY roll every day on the down side of the cycle, to see if you can do anything other than brood.
Loses a skill relating to the exhaustion trauma, other than Mad Science. This may present itself as not being able to remember how, or as not being able to bear using the skill.
Loses the use of the Mad Science skill for feats requiring Psi and Nerve point expenditure.
Loses all use of the Mad Science skill.
Develops psychic vampirism, unable to regenerate Psi points, but able to drain them from other characters (a great occasion for developing that Life Force Capacitor that those fools said was an insane idea! Heh. Heh-heh! Ah-hahaha!...)
Develops the psychic illness Haunting, able to see ghosts and losing 1 to 5 Nerve points on each occasion, depending on the severity of the case.
Develops the psychic illness Therianthropy, occasionally turning into a monster (not necessarily a conventional animal) and exhibiting an alternate personality to go with the shape.
Develops the psychic illness Doppleganger, in which the ka gets loose, appearing separately, doing misdeeds under your identity and seeking to cause your downfall.
Develops the psychic illness Poltergeist, particularly inconvenient for lab work.

Select a disability appropriate to the occasion of the exhaustion trauma. The GM may reward a perfect success (00) by removing a disability. Curing a disability can also be a roleplaying goal of course. Surely, there are some psychiatrically minded Mad Scientists who would like to help...

Mad Scientists in the Source Material

Dr. Edward Rolles Weston

Devine indicated his massive and loud-voiced companion. "The Weston," he added. "You know. The great physicist. Has Einstein on toast and drinks a pint of Schrödinger's blood for breakfast."
— Out of the Silent Planet, C. S. Lewis

Physicist from Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. In the first book, he was obsessed with developing space flight, to ensure the survival of the human race (or its descendant species) by letting it scatter over many worlds. To this end, he was willing to (as he thought) offer up a fellow human to Malacandrian "savages" and to exterminate those same Malacandrians to make room for human settlers.

In the second book, he had broadened his allegiance to "the Life Force" in all its forms, good or evil, which led him to invite diabolical possession. This happened.

His main accomplishment was the discovery of "Weston rays" and the development from that of a space drive. In the original book, this is presented as an interplanetary drive; in the Inkliverse, it is construed as an interstellar drive. Weston had no idea that he was working under infernal inspiration (though not, until later, possession) and would have been hugely contemptuous of any such notion. His drive could be used by others, but could not have been built without Weston's active involvement. He is known to have built two such drives, one to reach Malacandra and return, twice, the other to make a one-way trip to Perelandra.

In physical appearance, Weston was a big, blocky man with a loud, gruff voice and fair coloring. He, or his commandeered body, lost a hand-to-hand combat to the death with Elwin Ransom on Perelandra, in 1942, when he was forty-six years old.

Prof. Carmine Mario Filostrato

" In us organic life has produced Mind. It has done its work. After that we want no more of it. We do not want the world any longer furred over with organic life, like what you call the blue mould – all sprouting and budding and breeding and decaying. We must get rid of it. By little and little, of course. Slowly we learn how. Learn to make our brains live with less and less body: learn to build our bodies directly with chemicals, no longer have to stuff them full of dead brutes and weeds. Learn how to reproduce ourselves without copulation."
— That Hideous Strength, C. S. Lewis

Physiologist from That Hideous Strength. He was obsessed with freeing mankind of its connection to the "disgusting" world of the organic. If that seems like an odd obsession for a physiologist, well, he was mad.

His main accomplishment, or at least so he thought, was preserving alive the severed head of François Alcasan, a French radiologist of Arab extraction, executed by guillotine for murdering his wife. This head became the administrative Head of the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments, the N.I.C.E. In fact, the head was not animated by the soul of Alcasan, but by one or more demons, being a truncated and artificially made vehicle for possession. Filostrato never realized this. He was only concerned to have found a way (which he admitted to be a crude and preliminary one) of rendering humans "immortal" by making them independent of their too-mortal bodies. Filostrato's mad science lay in the technical genius that let him create the more-than-cutting-edge machinery that preserved the head.

In physical appearance, Filostrato was a tall, morbidly obese man with Latin coloring, a round, smooth face, and a high, piping voice. His disgust for the organic had led him to chemically castrate himself many years before the events of That Hideous Strength. He was murdered by his fellow N.I.C.E. members, decapitated at the order of the Head, in 1948, when he was forty-three.

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