[UA] Avatar: The Mentally Ill Mathematician?

[Gaston at math.sunysb.edu]

The Mentally Ill Mathematician

"Poets do not go mad; but chess players do.  Mathematicians go mad, and
cashiers; but creative artists very seldom.  I am not attacking logic: I
only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination."
-G.K. Chesterton

"The Mentally Ill Mathematician seems now in some ways to be what the
Knight Errant, Mortified Saint, Tortured Artist, and Mad Scientist have
been for other areas: sort of our Prometheus, the one who goes to
forbidden places and returns with gifts we all can use, but he alone pays
for."
-David Foster Wallace

This Archetype is more fittingly called The Promethean Hero, since in
Aboriginal Culture, the first Ascension was someone channeling the
Firebringer.  Then, through the ages, the archetype changed with a series
of ascensions, until Kurt Godel ascended in the early 20th century as the
Mentally Ill Mathematician.  I

John Nash was the last known Godwalker (though he wasn't aware of his role
as such).  His recovery, informed sources say, indicates a new ascension,
and a new role for the Avatar.  No-one's seen a memory-wiped Kurt Godel
wandering around, so it's unclear how accurate any of this is.

Fire to the cavemen, nihilism to the 20th century, heliocentrism,
relativity, string theory, transfinite numbers, and so forth. The
archetype is generally about creating (in the words of Alan Moore through
Warren Ellis) mad and beautiful ideas.

Symbols: Unkempt Hair.  Poor Grooming.  Absent Mindedness.  The image is
of one who is utterly consumed in contemplation of grave mysteries.

Taboos: A Haircut, a well-fitted suit, awareness of the social norms about
you.   High Social skills, if demonstrated, constitute breaches of taboo.

Channels:
1-50% "No-one understands but me."  Flipflop any Isolation or Self-based
check if the result is under your A:MIM skill.

51-70% "It all makes sense." Take a failed mark in a madness meter in
exchange for retroactive success (ala Entropomancy's I Win) on a
Mind-based roll.

71-90% "Blow your mind." Wherein whatever crazy new idea the MIM is
bringing to society ("Man can make fire??" "Time is relative?" "I can't
believe it's not butter!") is so revolutionary that it can actually cause
an Unnatural stress check equal to the tens digit of the avatar skill.

91+% "Theft of Fire".  The MIM can create a minor ritual.  Success on a
Mind-based check associated with whatever work the Character is known for
gives one-time results as though the Character were performing a ritual. 
This roll cannot be flip-flopped via the Archetype's first channel.
A matched success roll on this channel means the ritual is Significant.
An OACOWA locks the ritual within reality permanently (or until the next
rewrite). Before Prometheus realised "friction creates heat, enough
friction creates fire", it was a cold, cold place.  This, in essence,
creates new rituals for the current universe. (e.g., The Pointing of the
Bone came into being within Australian Aboriginal culture when a Shaman
channelled this Archetype)

And if you want, you can make it a critical success (even if you failed) 
by... dying. The manner of your death and the time is going to take...
thats not known in advance, but acute mental illness ending in suicide is
now the popular way to go. (in a different context, you have Rainer Marie
Rilke dying by the prick of a rose thorn, Hans Christian Andersen dying in
the long run by complications of injuries he got when he fell out of his
bed... unlikely and wasting diseases of body and mind that leave you
enough time to still do something are common, as opposed to dropping dead
before writing your masterpiece)