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View Full Version : Madness is the Father of Invention



Matuka
2021-02-18, 12:10 AM
An inventor's mind and body are warped beyond recognition by a intelligent and powerful magic user. The magic user does this to optimize there brain and body for inventing and to remove there ability to do almost anything else. That magic users then orders the new being to start pumping out designs for war machines, weapons, gadgets, and basically anything that can help the magic user in the war he's waging. Do any of you have any ideas on what such a being would come up with? Cause my mind is honestly sputtering a bit.

SpyOne
2021-02-18, 02:45 AM
Rather than try to invent something myself, I would take the opportunity to lift some things invented by others.
Leonardo da Vinci had some interesting stuff in his notebooks.
And of course Archimedes made his living as a mad scientist working for the department of defense in his day. ;)

Seto
2021-02-18, 04:48 AM
What setting are we talking? Traditional fantasy? Cyberpunk? Earth-based, contemporary? Science-Fiction ?

GeoffWatson
2021-02-18, 06:56 AM
Completely impractical devices.
He is free from restraint and sense.
Designs that would cost way too much, or require impossibly rare materials, or are really dangerous to use.
He's too mad to care about cost or side effects or safety.

Or he gets side-tracked easily. While working on a flying machine he gets obsessed with making a mechanical version of a bird that that flies by flapping wings. Completely useless to the magic user, but he's too mad to care what the boss thinks.

Are you familiar with the Girl Genius webcomic?
Like the Sparks (Mad Scientists) from that story but even nuttier.

Saintheart
2021-02-18, 09:30 AM
Simply put, the Leonard of Quirm solution: he invents nuclear weapons, though his honest belief is that its only real application is clearing mountains out of the way so roads can be more efficiently straightlined from city to city.

Nifft
2021-02-18, 01:38 PM
An inventor's mind and body are warped beyond recognition by a intelligent and powerful magic user. The magic user does this to optimize there brain and body for inventing and to remove there ability to do almost anything else. That magic users then orders the new being to start pumping out designs for war machines, weapons, gadgets, and basically anything that can help the magic user in the war he's waging. Do any of you have any ideas on what such a being would come up with? Cause my mind is honestly sputtering a bit.

There are a few literally inhuman inventors in existence right now -- computers have been programmed to explore some problems in engineering and mathematics.

You could also look at how computer programs have tried to re-invent walking.

Matuka
2021-02-18, 05:52 PM
What setting are we talking? Traditional fantasy? Cyberpunk? Earth-based, contemporary? Science-Fiction ?

Steam punk, though science fiction also works.

smasher0404
2021-02-19, 06:49 PM
How ethically constrained is the inventor? If they are literally focusing the entire brain towards inventing, it is possible that they also eliminated the inventor's ability to consider the ethical ramifications of their inventions. In that vein:


Specialized steroids that enhance a soldier's physical attributes temporarily but kills them once the dose wears off
Improved dispersal vectors for chemical/biological warfare (think mustard gas and napalm)
Rigging a device capable of blowing up cities within their own cities as a form of resource denial
Golems created by encasing their own soldiers in metal ala Dragon Age
Creating a human version of the Rabies virus to infect enemy soldiers to wreak havoc behind enemy lines
Machines to process corpses into usable rations for your forces