Youth:
When Dr. Todorov was a young boy he never got along well with other children. They called him Stan, which he hated. He rather spend his team hiding away in one of the many rooms of his families country mansion, reading books and taking apart his father’s priced clocks. Once in all those years he was lonely, so he built himself a friend out of clockwork. He called his companion Hauser, and when you would show Hauser a cube he would smile. Stanislaw also liked cubes, they were nice. Not like spheres. Sphere did not have a nice shape, and if you would show a sphere to Hauser he would be angry. Stanislaw like Hauser, he was so predictable and easy to understand. Totally unlike human children.
But young Stanislaw could not hide in his family’s house forever. This became shockingly clear when his parents were killed in a zeppelin crash. The crash was caused by lightning, which took out the zeppelin’s control room. The inspector who brought Stanislaw the bad news called it a random act of nature, and Stanislaw never forgave nature for that. Later that day he wrote in his diary that he would dedicate his life to the understanding of nature, so it could be tamed forever, and made safe for humans. Once ever deterministic relation between cause and effect would be clearly understood and mapped by humans, it would then be possible to calculate what intervention would create the greatest benefit for the human race as a whole. Suffering could be eradicated forever. The world would run like clockwork.
War:
To further his goal to fully understand nature Stanislaw realized that it would be necessary to gather what other people know. He took up academic correspondence with several scientists from both Oxford and Cambridge to find out what they knew about causality. While this seemed to be a safe way of interacting with people without meeting them, he did not consider the possible shortfalls. Someone was deeply impressed by his current work, and one day one of his remaining servants had to disturb him in his lab to tell him that people from “the government” had arrived. On this day Stanislaw discovered several things. He learned that he had a room in his house for the sole purpose of entertaining guests, and he also learned that England had engaged in some kind of war were advanced technology might be of use.
At first Stanislaw was unimpressed, their offers of money and appeals to his patriotic nature did not win him over. But their offer to organize gifted scientific personal to carry out his experiments swayed him to work for “the government”. As a result Stanislaw’s life saw little change. He still worked in his laboratory for most of his days, now dreaming up elaborate machines that might help with the war. Occasionally people would come by to pick up instruction for experiments, or to deliver results. As the war progressed, Todorov spend an increasing amount of his time and resources on the development of a device that he called a “causality generator”. A machine that would increase the level of determinism in the world, making everything predictable, and pre-determined. While he thought this would get him closer to his dream of making the world a safer and more reliable place, it turned out that humans could not survive the effects of this device. Stanislaw was angry, he knew that humans very erratic, unpredictable and essentially random, but this effect could render his device ultimately useless. The military did not agree, and began construction of the “Causality Bomb”. Fortunately the war ended before the final device was finished, so the only working prototype remains in Todorov’s possession, a small causality ray that can make the most unlikely things happen.
Aspects:
-Understand machines better than humans
-Young orphaned heir to his parent’s estate
-The world should run like clockwork
-Gadget: Hauser, the Robot Companion
Adventure Book:
Determination and Power
Dr. Stanislaw Todorow vs. the Ethics Committee
With sixteen easily assembled blueprints for experimentation with your children at home
Blurb:
Dr. Stanislaw Todorow is a driven man, a decorated war hero with letters before and after his name, his scientific exploits might well have been the deciding factor in the war. But his hardest battle is yet to come. After the war the way science is done has changed, results matter less, and suddenly everything has to done the proper way. During the preparation to one of his most ambitious robotic experiments Todorow is betrayed by one of his own scientist, who suddenly raises ethical concerns. All progress comes to a halt, and Todorow has to face the ethical committee.
But Todorow will not stop his scientific momentum unless he is opposed by an equally large force. He is a person who understands power; after all it is just voltage times current. His enemies call him a mad genius, his friends call him “patap kinili”, but they are robots, so no one cares.
This book tells the tale of Todorow’s epic battle with the forces of the scientific establishment. In the end it all boils down to one question: “Will the pressure of his peers break Todorow, or turn him into a diamond?”
Aspects:
-What do you mean, I need ethics approval?
- Enemy of the Oxbridge Cabal
Top Skills are:
5 Science
4 Engineering, Ressources
3 Resolve, Academics, Endurance
2 Alertness, Guns, Investigation, Pilot
1 Leadership, Mysteries, Drive, Survival, Weapons
Stunts:
Scientific Genius (Engineering Sciences, Specilization Robotics)
Scientific Invetion
Weird Science
Mad Science (HRI and Robotics)
