In lieu of a proper sub-thread move, I'm starting this new thread, and only copying the relevant bits to the current character idea.
The current idea I'm working with is to marry some of the ideas of Lovecraft's writings—that knowledge is dangerous and will kill us all— particulary “dreams in the witchhouse” as well as the motivation behind “Alice in Wonderland” (according to this link at least). And play a mathematician studying all the new and weird high-dimensional and non-euclidean mathematics.
It might pair well with Frank's magician and parapsychologist.
The above is a paraphrasing of something to which Brett replied:
I think there is something in the idea of a mathematician suggested by the CL Dodgson and Alice in Wonderland idea. Someone who has seen the dark side of imaginary numbers, quarternions, and non-Euclidean geometry. Unlike Dodgson, he doesn't think they are absurd, he things they are dangerous. Physically dangerous.They let things in, they suck things out. Perhaps he lost a friend in —or a lover— into a particularly hideous Riemannian vector space.
He's an expert on space-time and probably wildly consulted by physicists &c., which makes him the obvious guy to have had adventures with time-machines, teleporters, worm-holes in space-time, extra dimensions, parallel worlds, and quite a lot of things to do with modern and high-energy physics: atom smashers and so forth. Also, I think Maxwell's Equations come in there a bit. And Shrödinger's Equation. Besides that the Greeks invented geometry and the Arabs algebra, and lots of ancient civilisations with lousy knowledge of the physical sciences were nevertheless supposedly very advanced in mathematics. He has plenty of occasion to rat around in musty libraries looking for lost manuscripts, visit archaelogical digs looking for mathematical murals and such records, even to survey Nazca lines and make his own measurements of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. Certainly he might get involved in war work with the Manhattan Project. I'm seeing the "Theory in Practice" Stunt (p. 193) getting some air time here. Also, maybe, some Aspect like "As I told Bert Einstein…".
Despite his world-class expertise with "equations" and "spaces", he can only get tenure at Walpurgis because of his penchant for advising other mathematicians (at conferences ad so on) only to prove certain propositions in spaces whose dimensionality is not a perfect number, etc.
There is some literature from the period about a logician who works out a way to use propositional logic to travel to parallel universes, the Compleat Enchanter series by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt (later continued by et al.).
And to which Frank replied:
I like the idea of a mathematician. I can see him being useful for diagnosing and fixing space time rifts (the sort that cause time travel, or let in shoggoths. A little more work may need to be done to extract some general purpose.
Perhaps a "good will hunting" type mathematician, who is incongruously a working class bruiser as well as a gifted maths prodigy? Or one who has already seen "a little too much" and sleeps with a saw off shotgun and nerves on a hair trigger. Paranoia is great excuse for the capacity for violence as well as being "very very drunk"
It might be useful if Brett outlines the sorts of adventures he has in mind and the sorts of things we might be doing.
I shall continue the conversation after I've had some sleep.