Idea for a discredited sage?

Hi guys!

Today I created my character to play the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons. He's a Lawful Neutral hill dwarf cleric with the sage background, who got the specialty "Discredited academic". My GM asked me what exactly was the thesis that made my character become discredited. Any ideas? :D

Also, his ideal, bond and flaw are tied to the search for power: "Knowledge is the path to power and domination", "I sold my soul for power" and "Unlocking an ancient mystery is worth the price of a civilization". I was thinking in taking a lawful evil or lawful neutral deity to follow.

His research thesis was about a question that has plagued mankind and especially wizardkind for time immemorial. One whose answer would hold the secret of genetics, disease, cancer, and possibly creating life itself:

How the f#$% do you make an Owlbear?

So, if I am not mistaken, your character is based on Enlightment isn't it?

The reason for his discredited, could be a dissection (if he is from a culture which find this abhorrent) or Necromancy.

He never cleans himself. The other academics couldn't stand his horrible smell. He also polluted the experiments with all the weird substances and particles covering his clothes and body.

edited 25th Aug '14 2:16:19 PM by Druplesnubb

He was discredited for conjecturing on the theoretical offspring of a dwarf and an elf.

Does the thesis have to be the problem? He couldn't have been discredited for some other reason (say... Cheating on exams, plagiarism, etc.)

... getting caught with the dean's daughter... or wife... or both...

Or it could be political, he could have written a thesis where the losing side in the argument resembles a local magistrate a little TOO much...

Ran a scam about "predicting" the final exams, then turned out to have gotten it 100% right.

One alternate way to play it is that your sage was an honest, upright fellow... who ran afoul of someone unscrupulous who decided to step on him on the way to academic glory (and perhaps power in a university setting). After all, the discrediting doesn't have to be fair. It doesn't even have to be right (after all, Edison managed to get Tesla discredited over the whole alternating versus direct current issue, even though Tesla was right). It just mean the people in charge don't think much of you. And if you give the guy tenure, you have a built-in recurring antagonist.

Bonus points if, when talking about the rival who got you discredited, you say his name the same way Hubert Farnsworth of Futurama talks about... WERNSTROM!