Monday, April 1, 2013

Ex Vitro Fertilization

Question: If someone gets pregnant because of Virility/Muliebrity, can they still terminate the pregnancy through normal or supernatural methods? 3 Legend seems like a steep price if an unwilling person can just walk down to a clinic.

Yes, they certainly can.

Virility (or Muliebrity, for the ladies) is concerned with fertility and fertility only; as soon as conception occurs, its effects have ended. It allows Scions to ensure that sexual activity between two people of the opposite sex automatically results in conception, whether or not one party is normally infertile, it's the wrong time of the month for ovulation, an illness might normally interfere or anything else. It can grant miracle babies to those who were told they'd never be able to have children, but it cannot enforce the actual bearing of those children. It's only a power for making the next round of sex fruitful and has no control over what happens after.

In fact, not only can those who conceived as a result of Virility abort their pregnancies (by completely mundane means such as clinics or pills or by various supernatural ones), they can also have normal miscarriages, too. If someone without the Stamina to handle trauma sustains a serious injury, gets a virulent illness or otherwise has some kind of problem that prevents them from carrying to term, they can lose a Virility-inspired pregnancy as easily as a normal one.

The boon is specifically designed to grant children to the childless; almost every ancient society's myths include at least one or two deities in charge of childbirth and fertility to whom mortals can pray to beg for help if they're having trouble having children, and Virility is the simple and quick way a Scion or god can answer their prayers. It is not, however, designed to enforce pregnancies on those who don't want them, partly because mythology doesn't do that - from an ancient perspective, women get pregnant and then they naturally have babies, and abortions, though possible in ancient times, were far less common and more likely to kill the woman involved - and partly because doing so would be much more powerful than a level four boon should be, especially when used on Legendary beings. Gods of Health can create indestructible, unremovable fetuses if they want, but they'll need to use their Avatar in order to do so, just like they do for other wacky pregnancy effects (immaculate conception, men becoming pregnant, etc.).

If for some reason you really want to make sure that a seed planted with Virility makes it all the way to birth, you'll need to use other powers to ensure that. Blessing of Health will prevent any normal illnesses and anything but the most traumatic of injuries from causing a miscarriage, so it's easy to pop that on a pregnant person as soon as your Assess Health tells you that conception has occurred. Neither boon has any effect on the free will of the person involved, however, so you'll need to use other powers - probably Charisma or Manipulation knacks, or possibly the Demand a Labor spell (literally named in this case) - just like any other time you want to force someone to do something they otherwise wouldn't want to do.

I'm not sure what kind of situation you're envisioning here, but if your Scion is seriously committed to making someone carry a pregnancy to term who normally wouldn't do so, he's going to need to either pull some impressive mojo off or ride herd on her for the whole term, possibly both. In almost every case, it's probably easier to just knock up someone who either wants to have a baby, has no problem with having a baby, or has religious or political beliefs that prevent them from seeking an end to the pregnancy; but if for some reason your Scion needs to do otherwise, he's got his work cut out for him.

As for the three Legend cost, we don't know what to tell you. We think that three points of Legend for a power that can create a fetus even if someone is entirely missing their ovaries or has been sterile since birth is pretty reasonable; it's a literally impossible physical feat you're causing to happen, and one that may result in the creation of new life and people being born who never would have otherwise. It's a big deal!

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