Mistakes Have Been Made

Question: Is there any opposition to birth control in the Amatsukami? Because I may have accidentally impregnated Amaterasu while disguised, under Tsukiyomi's orders.

Oh, you wacky kids.

There's no particular prohibition against birth control in Japanese mythology that we know of; certainly they had forms of it in ancient Japan, most commonly "caps" of bamboo that would be placed inside the vagina to prevent sperm from reaching the cervix, although they weren't the most medically advanced technology and results were therefore spotty. Most of the gods in the Japanese myths we have are intending to reproduce because that's one of their cosmic jobs, so the issue hasn't come up, but theoretically they could decide to avoid having any more children and that probably wouldn't be an issue for anybody.

However, if Amaterasu is already pregnant, it sounds like it's too late to worry much about birth control. You're now in the realm of worrying about whether or not abortion is okay, if you want the pregnancy terminated without a birth, or whether adoption or infanticide is okay in cases of illegitimate children.

Unfortunately for you, adultery was a serious offense in Japan (both ancient and modern) and the Kami are likely inclined to punish it severely. If neither you nor Amaterasu are married, that problem's out of play, but illegitimate children are still not going to have a smooth life among the status- and politics-obsessed Japanese gods, who will probably never allow them to rise all that high in the ranks. It's hard enough being a Scion among the Kami, who are very tough sells when it comes to allowing "lower-class" or bastard children to have any kind of status; being the illegitimate child of someone already on shaky footing is hardly going to help that poor kid have a future as much more than a page. Of course, the most dangerous issue there at all is the fact that Amaterasu sure as hell doesn't want an illegitimate child being a smudge on her reputation, so she's likely to take some kind of action - most likely send the child, far, far away and never allow anyone to know about him or her. Infanticide, usually by exposing the baby in the wilderness or otherwise sending it off with no hope of survival (as Izanagi and Izanami did with Hiruko, their deformed leech baby, who they pushed off the coast in a boat), was practiced at various times in Japan's history, but it's unlikely that anyone with Valor will consider that a viable option, and anyway Amaterasu is probably not going to suffer anyone with her imperial blood in their veins to be left to die.

Abortion, surprisingly enough, is probably not an issue; it also was practiced fairly freely in ancient times, although it was more dangerous then, and it was only made illegal comparatively recently in the nineteenth century, when the Japanese government decided that a larger population would be good for the country. Among the divine, all it takes is a little Health boon usage or just normal medical knowledge.

But we don't really know the circumstances surrounding your accidental babymaking here, so we don't know which, if any, of these options might help you out. If you were in disguise and Amaterasu thinks this pregnancy is legit, she probably won't want to take any such action and would consider it an attack on her if you did, and you might want to go on letting her believe that rather than having to out yourself and face her undoubtedly furious retaliation. Political scandal is one of the most important things to avoid as a member of Amaterasu's court, so you may want to just never bring this up and let everyone live happier lives. If it does come up, you may want to take the baby yourself and keep the secret of who its mother is, or else adopt it out to someone who doesn't ask too many questions. If you're below God-level, the baby will be a potential Scion, so it might be a valuable asset to some other deity who can't or doesn't have their own children.

Of course, different gods have different personalities, and those are under the control of your Storyteller, so don't take our word as gospel. Some of them may have a personal problem with birth control or unwanted pregnancy that goes beyond this, and we don't have any real understanding of your situation, so our answers are vague.

This question is so tantalizingly mysterious - all "What do I do?", no "Here's what I already did!"

Baby Mama Drama

Question: My character had the... let's say "misfortune" to hook up with Aphrodite in our game and unfortunately rolled a 9 on the reproduction chart. If Ares finds out hes going to kill my character. What would you do in this situation? My character doesn’t yet know shes pregnant. How can I attempt to keep my character alive? And yes, my ST says there would be a death if there is a direct conflict with Ares.

We agree with your Storyteller. He is totally going to kill you if you are in the room when he finds out about this. We don't know what Legend your character is, but there's really no level of Legend where anyone is "safe" from Ares, anyway. We'll try to help anyway, though!

First of all, you can try to hide all this, but it probably won't work. Unfortunately, hiding a pregnancy like this is going to be next to impossible. Anyone with Assess Health (Apollo, Artemis and Hera at least, probably several others) will see that she's pregnant immediately - probably before either you or she knows, in fact. Even if she uses her Epic Appearance to avoid being visibly pregnant, folks with Ultimate Perception (again, Apollo and Artemis at least) will still know. She could go far, far away and not come back until the baby's born, but then everyone's going to want to know where she went and why, which means you need an amazing cover story and someone who can lie about it so fantastically that said people with Perception above won't immediately see right through it (not to mention somewhere for her to live for these nine months!). And even if you pull all that off, all it takes is one guy with Mystery to blow the lid off the whole thing, and you've got a ticking time bomb of a child running around who will almost certainly be a problem late ron. And remember that other gods from non-Greek pantheons may also run into her, and many of them may also find out about it and tell other people.

We'd also like to point out that other people besides Ares are probably going to be pissed off about this. You might get lucky, but there's a very good chance that a large number of Greek gods are now angry with you. Hephaestus, in particular, is a dangerous one; I don't know if your ST plays him as still married to Aphrodite or not, but even if he isn't, he was not pleased by all her cheating on him ever before and he probably won't appreciate that she's now sleeping with lowly Scions, even. His revenge is apt to be a lot more creative and difficult to see coming than Ares', and you'd better plan how to deal with the possibility of it before you end up in a throne-prison or wearing a cursed necklace or any of the other things he does to people he's mad at. Also, remember that Aphrodite is the belle of the ball on Olympus, and that all the other gods absolutely want to bang her and used to actively fight over her before she got married, so you're looking at a lot of gods - Apollo, Poseidon and Hermes are all named as her suitors - who will probably trigger jealous rages at the idea that not only did she turn them down, then she went and slept with you, who are basically a nobody. They may want to punish you, especially with Vengeance egging them on. And, of course, Hera is the goddess of faithful marriage, so she's not going to like this, and Ares is her son and may ask for her help, so Justice boons just came to the party. You may want to stay far, far away from the entire pantheon if you can.

Before you do anything, though you need to find out what Aphrodite's doing. It sounds like you have no idea what her take on the situation is or how she plans to handle it, which may be very literally fatal for you. Mystery can help, or you could simply try going to ask her (and hoping that she doesn't lie). She's not an idiot, so she will probably be figuring out her own plan for how to deal with this; she might abort the baby (basic Health powers make that pretty easy), use her Epic Appearance to hide evidence of the pregnancy so that Ares at least can't physically see it, claim it's Ares' kid, claim it's someone else's kid, claim it's immaculate conception, or even throw you under the bus by claiming that you assaulted her. She's definitely not going to just sit passively around and not try to make this come out the way she wants it to, so you need to find out what she's doing. If you come up with a brilliant plan to hide the whole thing, and then she just goes to Ares and tells him about it, you're 100% boned in spite of all your hard work. On the other hand, if she likes you enough, she might help you out. You'll never know until you try.

Once you know what she's doing (and assuming the answer isn't "I told him you attacked me, go draw up a will"), our next best suggestion is for you to go out and find a powerful protector. You know you can't survive Ares on a rampage, so start kissing butts - find somebody who can maybe protect or hide you, or convince Ares (or Ares' pantheon, so they can stop him) that killing you isn't worth it or isn't an option right now. The other Greeks may not be great choices, since they are all terrible vengeful people, but if you can find someone powerful enough in another pantheon and throw yourself on their mercy, they may be willing to help you in exchange for your services.

...what services those will be depend on the god, but be ready to have to do unpleasant tasks, talk to people you don't want to talk to, fight stuff, be experimented on, or whatever else they want in return for saving you. No one's going to do it for free, and they probably don't want anything you want to give. But hey, it beats being dead, right?

Other than that, we can only suggest that you be good at hiding. We would assume that Ares, or other offended parties, are going to find out about this sooner or later, so do your best to have a panic room/escape route/contingency plan. Ares isn't great at finding people, so you may be able to elude him for a while. Try to go somewhere he can't or won't chase you, or maybe create distractions or disturbances that cause him to veer off instead of pursuing you single-mindedly. Your life is all about survival right now, at least until this blows over, and your band will probably be along for the ride, since it's all too likely they'll get caught in the crossfire at some point.

Good luck, man. At least you'll have a very beautiful memory to keep you warm on those cold nights of hiding in the wilderness, hoping no one can find you.

How to Get Pregnant Without Really Trying

Question: Is it possible to have a Scion of the Morrigan birthed by a lesbian mortal mother after the goddess impregnated her in female form after a torrid night of lesbian passion?

You know, I have gotten variations on this question way more than I ever would have predicted. I guess people are very concerned about the possible outcomes of divine lesbian encounters.

Sure, dude, you can totally do that; Scion's full of people doing crazy shit, and I see no reason this can't be one of those moments. Compared to some of the reproductive shenanigans going on in various mythologies, this is downright tame.

I'm not going to go into the details of all the ways two ladies can have sex (you guys have the internet, I'm sure you can figure it out), but the only thing to really worry about is the fact that somehow one of these women has to get knocked up, which means something has to fertilize an egg. In humans, that requires particular equipment, but gods don't have to play by those rules. Appearance knacks - Undeniable Resemblance and Unusual Alteration - that allow specialized shapeshifting can easily provide ways for this to happen, whether it's creating fertilizing fluid of some kind that is released through small openings in the fingers or even modifying the pores of the skin to allow simple contact to pass something unnoticed from one to the other. Purview Avatars, of course, can also probably pull this off easily as well; the Savior especially can probably just impregnate via finger guns if you want it to, but others can likely pull off similar events as well. Exactly how this works mechanically depends completely on the actions and interests of the ladies involved and the Storyteller's rulings, but it's far from something that is difficult for your average goddess to do.

To digress for a moment, you'll see very, very few cases in ancient mythology where someone is born without a male being involved anywhere. This is because most ancient societies' understanding of the process of procreation mandated that both male and female parts be involved, which is why even most of the most famous parthenogenic stories involve some kind of opposite counterpart or proxy - Cavillaca becoming pregnant by eating Coniraya's sperm in a fruit, for example, Erichthonius being born when Hephaestus's seed fell on the ground and therefore impregnated Gaia, or Xquic being impregnated by Hun Hunahpu spitting into her hand - even if sex isn't directly involved. There are a few, with Hera's solo birth of Hephaestus probably the best example of a story with no dudes involved anywhere, but not a lot, and I can't think of a single one in which two ladies were able to combine to make a child (unless you want to get funky with the confusing myth of Heimdall's parentage, maybe?).

But that's okay, because those ancient stories aren't the boss of us! Today's Scions are being born in a world where lesbian relationships are commonplace, in vitro fertilization is an everyday occurrence and scientists have figured out how to make viable sperm with no male genetic material involved at all, so there's no reason whatsoever they have to adhere to those crusty old classical ideas of how babies are made. Especially if it's just something in your Scion's backstory, feel free to be creative, and if the Storyteller wants details, work them out. In the end, it's perfectly plausible roleplaying favor that doesn't affect your mechanical abilities or behavior as a Scion, so I see no reason to restrict it.

Baby Boomers

Question: If a player character is pregnant and she wishes to use the Psychopomp Boon Unbarred Entry, would she also need to expend the cost for Come Along to bring the unborn children with her?

Ha, creative thinking! But no, the fetus is free. The same goes for any other Psychopomp boon, or for other boons that involve costs for extra people (The Milky Road, Deus Ex Machina, etc).

You could separate out a bunch of effects for pregnant person versus non-pregnant person, but honestly it doesn't help the game much to add a lot of complications and extra resource-spending. We also wouldn't want to make pregnant people roll Stamina + Fortitude separately for their tiny inmates whenever affected by things like poison or disease (because otherwise nobody above Legend 3 would ever have pregnancies survive to term), or force them to be constantly rolling to see if taking damage in a fight caused them to miscarry. While the sproutling is still physically inside and living off of its parent's body, it counts as part of that parent unless there are wild extenuating circumstances.

Of course, those extenuating circumstances can happen and be dramatically compelling, but unless an enemy is intentionally trying to make a player miscarry (either through violence, through some kind of curse or relic or through Curse of Frailty, which is the one boon that does affect unborn children), it's usually better left to cinematic dodging and stunting appropriate to the situation. Our pregnant PCs usually pick up a few precautionary measures like Blessing of Health or Invulnerable Nail, but so far they've all made it to birth if they wanted to.

We do, however, cause passing through strange landscapes to sometimes affect unborn children in the womb; for example, going to an Underworld while pregnant means there's a chance the fetus will die thanks to being mortal, even though it's still inside you, while some Terrae Incognita might cause bizarre effects and an unborn baby is probably vulnerable to sustaining changes or mutations (usually not for the better) from Titanrealms you pass through. The Scion who carries the baby might herself also affect its growth by shapechanging while pregnant or using certain powers that influence it, at Storyteller discretion.

Our players are eagerly awaiting the imminent birth of Eztli's and Sowiljr's latest spawn, which is the first PC baby that is fully god-level (they didn't Avatar down for conception) and has also been rampantly shapechanged and dragged through multiple Underworlds and Titanrealms during gestation within its eternally active mother. The betting pool on exactly what kind of monster it's going to be is still awaiting a verdict, but everyone's pretty thoroughly sure it won't be normal.

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!

Babes in Arms

Question: If Hermes was born at Legend 9, how did he succeed at all the crazy things he supposedly did at birth? For example, he doesn't have the stats to beat Apollo's Perception.

Hmm, we may have sounded misleading when talking about this in the past - sorry about that, everyone!

When a child is born to two gods who are not in Avatar form, that child is also a god, no two ways about it. That means it's going to be at least Legend 9 - but, when you're looking at the gods of ancient mythology, we think that probably doesn't mean that it's always Legend 9. Some gods do crazy shit their first day in existence, like Huitzilopochtli murdering literally hundreds of other gods on the field of battle, that are obviously not possible for a mere Legend 9 deity (as our formerly-Legend-9 players can attest, I'm sure); they couldn't have been Legend 9, and they probably didn't do enough in the first five seconds of their lives to go up a few dots in Legend, either, so it stands to reason that some gods are born higher than Legend 9.

Which begs the question of how you decide how high in Legend a divine child starts out, of course. Things can be a little bit freeform when working with ancient myth; you can look at what that god was doing his first day or two of life and what power level that suggests and go from there, and you can also take into account crazy stuff that might have been happening during his gestation. Gods that have strong myths surrounding their conception, gestation or birth are likely to be higher in Legend when they're born, simply because they already have some myths surrounding them even when they're in the womb. Gods like Hachiman, whose mother delayed his birth for three years because she was busy conquering Korea like a boss, or Athena, who sprang adult from the cranium of Zeus thanks to his devouring of her mother, or Lugh, whose conception had been foretold in a prophecy and required all kinds of magical shenanigans to come true, are probably more likely to be born at higher Legends than other gods, who would have to work their way from their less-exciting origins on up the ranks of power.

And yes - that does potentially mean that you could have gods who are born already more powerful than their parents. They're pretty easy to pick out on family trees, usually as minor gods with major children, or as people who have little fame of their own other than being the parents of someone important. A divine child eclipsing his parents' Legend is a concern that probably isn't lost on most gods, and one of the many reasons that they don't tend to have many children who are flat-out gods. God-babies are in many ways dangerous, and the fact that your son might be born savvy, powerful and crazy enough to dethrone you during the first year of his life is not a very comfortable idea for anybody.

This is all very excitingly terrifying for god-level PCs, who are often already procreating by the time they hit Legend 9 and suddenly subject to the same worries and problems. We've never had a truly divine baby born to PCs yet - but Eztli's pregnant right now and neither she nor Sowiljr used their Avatars to make the kid partly mortal, so whenever that blessed event occurs, they're in for a whole new world of craziness. Both players are nervous about what's going to happen, especially since they're often rolling dice to determine random factors about who it's taking after and what kind of power level it might be at, and they're dealing with managing this pregnancy through several Titanrealms to boot. And also Eztli keeps turning into a bat when she has bat things to do, which is causing Sowiljr many sleepless nights imagining a litter of baby bat-monsters all calling him Daddy and begging for a little blood. The situation is tense and everyone's pretty excited about seeing what might happen.

But I'm sure they'll be fine.

At any rate, to go back to Hermes, who started all this pontificating: it's totally possible that Hermes was born higher than Legend 9, and you could rule so if you felt that he was doing things that were entirely beyond the pale for a Legend 9 infant to pull off. But then again, I'd also point out that Hermes didn't actually pull off evading Apollo's perception in that story; Apollo was able to track the stolen cattle back to the cave where Hermes was living with his mother, recognize the baby as the thief and then take him to Zeus for judgment (and Zeus didn't believe Hermes' protestations of innocence, either). He's definitely still a precocious child, but it seems pretty clear that he wasn't rocking the Ultimate Manipulation quite yet in that story.