Hermetic Birth Control in your games?

So, what have you used (or not) in your games for Hermetic Magic birth control?

Obviously the Longevity Ritual is a form. More curiously, Perdo Corpus could make someone barren (that could be a good thing) permanently, or possibly temporary with a Sun duration. I'm curious what other people have done, or I suspect may have ignored the problem.

IOS the only birth control ever - grudgingly - applied was the Longevity Potion.

Seriously, our current Jerbiton and Mercere magus desire offspring a lot. The Jerbiton read Diotima's narration to his spouse before the wedding, and the Mercere magus supports the Goliards (HoH:TL p.93f) for that.

Cheers

1 Like

I had a female maga who was very... active, as well as trying to develop fertility magic, so she desired a temporary form of birth control, and used a PeCo with moon duration. Upon reflection a sun duration would have made handling warping much easier, but would also be more potentially prone to failure (though perhaps not noticeably) and work in having to essentially follow the rhythm method to make sure the spell was cast on the right days.
A much more lucrative form of birth control can be had if Fertility lore is discovered, in that a fertility fetish can be created and invested with a woman's potential fertility and then harvested for one pawn of creo vis, rendering her sterile.
Unfortunately this can only be done by the woman's own hand in creating the fetish, otherwise it could be applied to livestock for a cheap supply of creo vis.

1 Like

Ya, my saga has always had the opposite problem. Mine and one of my troupe's characters both are trying to have children before we have to do longevity rituals (not with eachother)

THis seems like something completely out of time. Children at the time are precious and prone to dying for basically no reason, I don't think many people tried not to have them.

As far as magi simply wanting to get their rocks off. If I teleport a few countries away and seduce a village girl there is no reason to worry about the off spring other than to go and PeVi the AC (could be impossible due to Limit of the Divine). Magi are basically lords of the land having bastards wandering the countryside is just another applicable trope.

It seems like a very simple PeCo spell to render someone sterile.

An abortion can be done with a Part target (per the Fertility section of Ancient Magic). Not to get political but at the time I'm pretty sure that would be considered pretty evil.

1 Like

Abortions were, in the mundane history, both known and fairly often used at the time. After all, women die in childbirth, and there is a limit to how many children a family can raise. Miscarriage was fairly common as well, and distinguishing a natural miscarriage from an induced one is fairly difficult without modern medical technology, and doubly so if nobody really wants to know. Forms of abortion are documented for millennia before the rise of Christianity, though of course abandoned children in baskets make much more interesting stories.

https://www.yourtango.com/2013189729/condom-timeline-detailed-history-wrapping-it apparently condoms date back to 11,000 BC.

1 Like