Last night during an extended 2 year period of lab work and other downtime, one of the Magi announced that she is pregnant. Caught me completely off-guard, in a most pleasant way.
Glad now that I invested in A&A and Apprentices. When I first read A&A's rules for childbirth, I thought "wow, neat that the system is that detailed, but I'll never use that." Guess I was wrong.
The pregnancy was a result of a pagan rite conducted in a regio within a city in Egypt. She believes the father to have been a noble fairie jinn, and is anticipating some sort of sidhe-like fairy blooded offspring, perhaps even a gifted child.
I'm glad I've got RoP:F, I, and M. She may be in for a surprise...I'm imagining that a pregnancy involving a "1/2 human" child might be a tad bit more difficult than normal.
I know that Ars Magica faeries aren't, strictly, Celtic folklore faeries... but in folklore half-fae births are difficult. I've had two half-fae births in my saga to date and I've modeled it using the A&A rules but having the pregnacy "wound" be Heavy instead of Medium to represent the longer and more difficult birth. It worked well and led the an interesting mini-adventure with companions rushing to fetch a maga to save a woman and her fae-blood child during childbirth.
We picked up Apprentices after one of our Magi got pregnant. Simular craziness, in egypt no less. Shapeshipted Bjornaer Magna, possessed by Ancestor Spirits, mating with a gorg possessed by a Magic Lion Spirit.
The "cubs" are an interesting mix. Of course only one has a soul.
Per Apprentices p9, "when a child's parent is socially recognized, the child character has the same Social Status virtue or flaw.... designate...as 'Son/Daughter of (Social Status)'."
What if the child is the recognized, non-gifted offspring of a Hermetic Magus?
For the child's gender, I decided to let fate be my guide, rolling a "stress die:"
Possible "Botch," resulting in a hermaphrodite, human child with animal features, or some other unusual features.*
2-9: Odd, Female; Even, Male
10: Possible "Crit," resulting in multiple births. Reroll, If 1-5, single birth. If 6-9, twins. If 10, twins and roll again. 6-9, triplets.
I know this is nothing like real-world probabilities, but it seemed good enough. I rolled 10, 10, 1. Decided to roll that last 1 and got a "botch." Unsure how I wanted to interpret that, I rolled a "simple die" (odd/even) for each twin's gender seperately and got 5,6.
So, one boy, one girl, and there will be something "odd" about them...
*I have a good friend who is biologically hermaphroditic, so let me stress that I don't mean to insult such individuals by categorizing this as a "botch."
A female NPC Mercere senior magus, biological mother and parens to another PC magus, has taken the young female PC magus under her wing (she's a gossip/meddler type). The covenant has sufferage, they're quite the forward thinking place. They have secured the finest midwife in Southern France with payment in Vis, are investigating magics, enchantments, and other aids, etc. The covenant desires to grow in population, and provide good care to their covenfolk, so a good "birthing ward" is an excellent way to start establishing a "hospital."
Rules wise, I've thought of a few ways to help ensure a safe delivery:
A. Midwife with affinity, puisant, and specialty in childbirthing.
B. Magus with CrCo spells to aid recovery rolls.
C. Enchantment with CrCo effect to aid recovery rolls.
D. Theriatrics (A&A) to provide bonuses to recovery rolls.
Any rules on what might be "stackable," and if not, how do you HR this? Any ideas for other "stackable" bonuses?
Mother views herself as "nobility," covenant is in full summer and pretty wealthy, so I gave the kids Custos and they'll have Privledged Upbringing as well. Was curious if there was a virtue I had missed. Was looking for something like "covenant upbringing," custos/covenfolk could imply that, but don't have to.
What's wrong with 'Son/Daughter of Hermetic Magus' as a free social status?
Unlike regular son/daughter social status virtues, this one probably translates into Covenfolk rather than Magus, but still carries the benefits of your parents' social status rubbing off on you. If, that is, the parent has anything to do with the child. Bastard may be appropriate too, depending on the circumstances.
I would strongly recommend any childbirth inflict a season of new-parent on the mother immediately after the birth even if she comes out of it healthy and happy.
For a working mother, this would come out of one of the 'nominal free' seasons just fine. I'd also be happy to let the new mother have that season as training if she has the usual family support network or equivalent. Experience in profession: mother or profession: housewife or something similar. Of course, a typical young girl would probably pick up a bit of this skill as part of her own upbringing, especially if she has younger siblings. Extended families tend to mean the skillset gets shared around.
A maga, on the other hand, is probably going to have to lean heavily on caring covenfolk for her support.
One saga I play in has had a few pregnancies over the course of the saga. It's also had a couple of trips to Egypt, but no link between Egypt and pregnancies to date.
We've just used a simple die roll, even for girls, odd for boys (because boys are odd... I tend to have more women than men in my gaming groups).
Also, you might find this interesting. We've used to it before in my saga's to great success. It assumes supernatural abilities and the Gift are inheritable traits.
This is the inherent beauty and genius of the Ars troupe system at work. Players will do things for or to their characters that I could never imagine. Many times they write their own stories, all I have to do is supply the twist. So her pregnancy isn't 9 months, it's 9 years, or whatever. All sorts of things I can do as SG that achieves my goals as well as satisfying desires of the player. Sometimes players/characters get what they want, sometimes they get what they need and sometimes they get something altogether different.
Also random die for sex... but given the crazy circumstances, shape-shifting, and multi-person possession; I made of list of various possibilities and drew it randomly.
Since we had lions we rolled 1d6 for number of cubs!
We need a break-off thread about Egypt! What are you doing about local politics, pyramids, old temples. I have ideas, plans, etc.... but it is always good to mine the brains of others for exploitable ideas.
I've always rolled two d10, designating one "boy" and one "girl." If one is higher than the other, then the child is the corresponding gender. If they're equal, then it's a multiple birth, and I roll for each child separately, with another multiple if one of those is a tie. So, if I have boy-girl 6-5, then it's a boy. If it's 3-3, it's at least twins. Rolling for each of them gives me 7-10 (girl) and 5-1 (boy). If the last pair had been 1-1, then I'd have at least triplets, and would have to roll two more sets. And down the line. That way, I'd get about a 10% chance of twins, 1% of triplets, and so on. (Been using this system in all my games for about 17 years, and never had more than twins.)
