So you've been impregnated by a Lesser God...

[DrummerDave]

Now what?

I've done a horrible, horrible thing to one of my PCs and impregnated her with the spawn of a Lesser Other God (one found in the London chapter of Masks). The player is very cool with it and willing to run with whatever I throw her way, so...

What now? Obviously there will be horrible dreams and her reality will start to bend as the star spawn slowly begins to affect her body and mind. But the descriptions of Lesser Other Gods are fairly vague, and since no one in the party actually saw the ceremony, I can pick whatever God I want.

Aside from those dreams, I need some suggestions to help drive her into oblivion. Since she's the 'bedrock' of the group and has only lost 2 sanity upon the realization that something is growing inside of her and no one knows where it came from, I'm not for just sending her straight over the edge - a slow descent to total madness would be best.

Also, how long should incubation be? I'm thinking either something very short or very long. Unless we think she should essentially determine the timeframe herself, how she reacts to the spawn could determine whether it comes out sooner or later.

Well, now I'm just brainstorming, and that's your job! Throw me your sickness and help make this pregnancy one to remember.

[Laraqua]

How come she can't just abort? With or without surgery (that could become a mini-plot in and of itself - finding a surgeon willing to go hunting around inside her).

I reckon give her power slowly. Emotional power that she ends up revelling in until the baby comes to term and she is utterly obliterated. The power of corruption, of telekinesis (you control it, as Keeper, but she accidentally summons it). The bed she sleeps on - the frame begins to rust. When sad, a cold steam is created within the room that condenses on all the walls (or perhaps just the condensation part if you want to be more subtle). When angered, unlucky things happen. A candle topples onto a curtain, a man trips in front of a bus, mirrors crack, etc.

As the baby comes to term, her face drips with blood that causes rust spots, stains that will never come up and areas where mishaps will always come to pass. Her touch brings glimpses of each person's individual hell. She becomes more and more agonised with each passing day and through touching others, she manages to reduce some of that pain, thus she is tempted into torturing others, but once their SAN is completely overwhelmed and their sentience sucked into the personal hell, she finds no relief in them and must find another.

If you mix power with personal damage, it should balance it out all right.

[ThothAmon]

Well, now I'm just brainstorming, and that's your job! Throw me your sickness and help make this pregnancy one to remember.

You could go the route I went when a female PC was impregnated - have the resultant child be perfectly normal with no outward evidence of Mythos taint. It's easy to deal with an evil malformed thing but not so easy to tackle an evil that comes in the form of an innocent baby.

My campaign is a long-term one so this kind of plotting works for me. It may not for you, especially if you want an early pay-off.

If you want to consider such an approach in more detail I'd point you towards the John Wyndham novel 'The Midwich Cuckoos', the original source of my inspiration. My other source was the original movie of 'The Omen'. And yes, I do like my apocalyptic plotlines, why do you ask?

[Ssendam]

Oh dear, this can't end well

Huge mood swings, self loathing as she gets bigger, cravings for wierd food stuffs ... Hold on thats a normal pregnancy!!!

I think the general idea of having good and bad side effects works. Certainly wierd dreams and voices in her head could be used to start a slow build up of general wierdness.

As the outer god is working against the players maybe the dreams should contain unreliable information? Perhaps the party can use it to thier advantage by avoiding what the dreams suggest? Morning sickness could be painfull and result in some unearthly mucus being coughed up.

Oh, and paint the babies room jet black with small white dots (stars).

[Gaffer]

Does the character realize that she was impregnated in connection with a ritual or whatever? Or does she believe it's just a lost weekend, who-the-hell-did-I-go-to-bed-with event?

[Callum]

Rosemary's Baby, dude. Watch with a pen and pad ready to jot down ideas. Nothin' like having the spawn of Satan inside of ya!

[cynick]

Three suggestions for the actually birth:

• The really obvious "explodes out of the womb" or other variations (eats it's way out, etc, etc)
  
• The apparently normal birth as suggested by ThothAmon
  
• It isn't born in the usual manner, but slowly transforms the mother into itself - a parasite organism slowly taking over it's host

[jabonko]

I'm probably stealing this idea from somewhere, because it's coming to me too easily, but I don't know where it's coming from.

Instead of having her show any obvious/normal signs of pregnancy, let all the symptoms be internal. Her insides are slowly liquified and gooified until they become an indistinguishible black mass. (this would occur over the full term of the pregnancy, not finalizing until the baby was ready to be birthed).

If you want some outward signs, maybe make her get fatter (not pregnant-looking, just overweight), have her belly become distended, have her flesh bubble oddly, cellulite like crazy, discoloration, stretch marks, ballooning, ... think Baron Von Harkonen meets

The mother of Narly

But how would she stand? The telekinetic powers she doesn't realize she has (Laraqua) keep her up, move her like a normal human would. Loss of will: as if the baby were taking over her mind (cynick).

Slowly "past life experience intrudes on present day" (Ghostbusters). She gains cosmic knowledge no human should possess. This could take place over the first week, two weeks, month. It depends on how long you want the gestation period to last.

At first this knowledge, though jarring and frightening, is very helpful to her. Perhaps she can digest the information in Mythos tomes much faster and more completely. She learns many spells and they seemingly drain no POW or SAN from her (yet). She's tempted, perhaps, to use the spells frivolously. I would recommend making up some spells that seem very helpful: scrying, healing, etc. so that she isn't just summoning Byakhee's all over the place.

Perhaps have cultists begin acting more friendly towards her, even from the very beginning. She'd become suspicious, but so would her co-investigators. They would wonder what she's been up to that would make her popular with the cult crowd.

Maybe animals begin acting strangely towards her, as well. Her once cherished dog growls at her and cowers away from her. One night she has a terrible nightmare in which she sees someone drag her dog into the cellar, torture it, kill it violently (and messy), and then eat it. (Did anyone see Slither?). Of course when she wakes up the next morning she feels like she ate a very large steak dinner last night and can't find her dog. The baby made her do it: its thoughts are slowly taking over hers, though she is completely unaware.

By now she should be at least mostly terrified. Maybe she goes to a psychiatrist (I doubt it, I've never had a player elect to visit any sort of therapist in a CoC game, no matter how low their SAN points). But say she did. When answering his questions, she loses control of her voice. The baby begins speaking through her, though her facial expressions betray her fear of what is going on and her lack of control. The baby says such horrible things the shrink runs out of the room screaming.

She could visit a hospital, curious about the sudden and disgusting weight-gain. Everything would go smoothly: the standard rigamarole of "exercise (not exorcise) and eat healthy, bla bla bla". Until they try to draw blood. Her skin is tough and nearly impenetrable (Ã* la Elder Things in At the Mountains of Madness). Or it's too easily penetrated, like jello. When they draw up the black ichor from within her, the scientific world is baffled.

They want to keep her under observation. But her co-investigators (despite their suspicion of her) are even more suspicious of the doctors (they're eeeevillll!) and try to break her out. Only to find the cultists doing the same thing. At about this time the baby is coming to term and is ready to be born.

Personally (and maybe I'm just being a guy here) but I think regular birth can be as gross as it is wonderful. Let Lovecraft be your guide: take what makes you squirm and develop it into something so disgusting you scare yourself.

Depending on who is in control at the time of the birth - her or the baby - and who the mother is being supervised/guarded/tended-to by - PC's, doctors, cultists, other - she could give birth in any number of bizarre locations: hospital, cave, her house, subway station, top of a mountain, industrial waste dump site...

As for what the baby looks like... I don't really have any great ideas for you. Since I've been going with the liquify-her-innards theme, I'll suggest Shoggoths for inspiration. Maybe even let the PC's believe she really is just birthing a Shoggoth and that it could be killed, only to find that it's a lesser Other-God and they have to flee.

Speaking of Other Gods, reread that story by HPL. Perhaps she is filled with a strange compulsion to visit some distant and isolated mountain. Her dreams are filled with visions of the place. Prophetic scenes of terrible things happening that could be thwarted (they can't really, but the baby wants her to go there so it gives her a false hope and reason to go there: it could even lead to an adventure to seek out the item that would stop the terrible thing from happening (of course it really turns out this thing is going to help the badthing not stop it)).

Ok... rambled long enough. Enjoy!

[Roucheau]

I guess it is just me, but if I were running a PC that got impregnated by ANYTHING from the Mythos and with the way the Mythos works, this event is NOT limited to females, the only questions are what hoops do I have to jump through to get this thing aborted and if aborting the menance isn't an option, what suicide options do I have?

[Roucheau]

I guess it is just me, but if I were running a PC that got impregnated by ANYTHING from the Mythos and with the way the Mythos works, this event is NOT limited to females, the only questions are what hoops do I have to jump through to get this thing aborted and if aborting the menance isn't an option, what suicide options do I have?

[Gaffer]

If you want some outward signs, maybe make her get fatter (not pregnant-looking, just overweight), have her belly become distended, have her flesh bubble oddly, cellulite like crazy, discoloration, stretch marks, ballooning, ...
But how would she stand? The telekinetic powers she doesn't realize she has (Laraqua) keep her up, move her like a normal human would.

But perhaps a general glamour maintains the illusion that she is still normal in appearance and movement.

Perhaps have cultists begin acting more friendly towards her, even from the very beginning. She'd become suspicious, but so would her co-investigators. They would wonder what she's been up to that would make her popular with the cult crowd.

Before she's even "showing," cultists not only don't attack her, but try to shield her from harm.

[DrummerDave]

Wow. Lots of disturbing and terrible ideas here - and I mean that as a compliment!

So we had our first post-conception session last night, and the pregnant player and I just sort of played with some stuff to see how things would work out. She started hearing strange music that wasn't there, felt naseous and had hot & cold flashes, started gathering string/yarn to built a nest, and of course had a very strange dream involving the Dark Man (who they have all met in another set of dreams). In all, nothing too telling, but the other players are already starting to suspect something strange is going on...

I really like the idea of building the powers into the woman, telekenetic powers that are great but at a price. All of those suggestions were great and I want to work on those.

I am not sure why the PC hasn't decided to abort or do anything about it, like talking to a doctor. While I made it clear to the player that the PC was pregnant, I didn't make it clear to the PC that she is pregnant, yet she has responded by acting as if she is. But not overtly, which is nice. As these strange things started to happen, she just slowly started doing small things that seem slightly out of character...

The best part, so far, is when another PC asked her, straight up, 'Are you pregnant or what?!?' Everyone had a hearty laugh at that tactless maneuver, which would be a rude question by 21st century standards, but for the early 19th century is unheard of. Fortunately, it was quite within character for the PC to ask, and everyone admonished him for his rude behavior, but it wasn't as pointed of a question as it could have been.

Anyway, I'm going to let this develop a bit. I'm going out of town for a few days, but will check back to see if there are more ideas and sickness!

[cynick]

I am not sure why the PC hasn't decided to abort or do anything about it, like talking to a doctor.

It's the spawn of a God. I would certainly have it try to protect itself (and it's host/mother) from harm. The mother should not even be able to think the word abortion.

[Cosmoline]

Easy. Have the kid and make William Hurt pay child support. He's good for it!

[DrummerDave]

So then.... I've reviewed these ideas again and I think they're great. And seeing as I'm a fairly new father (1.5 yr old) I have some recent experience with pregnant women...

Okay then. I love the telekenesis idea and need to build up a list of how that plays out. The PC is already beginning to collect things for her 'nest' (she's a collector by heart) and I will definitely let her go as crazy as she wants. But since she still has a high Sanity, I want to make sure everything seems normal and continues steadily forward.

I'm thinking that I will create one TK episode and one dream per session, starting with things small and mundane and slowly working forward as the baby grows inside. I don't know what Lesser God has fathered her child, but she is starting to dream of The Dark Man, as she had an episode in Masks where she met him in a dream, and perhaps she relates all things back to him.

I also agree that her baby is probably stronger than her, and any ideas of aborting would not be met well by her or her child. I will report back if/when things begin to change...