Children of God: A Coda

This is an - arguably spoiler-free - appendix to Children of God, explaining something of the back-story that I began the post with. It's never explained outright in the story proper, and may have been somewhat confusing; so I felt I should mention it.

The story seed came from thinking of Jesus. Specifically, the Immaculate Conception. The Virgin Mary got off rather easily; pregnant, not by her husband, but hey! It's the Son of God! That's perfectly all right!

Whether or not you accept the truth of the Immaculate Conception, you have to admit that being impregnated by God is a pretty good excuse for any young mother who's unwilling, or unable, to support a child. (Or to acknowledge its father.)

But - there's no free lunch. What kind of social structure would evolve around such a thing, if "immaculate conception" was accepted as a plausible excuse? Well - who's going to take care of a Child of God? The church, naturally. That's their ball-park. So they're going to need some compensation for this - otherwise they'd collapse, especially if this is in the context of a small town or village, where the Church is basically an old guy in a robe who knows how to read Latin. So perhaps the mother pays some small tithe to the church, in return for their acknowledging her claim of Divine Insemination; and when the child grows up, it becomes a priest in turn, helping to keep the level of clergy high. Maybe - if this is common enough, which doesn't have to be very common - most of the church is composed of these Children of God.

So - what do you call a person who's half human and half God? A demigod, of course.

And what kind of adventures might a demigod get up to? What problems might they find themselves in, as a result of their privileged status?

(This was another point I found in favor of this idea, by the way - the idea of having what are essentially orphans be higher-class than most of their fellow citizens. It seems... right, somehow.)



Whatever bizarre, disturbing mind-thing that produced this dream was also probably responsible for influencing Children of God. Probably the same as the 'darkness' in this post. It's a recurring character! We'll give it a slot on the cast page, next.

(The cast page doesn't actually work that way.)

(...and I'm to bed.)

(Sweet dreams!)