Congenital deformity

Birth defect

Warning. This article has pokes on controversial topics, including discrimination. This is a presentation of how fictional people in a fictional world try to understand a complicated world of birth defects without the help of modern medicine. Articles present their assumptions and aren't meant to be an accurate representation of real-life conditions.

Goodwill of the people can sometimes be a fickle thing and such thing as first impressions can truly affect how one is seen and understood by others. Thus, being born with birth defects that alter one's appearance can have particularly dramatic effects on one's future and on the way one is later perceived. Some of these mutations can be harmless, some challenging or even life treathening. But they can also be seen as blessings or curses depending on whom one asks.

Causes

The causes for congenital deformities are not always well understood, but some ideas of their origins do exist. This includes everything from curses, moral failures of the child's parents, things that mothers consume during pregnancy, exposure to certain magical or extraplanar energies, inheritance through bloodline, the negative energies around the unborn during the pregnancy, environmental factors and the child simply being born mentally faulty or evil. Some of these theories have more credence than others, but all of them exist in one form or another.

Symptoms

When speaking of congenital deformities, one refers to physical abnormalities that are either present from a person's birth or become obvious soon thereafter. These can be both external or internal and can affect a person in many different ways. Misshaped or missing organs/body parts, extra appendixes, and crooked bones are just a few examples of how these birth defects might manifest.

Some of the deformities can be purely aesthetic in nature, others come with serious medical implications that may severely affect a person's quality of life, and even be lethal. Occasionally, the deformity might actually function as a boon, giving strength, agility, increased lung capacity or something else that can be turned into good use.

Symtoms vary wildly depending on the particular deformity, and its severity. Rarely there are two people who are exactly alike.

Cultural Reception

Congenital deformities are often seen in an unfavourable light if they are not downright feared. Several cultures across races have their own superstitions and believe about the unfortunate that have been born into unfavourable forms. The attitudes do vary from person to person, according to their own experiences. Hate, fear, pity and mistrust are sadly very common, and often people expect the deformed to have lower intelligence and even feral disposition, even though there wouldn't be any indications of that.

Among the elves, for example, deformities and other birth defects are very rare due to the way the elven souls function. Because of the way their souls and bodies interact, they have abilities like living abnormally long life spans, wandering souls that have had multiple lifetimes and which elves can have glimpses through during their old age, they can trance instead of sleep among many other unique abilities. As such, elves tend to have a very ethereal and flawless look.

Thus signs of such conditions as a deformity that exists from the elf's birth are seen by many other elves as signs of failed soul transfer between lifetimes, which has caused some damage to or even corrupted the soul of an individual. This superstition is very prevalent and exists in most elven cultures to a certain extent. While mild, less obvious deformities like joint hypermobility may be overlooked, things like missing limbs or abnormally shaped skulls are likely to be considered sinister signs. A child with deformity may be believed to do great things one day, but those deeds are thought to have dark consequences.

On the other hand, sometimes deformity might be seen as a sign of a chosen or a divine blessing. For aasimar that have a closer genetic connection to the source of their divine bloodline are likely to have strange physicality, but this seen more as simply proof of their divine origin, as the celestials are not expected to function with the same anatomy as the humanoids. This would also hold true with other type of worshiped entities: worshipers of demonprince Graz'zt, for example, could see a child with 6 fingers as a messenger of their demonic overlord.

Dispite the public mystifying of the conditions though, it is quite typical, however, that people who get to know and spent time with those with birth defects learn eventually consider the person just like anyone else with their own unique strengths and challenges.

Type

Physiological

Origin

Mutated

Cycle

Chronic, Congenital

Rarity

Rare