Temple Kits

The children born of Glaseahn priests and priestesses with Glaseah outside their order. A method of compensating for the low reproductive drives of the race. there's lots of info about this in Heartskein, starting in Chapter 5.

Procedure

An individual goes to the local temple to request addition to the queue for available surrogates, after which they are assigned to several days' worth of information sessions in order to prepare them to make better choices about how many kits they want and how involved they want to be with the temple surrogate. Afterwards, the individual is set loose to await their turn in the queue.

Reminders

"Once you reach a certain age, the temple contacts you for genetic counseling, and you're encouraged to have a family, with or without a partner. [....] They don't force you to do anything, they just want you to start thinking about it when you're young and energetic, I assume because kits require a lot of chasing around."

Gifts of the Goddess

"Usually genetic material is held at the Breath facility, where we have the lab and most of the crèches, and requests from local siv'ts are routed to them. On new worlds where there's going to be a permanent Glaseah population over a certain size, you need both a siv't and a sanctified lab and storage facility."

The Goddess's gift is a medical stasis/containment unit, containing a block of genetic donations. The one destined for the Ingleside siv't is sculpted into the shape of a chest formed by curling loops meant to represent the Goddess's breath. The indicator lights run along the curves in blue and white. The chest is mounted on a single sturdy pole twined with blue and silver cords, and there is a soft fabric cover for it, used at night.

Creation

"The priests and priestesses donate their genetic material to be used as a template for requested kits. They take your genetic material, add someone else's, correct for inbreeding and massage out flaws, and then graft some random elements on to invite the Goddess into the process. It's all anonymized; not even the priests know who contributed to which request."

Pick-up

Vasiht'h met his newborns in the welcome room. On arrival, a priest in the reception area used a wand to do a genetic scan, then sent him to a small private room where he was handed his babies by a priestess. The room had a chair (non-rocking, unfortunately) where Jahir sat. The check-out procedure involved a class on infant care, where they were given slings, a sterilizing wand, diapers, and other supplies, then two more priests deployed their wands to check that father and children were genetically matched, and logged the children as claimed.

Attitudes Toward the Kits

"The anonymity and the random changes make it so that all the temple kits are... just that. Temple kits. We say that the Goddess is their other parent. [....] Culturally, no one thinks anything of it. The narrative for the unbelievers tends to be 'my parent wanted me so much that he wasn't willing to give up the possibility of having me just because he hadn't found the right person to pair with.'"