Need Inspiration: How to Slow-Trickle Info to the Party

[Chimera245]

Character concept: A Final Fantasy white mage-styled healer cleric with a "friendly, caring, slightly ditzy village girl" vibe. Whose patron deity is an eldritch cosmic horror from beyond existence.

I need a way to have the nature of her deity slowly revealed to the other players rather than just "Bam! She worships the Screaming Tentacle Brain!"

How can I best hold out and drop clues bit by bit?

More background:
Her deity, ("The Unknown", domain "What Lies Beneath", precept "suffering") represents all things too alien for a human mind (or elven, or dwarven, etc.) to comprehend. It is not evil. Evil is something humans can comprehend.
It has goals for the material plane, but they are not things like "destroy the world" or "enslave humanity" or the like.
Most clerics strive to better understand their deity and their deity's goals and motivations to better work their will in the world.
However, she recognizes that it is by definition *impossible* to do so with her deity.
To use a metaphor, most clerics learn to see better in the dark. She's learning instead to navigate without sight at all.
This means she actually has trouble explaining her religion to others. People typically don't take you seriously when you answer too many questions about your religion with "I don't know".

Her appearance is that of a typical Final Fantasy white mage, right down to the white robes lined with red triangles, and the oak staff for a weapon.
Her hair hides one eye. Her armor is chainmail, but you can't see it under her robes.

If you were to look under her hair at her other eye, there's a horrible scar, and possibly a strange, non-human eye there. (I haven't decided yet...)
And if you look under her robe, (you perverted jerk) you find her "chainmail" is really just an actual chain wrapped around her body in weird geometric chain-knots. (most people think she's just a little clumsy, but it's hard to move right in those chains...)Some strange tattoos, maybe some more scars...

If it helps, the other two party members worship another god, "The Great Sheep" (don't ask) and mistakenly believe that she also serves that god. Partly because of her fluffy, curly, wool-like hair, partly because the ranger had gotten a vision from The Great Sheep involving my character.

So, Slow Reveal: ideas how to.

[Pleh]

You're using cliches. By itself, this will put players into the mindset that there's something being hidden or nothing worth investigating. Either way, the moment they sense that "there's more than meets the eye" they'll assume the worst (likely not be far off from the truth if they do) just as a precaution.

What you need are a series of red herrings. You need to hide a bunch of interesting things in this character so every time they grow a little closer to the character, her depth is justified by the other things they are learning about her so they don't keep wondering why the GM wants us to focus on this character.

"Oh, she has a troubled childhood. That's what she's hiding. Moving on."

"Oh, it lead to some bad relationships. That's it? Well, there's two of these now. Better keep my eye out for the next chapter of her story."

[Florian]

I need a way to have the nature of her deity slowly revealed to the other players rather than just "Bam! She worships the Screaming Tentacle Brain!"

Is there any reason why that should actually matter?

[Knaight]

You're using cliches. By itself, this will put players into the mindset that there's something being hidden or nothing worth investigating. Either way, the moment they sense that "there's more than meets the eye" they'll assume the worst (likely not be far off from the truth if they do) just as a precaution.

What you need are a series of red herrings. You need to hide a bunch of interesting things in this character so every time they grow a little closer to the character, her depth is justified by the other things they are learning about her so they don't keep wondering why the GM wants us to focus on this character.

As the GM this would apply, but Chimera245 is playing one of the PCs in a game someone else is GMing. Different rules apply there - if you're playing a character with any apparent depth, it will be assumed not to be a bit part. More than that there's a lot of assumed interaction, as there's no need to assume that the GM is trying to push focus on a particular character who seems like a bit part: The PCs are in focus by default.

[Pleh]

As the GM this would apply, but Chimera245 is playing one of the PCs in a game someone else is GMing.

Ah. Missed that part. Pardon me

[Chimera245]

Thank you, I didn't even think of red herrings.

On that topic, how long do you think I could distract the party with math?
As in, I saw a lot of "The Unknown"'s unknowable eldritch lore bordering against regular knowable non-eldritch lore at some of the more hard-to-envision mathematical concepts. Like infinity, four-dimensional shapes, hyperbolic geometry, etc. Even her holy symbol is a model of a tesseract. (also known as a hypercube, a four-dimensional analog of a regular old three-dimensional cube, for those who don't know.)

If "The Unknown" has its in-game focus put on its unknowability, and not on its flaming eyeball-teeth, I may be able to draw it all out longer. Does that seem like sound logic?

[Arbane]

Maybe spell choice? I don't know what Cleric spells would also be found in Call of Cthulhu, but look for those. (Is Black Tentacles even on the cleric list?)

[Steel Mirror]

Is your character trying to hide this at all, or is it more something that the rest of the PCs will misunderstanding about her at first, but which she won't actively be trying to obfuscate? Her own intent will be a big decider in what kinds of things make sense to throw in as foreshadowing.

[Chimera245]

Misunderstanding. She feels no need to hide it, she just has trouble describing the indescribable, on top of being a bit shy, slightly ditzy, and socially awkward.

She simply strives to understand as much as she can about the more exotic parts of existence, and learn to work around whatever she can't, and channel the power of The Unknown to feed the hungry, heal the injured, cure the sick, make everyone's lives better, klarbize the Fnerka-p'toids, bring f(x) to the e^i(pi), and java.null.exception(ia!ia!CthulhuFtaghnR'lyeh)