Shattered Kingdoms

I suppose this applies to all species, but my question was focused on Elves, Deep-Elves, and now that I think about it, a little about Half-Elves.

When they're 101, they enter the realms, looking the age as a human age sixteen, right? Now here's my question: How does the aging system work before they're old enough to enter the realms? Do they age as a human does until 16, when their growth suddenly stops? Or is the entire aging process x.16 speed? (since they only live to 275(or something) years old)

I figure that the Half-Elves age almost exactly like humans, since they get up to seventeen when they enter the realms (equivolent to human's sixteen) but then does their aging slow dramatically? Does it go along with humans, then they look ninty-whatever the rest of their life when they hit it?

Sorry if it sounds like I'm complaining about incongruencies, I'm not trying to, I'm just trying to figure out how it works for desc changing, and RP-accurate responses when characters ask about my character's child.

Thanks, everyone.

I've assumed that its proportional, and the math checks out, mooore or less, in favor of this for elves vs humans at least.

The short of it is you can think of three elf years as one human year. Just as an oak takes longer to sprout and lives longer than the pine, so too do elves and deep-elves float down the river of time at different speeds than humans.

(Misinforming joke removed )

They are born.

And yes, I would say a teen-aged elf would act like a toddler human.

That's gotta SUCK.

I always though of it that elves age and learn as fast as every other race, but their aging slows right down once they hit their teens so it takes them 250 years to age as much as a human would in 80.

Well, I did it, I crunched some numbers. Brace yourself...

All units are years.

Just the help age table with two new columns: HEY, the Human Equivalency in Years of the 'maturation' time of a character (the time before we play them,) and LISN, Life In Standard Notation (the time we get to play them.)

Looking at this chart, we see that from young to venerable, sprites age in about 2 years what humans age in 1. The maturation rates from birth to young are different, however: note how an elf grows into a playable character at a 6:1 ratio to humans.There are two theories we could conclude from the data:

First, that the races all Come of Age at different rates, and then stay there at even different rates still. While this could make sense, it doesn't feel elegant to me.

Second, that some of the time between when a race is as physically mature as a human is spent before they are a playable character. This means there are years of other things, such as acculturation, that may take place before we emerge from the halls of creation. For example, if we use the LISN rate, an elf is as able-bodied as a 16 year old human somewhere around the middle of her third decade, but seven more are spent becoming part of elf society, learning the enmity or what have you, and becoming the true 'adult' that a 16 year old human is in more than just physical senses of the term. I think this is a more elegant idea, and it gives basis for the longer lived races to start out with less of the starry eyes of youth and more of the far-off glimmer of their enchanted nature.

Take from it what you will. That's my two serious cents on the matter.

For me, I see most of the longer lived races as looking matured at roughly the same time that humans do. The differences would be subtle for a human to discern, but anyone of that race could easily see the youthfulness readily. A 20 year old elf or deep-elf would be a bit shorter than a human, but would otherwise have most of the features that might make them look like an adult. An elf or deep-elf adult would see complexion, height, mannerisms, and other characteristics as being young, where a human would mistake them as a shorter adult. They still need years to fully develop their mentalities, gain wisdom, knowledge, etc., where a human gains all of theirs in a much shorter time span. Just my view on it.

This reminds me of an encounter I witnessed between two elves once. A newbie elf, when asked what her age was, answered "18." The other elf, a vet player, exclaimed, "Eighteen?! You were still sucking at your mother's teet then!" I almost died laughing in real life.

But I've seen a current deep-elf player who RPed that she had a long life before 101. I guess it just depends... but maybe there should be more clarification about "pre-training" life for the longer-lived classes in the help files.

Yeah, I don't treat it like that. That'd be really weird. I treat it like they age normally up until like teenage, and then they just take FOREVER to "grow up".

I didn't know Ealuriel had kids.

When Caeserea's twin (teenaged) kids came to visit Kawl, they knew how to greet everyone in the inn properly. How to curtsey and bow, how to give a polite acknowledgement of others, but basically just spent their time playing around with the big minotaur.

It wasn't very weird at all.