Relative elven age

Posts : 41 Join date : 2010-08-24

With Andraliel and Cereanden no longer being the only elven characters, some guidelines need to be made about elven age in relation to human age.

I'm not a big fan of asking characters how old they are in dog years or any other kind, but it might be useful to have some way of knowing how many years worth of life experience an elven character has if he or she is young, middle-aged, old or just a child.

It's been suggested that elves age 12 times slower then humans. For myself this is problematic, since I find the thought of elven characters spending so much longer in infancy troublesome. This problem is most often circumvented with elves maturing faster until they reach adulthood.

So what do you think guys? Feel free to post a reply, even if you don't have an elven character at the moment.

Guest

The currect proposal is: x3 until they reach the age of 18, from that thay foward it's x12.
Btw, this is State, I'm using my character name here.

Posts : 41 Join date : 2010-08-24

I have a counter proposal. Since I haven't really seen an elven child, nor an elf who really looked old in RoM, I'd be ready to assume age is something very different to them. While human life is about growing old, mentally and physically, and what one uses his limited time with, elves (obviously long-lived, almost immortal by human standards) on the other hand seem to have a more steady culture of perseverance and personal development over time. The notions of honour and etiquette are strongly present in early quests and the backdrop for RoM's "elven champions" is the recovery of lost battle skills from the continent of Candara, which seems like a distant goal to say the least.

My suggestion is we have elves mature at approximately the same rate as humans, possibly with less temper tantrums and other such hallmarks of human moodyness, in a sheltered environment -to explain the lack of child NPCs- and upon reaching adulthood start progressing on their chosen career paths. Of course, elves are individuals. Many would be champions (like Labio and Walogowbi) seem to act like human teenagers, which would seem understandable.

As for the the question of longevity, we have some hints when combining the official site lore:
http://www.runesofmagic.com/en/articles,id182,0,history_elves.html
And the history book, given to champions by master Radulov:
https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img585/9883/rascrnshot2010111302301.jpg

Now I'm going to speculate a bit, feel free to call me on that later, but I see no other way. Since Palun'Aik seems to have passed away peacefully, I will assume he was nearing the end of his lifespan some 50 years ago from now. It's noted that approximately 1000 years ago the elves lived through the first twin kings, thus I'll take it as roughly the birth date of king Isnasil. With no mention of him meeting an untimely end, we can assume rulership to have been passed on to Palun'Aik when Isnasil passed away. Thus, I'll divide the 1000 years into two reigns of almost 500 years. If we assume human kings live something close to 80 years, we have a multiplier.

Elves have lifespans roughly six times longer then humans.

I don't think this is a major concern to any of our current characters, but with the same logic, I'd say elves degenerate physically only during the last decade or so of their lives. After all, there aren't even old faces for playable elves.

Posts : 41 Join date : 2011-01-18

This was posted on The RP Faction (by me)
It is just another idea I wanted to toss into the ring.

Quote:
The life span of elves has been a hot debate for years. For purposes of role playing, to make things simple, perhaps we could stick with AD&D 2nd edition. It says the life span if an elf is 1200 to 1500 years, but usually at around 800 they wander off and just disappear.

If we give humans a life expectancy of 100 years, we could very easily say for every 1 year a human ages, an elf ages 12-15 years. So with some quick math, it is easy to calculate the age of an elf, compared to the human timeline. In other words, an elf who is, say, 540 years old, would be equal in life to a 40 year old human. (40 x 13.5)

If your elf is supposed to be equivellent to a 22 year old human, 22 x 13.5 = 297 years old. (The 13.5 is the middle of the 12 to 15 hundred year span)

OR, if you wanted to end the elfs life at the 800 year mark, (when they typically wander off and disappear) simply multiply the human age you want by 8. Now our 22 (human) year old elf would be 176 years old. There is a 121 year difference between the two methods, but thats only 8 or 9 years by human standards.

Posts : 44 Join date : 2010-11-23

I wish this topic would get some clarity.

I'm thinking of Dan, he was brought up by humans. Did he grow to be an adult like the rest of the kids or did it take him longer? Does he look like an adult but is still a minor in heart? Is there a possibility that Dan's 400 hundred year old frat boy?

So. Will it take 15-20 years to become an adult for an elf or what?
And elves living hundreds and hundreds of years have always troubled me.

Please make a ruling to this matter. Thanks!

Posts : 41 Join date : 2010-08-24

It's obviously a problematic topic that makes heads ache. And it doesn't make things any easier that many prefer to cut through the issue by inserting elven age from a more defined system like LotR or D&D. The fact is, RoM has very little lore to begin with and elven age is no exception. All we are left with is conjecture and guesswork. I challenge anyone to do more thorough research than on my previous post. If you do, I will happily assume any discovered knowledge on the subject. Really, I will!

However as it stands, you will be best off being vague about the ages of your elven characters to avoid conflicts. Of course, should one character have a storytelling need to determine some age related things for his race, I don't see why we wouldn't be mature enough to let him/her overrule those characters who were just "elven adults" for the purposes of their own stories anyway.

» For elves or elven-likes :D