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Elves/Kelari and Age
Topic Started: Apr 23 2012, 03:36 AM (802 Views)
Taraela
Bard
So Rih and I were having a bit of a discussion today about Kelari aging. Because it's something of course both of us are/were working on for bio (I will kill whoever decided to gank that for "bathroom break", seriously) reasons.

So some sources/things we used when deciding for ourselves the ration of how many elven/Kelari years equate to human years was this line, from the quest reward, Nalthema:

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...as well as the note, "Age 12". The child's rough scrawl suggests this was written by someone just learning to write, a reminder of how slowly elves age.

So true to fantasy elves are aging slower, typical D&D, Tolkien, etc.

The issue is how much. Well a normal child typically starts really learning to read and write at 5-6ish? Or whatever age you go to kindergarten, I guess. For Sylver that would make it 12 Elf years for every Human year.

However making a guess can't be done on this just alone, from the same book:

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He says I read and write better than any other Kelari my age.

So we also know that Sylver is a bit advanced for his age, so 2:1 may not be correct. At this point it's looking for other sources and when talking with someone over at BoF, they said they saw somewhere that 300 seems to be the lifespan (again a rather typical one), and if you assume maybe Humans get lucky in this world and call it 100 (for old age, barring meeting your end on the end of a pointy sword), it would be about 3:1. That seems like a bit much--Sylver writing at 12, and other Kelari comparable at 18.

So as a sort of middle ground, Rih and I went with 2.5:1. So, you'd see an elf with comparable skills at 15, rather than 18.

Any other sources, thoughts, etc on this?

(PS--This really is another forum open for discussion and all)
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Shaeyn
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I hesitate to comment on this as I've been able to gather very little actual lore on the subject. But beyond the maturation rate which it seems this is all being based off. There's also the unaddressed issue of longevity.

For some elven lore, as well as lore for many races with long lifespans, it's a fairly common occurance for said race to mature into young adulthood at a relatively rapid pace (when compared to their total lifespan) and then simply stop aging. Or more precisely for the the rate at which they continue to mature/age to slow down to an almost imperceptable rate allowing the race to remain in thier prime for what seems like an inordinately long period of time compared to how long it took them to mature to young adulthood.

However I have yet to see this issue addressed in any in-game lore. So at this time it may be best to ignore such a possibility and simply go with a straight ratio and assume the races mature at a steady rate that holds true across all races equally.
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Vakturil
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Disregard work, acquire lore!

A buried (and locked) official forum post on the topic.

and

An apparent interview with a lore dev about the lifespan of various races among other things.

Copypasta below:

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Question 2: What about racial information? Naming conventions, lifespans, average height and weight kind of
stuff?

Lifespans:

Human: average lifespan of 60 years

Elf: average lifespan of 300 years

Dwarf: average lifespan of 150 years

Bahmi: average age of 100 years
Edited by Vakturil, Apr 23 2012, 10:34 AM.
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Vakturil
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As an aside, I can break out my old 2nd Edition AD&D Complete Book of Elves where the parents end up spending something like a decade changing diapers, if we want another comparison :P
Edited by Vakturil, Apr 23 2012, 10:54 AM.
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Rihatsu
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w00t answers! thank you thank you thank you! at least we have an age range comparison now. so, all that's left is to set the ratio in stone. 1:2.5?
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Taraela
Bard
Quote:
 
So at this time it may be best to ignore such a possibility and simply go with a straight ratio and assume the races mature at a steady rate that holds true across all races equally.

Yes, I should have said--but at least personally, I only see the ratio as being important for giving a sort of developmental guideline up until the point a character reaches their majority. After that...yeah we know very little, and I'll sit with the whole "I'm going to be as pretty as Arwen until the day I die" elf thing. After that--I'm still not entirely convinced that characters in this game age at all, as there are very few npcs that even look old (a couple of human ones, but certainly I don't recall seeing any old looking Elves or Kelari). Of course, that's a lot more work to add in from a developmental part of the game.

(Insert T's nostalgic comment about wanting to created a fat wrinkly character to dance around in the Mos Eisley Cantina in SWG, who gets more tips than the hot younger Twi'leks).

All of this would be a lot easier if we had some idea of the ages for non-Ascended characters in game, but we really don't have much idea. There are a few cases: Orphiel, we know, was old enough to be a tutor in Mathosia for a fairly young Zareph, Aedraxis, and Asha according to one of the books. Now, he is a genius so he could be teaching younger than others, though nothing indicates how old he is when that happened. Although (and I can't remember where this is coming from, except I'm fairly sure that it was mentioned in some Guardian quest bit), it's supposed to be 20 years between that business in Mathosia, and when all the Ascended players (guardians and defiant) are dumped into game. I figure he's got to be at least 40-ish...but hell if I know if he really looks that old.

Quote:
 
An apparent interview with a lore dev about the lifespan of various races

Is that a wiff of doubt I'm smelling? ;) The name generators do certainly match, though they are certainly not the greatest at generating names that best conform to the phonotactics. And certainly, a lot of the NPC names don't follow those conventions either (because a lot are references).

Going by those age guidelines though...makes some characters seem a bit older. ;)

Interesting bit in there about Kelari almost being matriarchal (for their priesthood at least). And at least that seems consistent with all in game material. However, it would be super nice if they said something like, surnames are matrilineal. Would make me happier about playing a wooish, spirit-worshipy people.

Also....can i borrow "copypasta" ? I just think that is the most awesome word! :D
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Taraela
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Dumb moment--Orphiel has got to be older than 40. It was five years of civil war before the ward breaking and all, +20 for us to appear, that's 25 years total, plus how old he was when he took the job (I'll say 20 for no good reason, though I think it's older), plus the amount of time he spent tutoring before the civil war started. Five years? Who knows. At the very least then...50ish?
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Vakturil
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Well, if Sylver was writing at 12 and considered 'advanced', then you're going to have to work out a few things first:

How advanced are we talking? Is he 'attending college after 6th grade' advanced, 'noticeably ahead of his peers' advanced or just 'head of the class' advanced? Considering that the Kelari lore shows them basically cutting deals with spirits to do everything for them, they might not value academics as much as we'd expect from a traditional elven sub-type. Of course, it seems that the High Elves of Telara are/were nomadic for a long time as well, so they might be more akin to wood/wild elves from D&D. Normal intelligence but little interest in book-learning. It's all conjecture unless we can find something else, though.

If the Kelari school their children as RL humans do, then Sylver's development is in line with a 6-10 year old human, where his peers are probably around a 4-5 year old in this area. This supports a slowed rate of maturity, since a human should have those skill in merely 6 years as opposed to the 'advanced' Sylver at 12.

If the Kelari place less emphasis on 'traditional academics' and focus on teaching their children about the spirits and how to deal with them (potentially a more useful skill to your everyday Kelari) then the rate of development is indeterminate from what we have. Hoever, I'd be astonished if a proud culture with a written language would just not get around to teaching their kids how to write for a decade. Now that I really think about it, the whole concept is too far fetched for me to buy, so they probably stick to the long childhood trope for HEs and Kelari. Of course, it's really just a footnote in a bio, so you could always treat Ri's formative years lightly and go back to flesh them out if/when we get more lore.
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Vakturil
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More than a whiff, m'lady B-)

Mainly because it's an older RP forum that's barely been updated since 1.6, so I'm going to take anything I see that's not posted by a Trion employee with a grain of salt, especially when the OP doesn't say who wrote back to him (unless I missed that.)

I do agree about the names. I think they're just going for the 'it kinda sounds like X' names instead of doing anything scholarly. I'd be shocked if it even occurred to them to try. Of course, you could mention that to them and offer your services. ;)

I think the whole matriarchal Kelari thing might be tied to the Drow of D&D with a matriarchal theocracy ruling over them, except full-on-evil as opposed to stereotypical elven arrogance. Sadly, that's the only fantasy matriarchy I can recall. Hopefully they'll explore it more. On a side note, I'd love to see some racial quests that focused on how different groups interacted/murdered one another. A Kelari vs. High Elves chain could be fantastic.

Now the age question intrigues me. There are no dossiers for the NPCs and precious little in the way of information we can glean from lore books and official posts. I tend to place Orphiel's age a bit higher, maybe into the mid 60's. The extra 10 years would give him the opportunity to achieve the status needed to rise to a position importance academically, as well as politically. It also explains why he refuses to leave his tower for almost anything now. Again, I could be missing something, but that's how he comes across to me.

I do agree about the elves/kelari getting the 'pretty until I keel over' treatment. I think it may just be due to the fact that it's hard for artists to portray old-looking elves in a game without making them look withered to the point of seeming undead. In a painted piece or cut scene, sure, but as a character model it's got to be harder.

Oh, copypasta isn't mine. I caught a meme from 4chan and seem to have infected you as well. Dear me. :$
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Taraela
Bard
We know that he is certainly advanced enough to be the first one to successfully really create ascension. Orphiel's dabblings were not so successful. Not to mention he gave us our wonderful planar attunement, and is the go-to guy with any technology-related questions (with Orphiel all locked up in his tower). A lot of that I'm going to assume is not all going to be learnt skills (Creating Ascension 101, meets MW 1 PM, F labs at 8 AM) or we'd have a lot of Sylvers, but a lot more innate talent, which tends to correlate with picking up and learning things much quicker.

But they did have what has to be a fairly rigorous amount of learning--in Anthousa's journal she mentions what she had learned as a child which included science (sadly it looks like I didn't repost that on here, but I'll get on that once I'm back from the shops). She mentioned history, too, I believe, but the point is that for someone who could make pacts with spirits and became a priestess, she did have what sounds like a pretty well-rounded education. What I recall from this book that makes it perhaps not the best to set as a "standard" for all Kelari education is that she mentions her father playing a major part in it, which could almost seem like they're being home schooled, however, I just can't buy into that being it (more for separate reasons, because this day and age at least home schooling still involves a lot of outside people contributing to education through books, or picking up to help teach a topic that a parent may not be able to), there is also this book where we know they are being assigned essays (whether this is by you home schooling parent-teachers, or by a separate teacher in a classroom), so I think it's fair to assume that most Kelari are going to be literate*.

The science bit from Anthousa is also a bit wishy washy since science changes, and given the sort of world they all live it, their science is going to be different than our own, I mean unless you can point me to sourcestone on the periodic table ;) . I'm going to assume certain things are still the same--the scientific method, since at least for the Kelari lore on the main web page, it mentions how younger Kelari have taken to the magitech and aren't as fastidious in their experiments and techniques as the Eth, who apparently get nervous when Kelari are handling things.


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since a human should have those skill in merely 6 years as opposed to the 'advanced' Sylver at 12

Ugh, key emphasis on "should" there. I've had students who still write at that beginning level. :rolleyes


*Okay well, they mention High Elves as being largely egalitarian, and then they also had a ruling family, because you know, that's not like non-egalitarian in the least [/sarcasm]. But some of those things would carry over to the Kelari, who would rather make pacts with spirits and deal on an even footing with mystical beings with powers than just /grovel to them. Plus there was one thing (can't remember where now) I swear that had said how they view others as having to prove their value or....it fades sadly. But I'd see the Kelari as a less class based race, minus the fact that the priesthood is very important, and that they would be more 'favoured' than others.
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