From the Chatlogs
QUESTION
Elemental_Elf
How old is the oldest mortal in your guy's worlds?
ANSWERS
Salacious Angel:
Black Jangwa, servant of Ragamattia, has existed throughout two incarnations of the world. Apart from that, the anatomists replace their parts endlessly, and some have lived for over a millennium.
LordVreeg of Sauroids on Saturday
Dedine moretal.
Venolisia is a human who is a master of the Bridge of SHade. He's been extended to over 800 years...but that's magic.
That was mortals earlier. LordVreeg (literally, this is where my title comes from) is the oldest living being in Celtricia, though less mortal, being an Omwo~.
Steerpike
Haven't wholly pinned down the numbers themselves, but the warlock-priests who consume the divine secretions of the corporeal Wasting God (senile and demented, His body slowly rotting) are several millennia old, while the enigmatic Moth-Kings, somewhere between men and "diabolic phantoms" are well upwards of ten thousand.
Luminous Crayon
There is a mortal who *appears* to have lived for several hundred years, though it's unclear whether this is a result of secret magic, or of trickery.
Weave
In Avernus? If you mean still living mortal, probably upwards of 400 years, but the Dwarf Lord Theomere survived for over 2,000 years off of a legendary artifacts power, if that counts.
In Shattered Spectrum... probably the current Lord Lockspar, who's using body modification and chemical injections to maintain himself into his 150th year, though few would be so quick as to call him "living" anymore.
In Opus, definitely The Authors, who live anywhere between 3 Fables (300 years) to a Tome (500 years).
Nomadic
Probably about 450, haven't really decided yet. Nicu can be quite long lived.
Llum
Anywhere from 105 to really darn old. Depending on the setting.
I'd second Vreeg's request to define "mortal". In Xiluh, the Kunahites' extra-dimensional nature somehow prevents them from working within the typical Xiluh mortality cycle, and the habatei are, at their essence, homunculi. not counting either of them, I'm not really sure yet.
I had actually considered making this thread because I didn't have an answer at the time and now I think I do.
My answer is for Trigalactic Imperium setting since that's what I've been working on lately.
The oldest person in the setting may be a myth altogether. They're sort of like an urban legend. Some people believe that this person exists, others don't. Some suspect that it may actually be different people across the ages pretending to be the same person. Their exact age is uncertain, many claiming that they have just always been around. They would have many names and titles associated with them but one of the more common ones is Charles le Sorcier.
Vreeg always has the most endearing typos.
I have two near-immortal races so this is hard to answer. The Urluq live forever, but can rarely remember the past. The Swarm Gods live in cycles of personalities; one can't remember the one that came before. There might be some especially cunning Swarm Gods who've kept a single persona since their creation.
I am assuming by mortal you meant sentient person. In either case I've been doing a bit more on my setting so I can answer this a little more accurately. The oldest known mortal in my setting is an Ononarim (whalefolk) elder known as Whitechest the Mind Knower (F-kreyug aia ms'Kreeanthiconus in their tongue). He's 930 years old which is especially long lived even for their long lived race. He is the settings ultimate wiseman though finding him proves a challenge in itself for non-Ononarim. Conversing with him is its own challenge as he is 300ft long and speaks in a slow booming voice but it's said that he is the wisest creature in the expanse and his wisdom is a great gift to any who can find it.
For Vernith, it's The Wanderer as far as the populace is concerned, but that's actually a title and outfit that's been passed down for thousands of years as the myth builds. The reality? It's probably just whoever the oldest Elf is at the time - there's no particularly long lived person yet, since the oldest mutant is about 317 - but because of how his mutation works, he could be the first person to outlive an elf.
Daedylon: The Choral King, the First-and-Last, Longest Lived.
Daedylon was the king of all Anthos when they first came from the Lighted Void long ago at the dawn of the Fourth Age. Even that long ago when the Anthos where at the height of their power, Daedylon still surpassed all others. A self-made king by manner of physical prowess, skill at war, and an innate talent for intrigue and diplomacy, the Choral King led his people from their long-forgotten homeworld to Arga and made war with the with all that stood in his way.
A slayer of not one, but three elder gods, Daedylon was cursed by the remaining powers to be the last Anthos to die, at first first a blessing, then a malaise. As time wore on, his body and mind remained, but his soul slowly waned until he was nothing but a tormented husk of a man.
He has been depicted as a handsome and valient king, a frail and scarred and scared wanderer, and a emmaciated harbinger of doom. Yet always he seems to carry a great trumpet-spear, wears a great beard, and sports a single, long braid that wraps around his body seven times.
Even today, many cults under different names and idealogies look to the First-and-Last; some for guidance, some for power, some for darker things. Throughout the last three ages (4th, 5th, and 6th) the Longest Lived has appeared and disappeared, been thought to be powerful figures of history and advisors of the great and mighty. For many, his coming will mark the end of days for the Anthos, if not all of Arga.
Not to derail the thread, but the more I think about this, the closer it seems to come to my gripe with the use of the word "immortal". Immortal, to me, means incapable of dying, and not indefinitely long-lived. I won't go into the rant here, though. If you want it, I'm sure it's somewhere in older threads.
I've never really thought of this particular question before. It does depend a bit on the definition. In CJ, at least, I tend to distinguish entities by mundane/supernatural and racial/unique rather than mortal/immortal - that is, what they can do and how many of them there are rather than how long they live.
The oldest individuals of the mundane races would certainly be the telavai of the Umbril (basically, elder Umbril that transfuse themselves with embalming fluid, mummify themselves, and sustain their consciousness through "magic" and extreme meditative self-awareness), and there aren't any known telavai that are over 200 years old. Of course, if any of them were older, they wouldn't tell anyone, because that would mean they were survivors of the Recentering and this would raise a great deal of potentially unwelcome attention.
I can't answer the question with true accuracy because a lot of characters have deliberately vague backgrounds and histories by design. If the Cult of the Redeemer is correct, for instance, then Enti-Ven Famar is nearly 300 years old, but it hasn't been seen for over two centuries and everyone else considers it to have died a long time ago. I wouldn't want to take any position on whether they're right.
For (the yet-to-be revamped) Amalga, the oldest mortals would be the Dwarven Forefather Kings, the Elder Dragons and the 12 Nef Dewin (Original Elvish Wizards). As for an individual character, well the oldest would probably be Brazel (a Black Dragon) but he's an odd case because he was also a god for a time... So I guess the most normal mortal would be Gyntaf Diafol, an Elvish Necromancer, who regularly leaches the life essence out of other mortals to extend his own life. He's been around for thousands of years.
In (the maybe-soon-to-be-revamped) Aeolond, the oldest mortal would be High King Kenton II who drank the Liquor of Fire and gained (highlander-style) Immortality. He's ruled his kingdom since its birth over 150 years ago.
In InnerSOL, there's no magic, so listing off "the oldest mortal" would be like me listing off the oldest person on Earth (i.e. fun fact but doesn't mean anything to anyone, really).
Hmmm. Interesting question. I think that kind of depends on what you define alive as, for Carbon Skies at least. There are a couple machine intelligences still kicking around that are several millenia old, and a few brains held in stasis that are approaching their thousandth year. As for people up and walking about, with the supposed death of the Empress, Torque would probably be the oldest at 301. There are also a couple other Claimants that are very close to their 300th year.
There might be a couple others who may or may not be older than that, but I'm not telling!
Quote from: Last Action AngelVreeg always has the most endearing typos.
Vreeg is a horrible typist. There is no way around it. You can probably imagine that the online Steel Isle players have to put up with some interesting Vreegism. Sadly.
Quote from: LordVreeg of SauroidsQuote from: Last Action AngelVreeg always has the most endearing typos.
Vreeg is a horrible typist. There is no way around it. You can probably imagine that the online Steel Isle players have to put up with some interesting Vreegism. Sadly.
'Twas most interesting, I think, when we had a character that was named after a Vreegish typo of another character's name.
In Fractal Galaxy, there's a fairly large number of individuals who have extended their lifespan indefinitely through various biological and electronic means (perhaps a few million in a galaxy inhabited by trillions of intelligent creatures), although this is technically immortality. Don't know if the fact that it's artificial counts or not in this case.