Quote:
Originally Posted by Opellulo
True! And this opens up another Fantasy trope on how everybody knows things that happened millennia ago but technology and society meanwhile remained just about the same.
Technically this could work if you consider the extended lifespan of those ever present "Eldar Races" but once you put in a standard TL3 human in the mix the setting loses any believably: in just the time for a teenager elf to reach adulthood men should have already reached industrial revolution era.
The difference in time perception is one of the coolest aspect never exploited in fantasy. It's millennia everywhere, always middle ages! I have started to cope with this boring aspect deluding myself that fantasy worlds are set on Mercury.
|
It's a trope that I think gets broken more often that you think, though it's a very useful and fun one to hew to when playing around in the DF world. Even then, just because technology hasn't advanced in the past 3000 years doesn't mean that humanity isn't about to start that swing, and humanity in the real world cruised along with relatively similar technology levels for quite a few thousand years compared to today. It's even modeled that between stone-age TL0 and medieval TL3, that's a delta of 4 covering several millenia, and then from the Renaissance (TL4) to today (TL8), is 5 tech levels in ~500 years, give or take.
Tolkien's ages aren't radically long, it definitely wasn't always the middle ages from the beginning, and the fourth age is ostensibly the age of men and the IR is right around the corner.
Wheel of Time has been out long enough that spoilers don't apply, and despite its flaws the story does explain that the world has been through a couple of apocalypses which have knocked back tech to the point where the world had to re-crawl the whole way back up from the stone age.
NK Jemisen's Broken Earth is another excellent one that breaks the trope.
Anyway, embrace that truth! That teenage elf, right now, IS going to see the IR take place, though they don't know it yet. But the human PC's won't, and that's fine too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered
On the other hand, since either you have a population explosion or birthrates equal death rates, the elf mother probably has a gaggle of aunts, sisters, and friends who have only that one little elf baby to ooh and awe over, and to help raise.
EDIT: never mind, they have the kid born 15 years ago still around. The math keeps the same number of babies around.
|
Oh, this is a bit of cool society building that can really shape how elf society could work. Say, in an elf community, that over the centuries (rather than millenia elves) out of 100 elves born only 1 or 2 makes it to the 'elder' caste for a variety of reasons. So when an elder elf does die in the community, of old age or whatever as long as it's a community thing, it has an effect on the community kind of triggers a minor baby boom. Be it the hormonal responses to grief, a hard-wired response to community size, or something else entirely (they are magical after all), the elf community self-regulates its population.
Opellulo, I also want to reinforce that I agree with you that playing with the perception of time is a GREAT storytelling tool.
Think about elves that will only have three generations. An elf may know that their father was born at the beginning of time, and their child will see the end of time. That's it, only three generations. The first, the middle, and the last. And they know it! It's part of the fabric of the universe, and these beings are tuned into that and are part of that magic.