Age, Unaging, and Dragons

[Alden Loveshade]

Ordinarily, the Age spell (M154) would not work on someone who has Unaging (B95): "You never grow old naturally and cannot be aged unnaturally."

However, almost everyone with Unaging does age to some point--otherwise they'd be forever newborn infants or a single fertilized egg cell (and please, no debates about "right to life, right to choose" here).

Dragons are a special case in GURPS Banestorm (227-228)--they have Unaging but continue to grow throughout their lives.

So here are two questions:

1) If someone successfully casts Age for one year on a 5-year-old boy who has Unaging, would he now have the form of a 6-year-old boy?

2) If someone successfully casts Age on a dragon with Unaging (say many repeated castings as dragons grow slowly), would the dragon get bigger and stronger?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Alden_Loveshade

Ordinarily, the Age spell (M154) would not work on someone who has Unaging (B95): "You never grow old naturally and cannot be aged unnaturally."

However, almost everyone with Unaging does age to some point--otherwise they'd be forever newborn infants or a single fertilized egg cell (and please, no debates about "right to life, right to choose" here).

Dragons are a special case in GURPS Banestorm (227-228)--they have Unaging but continue to grow throughout their lives.

So here are two questions:

1) If someone successfully casts Age for one year on a 5-year-old boy who has Unaging, would he now have the form of a 6-year-old boy?

No. You cannot be aged unnaturally. Otherwise the sentence could be reduced down to "You never grow old".

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Alden_Loveshade

Ordinarily, the Age spell (M154) would not work on someone who has Unaging (B95): "You never grow old naturally and cannot be aged unnaturally."


So here are two questions:

1) If someone successfully casts Age for one year on a 5-year-old boy who has Unaging, would he now have the form of a 6-year-old boy?

2) If someone successfully casts Age on a dragon with Unaging (say many repeated castings as dragons grow slowly), would the dragon get bigger and stronger?

As noted, the Age spell is a form of unnatuiral aging. However, its important to note that "age" here is being used to cover two unrelated phenomena.

One is perhaps better described a "maturation" rather than "Aging". Maturation is reaching physical maturuty.

Aging a year for Gurps purposes it "being one year closer to the next Aging threshold and having to roll for Aging if past an Aging Threshold".

Note the Peter Pan treatment6 in Bio-tech. It delays maturation but does not affect Aging. Even if used for decades the suer still rolls for aging at 50 years (chronological) even if never passed 11 physiologically.

So a regular 5 year old hit with an Age spell for 1 year does his first Aging Roll at 49 (chronological) but become no more mature.

The 5 year old and the dragon with Unaging have no Aging Thresholds and so wouldn't be affected even if thsi wasn't "Unnatural aging" by definition.

What you're looking for is a "Speed Matuation" Spell which is almost but not quite (if you're post fetal) in the spells section in Bio-tech.

[Alden Loveshade]

Thanks for your opinions. The "Speed Maturation" Spell sounds interesting. My mage might research that.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Alden_Loveshade

Thanks for your opinions. The "Speed Maturation" Spell sounds interesting. My mage might research that.

Useful outside of gruesome curses too. Livestock from birth to market in record time. Similar to the plant growth and alchemical maturation spells, so it's not completely out of thin air.