So how does Veeky Forums age their elves?

>Why are elf threads filled with people that don't know shit about elves?
Because people desperately want elves to suck to cater to their fragile ego, so they gladly latch on to the most implausible bullshit.

>Because people desperately want elves to suck to cater to their fragile ego, so they gladly latch on to the most implausible bullshit.

This. Weird as it seems, a lot of posters on this board are so beta that their only method of alleviating their crippling self-image issues is to shitpost about an imaginary species that they can tell themselves that they're superior to.

>a midlife crisis that lasts for a century

pretty good way to explain Feanor

Elf spend about the same amount of time as humans do in infancy, but after their third year they grow much slower. Their equivalent of our "fourth" and "fifth" years take two years and five years, respectively, and after that they grow at 1/10th of the rate of human beings.

> 0 - no different from human baby but much weaker because of poor healthcare in the forest
> 1-6 months - after a druidic ritual, either dead and devoured by wild beasts, or stronger and healthier than any human child, happens 50/50
> 7 months- 12 years - like a human child
> 12-30 years - like a human teenager of 12-19
> 30-70 years - young adult, like 20-29 human
> 70 and older - adult, ageing 1 year for every 9 years spent in the forest and 1 year for every 4 years spent outside
> Between 230 and 430 - youthful-looking senior, ageing 1 year per 4 human years
> Between 310 and 510 - very old and wrinkled

Infancy is about the same as humans, but they stall at preadolescence until they're around 20, then don't finish puberty until close to 30. After that they can expect to live to over 200, experiencing the feebleness of old age near the end as anyone else would, they just take longer to get there.

>They live absurdly long lives and reach physical maturity quickly
That's unnatural.

(not saying it's bad or complaining about "realism", it's just that nature IRL doesn't work like this. simple observation)

>it's just that nature IRL doesn't work like this.
It's not disadvantageous unless your rate of reproduction means that your species wipes out all available resources and consequently starves to death. But even that can be balanced out. Nature is full of that shit. Foxes start getting more numerous, eat lots of rabbits. When there's too few rabbits left for the foxes, the foxes start dying out. When the number of foxes has dropped, the rabbit population recovers and offers plenty of food for the remaining foxes.

Elves reach physical maturity faster than humans but don't have any form of society.

Okay, how long does it take for crocodiles, turtles and sharks, all creatures that can live for hundreds of years, to reach maturity?

Only correct answer

Don't forget trees.

They age like humans but spend the first hundred years or so of adulthood like neets, learning the family traditions, practicing various things, growing gardens, hunting, magic what ever. They are kept pretty sheltered by their parents and are rarely let out. Most females only have 1-3 kids in their lifetime before they become infertile.

Age as humans do until puberty would set in; then grow until fully grown at about 25-30. Puberty itself is of course different from humans: male elves do not get beards and do not develop deep voices like humans do, but their voices do change and become more melodic, yet more commanding. Female elves develop similarly to human females, but their voices change in ways similar to the males.
From age 30 or thereabouts, they are fully grown and aging essentially stops. The oldest elves are 10000+ years and look more or less like they did at 30.

Elf pregnancy is a difficult matter. A significant percentage of female elves cannot become pregnant again after their first time giving birth, and almost none can after say their third. Also, sadly, for some reason it is common for elf babies to be stillborn. This means that despite their long lives, there are not that many elves.

The only one of those I have a number for of the top of my head is sleeper sharks, which take 150 years to reach sexual maturity.

Elves age half again as long as humans. So to about 150. But they have better medicine which keeps them healthier for longer and increases the average life span more, and they tend to exaggerate how long they live for so the perception is they live to be twice as old.

There is nothing wrong with elves having to change diapers for 15-20 years. The only reason it seems weird is relative timeframes of species.

Imagine how weird it must be to say, a species of fast lived intelligent Goblins, who cannot believe we have to change our children's diapers for 2-3 years when they are done within a few months.

Most of those have a very real issue in that only a small portion of those born will ever make it to maturity.

Crocodiles take around 15 years to reach sexual maturity, slightly longer than humans (13), but never stop growing. Their most generous life expectancy is around 100.

The giant tortoise, currently the oldest living land animal at 183 years, takes all the way until 30 to reach sexual maturity, over twice as long as humans. Some reports say one reached as old as 255.

Great white sharks are funny in that previous estimates used to set them at 13 for sexual maturity and 30 life expectancy, but modern ones put them at 30 to sexual maturity and 70 life expectancy. Greenland sharks, possibly the oldest vertebrate in the world at over 500, take 150 years to reach sexual maturity.

So yes, it seems maturing quickly and living forever is unnatural.

Elves are bound the fabric of the world. They are not mortals in the conventional sense and immortality is more of a curse for even in death they shall roam the world for all eternity. You should no be awed by them. You should pite them.

>You should pite them
Cite them? Pipe them? Kite them?

It depends on the setting, of course, but my elves normally live between 950 and 1,000 years. Toddler to puberty (i.e. childhood), by comparison, only takes a little bit longer than humans, normally lasting until 14 years old, as opposed to the humans' 12. Adolescence, however, lasts until around 90 years old; or between 100 and 120 for late bloomers. After that, they see very little change, if not none at all, until roughly 800 or 850 years old, at which point their hair begins to grey slightly and they start to take on a few distinguished wrinkles. Of course, even these changes are nowhere near as severe as they are for an elderly human, though elves rapidly age as they approach within a decade or two of their deathbed, looking like an octogenarian or nonagenarian when they finally die of old age.

As you can see, I've actually put some thought into this; I even have similar age comparisons for dwarves and gnomes in many of my settings. Generally speaking, I prefer my elves to be a little more alien than most, and though a few of my players have complained about this in the past: an elven adventurer, like any other adventurer, is someone who has reached the full age of maturity. This means that, if you want to play an elf brought up by humans or within human society, they are very much someone that has born witness to the passing of nearly or over a handful of human generations, and that most of their childhood friends are assuredly dead, or at least so far beyond their experiences that they are no longer friends.

Short and fast-breeding live encourage evolution. The fast-producer breeders have more generations behind you than you and are thus more evolved, perfectly adapted to their envoirment and capable of adapting themselves faster. It is true, it is mostly mammals that become old and decay. But that also gifted mammals with the gift of faster evolution.

They don't age at all, they simply appear as whatever age they want to be. The only exception is younger elves, who don't have as much control over their self-image and appear as children up until they are able to recognize themselves as adults, usually around the time that other elves begin to view them as such.

Insects say hi

You sound like an insufferable GM

Most animals dont die of old age. They die because thy can no longer support their own weight. This is even worse with an insect with their exosqueletons and simple breathing methods.

And yet insects still adapt faster. Guess the old age thing was one of the leftover, shittier gifts

Oh, bugger off. It's not like you can't have human friends. In fact, you would have had far more friends than others. It's just that, in regards to those human friends you initially grew up with, you would have long outstripped their lifespans, as an obvious consequence of their differing physiologies.

It takes 25 years for an elf to become the equivalent of a 15-year-old human, or in other words they age only about 60% as fast to that point.

From 25 to 110 is the elf equivalent of a human aging from 15 to 30, or about 17.65% the speed of humans. So a 75-year-old elf is the equivalent of a human around 24 years old.

From 110 to 400 is then the equivalent of a human aging from 30 to 70, or 13.79% of the speed. So a 387-year-old elf is the equivalent of a human who's a little over 68 years old.

From age 400 on, each year is only about 10% that of a human. So a 410-year-old elf is like a 71-year-old human; a 500 year old elf is like a 75-year-old human. This continues until the elf dies of old age, usually some time around 450 or so.

Elves don't just age slower, though, they age *differently*. Elves aren't actually capable of getting pregnant or impregnating others (as relevant) until age 40, at which point elves start looking for a spouse. The elf cultural norm is that you have a kid around age 50-60, and raise that kid until they themselves are ready to have a kid (around when you're 100-110). While raising your kid, that is your only job: your own parent financially supports you and your kid (their grandkid).

Once your kid is married and expecting a child of their own, that's when you're considered an adult and expected to go out and get a job.

Some elves don't like that prospect and so instead take up the life of an adventurer around this time. This effectively means that you're abandoning your kid, so these elves are considered scum by other elves, unless they're at least sending back money to their kids and grandkids regularly.

Reptiles have slower metabolism. Warm-blooded, fast-breeding, active lifestyles makes lives shorter, particularly if you are small prey.

Age similar to humans, reach stasis, and at the end of natural life rapidly age and shrivel up. Adulthood is a more social state than a biological one.

No, until 5 to 7 years. The parents usually pay someone to do this in their place.

>Imagine living in a world with desperately needy girlfriends. It's fucking exhausting.

I feel frustrated just reading that.

I usually have my elves somewhere from 150-250-400 years max. I'm writing a short story set in my world where A 45 year old Half-Elf has a (so far not sexual) relationship with a 17 year old Sun Elf. It's a weird relationship to write since the Sun-Elves are tan, giant-eared primitive desert-dwellers and his love for her is a mix of "Protecc" and fatherly care as well as a sexual love.

>Are elven parents supposed to change diapers for 15-20 years?

Yes, its part of why they have stupidly low reproductive rates

Normal growth rates. Elves stop aging around 16 to 25, getting fully mature like a 20something but not suffering the age-related decay that humans get even in their teens. Then they become ageless.

Teeth continue to be shed and replaced every ten years. Scars fade in months to years. Anything short of a totally severed limb will regenerate (but it takes decades).

>all elves are the same

>waaah why is my mary sue not a demigod?

In very general terms, the more intelligent a creature is the longer it spends as an infant. Since elves are more or less of the same intelligence as humans (slightly smarter in some settings), they probably grow up as fast as humans as well.

However, due to their long lifespan they probably have a much more extended concept of childhood than humans. It's likely that they'll have much more cultural if not biological "phases" a child goes through before it's considered an adult. In all primitive cultures, a child is considered an adult in a biological and social way at the same time: During or right after puberty. Sometimes this involves some kind of rite of passage, but those rites tend to happen around the same time the child become a biological adult. When taking modern Western civilization as an example (but this goes for most modern, developed civilizations) childhood lasts even beyond puberty. It's quite normal for a child to reach puberty at age 12 and not be considered a full adult until age 18 or 21.

I'm assuming that elves follow human patterns in these things, so something similar goes with them, except in a far more extreme form. For example, an elf boy might enter puberty at age 12, but not be considered a full adult at age 200. The years between that would be filled with much the same things that fill the lives of the average high-school kid, except with more elf flavor. Like learning all those arcane elf-songs by heart and shit.

Orson scott card already did that one

>how does Veeky Forums age their elves?
in the cellar

Mine don't age. They're born functionally adult and change apparent age depending on what they need to be right then.

Someone post the thing about how fucked menstrual cycles are.

...

>Are elven parents supposed to change diapers for 15-20 years?
Yeah, that explains why the race that lives hundreds of years hasn't completely overrun the world.

I'd say it's the same but their adulthood lasts much longer
Say, biologically speaking for humans it's like (simplified)
0-12 infant
12-60 adult
>60 old man
for elves, biologically speaking, infancy would be the same, but adulthood would be much much longer

You know, 2000 years ago a boy would be a man at 15, fucked a whore/his wife/other man's wife and joined the army/learn a trade. He would be a patriarch at 25 ish and by his mid 40s he would be either an ancient or an established head of a community. He certainly wouldn't live past 80.

Nowadays we're only legally an adult at 18, but we're functionally one at our late 20s when we're no longer aprentices/students. Nowadays a man is in his mid 30s and would be considered old by late 50s or early 60s and can only enjoy retirement a decade after that (if at all) and we would live to a century heathy.

Are we the elves of our ancestors?

Elves take about 40 years to physically mature, and about 75 years to mentally mature. They're sexually capable at about 30, but elves don't have the same hormonal cocktail that human teenagers do, so are rarely sexually active before 50.

Elves are raised not just by their parents, but by vast families extending up multiple generations. They are considered immature until their first century.

They tend to spend their second century rebelling against the extremely conservative and patient elf culture, and often travel the world sometimes even going so far as to run away from what can sometimes be a stifling environment.

Assuming they survive, young elves who return back to their homeland are one way that elven culture changes and evolves over time, otherwise it would become quite static.

Elves are effectively immortal in regards to aging, and only die from violence and disease and appear to be youthful adults essentially forever, though large amounts of stress and disease can make them appear middle aged.

Particularly ancient elves of several millennia tend to be rather eccentric and occasionally quite mad. Sometimes they craft bizarre things, and sometimes they starve themselves.

Elves prefer not speak of such things, and will not to speak the names of the dead as it is believed to summon back the spirit from their place in the cycle.

you type in a real annoying way dude. neat lore though

>Are elven parents supposed to change diapers for 15-20 years?

Yes? Why would they care when they live for hundreds of years?

>As you can see, I've actually put some thought into this

/iamverysmart/

Sounds consistent. I like it.

>Imagine living in a world with desperately needy girlfriends. It's fucking exhausting
No joke that would trigger my anti-social behaviour and autism so hard i may even have a bad time

They only crap once a week, so it's not so bad.

How would an elf look in stockings?

I personally like to have my elves age and sexually develop about the same as humans until their 20's-30's, where their age and growth then drastically stagnate. Due to the long-lived nature of their race, the primary power structure is based on age or experience (the two of course, not being mutually exclusive). There is difficulty determining a maximum age, as most elves that live long enough to pass their nine-ten hundreds usually long since perish from disease or attacks, hole themselves away to an unknown fate, or are accepted as true wisdom-bearers (referred to as Eternals by shorter-lived races) and either revered or kind of just accepted that they will probably be around forever, depending on how much they choose to contribute to their society.

While they can have children as early as their teens, it is generally frowned upon or even ostracized by "civilized" elven societies as being an obvious tell for an elf's lack of emotional restraint and weak willpower to resist their baser desires. From this they have a significantly longer timespan before other elves consider a youngling to be emotionally mature, usually rounded to a century to coincide with the peak lifespan of any human (the primary interracial option due to their usual abundance) that might catch their attention.

Unrelated to the matters of aging, the elves' superior vision and hearing is believed to have developed due to or in relation with the intrinsic youthful beauty of the race, noticing the smallest slights to differentiate between themselves, where another race might find elven family members to look or even sound identical despite decades or centuries of age separating them. Style, fashion, and speech thus becomes important when interacting with such races.

By using a full sentence structure and formal punctuation on a website that actively discourages such things? Yes, I know. But thanks, I guess?

I'm not smart or even right; it doesn't take a smart person to think about something using their own understanding of things, and I'm not the only one who did just that in this very thread, obviously. But again, thanks, douche.

So?