Handling Immortality

We want to ask what is not a simple question:  Can a human brain handle 300 years of memories?  If so, what about 500?  What about 1,000?

Assuming a person were to be alive for centuries, could they recall their childhood?  Would they remember long dead people?  Or would they more easily forget all the new people and only recall the old friends now long dead?

There may be some evidence from our world that suggests that after 100 years or so, the human brain has a lot of challenges to continue working at top efficiency.  Now, some of that is probably due to physical deterioration, and magic may correct much of that.  But even so, could a fully functioning human brain retain 100 years of memories?  Is there a point at which it fills up, and if so, what then?

We expect you know what we’re getting at because you read the title.  How would a human brain handle immortality?  Depending on how you handle your immortals, many of them may not factor in here.  If your vampires are possessed by a demonic creature who is really only masquerading as the person they have taken as a host, well, then that is a divine / demonic mind, and says nothing about humans.  What we’re really talking about is what happens to a human if they use magic to keep themselves young, and disease free.  Presumably, this eliminates the inefficiencies that we see in the real world, but what happens then?

We think this should actually be addressed in your game world(s).  As powerful a tool as the human mind is, there must be a capacity to it.  What then.

To be clear, our elves are not based on LotR, but hopefully tied a bit more to folklore.  Because of that, they don’t live for 1,000 years.  But if they did, what then?  If a race were intended to live for 1,000 years, how would they handle their memories?  Would they have the ability to choose which memories were worth saving, and which might not be?  Would it be more random, with them losing some of the oldest memories, even if they preferred to keep those?

On Fletnern, titans can live for a couple hundred years.  In order to handle their incredibly long lives (with or without youth magic), they have a special way of handling the limited capacity of their brains.  In order to give their life purpose, they choose a “role”.  These roles could be almost anything.  Each should be unique.  One titan might be looking to write the perfect heroic poem, while another is hoping to create the best steel alloy, and another might spend his life in contemplation on the sound of one hand clapping.

By focusing their entire lives on their narrow role, they not only challenge themselves to continue living in order to succeed, but they are “giving their brains permission” to forget those things that don’t help them get to their role.  In many cases when (if) they accomplish their role’s goal, they will likely sit down and die shortly thereafter.

As we like to ask about most things - does this matter?  Well, it should matter when you’re trying to set up missions and motivations concerning the undead.  What if half of all vampires become senile within 150 years of their actual birth?  They probably become feral or berserk.  If that’s how you see it, then it certainly matters.

Let’s try a different view - What if liches need to maintain journals, because they have so much magic wrapped up in their heads that they can barely recall things that are going on around them?  Would a lich want to be lord of a castle and all its lands?  We think not, because why would the lich want to think about mundane things when there are so many other things those brain cells could be doing?  and under this scenario, it may not be able to do other things.

We have been focused on brains, memories and thoughts, but there are other aspects involved in immortality.  If your elves live for 1000 years, how many kids can they have?  There were discussions in earlier versions of the die-20 game that the gestation period for elves was probably two years.  Assuming a single elf was “mature” for 400 years, then could they have 200 kids?  Probably.  Now you can suggest that as a race they are too wise to actually go ahead and have 200 kids, but that’s a separate issue.

There are other aspects of near-immortality.  We have always thought that elves who lived 1,000 years demanded a highest fantasy campaign - one where even the common farmer had the time and reason to study druidic magic.  After all, if you were going to be farming for 800+ years, why not spend a couple years studying magic to double the yields?  What magics could the dwarves be using to enhance their mining efforts?  We have them use earth elemental magics, but wouldn’t they all learn a bit of this magic during their 300 year long lives?

This is the problem as we see it.  Something as important as living for centuries is going to completely change a culture.  They can’t just be humans with pointy ears or beards.  There has to be something a lot different about them, and about their society.

 

Does this kind of content interest you?  If so, we hope you will consider joining us in our Small Bites project or the full title of How to Build Your Fantasy World in Small Bites!  We continue to build our community of game masters and world builders, and we would love to have you join us!

This post was written as part of The River of Youth aka Potion Making 4 Noobs aka All About Magical Ingredients & Alchemical Health, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  (These book titles just seem to keep getting longer!)  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing all the ingredients and components used in that really popular book’s spell casting, as well as alchemy and how it can be used for the health and wellbeing of the fantasy community.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 78 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.