Keidran Lifespan

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ActiveRadarIsCasul
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Keidran Lifespan

#1 Post by ActiveRadarIsCasul »

Is there a difference in lifespans between the different subspecies/races of Keidran, similar to those of real-life canines and felines? Or are their differing traits mostly aesthetic with no effect on lifespan?
I'd really appreciate it if all you dagger and short-sword users could just not turn the battlefield into a pokefest whenever someone shows up with an ultra-greatsword i.e. me

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Re: Keidran Lifespan

#2 Post by Wobaku »

ActiveRadarIsCasul wrote: Thu Apr 26, 2018 5:23 am Is there a difference in lifespans between the different subspecies/races of Keidran, similar to those of real-life canines and felines? Or are their differing traits mostly aesthetic with no effect on lifespan?
I've wondered this too, it seems there's some evidence that fox keidran don't live as long as wolves, for example, more on that below.
Tom stated on a stream not too long ago (so grain of salt and all that, but still relevant to his thinking) that he's retconned the keidran lifespan, and now they typically live to be in their mid twenties, the lucky ones make it to around thirty, and the oldest on record made it to the ripe old age of 46.
Roselyn for example must be at least 25 (Raine is 18, and we see Rose in flashbacks to before Mary knew she was pregnant, and Rose looks pretty much fully grown there) and while she does look old, she doesn't look ancient, in fact i'd say she doesn't look hugely different here to how she did in the dragon masquerade.

And euchre must be even older, yes he says he is 21 but I don't believe for a second he fathered Raine when he was three. Why he would need to lie to Flora about this is a different topic though.

Now Laura is stated to be sixteen during the basitin isles and is pretty much one foot in the grave, this was made back before the age retcon, so I see three possibilites:
1. Fox keidran are short lived even by keidran standards.
2. Foxes have typical/new keidran lifespans, and Laura wouldn't have been depicted as grey and wrinkled as she was if Tom drew that arc now. This also makes her death a bit more tragic, I suppose.
3. Foxes have typical keidran lifespans, but Laura is even older than 16, which makes her relationship with Keith basically a cougar style thing, and makes her personality and stammering mannerisms rather odd. I feel this is the least likely.

Anyway, Natani and Zen are only 3 and 2 years younger than Laura, and I can't see them being ''middle-aged'', so I'm going to say that either Laura being 16 is outdated, or foxes do just have shorter lifespans than wolves.

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Re: Keidran Lifespan

#3 Post by Hulk10 »

Laura didn't seem that old to me. I think the retcon is correct so Laura would be middle aged.
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Re: Keidran Lifespan

#4 Post by Wobaku »

Hulk10 wrote: Thu Apr 26, 2018 2:49 pm Laura didn't seem that old to me. I think the retcon is correct so Laura would be middle aged.
She had pretty prominent crows feet and a fair amount of her hair was grey, she strikes me as the equivalent of a person in their late 50's at the minimum, in fact i'd lean more towards mid sixties. ''One foot in the grave'' probably is too harsh, but she definitely only had a few years left in her. Kudos to Keith for being willing to look past her age though, and Laura really deserved a better life than she got, even if she did kind of ruin Keith's.
And I can't imagine Zen and Natani will be wrinkled and greying in just a couple of years.

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Re: Keidran Lifespan

#5 Post by Hulk10 »

Wobaku wrote: Thu Apr 26, 2018 4:16 pm
Hulk10 wrote: Thu Apr 26, 2018 2:49 pm Laura didn't seem that old to me. I think the retcon is correct so Laura would be middle aged.
She had pretty prominent crows feet and a fair amount of her hair was grey, she strikes me as the equivalent of a person in their late 50's at the minimum, in fact i'd lean more towards mid sixties. ''One foot in the grave'' probably is too harsh, but she definitely only had a few years left in her. Kudos to Keith for being willing to look past her age though, and Laura really deserved a better life than she got, even if she did kind of ruin Keith's.
And I can't imagine Zen and Natani will be wrinkled and greying in just a couple of years.
Well when a spirit of her was created it looked young. So I imagine that was part of the rectonn.
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Re: Keidran Lifespan

#6 Post by Wobaku »

Hulk10 wrote: Thu Apr 26, 2018 5:03 pm Well when a spirit of her was created it looked young. So I imagine that was part of the rectonn.
Natani says this on page 755 however.
it's only as good as the memories. That's probably the reason why she looks younger. It's how Keith remembers her best.
And that probably wasn't her spirit, just a solid, parasitic illusion - Natani already produced another illusion of Laura before Laura was dead (first meeting with Keith in the woods) which definitely wasn't her soul, and this one was created through the same spell.

Now i'll admit that the illusion does change its modus operandi slightly a few pages after it's created (she basically claims to be the real Laura ''possessing'' the illusion from that point onward) but it still doesn't have all the memories that the real Laura would. That's actually how the group convinces Keith to dispel her.

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Re: Keidran Lifespan

#7 Post by Hulk10 »

Wobaku wrote: Thu Apr 26, 2018 5:21 pm
Hulk10 wrote: Thu Apr 26, 2018 5:03 pm Well when a spirit of her was created it looked young. So I imagine that was part of the rectonn.
Natani says this on page 755 however.
it's only as good as the memories. That's probably the reason why she looks younger. It's how Keith remembers her best.
And that probably wasn't her spirit, just a solid, parasitic illusion - Natani already produced another illusion of Laura before Laura was dead (first meeting with Keith in the woods) which definitely wasn't her soul, and this one was created through the same spell.

Now i'll admit that the illusion does change its modus operandi slightly a few pages after it's created (she basically claims to be the real Laura ''possessing'' the illusion from that point onward) but it still doesn't have all the memories that the real Laura would. That's actually how the group convinces Keith to dispel her.
Possibly. And yeah I recall that statement. But I still think it could be part of the retconn.
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Re: Keidran Lifespan

#8 Post by aitaituo »

Wobaku wrote: Thu Apr 26, 2018 11:44 am And euchre must be even older, yes he says he is 21 but I don't believe for a second he fathered Raine when he was three. Why he would need to lie to Flora about this is a different topic though.

Now Laura is stated to be sixteen during the basitin isles and is pretty much one foot in the grave, this was made back before the age retcon, so I see three possibilites:
Pre-retcon I'd always maintained that three made the most sense as the age of maturity for keidran. Laura's aged appearance at sixteen also makes perfect sense if 20 in pre-retcon keidran was the rough equivalent of human 80, meaning a probable age of death if you'd avoided all serious illnesses and injuries, but with rare exceptions living well past that at increasing infirmity.

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Re: Keidran Lifespan

#9 Post by Hulk10 »

It certainly is food for thought.
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Re: Keidran Lifespan

#10 Post by Wobaku »

aitaituo wrote: Fri Apr 27, 2018 2:05 am
Wobaku wrote: Thu Apr 26, 2018 11:44 am And euchre must be even older, yes he says he is 21 but I don't believe for a second he fathered Raine when he was three. Why he would need to lie to Flora about this is a different topic though.

Now Laura is stated to be sixteen during the basitin isles and is pretty much one foot in the grave, this was made back before the age retcon, so I see three possibilites:
Pre-retcon I'd always maintained that three made the most sense as the age of maturity for keidran. Laura's aged appearance at sixteen also makes perfect sense if 20 in pre-retcon keidran was the rough equivalent of human 80, meaning a probable age of death if you'd avoided all serious illnesses and injuries, but with rare exceptions living well past that at increasing infirmity.
I mean three being the age of adulthood was a possibility I guess, but I still really dislike the idea of it. Let's say 3 was the equivalent of humans being 18, and 20 the equivalent to 80 like you say, that would have Natani for example the equivalent of being about somewhere above 40, and I can't imagine her as being anything but a young adult. It would also mean that Natani has been an adult for over 10 years now while Keith only 1, which would have made their relationship something resembling a cougar style thing.

I also can't imagine Kat or Flora as already having been adults for 7+ years.

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Re: Keidran Lifespan

#11 Post by Hulk10 »

Didn't Tom show us with a drawing of Maeve when mainstream Keidran reach adulthood.
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Re: Keidran Lifespan

#12 Post by Wobaku »

Hulk10 wrote: Fri Apr 27, 2018 8:46 pm Didn't Tom show us with a drawing of Maeve when mainstream Keidran reach adulthood.
Yep. The ages of Maeve. And adulthood begins at age 8. But this is pretty explicitly post-retcon on the Keidran lifespan, as she is only greying at 23 (and presumably has at least a couple years left in her) whereas originally the general life expectancy was around 20, said by both Euchre and Eric.

That conversation about Euchre fathering Raine at 3 was about the original lifespan though, and I feel 3 simply couldn't have been the age of adulthood. 11 year old Flora for example is presented as a naive adolescent/young adult and has a personality to match, but if she had been an adult for 8 years already she couldn't really fit the bill. Same deal with Kathrin, she's simply too much of a ditz.

Euchre is just lying for some inscrutable reason, you don't get a title like Master Strategist without knowing how to pull the strings I guess.

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Re: Keidran Lifespan

#13 Post by amenon »

Wobaku wrote: Sat Apr 28, 2018 1:40 pm That conversation about Euchre fathering Raine at 3 was about the original lifespan though, and I feel 3 simply couldn't have been the age of adulthood. 11 year old Flora for example is presented as a naive adolescent/young adult and has a personality to match, but if she had been an adult for 8 years already she couldn't really fit the bill. Same deal with Kathrin, she's simply too much of a ditz.
Flora was playing house at seven-ish, so yeah, Euchre was always lying. If we consider aging to have been well and truly retconned, then it's not hard to see why; he couldn't very well give his real age, because he was unnaturally old. (Whereas now, he's arguably just naturally old, so there isn't necessarily an implication that he knows life-extension magic or anything like that.)
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Re: Keidran Lifespan

#14 Post by aitaituo »

When I say three as the age of maturity, I mean sexual maturity. The human equivalent of 13-15. I've always been reluctant to speculate much on the mental maturity aspect, because frankly it can only be fantastical even with the now lengthened lifespan. There really aren't any real world species to compare to human mental development, but for us it takes a very long time for a brain to mature, long, long after the rest of the body is mature. Part of that appears to simply be our evolutionary strategy, but there's also a phsyiological limit. You don't just get smarter by growth patterns and time stimulated hormones, you get smarter by practicing skills, gaining information, and reinforcing memories. The average toddler makes thousands of word-like noises before they say their first word and that is by the conventional reckoning of when they first say mama or dada, which objectively does not appear to be an actual first word, so much as wishful thinking by parents whose reinforcement teaches the child that the sound is special and to expect a special response from a particular person, which in turn hastens the toddler's learning. Human children can't cobble together a cohesive narrative longer than a couple of sentences until they are around five. We struggle with complex clauses until we're around ten to twelve. Many will tell you that most children can't manage to sound educated until they're at least 18 and that's in societies where we mandatorily provide formal education for twelve of those years.

Even with the retconned lifespans, the only realistic way keidran could be as individually smart as humans is if, at the physiological level, they are way, way smarter than humans, meaning that they must be able to memorize and learn at ten times the pace of a human or so. If that were the case, adult keidran should be noticeably more clever than adult humans and basitins, who would then only start to gain an intellectual advantage over keidran through a keidran lifetime+ of accumulated knowledge and experience. If so, why are keidran getting played by the Templar so well?

Another possible explanation, would be that keidran are dumber, but compensate through drastically more sophisticated instincts (including emotions). This is fantastical territory again. Human instincts are very sophisticated, to the point that there isn't a clear way they could be more practical without us being literal bugmen, which pushes the evolutionary pressure towards lower general purpose intelligence. These two forms of biological competence have a push and pull against each other that somewhat transcends evolutionary trends. People have an instinct towards fairness, not beating down on the weak or cheating each other in obvious ways, but the manifestation of that instinct heavily relies on our ability to abstract experience and then reapply those as formulas for new situations. Ants, on the other side of the spectrum, near mindlessly follow their instincts to the point that they behave like broken robots if their antennae and/or eyes are damaged (going in circles, walking into obstacles, failing to eat, etc), but their instincts are so sophisticated that when they function correctly they can build air-conditioned hives and engage in primitive agriculture and animal husbandry. It's not at all clear to me how keidran might have both at the same time, much less while appearing to have the approximate intelligence of humans.

A third possibility would be that keidran intelligence is possible through hypersociality, but this requires them to both faster learners than humans while still somehow less intelligent on an individual level. People get a great deal of their skills, thoughts, and values from each other through social transmission, an ability that borders on low-definition telepathy. Our brain waves synchronize to an extent when we listen to each other. If you're following my train of thought closely here, you're brain has actually partially synchronized with mine at the time I was writing/thinking this post. Keidran brains could operate in a way that's more effective at this, which would allow them to more rapidly develop skills while they go through childhood socialization. There are two serious problems with this idea. First, a brain that is highly dependent on external social input to develop that fast should also be much worse at individual thought and innovation as the neural structure would be grown to be critically dependent on that social input, as otherwise premature individuation could impair the ability to receive and grow around late social input. That would lead to keidran who are functionally mentally ill and noticeably lacking in competence if they don't get properly and fully socialized. There are real world children for whom something like that has happened from isolation and abuse (the most extreme cases have resulted in adults with no functional language ability o.o). Keidran would have a much shorter window where that kind of damage could occur, meaning getting lost in the woods for a month could cause actual brain damage in some sense. The second problem is we've seen too many keidran children living outside of keidran society with no signs of developmental problems. Maeve shouldn't just be shy, she should be in need of special education. Flora, Mike, and Kat should not be fully competent adults because they were raised by humans. Euchre should be weird, really, really weird.

So, yeah. Neutral has to be a biomolecular engineer (beyond) par excellance for keidran intelligence to really make sense.

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Re: Keidran Lifespan

#15 Post by Hulk10 »

aitaituo wrote: Sat Apr 28, 2018 6:54 pm When I say three as the age of maturity, I mean sexual maturity. The human equivalent of 13-15. I've always been reluctant to speculate much on the mental maturity aspect, because frankly it can only be fantastical even with the now lengthened lifespan. There really aren't any real world species to compare to human mental development, but for us it takes a very long time for a brain to mature, long, long after the rest of the body is mature. Part of that appears to simply be our evolutionary strategy, but there's also a phsyiological limit. You don't just get smarter by growth patterns and time stimulated hormones, you get smarter by practicing skills, gaining information, and reinforcing memories. The average toddler makes thousands of word-like noises before they say their first word and that is by the conventional reckoning of when they first say mama or dada, which objectively does not appear to be an actual first word, so much as wishful thinking by parents whose reinforcement teaches the child that the sound is special and to expect a special response from a particular person, which in turn hastens the toddler's learning. Human children can't cobble together a cohesive narrative longer than a couple of sentences until they are around five. We struggle with complex clauses until we're around ten to twelve. Many will tell you that most children can't manage to sound educated until they're at least 18 and that's in societies where we mandatorily provide formal education for twelve of those years.

Even with the retconned lifespans, the only realistic way keidran could be as individually smart as humans is if, at the physiological level, they are way, way smarter than humans, meaning that they must be able to memorize and learn at ten times the pace of a human or so. If that were the case, adult keidran should be noticeably more clever than adult humans and basitins, who would then only start to gain an intellectual advantage over keidran through a keidran lifetime+ of accumulated knowledge and experience. If so, why are keidran getting played by the Templar so well?

Another possible explanation, would be that keidran are dumber, but compensate through drastically more sophisticated instincts (including emotions). This is fantastical territory again. Human instincts are very sophisticated, to the point that there isn't a clear way they could be more practical without us being literal bugmen, which pushes the evolutionary pressure towards lower general purpose intelligence. These two forms of biological competence have a push and pull against each other that somewhat transcends evolutionary trends. People have an instinct towards fairness, not beating down on the weak or cheating each other in obvious ways, but the manifestation of that instinct heavily relies on our ability to abstract experience and then reapply those as formulas for new situations. Ants, on the other side of the spectrum, near mindlessly follow their instincts to the point that they behave like broken robots if their antennae and/or eyes are damaged (going in circles, walking into obstacles, failing to eat, etc), but their instincts are so sophisticated that when they function correctly they can build air-conditioned hives and engage in primitive agriculture and animal husbandry. It's not at all clear to me how keidran might have both at the same time, much less while appearing to have the approximate intelligence of humans.

A third possibility would be that keidran intelligence is possible through hypersociality, but this requires them to both faster learners than humans while still somehow less intelligent on an individual level. People get a great deal of their skills, thoughts, and values from each other through social transmission, an ability that borders on low-definition telepathy. Our brain waves synchronize to an extent when we listen to each other. If you're following my train of thought closely here, you're brain has actually partially synchronized with mine at the time I was writing/thinking this post. Keidran brains could operate in a way that's more effective at this, which would allow them to more rapidly develop skills while they go through childhood socialization. There are two serious problems with this idea. First, a brain that is highly dependent on external social input to develop that fast should also be much worse at individual thought and innovation as the neural structure would be grown to be critically dependent on that social input, as otherwise premature individuation could impair the ability to receive and grow around late social input. That would lead to keidran who are functionally mentally ill and noticeably lacking in competence if they don't get properly and fully socialized. There are real world children for whom something like that has happened from isolation and abuse (the most extreme cases have resulted in adults with no functional language ability o.o). Keidran would have a much shorter window where that kind of damage could occur, meaning getting lost in the woods for a month could cause actual brain damage in some sense. The second problem is we've seen too many keidran children living outside of keidran society with no signs of developmental problems. Maeve shouldn't just be shy, she should be in need of special education. Flora, Mike, and Kat should not be fully competent adults because they were raised by humans. Euchre should be weird, really, really weird.

So, yeah. Neutral has to be a biomolecular engineer (beyond) par excellance for keidran intelligence to really make sense.
Hmm yeah you have some good points. However I don't agree with you saying that Keidran are not as smart as humans, which is impossible as they are clearly sentient.
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In the name of the Mighty Legions of Predacons who preceded me I shall never again bow to your charge! But, I will heed your previous advice and face my true enemy AS A BEAST! -Predaking.

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