Transformation Lifespan

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Bellhead
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Transformation Lifespan

#1 Post by Bellhead »

I think this deserves it's own thread. Continued from the Sketch thread:
Technic[Bot] wrote: Sun Mar 01, 2020 1:30 am
MuonNeutrino wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2020 4:03 am -snip-

Also also, interesting aside - this seems to confirm that not only do regular animal dogs exist in the TK world (as Maren's previous comments implied), but that animal wolves exist too. It makes me wonder what dog and wolf keidran think about their animal counterparts.
I imagine they do not see any connection. Most humans consider Keidran little more than animals but at the same time Keidran consider humans little more than magical hairless apes. So i do not think they see themselves but distant relatives, at best, of their counterparts. Besides Mekkan is a rather young civilization and something like evolution has not occurred to them. Moreover all races, and probably a great deal of fauna, is synthetic, created by the masks. So evolution does not really apply here.
Now I wonder if the have something like a creation myth? We know the races were isolated at first, by design, but they must be some lore or oral tradition about their origin.
MuonNeutrino wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2020 5:53 am
AmigaDragon wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2020 4:57 am
MuonNeutrino wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2020 4:03 am Tom's stated that the transformation doesn't affect how you age unless you stay permanently in the other form - supposedly Rose would age like a human for as long as she was in human form, but the moment she went back to Keidran form all those years would catch right back up.
Are you saying if a 25 year old Rose spent 30 years as human, when she went back to keidran, those 30 years would catch up with her and she'd die right away?
Well, the context was Raine aging more rapidly in keidran form, so it was more 'if she spent 5 years as a keidran she'd age more rapidly, but then when she transformed back she'd snap back to being a 23 year old human' type of thing. But if it works the same way in reverse, then yeah that'd be the implied behavior, which as you note would lead to the odd situation of not actually being able to transform back without dying.

I managed to find where Tom explained this; it was in the stream chat during a sketch stream last year. I have a habit of copying down anything interesting Tom says in stream chat that I happen to see, so I actually have his exact words:
Tom wrote:<someone asks "Does Raine age more quickly in Keidran form?">

Twokinds: As long as raine keeps switching back to human form, her Keidran form stays the same relative age.
Twokinds: If Raine was stuck in wolf form, she would start aging like a Keidran.
Twokinds: But the moment she turned back, she'd be her normal human age and her Keidran form would go back.
To me, this breaks down as follows:

When the transformation is made, the form transformed into starts off as the same *relative* age as the native form. So when Raine transforms into a keidran, her keidran form is that of a keidran of the *equivalent* age as her 18-year-old human age (i.e. her keidran form is that of a roughly 8 year old keidran, not an 18 year old keidran).

Once the transformation is made, the new form ages at the usual rate for that form. If Raine transformed into a keidran and then stayed that way for 5 years, her keidran body would be that of a 13 year old keidran (i.e. probably the equivalent of a 30ish human) instead of the perhaps 11ish year old keidran that would be the equivalent of her 23 year old human side.

But, when she transforms back, her actual chronological age reasserts herself in her native form, and she returns to being a 23 year old human instead of suddenly becoming the 30ish human that would be the equivalent of the 13 year old keidran she had just been. And further, if she transformed back into a keidran after that, she'd have the body of the 11 year old keidran that's the equivalent of her 23 year old human body, instead of going back to having the 13 year old keidran body she'd had previously. And so, as long as she transforms periodically her keidran form ages no faster than her human form does, because her human form's age reasserts itself every time she un-transforms.

(And this does raise the odd scenario of a transformed human spending enough time in keidran form to grow old and frail and then transforming back and suddenly being in their prime again. If one had a human child prodigy who had mastered transformation by age 8 (likely the equivalent of a keidran of about 4) and then spent the next 20 years as a keidran before turning human again, they'd have lived an entire keidran lifetime up to an old age of 24 and then snapped back to being a 28 year old human.)

So, if it works like this, taking that pattern and reversing it would suggest that Rose would age like a human as long as she stayed in human form, but would 'snap back' to whatever the proper age would be for a keidran of her chronological age as soon as she transformed back. And if she e.g. transformed into a human at age 20 (probably the equivalent of a human of 50+) and then spent a decade as a human (aging only up to the equivalent of 60 or so), upon returning to her native form she would indeed 'snap back' to being a 30 year old *keidran* (i.e. a human of 100+) and most likely drop dead.
Didn't we had an old sketch detailing Raine and her wolf form? I mean is old and as everything mentioned by Tom but not added into the comic its canonicity may change without any previous warning but according to that Raine lifespan is unchanged between forms and thus could become the longest living wolf in history. For that it follows she ages as a humans in both forms and then Rose should age as a Keidran in any form. Of course that lefts Euchre as an issue since he is probably the current holder of oldest wolf alive. You could argue that since his talent is perfect transformation that he can simply change his physiology to age at a much more reasonable rate than "death at 30". On the other hand you could also argue that Rose transformation is not perfect and despite appearances she might look anatomically human but remain physiologically Keidran even after transformation.
On the other hand it could simply turn out that Raine's father side is much more magically gifted than her mother side, hence both Rose and Euchre can live for way longet than any wolf. Which would be ironic since her mother was at some point the most powerfull magic user in the world.
Not sure if it's been mentioned, but the average keidran expectancy is commonly known to be 20. A keidran at 23 would be the equivalent of a human around 110, if I remember Tom Lore correctly. He also stated that Euchre lied to Flora about his age, and that saying how he was so old would be spoilers. That said, the character sheet had Rose at 28, so her lifespan has DEFINITELY been increased, likely without limit, by some form of (probably) dark magic.

And if she and Euchre are cousins, we can assume they are roughly the same age. The equivalent of a human nearing 150+.

I'd also like to put it out there that Rose and Euchre are keidran, in their original forms anyway, while Raine is human as stated in her character sheet. Rose and Euchre may temporarily shift species, and age respectively for the duration of it, both would revert when switching back, no matter how long they switched for. Raine, on the other hand, would age more rapidly during and would revert younger after.

In short, she could shift at, say 40 years old, and she would be a wolf and would be older than any other. But she wouldn't be a 40-year-old wolf. She'd be a wolf at the proportionate age from which she shifted. Think of it like switching bodies. The body ages as it should, but the mind can be far older if it didn't start in that body.

Make sense to anyone, or am I just tired?
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Re: Transformation Lifespan

#2 Post by Technic[Bot] »

So decided to answer here since we already derailed last week thread besides seems much more contained here:
Bellhead wrote: Sun Jul 05, 2020 8:35 pm
Technic[Bot] wrote: Sun Jul 05, 2020 7:27 pm Also we really do not know how aging seems to work when transformed. Tom has insisted that Raine, and by extension euchre, age at the same rate regardless of form. Yet if you are able to "perfectly transform" into something else and basically at no cost. What stops you to tweaking your physiology to age significantly slower, or for that matter, to simply rejuvenate yourself every couple of years?
Might be remembering this wrong, but I remember differently. From what I recall, they age at the rate of whatever form they're in, starting at the relative age they're at at time of transformation, but while they age at the rate of their current form, their time spent (as a human aging 1 year, for instance) would all come back at once.

The way I understood it, if one of them spend the first 30 years of their life as a human without shifting, they'd be a 30-year-old human. If they were to shift back, they'd die of old age almost immediately. And if they didn't, then the next shift they did would yield a VERY old human.

Do I remember that right? This topic has been retconned over the years...
The last comment about by Tom that i could Trace back (pun intented) was on a really old sketch (2015) Raines forms . Which for whatever reason took way more effort to track down than expected. Anyhow in the comments Toms mentions
Tom wrote: Her lifespan, however, remains unchanged between forms. If she remained in wolf form, she could likely become the longest-living wolf in history, since she would still live just as long as any other human.
Which implies she ages at the same rate in both forms. Information on her lifespan is curiously absent on the more recent Raine ref sheet but its does mention than when she shifts she gains some mass from nowhere. Which is a way more weird than simply aging slower or faster.

In any case i think Tom made it that way to avoid weird situations like you propose. Were she lives as a human 50-years shifts and turns to dust on the spot. But even if that was not the case and Raine, and by extension her father, aged very fast. Since they can transform perfectly, what stops them from simply slowing their aging or dialing back they biological clock every few years? That is how i imagined Euchre has managed to live that long. But with current events i imagine it has more to do with necromancy than with transformation magic.
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Re: Transformation Lifespan

#3 Post by aitaituo »

Raine is special, though.

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Re: Transformation Lifespan

#4 Post by Bellhead »

For the current situation, necromancy is definitely a thing. But I see Raine's situation as fundamentally different from Rose and Euchre, as Raine was born of a human and a keidran with the transformation ability, where Euchre and Rose were likely both born of keidran.

That puts Raine in a different aging category to boot, let alone how she would otherwise age. And it makes her case very different from her father and aunt.
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Re: Transformation Lifespan

#5 Post by Technic[Bot] »

Bellhead wrote: Mon Jul 06, 2020 11:05 pm For the current situation, necromancy is definitely a thing. But I see Raine's situation as fundamentally different from Rose and Euchre, as Raine was born of a human and a keidran with the transformation ability, where Euchre and Rose were likely both born of keidran.

That puts Raine in a different aging category to boot, let alone how she would otherwise age. And it makes her case very different from her father and aunt.
I mispoke:
What i tried to say was thatI thought the way Euchre managed to extend his lifespan was by simply abusing his transformation ability, and either modified hi physiology to age significantly slower or rejuvenated himself every few years. Now with the knowledge that Trace's experiments on necromancy were far more advanced and fruitful than we had expected I now thing Euchre is some sort of undead monster.

On the case of Raine I remember Tom has insisted that since Euchre was 100% human on conception and Mary was also 100% human then Raine is 128% human, she just has the ability to shape-shift.
I am not saying that you are wrong, in fact i think having a slightly hybrid Raine would be far more interesting than what we have. For example if that were the case she would have been unable to pop the slave collar even if she had managed to fully transform and would have had to blow it up.
But i digress. What I am trying to say is that despite having a bit more sense if it were not the case, Raine is 256% human.

Regarding differences Between Raine and Rose, it has been stated in comic and hinted on sketches that Raines ability is far superior to Rose, and that actually changing does not have any discernible cost to her
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Re: Transformation Lifespan

#6 Post by Hulk10 »

Bellhead wrote: Mon Jul 06, 2020 11:05 pm For the current situation, necromancy is definitely a thing. But I see Raine's situation as fundamentally different from Rose and Euchre, as Raine was born of a human and a keidran with the transformation ability, where Euchre and Rose were likely both born of keidran.

That puts Raine in a different aging category to boot, let alone how she would otherwise age. And it makes her case very different from her father and aunt.
That's an interesting thought.
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