Twokinds Forums

If I remember right, humans and basitins age at the same rate. What's the conversion for keidran? Maddy played at being 14, but is actually 17. That's not a big diff in human terms, but in keidran?

Keidran age much, much faster than either humans or basitin. There is no *exact* conversion, though, nor is it a constant factor. A 3 year difference is indeed a much much greater difference for a keidran than for a human or basitin, but how much so would vary depending on the stage of life - e.g. the difference between a 5 year old and 8 year old keidran is much, much greater than the difference between a 9 year old and 12 year old keidran.

You may or may not have seen this, but I'll link it either way: Keidran aging chart, featuring Maeve. Very roughly, 0-3 is the infant-toddler stage, 4-6 is the child stage, and 6-8 is puberty and the teenage years. As such, one could postulate that 0-6 is roughly equivalent to 0-12 for humans/basitin, and 6-8 is roughly equivalent to 12-18. Beyond that is somewhat more nebulous. We know from the example of Laura that 16 is old enough to have a few grey hairs, but she still didn't seem elderly. Natani and Zen both still seem to be in their primes at 13 and 14. Rose lived until 26, and like Laura she had some grey hair but didn't seem elderly in TDM at an age of 20ish. Very roughly one might perhaps guess that 8-20 is 'adulthood' and after that is old age, but it's still quite nebulous, especially since Tom has changed things in this respect a little bit along the way.

Assuming that as a baseline, the difference specifically between 14 and 17 for a keidran *might* be the difference between 30-something and middle age on a human/basitin. Or turning it around the other way, developmentally a 14 year old human/basitin is probably equivalent to a 6-7 year old keidran, while a 17 year old human/basitin is probably equivalent to a roughly 8 year old keidran. Either way, a 3 year gap is definitely a significantly larger difference for a keidran than for a human in terms of life stages.

Basitin age like humans, you are correct, there. However, the most recent (and post-retcon) example of a keidran lifespan was here, if I recall.

Keidran lifespan has been slightly retconned since the comic's inception. When Tom first came up with the story, the life expectancy of the average keidran was roughly 19. Living to 22 was like a human living to 100. The story went that there were records of keidran living to 25, but they were few and VERY far between. That idea got scrapped within the last few years though, as the timeline for their lifetimes was proportionally very short. I'd say that "Greyfur" stage is more like a human around 75 or so... Old enough to be retired, but still able to fend for themself if need be. Note that Maeve does not have a cane in that picture.

With the new retconned lifetimes, I'd assume that a keidran living past 25 is relatively common, while one living to 30 is extremely rare or perhaps unheard of. I dunno. The most recent of cannon knowledge comes from Tom himself, during the streams. I don't really have the chance to watch them, so I miss the most recent stuff.

EDIT:
Muon beat me to it... But yeah. Adulthood is still most of their lives, but covers proportionally more time than previous timelines.

MuonNeutrino wrote: ↑Thu Feb 18, 2021 12:24 am
You may or may not have seen this, but I'll link it either way: Keidran aging chart, featuring Maeve.

Yeah....I've seen that one. While it did give Maeve's age vs physical development, there was no comparison to human/basitin ages....simply saying "age 12" doesn't give even a rough comparison or rough equivalent human.basitin age, hence why I asked.

Well, given that their maturation rates are different, it's rather difficult to give a real reference in that regard. For humans, for instance, there is a moderately long period where we can speak, not do not bear children. Regardless of the capacity to do so, of course.

For humans, that part of our life changes gradually compared to keidran. We spend roughly 10 years (8-18, give or take) going from adolescence to full-fledged adult, roughly half or age by that point, while (based on that chart) keidran go through that same process between 6 and 8, a quarter of their life at that point. Conversely, the aging up to 3 appears very similar in a few ways.

It's nonlinear enough that there's no real direct comparison beyond maturity at a given point, which varies individually anyway. Might be best to just learn them as separate races, rather than finding equivalencies between them. You'll drive yourself crazy looking for exact numbers.

Furthermore, Adira was 8 when Maeve was born so she became pregnant at 7 or 8. Keidran pregnancy is known to be between 3 and 6 months.