[Dragaera] Thoughts on age and experience on Dragaera

[Damien Sullivan]

On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 04:41:16PM +0000, Steve Rapaport wrote:

> I've never had trouble with the concept of humans being genetically altered
> to live longer or be taller.  Seems
> quite possible.  I could see 2000-3000 year lifespans.
> 
> I could even see (with more difficulty) the possibility of children
> physically aging slower, though 200 years to maturity is a real stretch.

There's a rationale for slower maturity: to live longer, you probably want
better self-repair and DNA error correction, which takes more energy
(food) to drive and perhaps more time (to check and double check), so
there's that.  (Also lower fertility, due to mothers' bodies being
pickier about when to risk the expense of pregnancy, and about the
quality of their offspring.  Though not elf-low fertility, probably.)

Also, in all probability humans could physically grow up much faster
than we do, with our childhoods being driven more by keeping us small
and subordinate to the parents who still have lots to teach us.  If
elves have more to teach, they might stay small longer... though there's
also only so much that can go in a human brain!  (But if jhereg brains
can support intelligence, maybe they've been upgraded...)

But that's all on the physical side.

> I'm not sure how long Savn was an apprentice to Master Wag, for example, but
> given his age and experience and intelligence, he appears to have picked up
> a year or two's worth of stuff.   But he's 90 years old, and he likely
> started his apprenticeship 10-15 years ago, right?

Heh heh.  Actually he's started only in the past year; it's a couple
pages into Chapter 6.  "The Master seemed in much better spirits today,
puttering around his small house (which had seemed much bigger a year
before, when Savn started stuyding with him.)"

And Savn's behavior with Vlad pretty much undermines any "need to repeat
things 20 times to learn in" idea; he's pretty quick up the uptake for
an ignorant peasant.  Especially in handling Vlad.

On the flip side, a bit later, Savn does reflect that "he [Savn] *had*
been pretty young at 70".  Of course one could be both skilled through
experience and immature through an adolescent brain that's refused to
prune off excess connections yet.

I think Savn's exempt from really heavy labor, as if he's not as
full-grown as his parents yet.  Not sure about that, though.

> And 70-year-old Dragaeran children form street gangs and beat people up.

Technically that could be independent of whatever skills they have.
Forming gangs is more about idleness and criminal opportunity and
risk/violence attitudes than about "social learning", I think.

-xx- Damien X-)