[Dragaera] A Teckla thought

[Mark Mandel]

Doing very occasional catch-up:

What I _haven't_ seen in this thread is ... well, anything like this list of
textev age comparisons that is in my "to be developed and posted on Cracks
and Shards" file: mentions of the age of a Dragaeran that occur with either
 - a verbal evaluation of that age
 - or an equivalent age for an Easterner:

(modified 2002-12-10)

   - 100 ~ = "tender age" Yen64
   - 200 = young  FHYA86
   - 300 ~ "young kid" (yg ad) Yen54
   - 300 -400= mid-20's Yen63
   - 400 = "young" FHYA3
   - 800 -1000 = 35-40 Jrg30
   - 1000 ~ = middle age Yen29
   - 1500 - , "pushing 1500" = "a bit old" Tek2
   - 2000 + "old" Drg48
   - 2000 - 3000 lifespan  Jrg 53
   - 2000 - 3000 lifespan = 50-68 Yen6
   - 3000 - "getting close to 3k" = "old" Drg127

Page numbers refer to the editions specified under A note on page
numbers<http://www.Cracksandshards.com/books.html#page_numbers>
.

The date tells us that I compiled this list before *Dzur*, *Jhegaala*, *Lord
of Castle Black*, and *Sethra Lavode* were published, so it doesn't include
any data points they may offer; and that was the month when *The Paths of
the Dead* came out, so I may or may not have checked it. But I may have only
looked in the four books actually cited here: *Jhereg, Yendi, Five Hundred
Years After, *and *Dragon.*

Anecdotes and statistics about people reaching 80 or 90 or 101 (like my
wife's great-grandmother) *in our world* are not relevant to Vlad's, or any
other Easterner's or Dragaeran's, sense of "how old" an Easterner or
Dragaeran is at any particular age, beyond Easterner childhood. We are told
that Noish-pa's 70 years is "a *very* impressive age" for an Easterner [*Yen
* 206]; remember that most Easterners in the Empire live in poverty, which
shortens lifespan (Cracks and Shards : Time : The
Clock<http://www.cracksandshards.com/time.html#clock>,
para. 6). So it seems not unreasonable to infer that Easterners generally
have a maximum expected lifespan of 80 years, though few may reach it and a
very few surpass it.

On Cracks and Shards, under differences between Dragaerans and
Easterners<http://www.cracksandshards.com/peoples.html#DvsE>,
I state without a reference that Dragaerans live 50 times as long as
Easterners. I don't remember where I found it, but that's the proportion
between Dragaeran 4000 and Easterner 80.

(WRT 1776: It would be very like Steve to throw in that kind of an Easter
egg.)

Mark A. Mandel, proprietor, Cracks and Shards
http://www.cracksandshards.com
a Steven Brust fan website



On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 1:51 PM, Alexx Kay <alexx at panix.com> wrote:

> Dragaeran life expectancy seems to be about 4,000 years, though many die
> younger due to accident or illness.  Teckla probably are more subject to
> accident and illness than the other houses, but there's no reason to think
> they can't live as long if they avoid these problems.  In a city the size
> of Adrilankha, one would expect to find more than a few individual Teckla
> who had survived past 2,500 years.
>
> In recent Timeline work, my best guess for the concluding date of the most
> recent Teckla Republic is 1775* years before the Interregnum, which is
> itself about 500 years before the "present" of the Vlad books.  This
> implies that there are still some living Teckla who remember life in the
> Republic.  There might even be a few surviving Teckla old enough to
> remember the beginning of that Republic.  I wonder what they think of
> groups like Kelly's?
>
> * Did they sign a declaration of independence in 1776?  :-)  [Yes, I know
> they wouldn't have referred to the date in those terms; I was just struck
> by the synchronicity.]
>
> Alexx
>
>

-- 
Mark A. Mandel, proprietor, Cracks and Shards
http://www.cracksandshards.com
a Steven Brust fan website