[Dragaera] A Teckla thought

[Tom Foolery]

If I may stick in an oar - do we know how long a year is?  Because we
know that the days are longer and that may skew the results. If a year
is 400 days and a day is 30 hours... an age of 70 suddenly becomes
much more impressive.

On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 12:28 AM, Mark Mandel <cracksandshards at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
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