Do elves grow up quicker in Dragonlance?

[dead]

I'm not sure -- and I'm too lazy to consult the War of Souls novels -- but I seem to remember when reading those novels that Githas (and maybe a few other elves) grew up very quickly since the last Age. They sprung from babe to adult almost as quickly as a human.

Am I off my tree?

Is the elven lifecycle of the Dragonlance elf any different from the *default* D&D elf?

 

[hong]

The trick is to realise that Dragonlance elves don't grow up faster than normal elves. Instead, a Dragonlance year is shorter than a normal year, but only the elves know this. Everyone else puts it down to daylight saving, and so never realise that every day in the summer, the government is secretly stealing an hour of their life away. Trust me, I'm a statistician.

 

[Zarrock God of Evil]

I'm not sure -- and I'm too lazy to consult the War of Souls novels -- but I seem to remember when reading those novels that Githas (and maybe a few other elves) grew up very quickly since the last Age. They sprung from babe to adult almost as quickly as a human.

Am I off my tree?

Is the elven lifecycle of the Dragonlance elf any different from the *default* D&D elf?

That doesn't seem to be the case in the original books at least. I think Laurana was already like 80 years old when Tanis met her and she was considered "very young" by elven standards at the time. Likewise I once owned an old Dragon module that featured a teenage Elfmaiden (1st level character) and as far as I remember she was around 90 years old.

-Zarrock

 

[Gez]

Hong has nearly the right of it. The truth is even more awful: elves are actually stealing those hours so that they can grew up faster.

Because when the Elven Feminist Movement stated that elven mothers didn't wanted to change the elven diapers of their elven toddlers for 60+ years, the Elven Chauvinist Pig Males, instead of agreeing to help them half of the time, decided to use this foul magic conspiracy to shorten the relative timeline of Elven growth.

It's a bit convoluted, but so are elves.

 

[talinthas]

for what it's worth, Gilthas is a half elf.

 

[TheEvil]

Spoiler included

Actually, unusually short childhoods are really nothing new. Anyone who watches soap operas will tell you that children frequently age very rapidly, sometimes as many as 15 years in just 9 months. It has also been noted that many soap characters seem to hang out in their late 30s for as long as 20 years.
It is my theory that they are banking away their childhood in exchange for more time in their prime, all through the miricle of compound interest.

It could well be that something similar is happening in Dragonlance, in this case, using the banked or possibly stolen time to prolong the prime plot lifetime of prominant characters.

Only Time Will Tell...

Spoiler space follows.













































For what it is worth, having read the novels in question, it is worth noting that most of the new elves are indeed not pure elven, and the only 'child of the heros' who was of questionable age was born 'off-screen' at a not precisely placed time, and conveniently died at the end of the trillogy.

And no, I have never watched soap operas. Not once. Uh-Uh. *Shakes head emphatically*

 

[dead]

for what it's worth, Gilthas is a half elf.

OK, maybe a bad example . . .

But what about the son of Porthios and Alhana Starbreze. Both of them are pure elven and their son (Silvannoshi?) seemed to spring up from bub to adult in no time.

Can any Dragonlance gurus tell me *exactly* how many years passed since his birth to his ruling of Silvanost? Is he an *adult* in the War of Souls?

Thanks.

 

[BelXiror]

I don't think they grew up faster so much as was forced to act older than they were by circumstance.

The same way a early teen may be pushed to act older if absolutly necessary, partucularly if they've inherited something, like a kingdom.

Put simply, they had there childhoods severly cut short.

 

[glass]

IIRC, Laurana in the original trilogy was not legally an adult, but she was physically grown up. How long it took elves to reach physical maturity was never revealed, but seemed to be considerably less time that it took to be considered legally adult.

Aside from that, I'd say the BelXiror had the right of it.


glass.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

You'll probably get better answers on the WotC dragonlance board.