It occurred to me that long-lived races / entities are treated in a very prosaic manner in most settings. I mean think about it - we have all sorts of trouble relating to humans with twice or three times our experience in the real world. What sort of subtle alienness comes with even greater age and experience?
By means of example, a Sage discussing the unaging Ammanene from the Enclave setting:
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To be mortal is not so much to age and die as it is to forget, to consign great swathes of our lives to nothingness. To forget is the very basis of change and the vigor with which we grasp at each new dawn. Yet who was it who lived your childhood if you yourself recall so little? You would know as much of the early years of your closest friends, told to you in confidence. Who would you be if the child you once were never faded with the passage of seasons? If the young man and all his dreams still walked with you in later life? Who would you be if you could not put aside sorrow, delight, horror, mourning and the death of love?
The ageless Ammanene remember all. Every word, every tragedy, every death, every moment of heartbreak and sorrow. The ageless folk are courteous, thoughtful, kind - respect for mortals leads the Ammanene to play the role desired of them. Yet the generations weigh upon the children of the Ammane. Sadness seeps from their eyes, from the gentle smiles they bestow on petitioners at the Watch of Trees. The wisdom of the Ammanene is the wisdom of a spearman, rent and torn, denied the release of death, yet placed as host at an endless gathering of nobles and manners.
Why then surprise at the retreat of the Ammanene? Why then surprise when whispered words or a simple smile can bring mortals to their knees? Every gesture, each ageless thought, has welled up through greater anguish, joy, suffering and experience than was ever had by mortal Ammander.
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So tell me about the immortals and the long-lived in your campaigns and settings - what makes them different and interesting? How have you accounted for the strangeness that comes with age?
Reason
Principia Infecta
By means of example, a Sage discussing the unaging Ammanene from the Enclave setting:
-----
To be mortal is not so much to age and die as it is to forget, to consign great swathes of our lives to nothingness. To forget is the very basis of change and the vigor with which we grasp at each new dawn. Yet who was it who lived your childhood if you yourself recall so little? You would know as much of the early years of your closest friends, told to you in confidence. Who would you be if the child you once were never faded with the passage of seasons? If the young man and all his dreams still walked with you in later life? Who would you be if you could not put aside sorrow, delight, horror, mourning and the death of love?
The ageless Ammanene remember all. Every word, every tragedy, every death, every moment of heartbreak and sorrow. The ageless folk are courteous, thoughtful, kind - respect for mortals leads the Ammanene to play the role desired of them. Yet the generations weigh upon the children of the Ammane. Sadness seeps from their eyes, from the gentle smiles they bestow on petitioners at the Watch of Trees. The wisdom of the Ammanene is the wisdom of a spearman, rent and torn, denied the release of death, yet placed as host at an endless gathering of nobles and manners.
Why then surprise at the retreat of the Ammanene? Why then surprise when whispered words or a simple smile can bring mortals to their knees? Every gesture, each ageless thought, has welled up through greater anguish, joy, suffering and experience than was ever had by mortal Ammander.
-----
So tell me about the immortals and the long-lived in your campaigns and settings - what makes them different and interesting? How have you accounted for the strangeness that comes with age?
Reason
Principia Infecta
