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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Misanthrope Prime" data-source="post: 9847868" data-attributes="member: 6776166">The elves in my setting are somewhat Chinese coded, and their quest for immortality is based on Taoist alchemy, which was divided into "external alchemy" (potions, chemicals and traditional Chinese medicine) and "internal alchemy" (meditation, cultivation, purification rituals, martial arts, quigong, etc). Its all about balancing the yin and yang within you, it's supposed to be hard.Well a previous iteration of the elven government said "we can do that wholesale" and began a national program to "perfect" the population, and built a gigantic magical cauldron artifact thing in their capitol and started a big ritual to make everyone immortal. And it worked.As long as an elf remains within a few hundred miles of the cauldron, they are immortal. To "go into the West" is an elven euphemism for suicide or being disappeared by the government, since if an elf who's outside of their natural lifespan leaves the radius of the cauldron they rapidly age and die. Because the majority of the elven population cannot survive leaving the borders of the nation, the government exercised a high degree of control over the population, but this and severe economic issues also prevent the elves from mounting invasions of nearby countries, as all but their youngest conscripts would turn to dust. Two other major infouences on the elves are the history of the Great Leap Forward and Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room, later adapted into Soylent Green. Interestingly enough, the cauldron is located on the antipode of the laboratory responsible for the creation of intelligent, self aware undead in a horrific experiment; not only are immortal elves a recent invention, but so are things like wights and liches.</blockquote>

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