Out of curiosity what was the youngest age among metahumans seen to actually use magic? (I.e. not just assensing as awakened but using it.)

Normally hits around puberty...which can be eight or so for some orks, heh...but as far as full control of the Talent goes (not just one-offs summoning a spirit or instinctively casting a spell), I think you're still looking at twelve or thirteen.

Youngest recorded case of puberty that I've heard of, some girl in the US reached puberty at age 3. Puberty is occuring younger and younger in the more "civilized" countries. Mmmm, steroids.

Chris

@DTFarstar
No estrogen analogs according to some theories.

WMS

There are several theories as to why, from what I remember the most common blame either the steroids in food and the fact that they are often general use cure alls in public health facilities or the hormones found in our meats and also we are now picking up significant traces of estrogen and estrogen analogs as well as MAOI's in the drinking water since SO many people are on them and traces come out through waste which then filters through into the water and common filtration systems aren't able to filter out these chemicals as yet.

Chris

On topic, it could be that its the mental or emotional rather than the physical maturation that triggers the kid's Talent.

My wife had precocious puberty, and got into an experimental drug test to control it. The youngest girl in the program: 4 months. Granted, that was probably a very severe case of some sort of physiological issue like a parasite or infection, or even cancer, but it's still there. My wife hit it at around 4th grade, and the drugs were able to stave it off until a more normal age. According to wikipedia, the youngest mom ever recorded was 5 1/2.

Huh, apparently my information was out of date.

Chris

I could see any small child with sufficient mental trauma gaining some modicum of control over their gift. Think along the lines of "When Rabbit Howls". some event causes a fracture int he psyche because the child as is cannot cope. The child manufactures a stronger personality that can, this personality is not afraid of the talent and makes use of it.

This has been fodder for many WoD scenarios in my gaming past, especially Wraith. It works wonderfully in Shadowrun or any game with a mechanic for viewing an aura.

According to MitS (3rd ed.), the youngest recorded awakened metahuman was eight years old. Don't know what Street Magic says.

From what I've seen, most children have some sort of Fear as an innate spell that they can cast from the age of about negative 9 months or so.

The average age of puberty, -excluding- all the outlier oddball cases, has been dropping, too.

I don't think we'll ever see puberty at 7 as -regular-...But 8 or 9 for both sexes? Young but unsurprising in a decade or two, I think.

(There are -hordes- of causes, many noted here already...If some history geeks could check me: I remember hearing once that puberty in medieval times was closer to 17 for both sexes, but dropped to our current 12/13(ish) as a result of improved nutrition? An irrelevant point to this discussion, but I'd be curious as to whether that's BS that I heard somewhere, truth, or what.)

No telling what the metaraces will mean, really...Thinking about just homo sapiens sapiens, the reality is that taboos, ethical issues aplenty, and the limited amount of data we have mean that we don't really know what the average is in any scientific fashion for "normal" kids...And it's awfully hard to isolate factors for the abnormal ones.

Evidence suggests that seven to thirteen. is the normal range for human puberty. Crappy nutrition arising from agriculture caused extremely delays in puberty and humanity is just now getting back on track. Mostly, it is meat. Paleolithic and Ice Age people ate a great deal of meat. Modern America's meat-saturated diet more closely resembled the diet of our most distant homo sapien sapien ancestors than any other diet since the advent of agriculture. High fat, high protein diets are the main contributer to "early" puberty within the normal range these days.

Of course, absurdly early puberty is probably the result of some chemical imbalance or genetic disease.