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Tomahawk
I'm wondering if I could get some opinions on this. Or if there is already something concise in a source book a point in the right direction. If this has been covered and I missed it doing searches please forgive me biggrin.gif

Specifically I was wondering if there is any solid information on aging other than what is in each racial blurb in the book. Dealing with Orks and trolls is pretty straight forward. They seem to be assumed (at least in the games I've been playing in) to age to maturity and then on to old age at an accelerated rate compared to a base human.

Dwarves and Elves on the other hand age more slowly than a normal human. But most games I've dealt with elves in starting out as a runner they are roughly the same age as a starting human runner. If the orks and trolls have their starting age adjusted then logically speaking wouldn't the Elves and Dwarves as well? it would appear not to be the case though from the novels at least in my recolection (which can be considered quite spotty rotate.gif )

The actual reason I brought this up is I was wondering if they've ever presented anything concrete on the upper age limits of elves (normal ones not immortal eek.gif )? I was thinking of a character concept of a guy who was a spike baby born around the year 2000. Basically he lived a more or less "normal" life and worked for a corp. Well as he closed in on human retirement age it became evident that he was not remotely aging as a human would and the corp denied him retirement pending review of the retirement situation for Elves. Getting discouraged he managed to get himself fired and is now stuck on the outside. So what in effect he will be is a guy starting a career in shadowrunning who is pushing up on age 60 if not slightly over 60. I was wondering what sort of condition a elf at age 60 could expect to be in. Like a 50 year old human? 40? 30? 25?

Anyway any incite you guys might provide would be appreciated.
Wireknight
Dwarves age quickly to about middle-age appearance(grizzled, etc...) when compared to humans, but from that point on age very slowly, with the estimated lifespan being in the 200 year range. Elves age somewhat slowly to adulthood, and stop aging at all when they reach it, resuming normal human aging speeds at something like 300 years of age. That's the impression I've gotten from various Shadowrun and Earthdawn sources, both fiction and game material.
Crimsondude 2.0
A 60 year-old elf would have the physique of, approximately, a 24 year-old human according to canon, so... He'd notice.

Which is really funny when I consider what someone in Iraq told me about some of the mercs out there (the ones with SF experience): They're 40-50 years old, a bit overweight but still pretty damn solid, and they're better than you at everything. Whereas this guy has the years of training and time to harden up, but is still in as good a shape as someone younger than myself. Your PC would have some pretty awesome attributes and skills. Of course, given the circumstances he could be 50 instead of 60 not not be a lame-ass Spike Baby, too, but still have all of the benefits. YMMV.
mfb
yeah, the whole "i still look 24" thing pretty much has a conceal of '-'. and not the dermal sheath '-', either. more like the cyberhand safety '-'.
Cynic project
The whole age thing is a throw back to those books about that ring,and that game that causes you to go into sewers and kill your friends with swords.

I dislike the age thing.I can some what see Elves and Dwarves living longer than humans..but I still would think that they would have life spans in the exterm human scale for the norm,maybe even on their short end..but I think the whole elves live 300+ years,is rather silly. And if they do not age at all, then it is just stupid. By the way,when i mean age,I mean when you body stops growing,and you start truly dying.
Fix-it
considering how short a time this is after the awakening, it really doesn't matter much (at least for elves and dwarves).
Crimsondude 2.0
Wha... um, okay Cynic.

Anyway, what's the saying? We've been dying since the day we were born.
Garland
Just at different rates.
Critias
QUOTE (Cynic project @ Dec 17 2004, 05:34 PM)
The whole age thing is a throw back to those books about that ring,and that game that causes you to go into sewers and kill your friends with swords.

Or maybe it's from Earthdawn.

(EDIT: And maybe's it magic, the thing that makes Shadowrun different from your average Cyberpunk game, and maybe D&D and LotR don't have trademarks on it. What, you wanted them to have Elves but have 'em just be humans with pointy ears? And Orks should just be non-stat modified humans with tusks? And Mages should just be Street Sammies who think they're casting spells when they're actually shooting people in the face, and...)
Cynic project
If you look at animals, they mature and grow up to a point. From that point they die. Your body starts to break down. You can prolong the decay of your body for a long time, in fact it is a slow thing in the first place,but in the end you are growing old,and not growing up. I think it is somewhere around 25 in humans. Now i could be worng,I have been that before.
mfb
we should get rid of elves, too. alsol, orks, dwarves, and trolls. nothing but throwbacks to last-century fiction and That Other Game. SR is cool and progressive, why should we be weighing ourselves down with that baggage?
Teulisch
the thing is, since the appearance of dwarves and elves, its only been about 53 years, so there shouldnt be enough data to say how long they live.

and with only 43 years since goblinization, most of those who they do have data on goblinized later in life, creating a very different statistic than what we may see for those born as orkds or trolls.

Also, for the 'average' lifespan, how much is that statistic affected from death by violence? i would expect a lot more orks and trolls to die of violence and lack of medical care than the other races.

what we dont know, is when 'middle age' would set in for an ork or troll. also, how vunerable would they be to heart conditions? I suspect a Ork or Troll could live a good 60 years, with good medical coverage.
Crimsondude 2.0
TT is the basis for the IC speculation, btw. Apparently some labs did genetic testing on the various metahuman genetic structures and developed the approximation which is close to the SR rules canon.

But, yeah, average is just that--Average.
ES_Riddle
QUOTE (Teulisch @ Dec 17 2004, 07:00 PM)
Also, for the 'average' lifespan, how much is that statistic affected from death by violence? i would expect a lot more orks and trolls to die of violence and lack of medical care than the other races.

what we dont know, is when 'middle age' would set in for an ork or troll. also, how vunerable would they be to heart conditions? I suspect a Ork or Troll could live a good 60 years, with good medical coverage.

Yeah, considering that the stat they give for humans is an average lifespan of 55 years when you consider the global view, you have to believe that they are not talking about how long the races can live, just how long they tend to live. I would guess that given orks generally impoverished condition, and the lack of medical care for the sinless, they are looking at really only aging about 10-20% faster than humans rather than the almost twice as fast as the average age figures would suggest. I bet their infant mortality figures really pull that stat down, too, considering that they often give birth to twins.
Crimsondude 2.0
No. Elves tend to give birth to a higher than normal rate of twins.

Orks breed in--not to mince words--litters.
ES_Riddle
QUOTE (Crimsondude 2.0)
No. Elves tend to give birth to a higher than normal rate of twins.

Orks breed in--not to mince words--litters.

I was under the impression that in 3rd they had pretty much taken out any references to the absurdity of triplets+ as regular occurances and had instead phrased that sort of thing as "high incidence of multiple births" whenever it came up.

Considering that orks are the world's fastest growing metahuman population due to the multiple births, the most that could really mean is that twins are fairly common and triplets aren't as rare as they are among humans. The strain of bearing 3+ baby-sized babies multiple times would probably mean that most ork women would die in childbirth or from complications, and if ork babies are smaller than baby-sized then they are going to have an extremely high rate of infant mortality. Also consider that a woman has 2 nipples; it is unlikely that a third baby will survive, let alone a fourth+.
KaOs
QUOTE (ES_Riddle)
QUOTE (Crimsondude 2.0 @ Dec 17 2004, 10:45 PM)
No. Elves tend to give birth to a higher than normal rate of twins.

Orks breed in--not to mince words--litters.

I was under the impression that in 3rd they had pretty much taken out any references to the absurdity of triplets+ as regular occurances and had instead phrased that sort of thing as "high incidence of multiple births" whenever it came up.

Considering that orks are the world's fastest growing metahuman population due to the multiple births, the most that could really mean is that twins are fairly common and triplets aren't as rare as they are among humans. The strain of bearing 3+ baby-sized babies multiple times would probably mean that most ork women would die in childbirth or from complications, and if ork babies are smaller than baby-sized then they are going to have an extremely high rate of infant mortality. Also consider that a woman has 2 nipples; it is unlikely that a third baby will survive, let alone a fourth+.

You do know that Orc women are not the same as human women, right? And with only two nipples it's not like all four babies would need to be attached all the time, you can take one baby away from the boob and let another feed.

Fortune
Besides, those human women that have triplets or quads ... or even quints seem to be able to manage somehow.
ES_Riddle
Human women who have triplets or more in modern hospitals tend to be ok (though I would guess their rate of complications is higher). I am aware that the average ork woman is going to be heartier than the average human woman, but their are still some serious dangers to giving birth in the third world conditions that most orks live in. Multiplets makes those even more lifethreatening.

From the baby end of things, it is well established that multiple birth babies tend to have lower birth weights, and as the number of babies involved increases have a greater chance of being born prematurely. Without hospital care, these things dramatically increase infant mortality. The two nipples vs. more than two babies thing is just icing on the cake. Yes, it is possible to rotate and still feed more babies than you have nipples. This cuts into the mother's milk producing capabilities and also her time. Milk doesn't come from nowhere, it comes from the food the mother eats. A family of SINless orks with four new mouths to feed is not going to be able to support them off of just dad's income.
Sandoval Smith
So then, being SINless orks, someone goes out and does the natural thing, and steals formula from the downtown Stuffer Shack. Problem solved.
ES_Riddle
QUOTE (Sandoval Smith)
So then, being SINless orks, someone goes out and does the natural thing, and steals formula from the downtown Stuffer Shack. Problem solved.

And the ork gets picked up for shoplifting and sent to jail, thus compounding the problem.

I am still failing to see how having triplets+ as a regular occurance would help orks increase their population considering the evolutionary pressures at work. Metahuman babies take a lot of time and energy to raise to reproductive age. It would be more benefitial to the orks' reproductive fitness to have fewer than 3 babies at a time. That doesn't mean it is the case, though; natural selection doesn't just give you what you need, it kills those who don't have what they need.

Orks, however, are the fastest growing branch of metahumanity. That means that they must be making more babies who survive to reproductive age than the other branches. I don't think this would be the case if orks were having 3+ infants per birth.
Fortune
I never said that there wouldn't be a high infant mortality rate amongst Orks. Merely that nipple count would have very little to do with it.
Adarael
Lemmie blare my air-horn on the subject again, since it comes up so damn often.

Lifespan/Death Rates: By canon, there are no absolutes as to what middle and old age are for any humans other than plain-jane Homo Sapiens Sapiens. There are suggestions. There are suspicions. There are guesses. But there is nowhere in any 3rd edition book that says, "Orks live to be X. Old age is Y." Or, "Elves live to be Z, but always look like they're 24." The numbers in the Shadowrun Main Book are average life expectancies, not 'death by being old.'

This is because they are leaving it up to you, the GM, to decide how long or short any given race should live. You want Elves to live 500 years? Knock yourself you. Want 'em to live the same as everyone else? Hey, looking like you're 25 when you're 60 is a perk of having a +2 charisma bonus. There are no absolutes, because some people like the game more cyber, some people like it more fantasy.

Birth Rates: As has previously been stated, all references to Trolls and Orks having litters have been removed in 3rd edition. No matter if metahumans are 'magic' - we can assume that their 'magic' birthrates evolved in some fashion to serve a biological purpose. There's no biological purpose to having 4-6 babies if you only have two milk dispensers, because chances are all but two of the kids will die before they really have a chance to develop, and the two remaining ones will be malnourished due to having to have fought for a diminished food supply. It would be much more likely in biological terms for orks and trolls to have a much faster gestation period, rather than an increased birthrate.

Summation?

Metahumans live as long as you, as GM, want. They bear as many children as you, as GM, feel is likely.
mfb
yeah, see. the whole thing where metahumans may or may not age differently? that's a plot point for the game that's got more impact than the destruction of Fuchi. it'd be like saying "spellcasting is part of the game, but it's up to the GM how it works."
Edward
I recall reference to orcish dissatisfaction with sexual age of consent legislation as they go threw puberty earlier than humans and will be early middle aged by the time they can legally have sex in some American states.

As to lifespan statistics I believe that studies of biological life expectancy normally exclude all violent deaths.

Giving birth to a litter of orcs (assuming the mother is an orc) is probably not nearly as difficult stressful as a human giving berth to triplets, if liters are the standard. Look an the sepsis that have high multiple births as the default today, say dogs as an example, dose the 4-8 pups cause a high incidence of death while puping among the average dog breeds. No there bodies are designed for it and there young are of smaller relative size. If orcs do give birth in litters (and I hav seen references that sujest it is true) I would expect the orc skeletal structure and reproductive system to make this workable and the babies to be smaller than baby humans (probably a less well developed brain at birth and obviously with a fast initial growth rate) milk production can (without to much difficulty) be greater than a human’s my considering moor efficient or lager breasts (why do you think orc porn sells). The subspecies was viable during the 4th world without modern conveniences like formula it requires you assume significant biological differences but a humanoid sub-race that gives birth in liters can work if you assume significant biological differences.

Even if you assume only 2 will survive they will not necessarily be malnourished.

There is a species of bird that lays 3 eggs each a day apart. The first laid will be the first to hatch and will have the strength to eat its fill before the others try. In a good year all 3 will live, in a bad year only the first will get enough to eat, most of the time 2 survive. Of cause they avoid waist by feeding any chic that dyes to eth remaining chicks, something meta humans would have a problem with.

Edward
Rajaat99
I always assumed that Orks and Trolls die more quickly because their metabolism never slows down,like in humans. That's why theres so many buff Orks and Trolls. Their metabolism literally burns out their body, so they never really get "old", they just go and go, then die.
Fortune
QUOTE (Edward)
I recall reference to orcish dissatisfaction with sexual age of consent legislation as they go threw puberty earlier than humans and will be early middle aged by the time they can legally have sex in some American states.

Actually, they would be more dissatisfied with the legal drinking, voting, and driving ages.
Kremlin KOA
Adarael if you go through the various sourcebooks you CAN find hard limits on what ages are... the Averager life expectancy is partial;ly based on environment and such but it is a good way to measure...

In short it is listed in sourcebooks that dwarves get to 125+ and elves get 400+ this doesn't make the game any less gritty... as that means elf and dwarf runners have more to lose
Adarael
Actually Kremlin, you're wrong.

In 1st Edition, they listed hard limits. That's the source for the estimations that you've posted. In 2nd edition BBB they listed different hard limits. In Tir Nan'Og, Tir Tairngire, and Shadowtech, they listed or suggested different limits, all of which contradict eachother or the BBB on some level.

In 3rd edition, the game we are assumed to be playing now, nowhere in any book is there a number for anyone's old age, middle age, or maximum lifespan based on metatype. Due to the inherently contadictory nature of prior hard limits from 2nd edition, some of which (like the TT estimate of elves living to 500-600, rather than 300) have been disproven (and commented on by The Smiling Bandit, actually).... This leads me to believe that really, it's up to you, as the GM.

MFB:
It's up to you if you think aging is as important for *gameplay* as spellcasting, because in terms of mechanics and rules, et cetera, it is not. While it might change the socio-political dynamics of the game world, it's something that they have *fundamentally left up to the GM*. Regardless of how you feel about it, that's the case. That's why this thread keeps coming back up - because they *didn't* put a D&D style age chart in the game.

I think all y'all need to remember something: Shadowrun is not Earthdawn, Shadowrun does not follow Earthdawn rules, and is not necessarily the same as Earthdawn. While there are similarities, and there's a strong connection, things have changed from the 4th to 6th world.
Just Jonny
I agree that while aging has a great deal of social and personal impact, but from a rules standpoint, it's pretty pointless. Seriously, has anyone had the same character run for more than 10 game years? For every runner who lives that long without retiring, at least 10 die of causes totally unrelated to aging. So I say leave it to the GM, but in my game I use the Earthdawn life spans, simply because they've seen people die of old age, and are pretty clear.

Edit: In case anybody else wants to use the Earthdawn ages...

Dwarves:
Physical Maturity:after 10
Life Span:100-150

Elves:
Physical Maturity:twenties
Life Span:300-400

Humans:
Physical Maturity:teens
Life Span:75-100

Orks:
Physical Maturity:early teens
Life Span:40-60

Trolls:
Physical Maturity:early teens
Life Span:50-70
Fortune
QUOTE (Just Jonny)
Seriously, has anyone had the same character run for more than 10 game years?

I have had a character for more than that, and one of the players in my game has also.
FrostyNSO
I've got a dude going about 12 years now. Couldn't go to bars when he started out =)
Ed Simons
QUOTE (Edward)
As to lifespan statistics I believe that studies of biological life expectancy normally exclude all violent deaths.


Well, the average life span listed for humans in Shadowrun is lower than modern life expectancies, which implies they aren't just measuring natural life span, but death from all causes. Of course, none of the various metahumans have been around long enough for estimates of average life spans to be meaningful.

Then, there's the consideration of subspecies. Do gnomes have a different life expectancy than dwarves? How about orks and ogres? For that matter, why is 19% of the CAS population orks, but only 7% of the UCAS population?

Do those who goblinized have different life spans than those who were born as metahumans? The source material is wildly contradictory on this.

And the increasing magic level may also affect life spans. The first elves and dwarves were born in 2011 (except for the spike babies, who appear to be mainly elven player characters). The first orks and trolls goblinized 10 years later when the magic level rose high enough for them to exist. Further increases in magic level could possibly lead to longer life spans for orks and trolls. After all, they needed more magic to exist in the first place.

QUOTE (Edward)
If orcs do give birth in litters (and I hav seen references that sujest it is true)


2nd Edition stated something about a minimum of 4 orks born at a time. But in Threats even the racist Human Nation claimed numbers that only meant an average of about 2.5 (including infant mortality).

The problem is huge multiple births make no sense based on published population figures in SoNA and SoE. There orks form about 11% of the population. If orks produced litters the size the Human nation claims, about 22-23% of the population would be orks. If orks produced litters the size 2nd edition claimed 40-50% percent of the world population would be orks.

In fact, based on population figures from SoNE and SoE, only one race is so common as to imply they regularly give birth in litters of 6, and that's elves. (Or elves have life spans comparable to orks. Or a lot more than 10% of the population was born as elves in 2011. Or there were a couple hundred million elven spike babies.)

QUOTE (Edward)
milk production can (without to much difficulty) be greater than a human’s my considering moor efficient or lager breasts (why do you think orc porn sells).


Lager breasts? Intoxicated ork babies?

Breast size has nothing to do with milk production capability in humans. The listed heights and weights imply orks (and dwarves) have bigger bustlines, while elves are a bit undeveloped in that area, but YMMV.

QUOTE (Edward)
The subspecies was viable during the 4th world without modern conveniences like formula it requires you assume significant biological differences


Why do you feel that assumption is a requirement? Orks can survive on the same diet as humans and react to drugs, medication, and disease in the same way.
Ed Simons
QUOTE (Tomahawk)
I was thinking of a character concept of a guy who was a spike baby born around the year 2000.  Basically he lived a more or less "normal" life and worked for a corp.  Well as he closed in on human retirement age it became evident that he was not remotely aging as a human would and the corp denied him retirement pending review of the retirement situation for Elves.

The thing is, by the time this character turned 11, it would be obvious that he was an elf, not an extremely tall incredibly thin human with strangely shaped ears. Any corporation would know he was an elf when they hired him, not four decades later when he's ready to retire.
Kanada Ten
QUOTE
Or a lot more than 10% of the population was born as elves in 2011. Or there were a couple hundred million elven spike babies.)

I've always said they continued to be born well after 2011, each year more were born from normal humans at 10% the average birth rate until such time as matches the figures printed. And that elves encouraged early births to pump up their numbers since once they hit 25 (I personally think) the ability to conceive probably drops to match the projected lifespan. No canon backing to that though.
Edward
QUOTE (Ed Simons)

QUOTE (Edward)
The subspecies was viable during the 4th world without modern conveniences like formula it requires you assume significant biological differences


Why do you feel that assumption is a requirement? Orks can survive on the same diet as humans and react to drugs, medication, and disease in the same way.

To expand that line of my text
The subspecies was viable during the 4th world without modern conveniences like formula. Assuming orcs birth in litters this requires you assume significant biological differences to modern humans

The reason the difference is required is that a human would not be able to sustain repeat multiple births of human sized babies or provide sufficient natural milk to feed them. I do not have this as fact it was taken from the previous posts but sounds accurate. In the time before formula what was the fait of quadruplets when a whet nurse could not be obtained. And what was the chance of survival for the mother.


Aging (and reproduction for that matter) have no impact on eth rules. They do however have an impact on the setting.

So far mortal elves cap out at about 70. What dose a 70 year old elf look and feal like. Are they having issues with retirement ages? Will a glass sealing develop because there are enough old and experienced elves and dwarves to fill all the high ranking positions in racially divers cowponies (as orcs are having the problem that they have difficulty acquiring the skills and respect to clime over the humans due to there shorter lives (I forget witch book mentioned this compliant but it implies that the orcish age is not purely a symptom of bad conditions))

Although the effect on the rules is minimal the effect on the setting is as significant as the presence of these races (or magic for that matter).

Edward
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (Adarael)
Due to the inherently contadictory nature of prior hard limits from 2nd edition, some of which (like the TT estimate of elves living to 500-600, rather than 300) have been disproven (and commented on by The Smiling Bandit, actually).... This leads me to believe that really, it's up to you, as the GM.

I don't know the Smiling Bandit. I have no reason to trust him. Do you?

~J
Fortune
I met him once at GenCon ... seems trustworthy to me. biggrin.gif
Ed Simons
QUOTE (Kanada Ten)
I've always said they continued to be born well after 2011, each year more were born from normal humans at 10% the average birth rate until such time as matches the figures printed.


That would be a reasonable explanation, though I don't recall anything like it in the books. So why did this happen to elves and not to dwarves (who are already underrepresented in the population figures)?

QUOTE (Kanada Ten)
And that elves encouraged early births to pump up their numbers since once they hit 25 (I personally think) the ability to conceive probably drops to match the projected lifespan.  No canon backing to that though.


Cool, an international elven conspiracy. biggrin.gif
Kanada Ten
QUOTE
That would be a reasonable explanation, though I don't recall anything like it in the books.

I agree that they don't say anything in favor of such, but then again, I don't recall anything said against it either.

QUOTE
So why did this happen to elves and not to dwarves (who are already underrepresented in the population figures)?

Similar to orks and trolls, more elves were born (and kept) in proportion to dwarves. Also, there's a bunch of dwarves and trolls unaccounted for living under the ocean; that is where you'll find them, underneath the water, sea dwarves, underneath the sea.
Kremlin KOA
in england I know it was because Dwarven babies were killed at birth among the nobility... as later were orkish and trollish babies
Moon-Hawk
Also the different VITAS plagues might've hit the races differently. Maybe the elves lost very few individuals, while the orks got hit particularly hard. This could be due to standards of living, or maybe even just a racial predisposition.
Tomahawk
QUOTE (Ed Simons)
The thing is, by the time this character turned 11, it would be obvious that he was an elf, not an extremely tall incredibly thin human with strangely shaped ears. Any corporation would know he was an elf when they hired him, not four decades later when he's ready to retire.


I agree with that....what I'm saying is how would that affect things like retirement and the like. I guarantee a company would be perfectly willing to overlook that they are screwing over Orks and Trolls, but there is no way they'd start paying someone a pension at 65 if there was a strong prospect that this person would live to 300...heck even if they'd live to be 150.

There are alot of consequences that would arrise based on the aging. Yes I realize it has been done in games for years as pointed out earlier but others. But in general you have very little mixing of races in most "Fantasy" settings quite unlike the way things are in Shadowrun. I just think these are interesting things to look at from a social perspective.

Another thing you could look at is what the effect will be 200 years down the road. If things work the way they do in the real world you'd have heavily entrenched Elves running everything by that point. They have time and charisma on their side.
U_Fester
Mine characters never long enough. heck most of them can barely shave when they die....

mental note, must kill GM.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (Moon-Hawk)
Also the different VITAS plagues might've hit the races differently. Maybe the elves lost very few individuals, while the orks got hit particularly hard. This could be due to standards of living, or maybe even just a racial predisposition.

Goblinization happened after the second wave of VITAS. In both cases, VITAS was a harbinger of a new genetic expression.

~J
Ed Simons
QUOTE (Kanada Ten)
Similar to orks and trolls, more elves were born (and kept) in proportion to dwarves.


If the difference between elven and dwarven population is due to infanticide, then over a third of dwarves were killed at birth. eek.gif Keep in mind that would be a worldwide average over a period of fifty years.

And orks and trolls weren't born, they goblinized in 2021. Even if that wasn't the case, if the problem was due to unwanted infants being killed, then a third to a half of all orcs and three-fourths of all trolls were killed at birth.

QUOTE (Kanada Ten)
Also, there's a bunch of dwarves and trolls unaccounted for living under the ocean; that is where you'll find them, underneath the water, sea dwarves, underneath the sea.


Where on do the books say anything about aquatic metahumans? And that would require about 20 million aquatic dwarves and over 30 million aquatic trolls to be living off the coast of North America.
Kanada Ten
QUOTE
If the difference between elven and dwarven population is due to infanticide, then over a third of dwarves were killed at birth.

Not infantcide, that was just a minor note. Elves were born at a rate triple that of dwarves or whatever.

QUOTE
And orks and trolls weren't born, they goblinized in 2021.

Similar dispraportion of appearance not method of creation, for every one one troll, you get nine orks.

QUOTE
Where on do the books say anything about aquatic metahumans?  And that would require about 20 million aquatic dwarves and over 30 million aquatic trolls to be living off the coast of North America.

Please tell me you knew that was a joke.
Ed Simons
QUOTE (Moon-Hawk)
Also the different VITAS plagues might've hit the races differently.  Maybe the elves lost very few individuals, while the orks got hit particularly hard.  This could be due to standards of living, or maybe even just a racial predisposition.

Orks, trolls, and dwarves have a genetic predisposition to survive disease.

Average orks and dwarves would have 6 dice to resist disease. Average trolls get 8. Average elves get 3. Even the weakest and sickliest of orks and dwarves are more disease resistant than the average elf.

Any normal disease would kill a higher precentage of elves (and humans) that any of the otther metahuma types. Yet elves are heavily overrepresnted in the population figures. Dwarves are somewhat underrepresented, as are orks (presuming they have birth rates similar to humans), and trolls are massively underrepresented.

Maybe those nasty immortal elves have been engaging in biowarfare against the other metahumans.
Fortune
Or maybe those figures only refer to people with SINs. A higher percentage of the Goblinized races are SINless.
Ed Simons
QUOTE (Kanada Ten)
Not infantcide, that was just a minor note.  Elves were born at a rate triple that of dwarves or whatever.  Similar dispraportion of appearance not method of creation, for every one one troll, you get nine orks.


That's a bit different than what you said, though it does match my previous statement that a lot more than 10% of the population was born elves in 2011.

Population figures like those in SoNA and SoE work if about 14% of the population became elves, 9% became dwarves, 9% became orks, and 4% became trolls. That is the simplest solution even though it contradicts the books which say about 10%.

QUOTE (Kanada Ten)
Please tell me you knew that was a joke.

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(Since we both forgot to use smileys before.) smile.gif
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