Centurion
Dark Council Elite
*cracks knuckes*
Note that nothing in this post reflects on the opinions of the lore management team, nor is to be considered a fact in-character or out of character until / unless @Michcat, @Naelwyn, and @Faelin give their opinions.
[| Introductory |]
Yes yes, welcome to my humble little thread.
In the following mass of words I'll be trying my damned hardest to make sense of the blatantly obvious fact that our characters age at different rates. For example, @blargtheawesome has aged only a few decades in the time that @Ddaug02 has started and ended a family line of the Wise name. As another example @Tybalt has remained aged 17 since he first joined the server and from what I understand he will not be aging any further, even now that he has a 3 year old child.
I am entirely aware that time and its flow is a tricky mess to go about unraveling - a "wibbly wobbly ball of timey wimey stuff" as Naelwyn (and the Doctor) has claimed it to be. With that in mind I will be striving to give a detailed personal analysis of the subject that can perhaps gain traction and be of agreement to the playerbase and perhaps even the lore management team.
So without further adieu, shall we get to it?
[| Alteran Temporal Years |]
After a few days of thinking on the subject, I began to believe that we should have a baseline for time flow on Altera - the equivalent of time flow here on Earth, apart from the time that elapses over the course of a year. With ample thought given to the naming of this baseline I came up with the above.
ATY (Alteran Temporal Years) would make up the rate at which the world around our characters ages. A very simple example is outlined below:
Character 1 ages from 20-26 over the course of two OOC months.
Character 2 ages from 20-22 over the course of two OOC months.
Altera ages from 0-200 over the course of two OOC months.
As you can see the actual static flow of ATY doesn't affect individual characters' aging process as that would be both a burden to enforce and heavily unwanted among the community. This was essentially the central ideology behind my decision to come up with and detail ATY - to please as many people as possible.
Of course, the rate at which Altera ages per month is definitely supposed to be static unless acted on by an outside force (such as the Gods, or dare I say the Immortal Kings), though the actual rate at which is ages doesn't have to be the example given above - 200 years : 1 month. That would be up to either popular opinion or lore management decision.
This however would not be something easily gauged by characters (with an exception to most likely Thaumaturges or Evokers over the other two schools, or the Gods) through roleplay observation or the like. So if this were to become a thing - all of our characters wouldn't suddenly go "Oh right, I forgot to mention, I'm 900000 Alteran Temporal Years old. Ain't nothin' but a G thang." That would be silly and have metagame written all over it. While some of the oldest characters still around would probably pay enough attention to notice that the people around them age at different rates, it's such a commonplace and unmentioned thing in our world that it's hardly likely anybody would notice enough to cause a scene or question it.
[| Personal Timestreams |]
This is where it gets particularly interesting.
I would dare propose that our characters are aging at a rate decided by an ethereal entity - most likely the Gods or Immortal Kings - and this rate can and will fluctuate over time or stop entirely if the entity wishes it to. I.e., we OOCly decide how our characters age and if they age, even while the sun keeps rising and setting overhead and explaining why characters like Scardrac, Naelwyn, Axex, Archaeus, Tzemik, Vorar, and so forth are still around.
There's not much more to it rather than "Within reason the effects of your decisions to age your characters are in-character."
With this being how it is I'm sure that using some sort of magic - God given or learned - one could potentially manipulate their own or others' timestreams to a certain extent with the consent of the player(s) involved.
I don't have much else to write on the subject of personal timestreams than I've already given.
[| In Summary |]
What I propose here is only with the best intentions towards all of us and holds no true effect against the world at large that would change any aspect of day to day roleplay. I ask for your feedback in the thread below and any comments or critiques of my logic or writing here.
And by all means, thank you all for taking the time to read this thread.
Note that nothing in this post reflects on the opinions of the lore management team, nor is to be considered a fact in-character or out of character until / unless @Michcat, @Naelwyn, and @Faelin give their opinions.
[| Introductory |]
Yes yes, welcome to my humble little thread.
In the following mass of words I'll be trying my damned hardest to make sense of the blatantly obvious fact that our characters age at different rates. For example, @blargtheawesome has aged only a few decades in the time that @Ddaug02 has started and ended a family line of the Wise name. As another example @Tybalt has remained aged 17 since he first joined the server and from what I understand he will not be aging any further, even now that he has a 3 year old child.
I am entirely aware that time and its flow is a tricky mess to go about unraveling - a "wibbly wobbly ball of timey wimey stuff" as Naelwyn (and the Doctor) has claimed it to be. With that in mind I will be striving to give a detailed personal analysis of the subject that can perhaps gain traction and be of agreement to the playerbase and perhaps even the lore management team.
So without further adieu, shall we get to it?
[| Alteran Temporal Years |]
After a few days of thinking on the subject, I began to believe that we should have a baseline for time flow on Altera - the equivalent of time flow here on Earth, apart from the time that elapses over the course of a year. With ample thought given to the naming of this baseline I came up with the above.
ATY (Alteran Temporal Years) would make up the rate at which the world around our characters ages. A very simple example is outlined below:
Character 1 ages from 20-26 over the course of two OOC months.
Character 2 ages from 20-22 over the course of two OOC months.
Altera ages from 0-200 over the course of two OOC months.
As you can see the actual static flow of ATY doesn't affect individual characters' aging process as that would be both a burden to enforce and heavily unwanted among the community. This was essentially the central ideology behind my decision to come up with and detail ATY - to please as many people as possible.
Of course, the rate at which Altera ages per month is definitely supposed to be static unless acted on by an outside force (such as the Gods, or dare I say the Immortal Kings), though the actual rate at which is ages doesn't have to be the example given above - 200 years : 1 month. That would be up to either popular opinion or lore management decision.
This however would not be something easily gauged by characters (with an exception to most likely Thaumaturges or Evokers over the other two schools, or the Gods) through roleplay observation or the like. So if this were to become a thing - all of our characters wouldn't suddenly go "Oh right, I forgot to mention, I'm 900000 Alteran Temporal Years old. Ain't nothin' but a G thang." That would be silly and have metagame written all over it. While some of the oldest characters still around would probably pay enough attention to notice that the people around them age at different rates, it's such a commonplace and unmentioned thing in our world that it's hardly likely anybody would notice enough to cause a scene or question it.
[| Personal Timestreams |]
This is where it gets particularly interesting.
I would dare propose that our characters are aging at a rate decided by an ethereal entity - most likely the Gods or Immortal Kings - and this rate can and will fluctuate over time or stop entirely if the entity wishes it to. I.e., we OOCly decide how our characters age and if they age, even while the sun keeps rising and setting overhead and explaining why characters like Scardrac, Naelwyn, Axex, Archaeus, Tzemik, Vorar, and so forth are still around.
There's not much more to it rather than "Within reason the effects of your decisions to age your characters are in-character."
With this being how it is I'm sure that using some sort of magic - God given or learned - one could potentially manipulate their own or others' timestreams to a certain extent with the consent of the player(s) involved.
I don't have much else to write on the subject of personal timestreams than I've already given.
[| In Summary |]
What I propose here is only with the best intentions towards all of us and holds no true effect against the world at large that would change any aspect of day to day roleplay. I ask for your feedback in the thread below and any comments or critiques of my logic or writing here.
And by all means, thank you all for taking the time to read this thread.