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Elven Puberty and “The Wild Years” That Follow

I've been thinking about how Elves mature into adults and have come up with some ideas on the subject that I'd like to run past people. Here's an overview of The Wild Years, which usually begins around 110-125 years of age and lasts until 160-175.

Imagine that when you reached the age of 10, your growth slowed to a snail’s pace. While your friends are growing taller, stronger, and more beautiful/handsome, you stay basically the same. Your mind continues to develop, however, and in many ways you show more intelligence and maturity than your peers. But unlike them, you can’t do many of the things they do because of your physical limitations. They’re getting to play sports, learn to drive, and some are even getting to have… the sex. But not you. No, all you can do is watch as the world seems to move on without you. That causes you to get increasingly frustrated and resentful. If only you had a bigger body, the world would be your oyster, but you are stuck in the one you had at the age of 10. You fear that change will never come and you’ll be stuck like this forever. Then, at 20, you suddenly experience a year of rapid growth, transitioning from the body of a 10 year old to that of a 21 year old.

Think you might go just a little bit cRaZy after that? Think you might be running around, trying to do all the things you couldn’t do because of the child’s body in which you were stuck for a whole decade? Well, that’s basically how it works for Elves in my story setting.

For Elves, decades are more like years. Elven puberty, which usually begins at 100-125 years of age, only lasts about 10 years. Thus, from their perspective, they go from a child’s to that of an adult’s almost overnight. This causes all the wisdom and knowledge they have accumulated to be tossed out the window. They go bonkers trying to finally do all the things they wanted to do but couldn’t for the past 50 years or so, and it usually takes about 50 years for them to get this excitement out of their system.

These are the Wild Years, where Elves go nuts, often setting out on adventures, trying to experience as much as they can as quickly as they can. They are prone to reckless and often impulsive behavior, often failing to consider the consequences of their actions as well as older Elves do. All the wisdom they gained is still there and can occasionally be called upon but much of it has to be relearned through mistakes. The Wild Years are a half century of discovering the “why” behind many of the lessons taught over a century of prolonged childhood, lessons that are reinforced through experience, often the painful variety.

Older Elves will tolerate the Wild Years as much as possible but may prefer to send the Elf in this stage of life on a quest of some kind, usually on the pretext of serving a good cause, in order to make sure they’re not a bother and can’t embarrass themselves in front of too many other Elves. Elven cultures emphasize harmony, or at least the illusion of it, so disruptive Elves are sent away until they have “got it out of their system.”

Thus, the Wild Years are when most Elves interact with other races in a less official capacity. They may make friends with Non-Elves and often will learn as much as they can about other people and their cultures. While some Elves in their Wild Years are still a bit smug and superior minded, others will spend this period adopting the practices of others as much as possible as they may come to see their own cultures as too restrictive and even oppressive. Most, however, hold on to certain Elven customs while staying open minded and trying those of different cultures.

Another significant aspect of the Wild Years is that they are when an Elf is the most likely to have a child with a Human or Half-Human (the only types of Non-Elves with which they can reproduce.) Elven women are less likely to be impregnated due to the 5-10 year gaps between their reproductive cycles, but as they are not accustomed to these and are often caught up in their exuberant pursuits of other kinds of adventure, it is not difficult for them to fail to realize that the sharp increase in the interest they feel toward a man of another race may be indicative that she is within her window of opportunity to conceive. If she does copulate with a man and he is a Human or Half-Human, then there is a very real possibility that she will become pregnant.

Most Elven women in their Wild Years who become pregnant will usually be far from home at the time and therefore without the support of their families. As a result, many of them will have the child but either leave him or her with the father, place the child in an orphanage, or, tragically, abandon the child. A few Elven women may try to use abortifacient herbs to resolve the pregnancy a different way, as other methods of abortion are extremely risky due to the layers of magical (and aggressive) defenses the womb generates while the next generation of the species is gestating inside of it, but abortifacient herbs are not without their own risks.

Firstly, the toxins in the herbs which induce a miscarriage may damage certain organs in the body, such as the liver or kidneys. For another, even after the miscarriage has been induced, there is still the issue of the fetus being expelled from the womb. A normal birth and a stillbirth involve many of the same processes and therefore carry many of the same risks. Further, if the Elven woman doing this does it in secret or turns to an unscrupulous or incompetent individual for assistance, a whole slew of other problems may arise. Finally, there is the simple fact that reproduction for Elves is usually an uphill battle. Simply getting pregnant can involve decades of missed opportunities and failure even when the opportunities are seized. Elven cultures, therefore, view a miscarriage as an immense tragedy. Consequently, inducing a miscarriage is often anathema to even the most desperate of Elven women in their Wild Years. (There is also the fear that the abortifacient herbs may damage the womb, making future pregnancies either even more difficult to attain or even impossible.)

Male Elves in their Wild Years are more likely to have children with Humans or Half-Humans than females. As they are not limited by the "deucedly erratic" nature of the reproductive cycles of their female counterparts, the "window of opportunity" is dictated by the women with whom they have a tryst. Most Elven men in their Wild Years either forget that Humans and Half-Humans work differently than Elven women and are thus do not consider the possibility of conceiving a child in this manner.

It is for this reason that Half-Elves conceived by Elven men in their Wild Years may grow up without their father. The Elf may have only had a one-night-stand with the woman before setting out and, because a decade feels more like a year to him, if he passes through that area again, he will likely be stunned to discover there is a Half-Elf child waiting for him. Most unnerving of all will be that it may have only been a decade or two ago that he had the same build as the child. It is rare that an Elven man in this situation will stay with the mother, especially if he's in the early stages of the Wild Years.

However, for the same reasons that an Elven woman is unlikely to pursue an abortion, an Elven man is unlikely to entirely abandon his child. He may not stay with the mother and his child, but he will usually do what he can to support them from afar. Alternatively, he will take the child with him but place him or her in the care of a monastery, convent, Mage Academy, or some other place where the child can be raised and properly educated, sending money and other things on a regular basis. It is unlikely, however, that the child will ever be welcomed into his home once he marries an Elven woman and has children with her. The only exceptions to this are when he fails to have a sufficient number of children to meet the quotas that his House or Clan has set forth for him. But, if the Half-Elf is brought into the family, it is usually made clear that it is only out of desperation.

The Wild Years will gradually taper off as they progress. Some cultures treat this gradual reduction in reckless abandon as part of the Wild Years while others call it the Mellowing Years. Regardless, the accumulated lessons from mistakes, the acclimation to the adult body, and the fact that the Elf has been able to do many of the things he or she desired while trapped in a child's body cause the eagerness and impatience to decrease until they are gone. At that point, the Elf will return to his or her homeland, ready to assume whatever roles await them. Some, however, never return home, usually because their Wild Years exposed them to things that made them view their culture in a different light and they decided they did not want to be a part of it any longer. Such Roaming Elves, as they are called, are often regarded as pariahs at best and legally dead at worst. However, few of these individuals care and will simply focus on finding a place that suits them.

So, those are my ideas for the Wild Years that follow Elvish puberty. What do you guys think? Do you think I'm on the right track with this? Also, do you have any suggestions for other things that could be part of the Wild Years? Let me know!
 
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