Immortal Characters

[Telcontar]

Yeah, there are varying types of immortality. Maybe we should define them... Tolkien's elves can die, but only through violence (and in some rare cases, sadness, as mentioned above). They are free from sickness and disease, as well.

I'd suggest calling the inability to die from old age Agelessness, though that's not quite right. They do age to some small degree.

 

[Kaellpae]

Is there an immortality that keeps you alive until you're ready to die?

 

[Joe the Gnarled]

Is there an immortality that keeps you alive until you're ready to die?

There is anything you want... You have only to put it on paper. As far as works that are already written I cannot think of any specific examples of this, however it sounds familiar. I am sure I have seen/read it somewhere.

 

[Ravana]

A better question might be "Why do I want to use immortal characters?" Those who have been around here long enough will recognize that as a variant of the question I usually ask whenever someone asks a "How do you do X?" question.… The point being: if there's no reason for you to include immortal characters, then you probably shouldn't include them, whereas if there is a reason, the reason itself will probably go a long way toward answering the other question.

Telcontar suggested trying to catalog the various types of immortality… those who have been around here etc. will probably be shocked that I'm going to take a partial pass on the invitation to do so. ( Again.) But only partial. I'll throw out a few examples in order to point up some of the issues that can arise when using immortals.

- Does not/cannot die of old age (and possibly disease); can die violently. The standard view of elves and vampires.
- Serial lives: can die, possibly by any means "mortals" can, but always comes back–resurrected or reincarnated; most likely retains some or all memory from previous lives, or at least has some way whereby these can eventually be accessed.
- Transfer immortality: the mind/soul/etc. needs to be periodically switched to another body; can die if this is prevented.
- Parasitic immortality: as above, but the new host doesn't lose its own mind/etc. in the process.
- Volitional immortality: can die by choice, either in addition to any of the above, or as the only possibility.
- Cannot be killed by any means–at which point you need to decide the extent to which the character is also invulnerable, and what happens when the character does take "lethal" damage.
- Immortal soul: bet you all forgot about this one… even though it's the default assumption of most of the world's religions, which will tell you that you are immortal, you just won't be sticking around here forever.

This last one is the one that makes most immortals ring false for me–because unless you assume it's true, it seems to me that most immortals, apart from maybe those of the second-to-last type, would develop debilitating paranoia over time, as they sought to avoid anything that could kill them, that had even the remotest chance of doing so… or even causing them serious harm or long-term inconvenience, like, say, being buried under a rockslide for the rest of eternity. No matter how attached we may be to life, we all know we're going to die eventually anyway; and most or all of us were raised to believe that our souls will live on afterward (whether we still believe that or not). But consider–just how "heroic" do you think you could be if you knew the only way you could die was if you screwed up? Worse, if you also believed that death was final? Would you be out and about in a dangerous world? Or even answer the door? Tolkien's elves had it easy: they not only believed in an "afterlife"–a land of the gods, actually, but same difference for present purposes–they had firsthand accounts from people who'd been there.

 

[Telcontar]

Yes, Ravana. We're shocked that you only took a partial pass.

Looks fairly complete to me, though. Most of the ones I can think of would be subsets of the ones on your list.

Also, it's not a new realization that the immortality thing was a poorly though-out 'reward,' or that for humankind it would be a downright curse. I think there was a Greek myth character whom the Gods cursed with immortality. Eventually most humans would get bored, or go crazy as he watched everyone he got close to die around him.

And in the long, long term, he would have to deal with the sun going supernova, and he gets to just hang around and float in the resulting molecular cloud. True immortality would be a fearful thing. It would take a very, very particular sort of mind to enjoy even a few thousand years of it.

 

[Kaellpae]

And after a while. If you married someone from their 20s to their death(80s-ish) it'd eventually be a blink of an eye to you. Or eventually you'd forget about them. Eventually you'd probably just pull back and ignore humanity and all of its petty squabbles.

 

[Joe the Gnarled]

Yes, Ravana. We're shocked that you only took a partial pass.

Looks fairly complete to me, though. Most of the ones I can think of would be subsets of the ones on your list.

Ravana’s partial pass is better than my full fledged attempt any day of the week.

 

[Donny Bruso]

Ravana’s partial pass is better than my full fledged attempt any day of the week.

I know the feeling.