A thought I had: How old are the characters?

Fatshark Lounge
1

I know we have no canon information on this whatsoever, but I still thought it would be interesting to talk about.

I’d imagine Kruber, Saltzpyre, and Sienna to be in their 30 - 40s, with Kruber being the youngest and Sienna being the oldest.

Now, Bardin is a dwarf, which means he can be older than humans. However, his optimism, his undertaking of the seemingly impossible task of searching for the lost hold of Karak Zorn, along with a quote he has towards Sienna saying that “Where I’m from, it’s “wrong as always, Bardin””, in response to her saying he’s right as always, leads me to believe he’s one of the younger Dwarfs.

I’d imagine him to be around 40 - 50 years old, but amongst Dwarfs, that’s someone who’s still considered fairly young, having only reached adulthood 10 - 20 years prior.

Kerillian is probably the trickiest one to guess out of all. She’s the character we have the least amount of information on, and Elves are the race that show the least signs of aging. It’s anyone’s guess as to how old she is, however, her condescending nature towards the other members of the team, along with her curiosity, leads me to believe she’s also fairly young, at least by Elven standards.

As Elves can live for far, far longer than humans, even way longer than Dwarfs, up to around an average age of 1000 years old, Kerillian might be 200 - 300 years old, though I have little to support that.

That’s just the playable characters though. We also have Lohner and Olesya.

Lohner I’d say is around his 50 - 60s, an old man, but he’s not out of the game yet. Olesya I’d expect to be around her 60 - 70s. She’s an old crone with graying hair and a creaking voice, and she should have an age to support that.

But this is all what I think. What do you fellas think? Do you think they’re older, or perhaps even younger? There’s really no right or wrong answer to the question, it’s all up to your own interpretation.

Edit:

So, after talking about it for a bit, we’ve more or less reached a (incomplete) verdict. Kruber, Saltzpyre, and Sienna are all 40 - 50 years old, with Kruber still being the youngest, and Sienna still being the oldest (so Kruber would just be entering his forties, Saltzpyre is in his mid forties, and Sienna is in her late forties/just entering her fifties).

Bardin is older than all of them, though younger than the Elf, so that would make him around 60 - 70 years old, either about to or having just reached senior status in his clan.

Kerillian… will remain inconclusive, for now at least. She could potentially be anything, but generally we agree she’d be in the Elven equivalent of her late twenties. What that is, however, is the tricky part. She could be anything from 100 to 400 years old, but we generally didn’t go higher than that. Either way, as it often is with Elves, they always have to be so irritatingly cryptic.

Fahking Elves, how do they work?

And finally, Lohner and Olesya are in their 60s, with Lohner just entering his sixties, and Olesya either being in her mid- or late sixties.

3 Likes
2

I remember seeing a discussion/speculation about this before, but I don’t remember where it was, and it was a long time ago…

Certainly, all of the humans are past their absolute prime. I don’t know how Warhammer’s life expectancies and signs of aging relate to the real world, historically or otherwise, but I’m gonna go with what I know of the real world stuff.

I agree that Kruber’s the youngest, but even he could be anywhere from little less than thirty (though I doubt that) to over forty. A beard (or a moustache) makes anyone look older than they are, and Kruber has impressive facial hair, so it’s hard to base anything on his appearance. He’s an experienced soldier, and while he likely didn’t start his career quite as young as Victor, he still might’ve been in his teens when he signed up. He hasn’t started to show significant signs of aging yet, though, so more than forty years of age I also find unlikely. So I’d guess Markus is somewhere slightly over thirty.

Sienna is a difficult one. Her appearance and voice suggest something over forty, maybe even fifty, but her addiction to Aqshy might have aged her appearance prematurely. Again, I don’t know the lore side of how Aqshy, magic in general or mages’ abilities relate to their age and appearance, but it’s quite common in fantasy for magic to extend the wielder’s lifespan somewhat, either through spells or naturally. I can’t say anything more than what her appearance suggests.

Victor seems somewhere quite close to Sienna’s age, I think. While he’s still physically quite fit, his face certainly isn’t that of a young man. He’s also had time to move up in rank as a Witch Hunter despite his unpopular opinions about the Skaven. I’d say, around forty or forty-five.

Bardin has a varied history, even before he left as a Ranger. He’s had enough time to spend some as and Ironbreaker, for example (an elite unit, as I understand it). His attitudes and ideas are (apparently) quite unorthodox for a dwarf, though, which could suggest a younger age than his experience does; he hasn’t quite taken in all the idiosyncracies of dwarven society. My guess is (and it’s pretty much completely a guess) that he’s close to the dwarf equivalent to his thirties: Enough to have two careers, but still young enough to retain his radical views.

Kerillian is, yes, the hardest one. She appears young, but she’s an elf. She hasn’t told anything about her past that’d suggest she’s been anything other than a Waywatcher before, but she certainly is very skilled. Unlike Bardin, who seems to have a longer history in strange ideas and dislike from his peers, she left her home because of a single incident (and it’s not even completely clear whether her exile was a real punishment or self-imposed), so it could’ve happened at any time during her life. And finally, it may be just the time she’s spent among humans and Bardin, but to the best of my knowledge she’s still quite friendly and tolerant for an elf. So again, this is practically completely a guess, but I’d say she’s the elven equivalent of her late twenties.

And as for the two allies, well, both are clearly passed middle age already. Olesya seems to be in her sixties, maybe more if her wizarding helps. Lohner appears only slightly younger, having (mostly) given up the sword a while ago, and getting grey and bald, and may be pushing or even slightly over sixty himself.

3 Likes
3

I might’ve undershot Saltzpyre and Sienna by a bit, and I think it might be more appropriate to place them in their 40 - 50s, rather than 30 - 40s, with Sienna still being the oldest out of the two.

She does refer to herself as an “old woman” in her voicelines, so her appearance does seem like genuine aging, and not just the effects of using magic. I forgot to take a look at Saltzpyre’s face, which does indeed look way older than someone like Kruber’s, so he should be a tad bit older.

Dwarfs reach adulthood by the age of 30, and they are considered seniors or “Full Beards” by the age of 70. A Dwarf is only truly considered “old” when they are around 120 years old, or what is referred to as a “Long Beard”.

When a Dwarf becomes a Full Beard, they are granted the honor of taking on an apprentice, and considering Bardin never talks about this, I don’t believe he’s reached this state yet.

So for Bardin to be considered young by Dwarfen standards, he has to be between 30 - 60 years old. They’d still have plenty of opportunity to take on a couple of different jobs like Ironbreaker or Ranger in this age, as Dwarfs only tend to settle on mastering a single job when they become a Full Beard.

Now as for Kerillian, I do agree that she seems like someone that might be in her late twenties, but to translate that into Elf standards is a bit tricky.

The average age of a human in real life is around 80 years (rounded up).

I’m going to round “late twenties” up to 30, both for simplicity’s sake, and also because I rounded up the other thing.

30 is 37.5% of 80.

And if the average age of an Elf is 1000 years, 37.5% of that is 375 years old. Considering I rounded up earlier, I’ll take a few years off, which would leave her around 300 - 350 years old, a bit older than I guessed to begin with.

Lohner and Olesya are old, yes, but I don’t believe they are around the same age. There has to be at least some gap between them, as Lohner himself refers to her as being old, which would be weird if he’s the same age. So if they are both around their sixties, Lohner should be 55 - 60, whereas Olesya would be 65 - 70.

4

It’s also possible that he did reach Full Beard age at some point, but it was either just before or soon after he left as a Ranger, so he never had time to accept an apprentice (and if he did reach it before leaving, it’s likely that his ideas kept candidates away too). Nevertheless, it wouldn’t have been long ago.

Then again, they likely aren’t children for a century and a half, and maturing (both physically and mentally) relative early messes up other relations too. So let’s reform the idea: a young(ish) adult. Someone who’s expected to have decided their profession already, and possibly, depending on culture, having started a family, but that hasn’t really started to make a name for themselves yet.

5

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the forests around Athel Loren are magical, and time is wonky there. With reports of an army marching in and coming out 300 years later. So she could actually be way older or younger than we think if you just go on the date of birth. But her actual age, as far as I know, elves don’t die of old age unless it’s a magical thing, like being reborn. There are some elves that are 7,000+ years old but I think it was stated somewhere that most elves die of boredom? They just don’t have anything left they want to do and disappear around the age of 2,000-3,000. And most die in wars or fighting long before that.

But she made it to a Waystalker, which is the elite of the elite guards of Athel Loren, they are considered heroes. They are very distinguished and stand out compared to even Waywatchers. So, having that much experience would suggest she’s a bit older?

1 Like
6

Still boggles my mind a bit that he’d be considered a senior within his hold by then. He certainly doesn’t act like one. He doesn’t seem that mature, but then again, almost no one in the Ü5 are.

I’d like to think Elves are only considered adults when they are at least 50 years old.

I’m unsure what you’re describing exactly. Isn’t this still someone in their late twenties (I.E, a young adult)? Aren’t people expected to have chosen a profession and started a family by then?

7

No, you’re completely right that time seems to go by faster in Athel Loren, but I don’t think that the aging process itself is affected any more than it would be outside of the forest.

So if Kerillian was born inside of the forest and she stayed there for let’s say 400 years (arbitrarily selected), but 4000 years had passed outside, I wouldn’t exactly call her a 4000 year old, as she would physically still only be 400 years old.

But her actual age, as far as I know, elves don’t die of old age unless it’s a magical thing, like being reborn. There are some elves that are 7,000+ years old but I think it was stated somewhere that most elves die of boredom? They just don’t have anything left they want to do and disappear around the age of 2,000-3,000. And most die in wars or fighting long before that.

Even if Elves don’t have a set lifespan (as Dwarfs don’t either), they’d still have to go through juvenility and adolescence and all that. They’d still have stages where they are considered young, middle aged, and old. I certainly don’t believe that when an Elf is born, it’s a fully-grown adult that pops out.

So even if Kerillian doesn’t have a concrete set point in time where she’s going to die, she can still be considered young or old, based on how far she is in her aging process, along with how long Elves tend to live on average.

But she made it to a Waystalker, which is the elite of the elite guards of Athel Loren, they are considered heroes. They are very distinguished and stand out compared to even Waywatchers. So, having that much experience would suggest she’s a bit older?

That is true, but I don’t think there’s actually any age restrictions on making it to Waystalker. Some Asrai may just show a natural talent for marksmanship at a young age, and make it to Waystalker early on. Waystalkers are described as being closer to the forest than any other Asrai, and with Kerillian being described as having a better eyesight than most other Elves, along with being able to sense the Weave itself, she might just have had some instinctive talent, not necessarily several hundred years of training.

Also, keep in mind that Kerillian has only risen to the rank of Waystalker by the time of the second game, as she was a Waywatcher in the first game. As she’s currently in some kind of exile from her other kin, there’s no one there to promote her, so her title of Waystalker is self-proclaimed.

8

Pretty much, yeah, but I tried to state the idea as something else than years. If we think that elves live for, say, a 1000 years and that they mature at the same relative rate as humans, they’d still be complete children at 150 years of age, physically and mentally. I haven’t seen a single fantasy work or world where that was the case, and often even the longest-living races mature at only half, maybe a third of the rate of humans. So if elves are considered adults at 50 years of age, translating that to the historical age of adulthood of around 16, would make Kerillian closer to 100 than 350. I used the (human) years earlier mostly as shorthand for the comparison to growth and adulthood, and tried to form the same idea differently.

To be honest, there are a lot of plot holes in practically all fantasy worlds, considering the growth, maturation and learning speeds of the very long-living races.

9

In DnD, elves only reach adulthood at the age of 100 and that’s when they can take an adult name. And they only live for 750 years max normally.

10

And that’s still relatively earlier than humans.

11

Oh, I think I might’ve misunderstood you, because in your original post, you said that Elves likely aren’t children for a century and a half.

I might’ve, once again, undershot things, and 50 might be too early considering it’s a species which can, in theory, live to upwards of 6000+ years of age.

@SmokerT69 proposed that, like Elves in DnD, they would reach adulthood at 100 years old. I don’t really know where it’s fair to place when an Elf can be considered an adult in Warhammer, as there’s no canon information on it (to my knowledge), nor can Elves actually die of old age.

100 years seems fair, given that the average life span of an Elf is 1000 years, which would make it so they enter adulthood after 10% of their (average) lifespan has passed, though this would still be earlier than humans.

I’m still thinking Kerillian would be around the 300 - 350 years, which would, per DnD’s lore, make it so she reached adulthood 200 - 250 years ago. However, I don’t know if this translates well into human life spans, if she’s supposed to be a young adult in her late twenties by our standards.

Regardless, we probably won’t come to a conclusion about this anyway.

1 Like
12

What’s interesting about the idea of a long-living species is their growth doesn’t necessarily have to be related to our own at all and it doesn’t have to be slow either. As far as we know, elves could become adults around 20-30 akin to humans, with most of their education done. I imagine elves that want to further themselves in some profession or study will continue their education and studies for much longer than that, but I can’t imagine every single elf does that. It wouldn’t make much sense from an evolutionary standpoint for an elf child(or any child) to take many decades to reach full maturity. If you look at existing species seen with enormous lifespans they don’t all necessarily take a long time to mature. A noticeable exception would be the Greenland Shark which reaches sexual maturity around 150 years old. They also live in frigid waters and having very slow metabolisms though. We hardly know anything about an elf’s physiology other than pointy ears.

I’ve looked around before for the aging and such of elves, but it hardly seems elaborated upon. It’s probably kept vague so writers can manipulate their writings with ease when it comes to elves. As for elves dying, I read that they sometimes die similar to old age because they’re just kind of tired of existing. Others are kept living due to magic or some other concept.

Based on U5’s general conversations and the look of their models, the humans are definitely in their 40’s-50’s. I’d be surprised if even Kruber was in his 30’s. The conversations suggest that the dwarf is definitely older than the humans, but younger than the elf. It’s anyone’s guess as to how old Kerillian would be.

3 Likes
13

So this got me interested lol…

Apparently,

“The more cortical neurons a species has, the longer it lives—doesn’t matter if it is a bird, a primate or some other mammal; how large it is; and how fast it burns energy. The number of neurons that you find in the cortex of a species predicts around 75 percent of all of the variation in longevity across species.”

I guess that’s if we’re going in with a scientific view point and not “ITZ MAGIC”. And yea, there’s a lot of species that take a very long time to reach maturity.

EDIT: Deleted the tortoise thing, Got it completely wrong. It’s not puberty that takes a long time, it’s when it reaches maturity, full size, which can take 40 years.

1 Like
14

Fun fact: telomerase is a part of DNA that allows the cells to continue replicating without damaging themselves. Humans don’t have a way to recreate telomerase for the entirety of our lifetime and, because of it, we end up dying of old age because we cannot produce new cells to take the place of old ones.

Lobsters (certain lobsters, if I’m not wrong) are capable of living for extraordinary periods of time because they can perfectly replicate that portion of their DNA; they’ll only usually die during their molting stage because it is too costly to them.

I think it makes a lot of sense to say that the elf-children are as capable/more capable than a human child of the same age and just stay in their prime for 600-odd years at which point they begin to deteriorate. I imagine it would be a slow process, but over the next 200-300 years they get slowly weaker.

That is if we are approaching it scientifically!

1 Like
15

yea, my sisters fiancee caught a huge one 2 years ago, made news around the world. Was just after a hurricane hit the island.

They said it was well over a 100 years old.

I dunno about that. As they seem to get stronger with age, I guess it could just be they are more experienced. But elves don’t seem to get old and die, they seem to die from boredom once they’ve lost the will to live or have nothing else they want to do.

2 Likes
16

100%, I agree.

In that case, I think they wouldn’t get stronger unless they have an affinity for something that grows more powerful with knowledge/experience (magic/mages come to mind). They might become more skillful soldiers or masters of their craft, though, which lends a lot of merit to how the High-Elves are renowned for their beautiful clothing/jewelry; their craftsmen are so well trained or experienced that they can dependably make tools/items that are 10x the quality of anything the humans can produce.

I think it would also give even more benefit to the Waystalkers. I’m not sure what the lore is on how much elves remember, but if a Waystalker can live long enough to master a 5 mile by 5 mile stretch of woods they could be a nightmare to an attacker. Imagine being able to tell where every tree/branch/rock/cave/hill is and how far their arrow can fly from every point in that stretch of woods… no one can be there and be considered ‘safe.’

Also, what a catch! That’s amazing!

17

Kerillian’s dialogue would suggest she is well over 50 years old(big shocker, I know). But it at least gives some idea.

1 Like
18

The fact that a Wood Elf, one of the most isolationistic species in the entire world, travelled all the way to the Southlands in order to visit a Dwarf hold (keep in mind that Dwarfs and Elves despise each other ever since the War of the Beard), is already strange enough, regardless of her age.

Also, 50 years ago would mean that Kerillian traveled to Karak Zorn in 2473 I.C (largely unimportant, but just wanted to mention it).

Regardless, it certainly gives more leeway towards her being a bit older than just the 100 - 200s.

2 Likes
19

A little bit of an update on the Kerillian situation, I did some digging (if you can even call it that) and found mention of a High Elf Wizard by the name of Caladris.

Caladris, according to the WHFB wiki anyway, is considered extremely young, being only 150 years old.

While the wikia only says it’s considered young by High Elf Mage standards, I would assume it’s also young by High Elf standards as a whole, and would thus also assume that something young by High Elf standards is also young by Wood Elf standards (as Wood Elves have little to no biological difference from High Elves).

This doesn’t do anything to hint at Kerillian’s age, but if we’re still going with the idea of her being in her late twenties, she’s at least 200+ years.

Come to think of it, what if when it comes to translating human age into elf age, you just have to multiply by ten?

I mean, let’s go with Caladris again and him being 150 years old is considered extremely young for a wizard. Let’s divided it by 10, which gives us 15 (big shocker, I know), which would also be a considerably young age to become a wizard for humans.

So if Kerillian is in her late twenties, and late twenties is 28 - 30 (approx.), that would make her 280 - 300 years old.

Link to the article on Caladris I found.

1 Like
20

This seems reasonable to me. It gives her plenty of years to become a Waystalker and also makes her young enough (by elven standards) to retain some naïveté around the issue with her having witnessed the ritual that resulted in her banishment.

On that note: I find it sort of a cool character trope that Kerillian suffers from an infectious amount of curiosity. She has this eagerness to know as much as she can about everything.

She is constantly asking after how other people are going to deal with their problems in the Uber-Doober 5. Asking Kruber about how his relationship with Saltzpyre is going; prying about Saltzpyre’s dreams; asking Sienna how she feels about her fire-lust; as a matter of fact, the only one she doesn’t really push on is Bardin… which I find cool in it’s own way. I think she’s developed some really cool respect for him enough to the point where she drew her conclusions and backed off.

1 Like