On 11/16/05, Maximilian Wilson <wilson.max at gmail.com> wrote: > On 11/16/05, Davdi Silverrock <davdisil at gmail.com> wrote: > > > > looking old. So, too, are witches described as being old. Well, one > > witch (Noish-pa), anyway, and I'm generalizing from one example. So > > > Actually, I would expect witchcraft to have an easier time than sorcery > countering the effects of old age, given that witchcraft seems to be mostly > about (self-) awareness, while sorcery is more like a tool for manipulating > power. I suspect that Arra's and Laszlo's longevity is a witchcraft > side-effect. Well, perhaps. I've mentioned my doubts about those characters elsewhere, and I will just add here that Paarfi probably does not know much, if anything, about witchcraft personally, and might well therefore be given to exaggerating its capabilities. The same goes for necromancy, I would think. I find myself wishing I could read some of the primary sources regarding the 9th (or 10th) Battle of Dzur Mountain, and the Battle of Adrilankha, just to be sure that the events that Paarfi writes about were indeed recorded as happening. > > To the left, I would posit that the decrepitudes of old age are indeed > > nothing more than accumulated damage at the cellular and genetic > > levels. If sorcery can heal disease and trauma at a larger physical > > level, it *should* be possible to simply heal old age - if not in > > oneself, then in another, and sorcerers could simply take turns in > > making sure that they are all effectively unagingly immortal. > > > And it *should* be possible to reattach severed heads, or repair the damage > done by a dagger to the eye. They don't seem to know how to do that yet, and > perhaps old age is similar. Well, in that case, the problem is definitely damage to the brain. Aging of the brain might be a a non-reparable problem, but if that's the *only* problem, very old sorcerers should still *look* young (or ageless), since the appearance of age is mostly in the skin and other non-brain tissue, which should theoretically be reparable.