Question Class Reunions

I was rereading Lady Lightning and got to the Con, which got me thinking what would a Whately reunion be like? How is it set up, are there two, on for heros one for villians?

Considering how long-lived, and/or immortal some of the students are... how far out do you go with class reunions...? Those awkward reunions where the only students there are Sidhe, because everyone else died hundreds of years before...

Cryptic wrote: I was rereading Lady Lightning and got to the Con, which got me thinking what would a Whately reunion be like? How is it set up, are there two, on for heros one for villians?

I'd worry more about the mages resuming old rivalries, or the techies setting up a little Robot Wars competition.

No, Reunions would be held at the Academy, and School Neutrality would be in place. You leave your disintegrator ray at home, put your grudges and rivalries- and blood feuds- on hold, and you go to reconnect with old school friends. The Syndicate enforces the Neutrality, and the 'heroes' by and large would rather gargle broken glass than give the 'bad guys' the satisfaction. If you see someone you really want to take out, you just smile, give them an ominous nod, and move on.

If nothing else, it would give some people a context to talk civilly face to face with people they need to communicate with, when normal circumstances would never allow it.

And it's understood- nobody comes in their 'work clothes'

Rose Bunny wrote: Considering how long-lived, and/or immortal some of the students are... how far out do you go with class reunions...? Those awkward reunions where the only students there are Sidhe, because everyone else died hundreds of years before...

Fey, Ayla, Jade and Tenyo hold the 4007 class reunion. Of course they are the only ones left alive of the class. There are a few others, since it has become an all school reunion, like Absynthe and Whisper... Fey and a few magi are all that are left. They still occasionally try to find Sara Waite who is still missing....

Ayla? I don't think so. But Bladedancer might have become the Ninth Immortal. And the 3010 reunion was particularly sad, because Chaka had just passed away. There are limits for even the Soke-no-Do to extend her life through ki manipulation...

Read the Ayla stories again, especially the last ones. There are hints, hints that Ayla might be able to join the immortals too. Besides the fact that he is being mentored by Circe, who might give him some hints. But in at least one possible future that someone sees for Ayla he becomes fully female and like a demigoddess at least. Very powerful and not just due to her money.

Anne wrote: Read the Ayla stories again, especially the last ones. There are hints, hints that Ayla might be able to join the immortals too. Besides the fact that he is being mentored by Circe, who might give him some hints. But in at least one possible future that someone sees for Ayla he becomes fully female and like a demigoddess at least. Very powerful and not just due to her money.

Being mentored by Circe is generally considered a fast track to a burial at sea carried out by remote devices.

null0trooper wrote:

Anne wrote: Read the Ayla stories again, especially the last ones. There are hints, hints that Ayla might be able to join the immortals too. Besides the fact that he is being mentored by Circe, who might give him some hints. But in at least one possible future that someone sees for Ayla he becomes fully female and like a demigoddess at least. Very powerful and not just due to her money.

Being mentored by Circe is generally considered a fast track to a burial at sea carried out by remote devices.

More like 'burial' if they find some dust that WAS the body?

Anne wrote: Read the Ayla stories again, especially the last ones. There are hints, hints that Ayla might be able to join the immortals too. Besides the fact that he is being mentored by Circe, who might give him some hints. But in at least one possible future that someone sees for Ayla he becomes fully female and like a demigoddess at least. Very powerful and not just due to her money.

Are you referring to the Gen 2 story where Hugo Butler of the nascent Vanguard meets "Financier" - who is still anonymous despite lots of fan speculation that it's Ayla? If so, you might be mistaken, as in that story section, there's no hint that Ayla is fully female.

elrodw wrote:

Anne wrote: Read the Ayla stories again, especially the last ones. There are hints, hints that Ayla might be able to join the immortals too. Besides the fact that he is being mentored by Circe, who might give him some hints. But in at least one possible future that someone sees for Ayla he becomes fully female and like a demigoddess at least. Very powerful and not just due to her money.

Are you referring to the Gen 2 story where Hugo Butler of the nascent Vanguard meets "Financier" - who is still anonymous despite lots of fan speculation that it's Ayla? If so, you might be mistaken, as in that story section, there's no hint that Ayla is fully female.

(I am sorry but the urge to ask is too great)

So you are confirming that Ayla is the "Financier"?


I had to ask

mhalpern wrote:

elrodw wrote:

Anne wrote: Read the Ayla stories again, especially the last ones. There are hints, hints that Ayla might be able to join the immortals too. Besides the fact that he is being mentored by Circe, who might give him some hints. But in at least one possible future that someone sees for Ayla he becomes fully female and like a demigoddess at least. Very powerful and not just due to her money.

Are you referring to the Gen 2 story where Hugo Butler of the nascent Vanguard meets "Financier" - who is still anonymous despite lots of fan speculation that it's Ayla? If so, you might be mistaken, as in that story section, there's no hint that Ayla is fully female.

(I am sorry but the urge to ask is too great)

So you are confirming that Ayla is the "Financier"?

I had to ask

I can neither confirm nor deny that I am confirming or denying that Ayla might or might not be the Financier, or someone else.

I suspected as much,

elrodw wrote:

Anne wrote: Read the Ayla stories again, especially the last ones. There are hints, hints that Ayla might be able to join the immortals too. Besides the fact that he is being mentored by Circe, who might give him some hints. But in at least one possible future that someone sees for Ayla he becomes fully female and like a demigoddess at least. Very powerful and not just due to her money.

Are you referring to the Gen 2 story where Hugo Butler of the nascent Vanguard meets "Financier" - who is still anonymous despite lots of fan speculation that it's Ayla? If so, you might be mistaken, as in that story section, there's no hint that Ayla is fully female.

David Goodkind, however, might be a different story.

Bek D Corbin wrote: And it's understood- nobody comes in their 'work clothes'

"Hej, Kris! Bek says you have to strip!"
"This is why they didn't send you an invitation, Mads."

Isn't Mads Scandinavian? He was just explaining how the sauna works.

Sir Lee wrote: Isn't Mads Scandinavian? He was just explaining how the sauna works.

They're both Danish, but Kristian was born in Aalborg, Mads in Chicago.

I wonder if Hawthorne's renovation includes a sauna? I know whirlpool baths/hot tubs can be considered medically necessary equipment.

this occurred to me: what about the high level exemplars like Hippolyta, Alyss, and others- wouldn't they be theoretically around as well if their aging is all but stopped and they possess a high level of regeneration? And what about the drows- surely their longevity would allow for them to live that long alongside their sidth counterparts even if it's a lesser length of life by comparison.

Yes, all of those might live for a long time. How much in each case is a matter of speculation. I suspect that only very few would be truly immune to aging. In the case of artificial life forms such as Caitlin and Tennyo, perhaps they wouldn't exactly age, but at some point they might enter some catastrophic failure mode. I think there was something in the early Caitlin stories (or perhaps in the non-canon fanfics that preceded it) about what happened when an Artificer was killed, and I think it wasn't pretty.

As for Tennyo... well, she would put the "catastrophe" in "catastrophic failure." One hopes that she would be able to sense her impending death and fly far into space before blowing up.

Remember it isn't only just not aging.
Live long enough and the universe wioll get you somehow - illness, accident, giant anvil falling on you, something.

True. Even high regen comes with the flip side risk of regen cancer. And no-aging/Wolverine-level regen can be defeated with enough determination, such as instant atomization.

Come to think of it, there's a story going on over at BigCloset set on the following premise: boy captures the Wandering Jew and helps him to die -- by completely burning him and pulverizing the remains, so not even magic regen will have a starting point. Only the curse jumped on to the boy...

I guess that the author did not consider that a divine curse might work like the Nathan Brazil Plot Armor from the Well World books -- it's not so much that Brazil was invulnerable, he was "only" unaging and had slow but full regen, -- but whenever there was a real risk of him dying the Universe (in the form of the Well World Master Computer) tweaked the probabilities so that somehow he would fail to die. If Brazil was in Japan intending to go to Hiroshima in early August 1945, his car would break down, he would keep losing his train tickets, and if he walked there from sheer stubbornness, Little Boy would fizzle.

There is an advantage to Nathan Brazil's situation, in that over time the newer memories crowd out older memories so he can be who he is now instead of having to be all of him all the time.

I remember a study about 20 years ago, which worked out that ignoring old age and its associated illnesses, something - disease, accident, etc. Would make the average lifespan around 350

Nathan got that bug fixed on the first book. By the way, too bad that Chalker died without ever writing a story starring Danielle Brazza...

But average is just that -- average. Meaning that, if you get a few kids dying of stupid childhood accidents, you also get a few Lazarus Long types who defeat the actuarial tables and live way longer than expected.

In Richard Kadrey's "Metrophage", there was one character, a criminal drug-lord, who was using all kinds of medical interventions to extend his lifespan.

Granted that this was written 30 years ago, so would be sci-fi based upon the cutting edge as was envisaged 30 years ago, but his main problem, apart from wear'n'tear-related damage, was trying to retain a homeostatic balance, whilst retaining his influence upon the market.

The teleomere research discoveries han't been made then, so were not a consideration, but the in-story forms of gene therapy were possible, if extremely expensive. Not just in monetary terms, but in time.

The drug-lord's problem came from the fact that he would have to be out-of-action for at least 18 months, which would put a severe crimp on his operations. He hadn't been able to develop Diabolik's or Paramount's approaches towards generating loyalty in his "subordinates".

Note, that i use this word specifically, as it demonstrates his ways of relating to his employee's. There's a couple of events in the story, that shows how loyalty from his business partners was not on the horizon.

---

Nathan Brazil's case is an interesting one.

In "The Well of Souls"

So while it stands out as a nice example,

So it's just a case of finding the solution that is appropriate to the human species.