Question: How old do wizards get in the CtS universe?
Answer:Well ... this is a tricky question, really.
Those of you who have read
our well hidden page about the creation of the multiverse know that Life is 'merely' one of the nine base elements (along with other, less bothersome ones like fire and water). As such, one might think that magic should be able to give wizards eternal life (many wizards indeed believe that it should). Unfortunately, transmutation - that is: changing one element into another one - is one of the hardest things there is in magic. The reason is attributed to universal stubbornness: the base elements simply refuse to change. More scientifically it is believed that because they are truly base elements, you can’t simply break them up to something smaller and then rebuild them as different elements. Instead of changing the universe (which is very easy as everything changes the universe) one needs to change the nature of the universe (which is hard).
Observant readers may argue that there are plenty of examples of elemental transformation and this is true and fair and indeed given enough magic you can transmute neighbouring elements into life fine. The problem is that “enough magic” in this case is sufficient to cease all other life in the neighbourhood.
This means that wizards – and other magic users - on the whole live exactly as long as you’d expected an average scholar of the same species to live (that is: pretty long for an elf, not quite as long for a human).
That is, at least, …
good wizards.
So far all I’ve discussed was transmutation: creating life by changing other elements. Of course it is much easier to simply move existing elements about, and this is what most magic ultimately does. Of course, for the element life this means one has to take away life from something else. Hence wizards can sustain their lives by leaching it of others. This is, in polite society, not considered nice.
You may recall the witch wanting to defeat the lady of the forest? Yup, same thing.
