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I am trying to give a whole back story to my new character and want to give her an adult age and figure out from that when she was born, and her parents before. Maybe even a whole family tree. I thought this would be fun to get deeper into the Lore.

I read on a DnD wiki that wood elves can live to 350+

For example.

Adulthood - 110yrs
Middle Age - 175yrs
Old Age - 263yrs
Venerable - 350+

As this was from a DnD wiki, it's not TES but would it similar or concurrent?

IIRC, adulthood comes sooner (they allow a 25-year-old to become Queen, so...). Middle age at 200, life expectancy is around 400.

Ok thanks. Is there any articles or such that point to this? Looking around the webs I'm getting a whole mix of different information.

Sorry, the above was for Altmer. We have very little info on Bosmer. 350 might be a good life expectancy for them, but it could be half that for all I know.

Minor Edits wrote:Sorry, the above was for Altmer. We have very little info on Bosmer. 350 might be a good life expectancy for them, but it could be half that for all I know.

And equally, it could be double the above estimate - while Altmer and Dunmer we can at least have reasonable estimates, Bosmer there is nothing to work with apart from they are elves and elves live longer than humans. Literally nothing.

Ha, guys thanks. I guess that's why I am finding it difficult to source info for Bosmer. I can find articles and sources for all other Mer. If there there's that little info regarding life expectancy for Bosmer I may have use the one I found about DnD Wood Elfs. I know that's strictly not going to be right in TES Lore..I don't know what to dooooo :/

The Dunmer and Altmer are known for their longevity, not the Bosmer, implying they have naturally shorter lifespans. It's also possible, but less likely, that this is merely because few Bosmer reach old age.

That's true however my Bosmer lady ain't going to die through battle or disease that's why I am looking for a general lifespan. Alas, I cannot find one

Keep in mind, there's a lot of new ESO info out there, some of it on Bosmer. Might be worth looking into for your character regardless. Go here and search for Wood. I already searched "Bosmer", mostly it's just stuff on tribal bosmer in Valenwood. And there could be other nuggets of info in unrelated texts.

Apparently Bosmer who follow the Green Pact fart a lot. There's something you probably didn't know.

Bosmer is my favorite race, and I've always wondered this too. The Dumner and Altmer have a long lifespan, but I've read (in a uesp discussion not on an actual fact page) that Bosmer are an elf/human mix, which gives them a shorter lifespan than the other elves but longer than humans. I just assumed it was about half of the Altmer/Dumner lifespan. I assumed 400-500 years or so. Until they come out with the facts, I'm content with that. What can you do, if they've never said?

Farore, indeed, Bosmer are too my favourite race. I understand quite a bit about them, but I want to delve a little further to really build a solid story.

I wanted her to be a mature young adult. So I thought 127 years old could be just that. Which would place her birth 4E 74 (as the beginning of Skyrim is 4E 201). As this is the game I started this character on. Then that led me back to her parents, who I thought could be residing in Cyrodiil during the Oblivion Crisis, who fled Cyrodiil into Morrowind only to witness the eruption of the Red Mountain. I have lots more to think about yet.

Anyway, that's going off topic. I'm just trying to discover an age span they could live without use of magicka, or no threats of war, famine or disease etc. Just a general time span of their possible age range.

Hello, just created an account because here is the answer to your question:

ESO's official website followed by: /en/news/post/2013/05/03/ask-us-anything-variety-pack-4
(got the message "You are not authorized to post non-Elder Scrolls URL links")

Can you please elaborate and give us some numbers to work with for each race or at least the Elven races (Altmer, Bosmer, and Dunmer)? – By Nathan Payne / Andrew Hudson

Elves live two to three times as long as humans and the “beast-races” (Orcs, Khajiiti, Argonians). A 200-year-old Elf is old; a 300-year-old Elf is very, very old indeed. Anyone older than that has prolonged his or her lifespan through powerful magic.

It seems all mer have the same (natural) life expectancy.

Heinrich wrote:Hello, just created an account because here is the answer to your question:

ESO's official website followed by: /en/news/post/2013/05/03/ask-us-anything-variety-pack-4
(got the message "You are not authorized to post non-Elder Scrolls URL links")

Can you please elaborate and give us some numbers to work with for each race or at least the Elven races (Altmer, Bosmer, and Dunmer)? – By Nathan Payne / Andrew Hudson

Elves live two to three times as long as humans and the “beast-races” (Orcs, Khajiiti, Argonians). A 200-year-old Elf is old; a 300-year-old Elf is very, very old indeed. Anyone older than that has prolonged his or her lifespan through powerful magic.

It seems all mer have the same (natural) life expectancy.

Thanks so much for posting this link. I'm guessing this applies to all elves, including, Altmer and Dunmer? Very helpful!

In Oblivion Tar-Meena judges Mankar Camoran 'unlikely to still be alive' at first, suggesting that he is very old for a Bosmer (and he should be roughly 250-300 years old or so).

Heinrich wrote:
It seems all mer have the same (natural) life expectancy.

ESO bit, so ignorable on this given it conflicts with Bethesda's own work. The fact is every game since Arena have all featured elves older than those figures naturally, let alone some of the life-extension magic users.

CBR JGWRR wrote:

Heinrich wrote:
It seems all mer have the same (natural) life expectancy.

ESO bit, so ignorable on this given it conflicts with Bethesda's own work. The fact is every game since Arena have all featured elves older than those figures naturally, let alone some of the life-extension magic users.

Hello,

Could you give me the names of some of these naturally old elves?
I know of Vorian Direnni who has lived longer than 611 years, but he mentioned being a wizard so I suspect that he magically extended his life.
I have not played many ES games so I do not know much of the lore featured in them, but I am very interested in the ES lore.

CBR JGWRR wrote:

Heinrich wrote:
It seems all mer have the same (natural) life expectancy.

ESO bit, so ignorable on this given it conflicts with Bethesda's own work. The fact is every game since Arena have all featured elves older than those figures naturally, let alone some of the life-extension magic users.

I don't think they would be allowed to make those kinds of claims if they're not true. It is a pretty direct answer to a specific question. Ignoring it would be silly.

Also, a lot of things in older games are retconned when new ideas come about.

The question was specific, and the specificity of it was ignored by Zenimax in favor of making a broad, overreaching. half-assed reply. I think it would be silly to take such a thing as the absolute truth when we have substantial evidence to the contrary. This wasn't a retcon, this was someone at ZOS shooting their mouth off on a topic they didn't fully understand. Again.

Altmer and Dunmer are singled out for having longer lives, Bosmer are not. Barenziah lived more than 4 centuries, and there's no evidence she used magic to do so.

edit- And looking back on it, I'm really the one shooting my mouth off on a topic I don't fully understand. I guess what I'm saying here is that the ZOS statement is likely inaccurate and almost certainly overbroad given what we know of the game universe, which is why I consciously avoided bringing it up in the first place. Given their record thus far (particularly in regards to these OOG statements), I believe it can be chalked up as a mistake rather some sort of a retcon. That would be giving them too much credit, as it suggests they were attempting to change lore intentionally rather than negligently.

Minor Edits wrote:This wasn't a retcon, this was someone at ZOS shooting their mouth off on a topic they didn't fully understand. Again.

.

That. ESO isn't even being developed by Bethesda, so in no way is it a retcon.

A prior topic: http://forums.uesp.net/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=27306 has already covered this, but:

DF - Most obviously Barenziah, over 400 then.
MW - half the population of the province is the older side of 200, despite the volcano. One bloke is the older side of 4000...(admittedly, one hell of magic user)
OB - trouble is, all elves we know ages of are magic users...
SK - Pretty much every Dunmer on Solstheim was around during the Red Year. Same for the ones on the mainland. Altmer are few in number anyway, and pretty much all magic users.

CBR JGWRR wrote:

Minor Edits wrote:This wasn't a retcon, this was someone at ZOS shooting their mouth off on a topic they didn't fully understand. Again.

.

That. ESO isn't even being developed by Bethesda, so in no way is it a retcon.

A prior topic: http://forums.uesp.net/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=27306 has already covered this, but:

DF - Most obviously Barenziah, over 400 then.
MW - half the population of the province is the older side of 200, despite the volcano. One bloke is the older side of 4000...(admittedly, one hell of magic user)
OB - trouble is, all elves we know ages of are magic users...
SK - Pretty much every Dunmer on Solstheim was around during the Red Year. Same for the ones on the mainland. Altmer are few in number anyway, and pretty much all magic users.

Again, I don't believe that they'd be able to say something like that without it having some semblance of truth. If Bethesda would have answered it that way, would you guys be questioning it? I think they've provided us with a pretty good guideline as to how long elves can typically live. Granted, it was pretty general, and didn't note any distinctions between elven races, but I'm not going to claim to know more than the developers of a TES game. Could they be wrong? Sure, but why would they even answer then? If they didn't consult Bethesda about it, it seems kind of unprofessional to answer.

Witchery wrote:
Again, I don't believe that they'd be able to say something like that without it having some semblance of truth. If Bethesda would have answered it that way, would you guys be questioning it? I think they've provided us with a pretty good guideline as to how long elves can typically live. Granted, it was pretty general, and didn't note any distinctions between elven races, but I'm not going to claim to know more than the developers of a TES game. Could they be wrong? Sure, but why would they even answer then? If they didn't consult Bethesda about it, it seems kind of unprofessional to answer.

Yes. A fair few people on here would question it and argue with the developers over it - certainly have in other areas over the years. For one example, MKs view on the status of Alessia vs Miraak on the claim to be the first dragonborn is something I disagree with.

This is an area Beth have always left open to debate - The closest to defining ages they have done is mentioning 1000 year lifespans for elves in The Real Barenziah, noting that members of house Telvanni are accused of Necromancy for reaching a thousand or so and Tar Meena's relatively informed guess that Mankar Camoran must be getting on a bit.

If they say 300 years I'm going to go with that until they say/prove otherwise. Id be happy with that.. That's like saying I've lived only 7.6 or so percent of what I could. What I wonder more about is the aging process. Would elves stay children longer? Would they look young at 100? 200-300?? That's a huge gap. Say people have a natural lofe expenctancy of 70 to to 100 years... Thirty years. But to have a natural life expenctancy spanning 100 years difference seems.. strange. To die from natural causes at 200 or 300.. weird.

As far as elves actually care, adult in the same time as humans.

Childhood - same
Adolescence - a year or so longer in general.
Basically an Adult - 20 or so.
Child-bearing - From that (in one known case, in unusual circumstances) to 2 or 3 times that. Not unreasonable for an elf to be having their first child by the time a human born the same time to be celebrating grand-children.


As to how youthful looking? If you have DB DLC visit Solstheim, most of the elven residents have been alive since the Third Era. One has been alive since the Second... Certainly doesn't look like he is about to keel over and die.



Not that Neloth would let a silly little thing like death stop him of course.

I don't think they would be allowed to make those kinds of claims if they're not true. It is a pretty direct answer to a specific question. Ignoring it would be silly.

Zenimax is the parent company.They don't need permission to do anything.As for your other remark...What?That was the broadest most non answer they could give and that's if you completly disregard the fact that it breaks lore:

the “beast-races” (Orcs, Khajiiti, Argonians)

I'm surprised no one noticed this before because the moment I saw it my jaw dropped.How can you give credence to someone who talks about elven life expectancy but doesn't know that orcs belong to said elven races? Now that I find really silly.

OT:Here's what I remember on the subject:

(Playable)Mer folk=
~The Orsimer have the lowest life expectancy of the elven races.It is comparable to the average human life span(70-120 IIRC).
~The Bosmer come second on the list.They have a lower life expectancy then Altmer and Dunmer folk because Bosmer men liked to take human females as wives and over time their elven blood "thinned"(about 100-200+).
~The Dunmer have a slighly lower life expectancy then the Altmer but the difference isn't that big if you don't include wizards (300-500+ IIRC)
~The Altmer have the longest life expectancy out of all the races.The average Altmer could easily reach 500 while the altmer wizards go towards 1000.

Most men live to about 70+.The only exception are:
~The bretons.The elves of high rock (like the Bosmer) started to breed with their human slaves and over time that produced the Bretons.They have a higher affinity towards magic then the other human races and are know to go above 100 years of age.

The (playable) best folk have the lowest life span of all the Tamirilic races(30-50).

Note:Dunmer wizards can employ similar techniques to Altmer wizards to prolong their lives but this "culture" is more present among the Altmer society.
Note 2:Throughout Tamirilic history there have been individuals that went well above the 1000 mark (2000,4000 etc) but these individuals are few and far between.

I don't know ultimately how accurate that all is, Mefris, but it's a perfect summation of my own head canon on the matter.