Alright, it's been a while, but I had a thought and decided to look into it, only to find nothing canon on it. I know ghouls can live for a long length of time, and I know they can't have kids cause they're sterile, but my question is this:

If you were ghoulified as a child, would you ever age? It seems that all of the ghouls in the games were advlts/older teens when they were turned into ghouls themselves, and I can't recall/find any diologue about anyone aging as a ghoul.

There was a ghoul in Underworld who had been ghoulified as a little girl.

They age exactly like older ghouls, they just live longer because of being younger.

Haven't been able to play F3, my live account got suspended cause micro$oft charged me for gold after I unsubscribed and I never paid em for it, and I can't play F3 cause all my saves have corrupted content from the now inactive DLC's. Forgot about her little story. Thanks for the reminder/answer

Like Sebor said, there was that ghoul in Underworld who was ghoulified at a young age when the bombs fell (she runs the inn). The only thing is, since they're in an ever rotting and regenerating state, it doesn't make a difference how old they get since there always rotting and regenerating.

wait, wait wait. If you guys are talking about Carol, she was in her twenties when the bombs fell, and according to the wiki (Which I just pulled up for notes) is the one who was halfway in the bombshelter when her dad was vaporized. I don't think any of the other ghouls talk to you about the war.

It says on the wiki, about Carol, that there is an inconsistency between the date of her birth and the way she tells the story. She says that she was born in 2051, but she remembered herself as a little girl looking up at her father. I have a feeling that the date is the wrong one.

Regardless of whether she was in her twenties, or younger, ALL ghouls do age from what age they were when it happened, but are left as I said, in a constant rotting and regenerating state.

alrighty, thanks for the info fellas.

That ghoul in Underworld.. I could be wrong but didn't she say that she slowely became a ghoul? So the radiation that did her in was over time, she was still mostly human until around advlthood. It wasn't like she was 8 years old and hit with a large amount of radiation and the next day she was a ghoul.

I don't believe kids can become ghouls. Maybe teens but not little kids. The radiation kills most advlts, so I can't picture a kid surviving the change. Unless they got alot of medical help.

Then again I could be wrong about what she said.

From the inconsistencies I'd say that she isn't completely sure about what she said.

It would make a lot of sense that she's not 100%, because like Super Mutants, Ghouls are just as likely to forget things about their past, as them. Probably even more so, with how long they've been around, the old memories are just pushed too far back or forgotten completely.

well considering kids in bethesda games are all immortal, i kind of get what you are saying.

I forgot about this, but in Van Buren, there were supposed to be "Born Ghouls", created at the Reservation. They're actually as their name suggests, and born as a ghoul, not done in by radiation and stuff.

I am sure you know that isn't canon. The reason behind "Born Ghouls" was because the lore behind the creation of ghouls hadn't yet changed. To make a ghoul you needed a human with alot of Radiation then exposed to FEV. So since there was no longer any FEV, at least no access to it, Ghouls would one day be all gone, just like Super Mutants. So the scientist guy was working on a way for ghouls to reproduce.

Now that ghouls can be created just from Radiation, that means ghouls will always be around. So no real reason for anyone to try to find away for them to reproduce.

Super Mutants on the other hand. They were working on it in Fallout Tactics, then the MWBoS destroyed it or took it for themselves.==> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roY9pkQDZdA&list=UUg2D1zReyIvlUb3nxHtWe3g&index=8&feature=plcp

Ghouls don't "age" as in get old (get physically elderly) deteriorating in manner of humans, but I suppose that it makes sense that a person ghoulified at adolescence, would physically develop from childhood to a point of advlthood, as per the course of nature.

It's the ghoul condition itself that maintains their long life spans. It in effect keeps them in a physical constant status of around middle age, or whatever age time afterward if they were ghoulified by superboosting their body's internal regenerative ability.
I would hypothesize that a successful "ghoulification" process occuring probably doesn't bode well for those over ~ their 30's. It probably works in the other direction as well. The younger you are the less likely you don't simply kick the bucket from rads.

Instead of aging, I would also hypothesize that ghouls instead eventually turn feral. How long that takes or if it's an inevitability naturally in all cases outside of being measured in terms of centuries, I don't know. It seems that constant exposure to high radiation levels speed up the time-frame and odds for when individual ghouls turn feral tremendously.

I would put out a guess, that as far as you could compare to human age, that a ghoul naturally without considering radiation exposure after becoming one, would "age" physiologically as we would consider it, on average about 1 year physically, for a little under every 25 actual years.

So to say, take the example of Raul, who was 30 when the bombs dropped, probably lived about 8 or so years afterward as a human before moving into Mexico City, around 2 years more before starting to become a ghoul, would in effect be about 50 comparative "ghoul years" old by the time New Vegas takes place. Some might disagree, but it seems to make sense.

Also,
video games.

You'd age really slowly I'd assume.

Yes, I am aware it's not canon because it's Van Buren stuff, and the only things of Van Buren to come to realization are what we saw in New Vegas, but I thought I might just mention it anyway because it is an example of what could have been, ghouls during their young/child years.

Ghouls age, though at a rate of about much much slower then the normal human.