Seems to me that people take the race of their mother, though. You can't really get mixed races :huh:

VERY rough here, but:

Altmer: 300 yrs
Dunmer: 200 yrs
Bosmer: 200 yrs
Bretons: 125 yrs
Argonians: 90 yrs (I heard somewhere they live for an unusualy long time, even though they age quickest. I could very well be wrong, though.)
Imperials: 80 yrs
Nords: 80 yrs
Redguards: 80 yrs
Khajiit: 60 yrs
Orcs: 50 yrs

Those are at least my guesses

Isn't Barenziah still alive at the dawn of the 4th era? And wasn't she a contemporary of Tiber Septim? That makes her well over 400 years old.

Magic, and being royalty seems to expend lives exponentially for elves.

How does vampirism affect the aging process?

It halts it completely. You LOOK older, but you don't actually age anymore once you're a vampire.

According to The Real Barenziah, all elves of pure blood can live for up to a thousand years... the key word being "can." Very few of them ever do. They usually succumb to violence, illness, or old age (as a result of a hard life, e.g. being a miner or peasant) long before that. The reason Barenziah is so damn old and still looking young is that she's lived a privileged life, surrounded by good food, with a minimum of physical labor, and of course her blood is especially pure seeing as she's royalty.

Bretons can live longer than other human races, but old age hits them much harder. They become frail and fragile due to their mixed blood.

Orcs are shorter-lived than humans, but not dramatically so.

I've heard nothing about Khajiiti having short lives, so I think it can be assumed that their lifespan is comparable to humans. Same with Argonians, probably, though given their mysterious biology, who knows?

He's a Dunmer, but he aged "like a Breton". Most Dunmer would be in their prime in their fifties. Cassynder at the same age (he cannot be older, unless there was hanky-panky between Katariah and Pelagius before they married) was already decrepit. And the key phrase is "like a Breton", as if the reader is expected to see the similarity between Cassynder's condition and how Bretons are known to fare at the same age.

I would suspect that many Khajiit die of foul play, accident, drug habit, or similar other-than-natural causes well before their regular lifespan is up. They're ultimately of stock similar to Bosmer, but (1) Bosmer corrupted their race by "taking Mannish wives", and (2) who knows how being bound to the Lunar Lattice has affected the Khajiit lifespan.

Argonians, if they are indeed cold-bloods, and this influences their lifespan the way it does real-world large-bodied cold-bloods, could be very long-lived indeed.

The Bosmer are weird in their own way. Some are supposedly like the classical image of forest fairies, small strange-looking creatures who spend their whole lives in the trees. There are probably plenty of them who live according to the Pact that have pure blood and could outlive many humans.

I highly doubt it's that simple for Argonians, though. I'd imagine that some are indeed ectotherms, but there are probably endotherms as well. It's been hinted that their morphology is closely related to the ritual ingestion of Hist sap, among other things. Some are probably very short lived while some could live for centuries (but are unknown to outsiders because there are just some areas of the Black Marsh where no non-Argonian has ever set foot). And again, like Khajiit, perhaps there are some fully sentient Argonians who could indeed be mistaken for tree-dwelling lizards by ignorant outsiders, and who pays attention to how long those live?

I believe that the elves are a relatively fragile race in general, or at lest the High Elves. For instance, a change in stride increased their lifespan by a 100 years, probably due to reduced stress to their bones. So to compare let's say an Imperial and a High Elf are hit by the exact same poison. The Imperial heals the poison, and has a very slightly decreased life span, probably a year or two due to increase stress on their body during the time the poison was in them, and the strain of healing. The High Elf would have a dramatically shortened life span, maybe around 30-60 years from the healing process and the strain from the poison while it was in them. Anyways that's just my theory.

so, in oblivion nords have a normal human lifespan?

Didn't the Orc short lifespan come from the Nords tossing a curse (who was it from? I've forgotten, please remind me!) from their race and onto the orcs?

Indeed.
"Nords only had a lifespan of six years due to Orkey's foul magic. Shor showed up, though, and, through unknown means, removed the curse, throwing most of it onto the nearby Orcs." -http://www.imperial-library.info/gods/skyrim.shtml



Nords have the same lifespan as they always have had.

I read somewhere an interview with a Dunmer farmer, and that he retired or would retire at around a hundred, and then spend another 20 years or so sitting around with the other old Dunmer. Can't remember the exact source, but if you go off that, then the average lifespan of the dark elf on the street would be about 120-130. Obviously mer that don't have to spend all their time toiling in the fields breathing in lungfuls of ash and putting up with various maladies have a much longer life, as evidenced by Barenziah.

Yes I remeber that one, and I found it.
Quite a funny one to read.

"Alvur Relds:
Well, I'm fifty, done my twenty years in the Service, and I'm in the prime of life. I expect another fifty good years, and then I'll be old, and slow, chatting with gaffers around the hearth for another twenty, thirty years. I've known mer still mind-sharp in their late hundreds, and heard of folk 200 and older. My family usually makes it to 120-130, providing we don't get sick or poked in the eye." -http://www.imperial-library.info/interviews/alvur.shtml

As always Mer lives longer then Humans and other races.

Tolkien's Elves also lived in a world with gravity and geography. . . TONS of it. And considering his essays on Fairy stories, and the importance of maintining the order and continuity of your secondary reality, it is likely that the density of Elder Scrolls owes some nod to him. Ever read The Simlarillion? Anyway, trees live for thousands of years. . . all aging comprises is a degeration of cells over time. The High Elves, with their innately high magika, probably age more slowly because the presence of innate magicka likely preserves the cellular structure against normative damage. . . rather like antioxidants. And if you have a problem with the lifespans of Elves. .. well, consider the Daedra. They aren't even mortal.

Besides, your notion of reality is subjective. Reality is a highly relative term. You speak of the elf lifespans being unrealistic only because you are accostomed to beings who live for roughly 50 to 100 years, for reasons not entirely understood, detail for detail. Your own lifespan is immeasurabley long compared to a mayfly, which endures for only a day.. . or a sperm cell, which endures for less time still outside of a host. Is your span of years unrealistic?

Barenziah was born in 2E893, making her 436 years old. Assuming her lifespan is typical (no good genes, etc.), that would mean most Dunmer live to be 450 or so, assuming war/disease/accidents don't claim them.

"Vampires are ageless but they are not immortal. This distinction is important because the reader must understand that while any given vampire may be older than the oaks, he too may cross to Oblivion. Since vampires do not die of old-age, all dead vampires have succumbed to a violent end. Vampires, like Lycanthropes, can only be harmed by Silver (or better) weapons.

Barring a horrifically violent end, a vampire continues to learn and advance his trades throughout his (now unnaturally long) life. The benefits of agelessness combined with the capacity for growth of all thinking creatures should be self-evident. Any vampire "ancient" by our standards should be considered a Grand Master in any trade or profession to which he has applied himself. Indeed, if given hundreds of years of practice and study, one should expect any vampire to be extremely adept in any skill or ability and therefore great caution should be exercised when dealing with any vampire."
-http://uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Vampirism


The spear of His Majestry Tiber Septim has the power to double your life expectancy. :hubbahubba:

Well, Barenziah may have lived that long, while it appears that some other Dunmer only live to be 150-200, maybe dark elves just don't age the way humans do, perhaps some age fast enough to die at 150, while others live well into there 400s or even 500s.

There's also the fact that Barenziah being a queen, probably get's the amazing health care from ancient Dunmer wizards, grandmasters of Restoration, on top of not having to do a whole lot of rough work (apart from when she was a teenager, and lived with very little money in Skyrim for a couple years, she was a member of the thieves guild!).

Don't forget she bumped uglies with a khajiit. That likely drained a few years off her life.

Yeah, so that means that Dunmer can probably live to be even older than Barenziah.

Wait a minute, could that make her a zoophile?

This is true, whenever this question comes up (which is extremely often) it is usually agreed poor elves can live to about 120.



Barenziah is as rich as rich gets though. On Earth, humans with the best healthcare and diet can live to 110, but most people in poor countries don't live past 60. so if we're to use the above as an indication, rich Dunmer live close to four times longer then poor ones in the best circumstances (which also includes access to mages). I'd postulate their maximum lifespan is close to 300 without much use of magic (but still with good diet and healthcare). The maximum human age is 100 (like on Earth) and Orcs are stated to live to a maximum of sixty, but usually due in their forties (due to the curse).

Its really hard to figure how long the elvish lifespans are, beacuse of their very easy access to magics. However, with the Dunmer age established, I shouldn't see the Bosmer living much longer. However, in the case of the Altmer, its really hard to pinpoint seeing as most use magic. However, they are quite inbred, which is also important to consider.

As for the beast races, no hard evidence at all for their ages. My guess is similar to humans.

That was a joke. Boning people has nothing to do with how long you live, even in the Elder Scrolls. (Well, depending on how high your Resist Disease racial effect is.)

And the proper term is xenophile. Khajiiti are people, not animals.