In the period of calm after the shit with Aggregor, the Andromeda 5 spent some time actually getting to know each other and essentially coming together to bond over their shared trauma, in spite of P’andor probably initially trying to avoid it all together and otherwise let it sink in. Of course, during that time they learnt about each other’s homes (mainly about the planet they come from) and more about general cultural facts about them and their people, if they care to share the details of which.
Among this sharing, age relative to their species versus the number of years lived is shared, and though everyone involved were adults and no child was harmed by Aggregor, finding out that the person who didn’t know what a prison is is both about a hundred years or so old yet only about the equivalent of mid 20s is an unexpected surprise. Having said that, here are some thoughts about that.
Galapagus, with his significant lack of knowledge of the world outside of Aldabra, strikes me as someone who’s not had a whole lot of worldly experience. With my thoughts on geochelene aerio, alongside Aldabra itself, I believe that the older that you are the more taboo philosophies that the elder generation begin to circle within your discussions, the eldest generation going along with my ‘Aldabra is a post-nature-apocalypse’ headcanon being the same individuals born before the apocalypse in the late stages of what I’m dubbing as ‘The Age of Corruption’.
Yada yada, if Galapagus was a lot older - or even just slightly older - he probably would have been introduced to debates about ‘lying’ and ‘prisons’ and what have you. The eldest generation are breaching possibly a thousand years old or so - perhaps even more - and still heavily philosophise about the AoC and recall the saviour from evil/instigator of the apocalypse Addwaitya.
Galapagus is at least old enough to discuss the effects of whatever banishment ritual Addwaitya had performed to absorb much of the corruption, only that he doesn’t know what that corruption specifically is, and knows that a few spawning forests lead to splits in the veil of the prime reality and Legerdomain. He would say, if Annie later introduced him to DnD or some other fantasy media, that the spawn forests - working title for ‘forests that over ran the old cities’ - act akin to the Feywild, with an environment baring a sentence and a will to exist as it wants.
On the opposite end of the spectrum sits Ra’ad, already in the equivalent of his early 50s late 40s despite the numbers reading as 35 or 30. Outside of simply knowing that - of all the animals (and radiation for a special someone) that the Andromeda 5 are based on - squids live to only 6 years at the oldest, there’s not too much reason for me to make Ra’ad older than middle aged other than for some funny contrast.
I suppose another reason - even if I haven’t really fact checked it myself - is that somewhat in relation to Galapagus and Aldabra’s apocalypse, Ra’ad gives off the vibes of a doomsday prepper or as someone just too anxious to let the world take him that easy (considering what happens in the show, can you blame me). And the reason why I say something about fact checking is that I’m not sure if 40-50 year old dudes are the age demographic for doomsday preppers, but at the very least it’s a pessimistic ‘something will go wrong’ attitude mixed with the behaviour of ‘i will not let it leave me high and dry’ and thus this jelly has anxiety.
Bivalvan, based on an ocean creature or two with wildly different age ranges, has what I’m saying is giant clam based ageing averages and get him to a good 60-80 year number for a 40 year old equivalent. Again, no particular reason outside of ‘yeah that’s a whole ass middle age mum’ vibes especially if you take a look at him with Annie, but I’m mostly sitting here going based on vibes.
And also, I had sworn that there was some mention of a previous job that he held down, about being a salesman or something? Like? Am I just misremembering? Have I got a bad case of the mandala effect? I saw it on the wiki once where did it go?
That and, tinkering with mechanics and tech stuff just seems like a real middle aged activity, outside of Kevin doing that shit for his sick ass car I mean. I mean, might just be the middle aged folk that I know and the fact that I’ve never had a backyard without a homemade (ham?) radio tower somewhere by the roof or right in the middle. That could just be bias of course, but I am designated both mum AND dad vibes from Bivalvan and making him the equivalent of his 40s.
And turning attention to Andreas, armadillos don’t particularly live that long either, but living for 12 years is double that of a squid so numbers wise he’s probably just a little younger by number for younger by equivalent. Something maybe late 20s or early 30s for the numbers of maybe 20-25 years lived. Like, he’s the overall, even if technically Galapagus is the actual 25 year old of the 5.
Living long as a Talpaedan isn’t as overtly necessary considering the number of individuals that live in any one family colony, and numbers don’t particularly matter once they’ve reached a socially accepted maturity, so Andreas has a harder time working out what age range he is for sake of communication, but otherwise he knows he’s been an adult for a hot while there. Think, for those who’ve watched not only Critical Role but specifically Campaign 2, where Nott compares her relationship with Caleb as a parent and child relationship, where she herself is the parent and Caleb - very much an adult human - is the child.
Other than not having lived long by the numbers, Andreas not having lived long by equivalents also comes from the idea that he’s very receptive to someone (he likes) telling him what to do and where to go and what to try and etc, etc, etc. He’s naïve amongst being of low intellect, though the later is not indicative of youth, and is probably far too trusting to be someone older than he probably is. Of the Andromeda 5, Talpaedans have the closest lifespan to humans, even if they taper off at a younger age on average.
And finally, we have P’andor, the fucked up deer himself.
Look, I asked my discord boys how long radiation lasts or otherwise what the fuck a half-life is and would P’andor have one. The gist of it? The more radioactive a thing is the less it ‘lives’ for because it rapidly fissiles into different materials. Bismuth, the exact opposite of such, has such a low radiation that it’s half-life is older than what time left we have in the universe, and the fact that it was the universe that made the damn thing it’s bizarre to think about.
But considering P’andor is a hungry mother fucker stuck in a suit, the very real threat of death means that very fortunately he doesn’t get to witness the universe around him and the loved ones he had die around him at the age equivalent of 40 (for maybe a half-life dealio). Alternatively, seeing as though he’s not constantly having to chow down on some active uranium, it also means he’s not in his 60s at 20 years.
And even then, Prypiatosian-Bs don’t technically have a biological childhood to age from, nor so much as developmental stages to mature a mind to. A bone parent just chucks an ulna or a rib into a very radioactive area and - whether waiting around for a ‘kid’ to spawn or running off with the knowledge someone could happen - radiotrophic spores just eat away at the heated bone until the marrow is exposed, singes the spores before they take fungal root and begins to eat the radiation around it until it forms a little fucked up deer skeleton.
It’s like, P’andor has the knowledge of a 30-40 year old equivalent Prypiatosian-B, but by going ages without a bite of radiation, he could be even smaller than a new skeleton by proxy of having eaten all of his skeleton already and running out of energy. This man- he’s as old by number by how well he has eaten, which could be said generally for most creatures with the difference being that - by constantly consuming energy and radiation - P’andor can functionally live forever.
Not that he’d want to at a certain point but uh, P’andor’s situation is already not the happiest let’s not get into the hypothetical but kinda technically feasible outcome of outliving everyone he loves so shush up and appreciate the thoughts I’ve been putting off forever ever since I believe it was @sugarbutterfly432 ‘s one post about the Andromeda 5 outliving Annie.
At the very least, not all outlive Annie, but like 3 of them will and also outlive 2 husbands it’s probably not the best situation but they married in spite and perhaps because of that, if marriage is such a once in a lifetime opportunity they may as well just get that settled so that they’ve got it all sorted out.
Speaking of Annie, if P’andor doesn’t know what a child is, why did he pick her up off the streets? Well, lads laddies and lassos, he saw a small little starving createur (not entirely inaccurate) and thought ‘well, fucko, guess who’s getting adopted’. And now P’andor joins Ra’ad in - at least what I’ve thought in detail about and settled on - ‘what the fuck is a child’ club and has to speed read to get things right.
Maybe Bivalvan too doesn’t know but I can’t decide if he’s more clam or more crab in this instance.
And that’s what I got for a topic that has been haunting me ever since the outliving post; thank you by the way for that, whoever it may be since I cannot find the post. Ever since I found out squid live at most 6 years it’s just been ‘how the fuck do i write about this?’ and wondering ‘should i tag this as mortality???’ because damn-
Anyway, I blame someone for this for this :)
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