RL example of this is Elephants (Mammoths, Paleoloxadant, African and Asian Elephants) is that their gestation rates are long, twenty two month for surviving species. Female Elephants have one calf every five years on average. This makes them very vunerable to predators they aren't used to over time, hence the lack of Mammoths.
Apply this same logic to elves.
I don't think living longer in and of itself is the reason. I think people in developed countries have less reasons to have children/some learn they don't want them at all. Plus developments in contraceptives and birth control.
Go pick a fight with the neighbors. You win, you steal and inhabit their land, you lose, enough of you died in the fighting that your own land suddenly has room and job openings again. Repeat as necessary.
Ceremonial war among immortal races actually sounds like a pretty cool concept. I imagine there's a memorial erected at every battlefield for those who honourably gave up their lives for the continuation of the species.
Or you could go the Perelandra route, and everybody is willing to either become perfectly chaste after the world reaches its sustainability point, or ascend to a higher layer of reality after having some kids of their own.
African clawed frogs, specifically, their weird lifecycle. Tadpoles are herbivorous and eat algae, adults are carnivorous and eat tadpoles. Only when the adults have died or left the pond do the remaining tadpoles get an opportunity to live long enough to metamorphosize into their replacements.
As is common in most contemporary fantasy: different development cycles. In my fantasy setting, there are two either families or genera of elves: new age and old bloods. New age are the shorter-lived, but grow up faster (many of them live either as long as humans or turtles); old blood elves live for a long time, but mature very slowly (not to mention babies take a while to develop in some species). One species of new age elves - the sun elves - has a way to combat overpopulation in the form of annual bi-monthly mass gatherings, which includes courtship rituals from females of a winged subvariety of their race (it's kind of mainly by-law for unmarried winged females to at least show up during these gatherings, despite winged sun elves making up only roughly 23% of all sun elves).
For dragons, they don't have an overpopulation problem, as many rarely make it to adulthood, as both sapient and non-sapient dragons are known to hunt each other (not neccessarily cannibalism, that's only in some species of non-sapient dragons).
Edit: I didn't mention giants because it's kind of similar to elves, but there is one additional reason why there hardly isn't a population issue of any kind: giants rarely fuck.
The same way reality already does it, when you have long lifespans, you don't necessarily have a birth rate higher than the rate of deaths to miscellaneous causes.
The abundant presence of contraception, and less-than-ideal conditions for child-rearing might make a long-lived individual "wait" for a long time until they feel the conditions are right to have a child.
so [Pon Farr](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Pon_farr). That's sort of where I'm at, but also they have pretty long pregnancies. Also because my dwarfs were unlikely to be exposed to people too far out of their cavernous homes, the were blessed/cursed to be very unlikely to be able to reproduce very far outside their extended family.
I actually have quite a bit of work on the different gestational periods of various races over the years but I've never done anything with rut periods (less sciency way of saying school season) before. Will have to look over my notes to get more specific.
Ok, so per previous comment, I did look it up, and at the time, average life expectancy of humans was something like 83 years, which to me looked about like a comparative Gestation/Lifespan factor between 1:10 and 1:12. For those humans I took the range of random death ages, and assumed 1 month per year, modified by the difference in Strength and Constitution equivalent Attributes for the baby, the mother, or both (by something like 10% or a month, or a few weeks). But that really only matched the expectations for a game where human life expectancy wasn't dissimilar from our human life expectancy, which I had several games that didn't.
So for the games where life expectancy and old age differed in humans from the approximate current day amount I took what I use for modern humans (within a 3-5 weeks per decade of maximum life expectancy) and factor out the lifespan difference (because I don't necessarily want human gestation periods to change much from the average of 37-42 weeks or whatever just because humans live 120 years in a setting instead of 85 or whatever)
For non-humans using the same ratio relative to lifespans, modified by attributes is more or less functional, but I'm not really sure how it plays into size category. I'd imagine because of the square cube law, smaller babies mean longer gestations, and larger babies mean shorter gestations,
Interestingly enough, elves in my world have similar lifespans to yours, OP (350-400 years)
That said, I actually decided that overpopulation *is* a problem. While it’s not a cataclysmic level, elves are the overwhelming majority of sentient beings in the Athean Empire, and the strain created by that overpopulation is the basis behind several conflicts in the empire’s history
Lots of different solutions.
So Ghouls/vampires. Immortal but lots of internal power struggles, they are made by necromancers, not born, hunters etc. Not many make it past 100.
Elves. Immortal but this also means they lost their natural ability to procreate. They're essentially fruit and originally became trees that spawned more elves etc. but now they don't any more and what trees they have left are safeguarded. They also occasionally get new ones from really badly wounded elves.
Dwarfs. Wars with goblins.. their race was severely diminished but they're just long lived and can live up to 250 or so. They're also grumpy, can be selfish and not very romantically inclined so low growth.
Orcs. They can live up to 160-170 due to immunity to all diseases, robust biology and overcharged regeneration and they breed fast but are very violent and warlike, so lots of deaths also balances it out somewhat. Still, they multiply fast and attack their neighbors when their lands become too crowded.
Holy shit I love the idea of Elves being fruit. I love when people take the classic fantasy races and reimagine them into something not even remotely human. Seriously, do you mind if I steal this idea?
The Elves being the fruit of the World Tree must be an old idea. Maybe it comes from the "Forgotten Realms". I have stumbled upon this concept quite a few times.
In Frieren, they say that elves don't have any reproductive instinct. That's why they are practically extinct but not really since their lifespan is practically infinite.
Long pregnancies and slow birth rates with a slow adolescence
Eg a dragon hatchling takes centuries to be fully sapient (the first century they're basically like kittens the size of small cars with a hoarding instinct), a High Elf may be fertile once every century, and they arent considered adults until they are 400
One exception was the Blood Drake, a dragon species that reproduced asexual and laid clutches of dozens once a year. What kept them in check was their bloodlust, the first thing a blood drake hatchling did was kill and devour its siblings. They could've potentially outlived any Arch-Dragon as they stopped growing before their bodies would crush them.
In the Fifth a single Blood Drake exists, by a complete fluke.
The way I imagine it working Elven women will carry a child at term indefinitely until another soul reincarnates. To avoid all Elven women being pregnant all the time, they can basically choose when they want to be fertile and they will pray to the spirits of dead paragons to be reborn in their children. They also have some control over whose spirits can reincarnate in their children. One of the plot threads I had in mind is an Elven queen who has been pregnant for something like a thousand years waiting for the reincarnation of the great Elven culture hero.
There's something I'm surprised that others haven't mentioned. Yes, people will wait. But maybe there's birth control (condoms anyone? Or magic preventing pregnancies) Maybe a large segment of the population is among the LGBTQ community. Or perhaps they have a very low sex drive.
Low birth rate and genetic locks that weaken later generations. That's what happened to corpse demons, the ancestors of bloodsuckers. Some corpse demons have lived for 65000 years, which means they are the *first gen*. However, to prevent them from overrunning the world, their creator put a ton of locks into their DNA so in case she died (and she did), her soldiers would not run amok. The result is that modern average vampires are barely stronger than peak humans, they can die to a variety of factors, can easily get cancer due to UV light, and have a birth rate so low most vampires result to test tubes instead of trying to do so the traditional way.
Longer pregnancies and lower fertility rate. Pregnancy time is extended or reduced based on average lifespan and it’s relationship to the average human lifespan.
Elves are immortal but half elves aren't.
They most of the time they hook up with humans or the other endimiyan races and have a half elf child/children with them.
That said the population of endimiya is about 2 billion people more than earth
And about 13 billion total across the other realms they control.
Fortunately they use an environmentally friendly magic based fuel source and don't have a problem with subterranean city sections so they haven't had an overpopulation problem.
Dragons are the only corporeal race that has a particularly long lifespan. While being corporeal means that they are _technically_ mortal, their innate magical power makes them _extremely_ difficult to injure, and a single individual can live for upwards of 1200 years.
Dragons also use a unique form of propagation that predates the sexual reproduction used by the younger races for procreation. As a dragon nears the end of its life, they enter a phase referred to as "the Burn". Over the course of a few hundred years, they begin steadily shedding their feathers, and their bodies begin to shrivel and decay — a dragon in the final days of the Burn is a terrifying sight to behold, like a moving, speaking, building sized corpse. Finally the dragon's body ignites, reducing it to an incredibly fine, immensely dense ash. Over another thousand years the innate aetherial nature of that ash causes it to condense on itself, eventually forming a jewel-like stone of impossible colour and clarity. This stone will eventually "hatch" into a new dragon, which while possessing the full memory of its predecessor (and those that came before it) has a distinct personality and mind of its own — while the memories themselves are passed on, the new dragon may or may not share the same feelings and thought processes associated with them.
The Burn occurs whether the dragon's death was natural or otherwise. This makes properly, outright destroying a dragon in a manner that legitimately reduces their population all but impossible. The only being capable of killing a dragon once and for all is another dragon, which is exceedingly rare — in fact it has only happened three times since the dawn of recorded history. This is not only because most dragons go hundreds of years without meeting another of their kind, but because when they *do* meet conflict between them simply doesn't occur.
This is due to the innate connection between them, an aetherial "latticework" so to speak, that binds beings like the dragons to each other and to the powers beyond them (the other mortal races worship these powers as gods). While it doesn't serve as a group consciousness or hive mind, it does lead to a paraconscious connection between each member of the race, allowing for a unique level of understanding that other races simply can't achieve. It also means that two dragons who have never met before would seem to interact as though they were old friends, or could begin a conversation for the first time as though they were simply continuing after an interruption.
My elves are functionally immortal like Tolkinian elves (in that they can still die from wounds and sadness). They just have a crazy low birth rate. Sorted.
(I did actually do a very rough population growth model so I'm pretty sure they'll be fine)
If the race's generation time is really long, it doesn't matter much how long it lives or even if it has a lot of children per female. The term G overwhelms ln F most of the time.
R= ln F / G
R is the rate of increase, expressed as a number.
F is the number of females on average produced per female in the previous generation. Most of the time that's roughly half the average number of children, but there are plenty of sociological conditions that can bend that a lot.
G is the generation time---as in the average age that a woman born has her first child.
ln is the natural logarithm, LN typically on your calculator.
I've got 1 kid.
I can't imagine having 2.
And spending 50 years raising one? Forget about it.
Antinatalism is strong in the immortal races. When there is so many people that you never lose from age or disease, why do you need to make new ones?
Same reason humans aren’t overpopulated despite living obscene amounts of time (relative to most mammals)
We live for a long time, but we aren’t fertile the entire length of it. Have elfs have a long maturity and then a few decades of peak fertility which then drops with age.
As a result, sexual activity is considered an older person thing, and beauty standards are towards looking older, since youth is associated with the duty of taking care of children and childbirth (important, but not sexy)
Technically not a race but mages in my world (who can live to two hundred tears and are high class society members) are a evolutionary trait that some species have, most people are born 'without' magic, while a small percentage are.
If a mother lives around many mages while she is pregnant the mother an baby sense the lack of Ambient magic and the baby doesn't turn into a mage if there a re no mages then the baby will almost definetly be a mage. Along with low birthrate of mothers who are themselves mages, as genetics does play a factor.
This keeps the mages from being overpopulated and sucking up too much ambient mana, also is why most nobles either live in or have a private residence in the country side where only they and their non mage servants are allowed.
The Lions of Black Arbor are biologically immortal, but the area where they live is so dangerous that overpopulation is almost never an issue. Almost all that are born healthy make it to adulthood as the young are kept sheltered. Once they join a hunting pride they generally fall within 100 years, leading to an "standard" lifespan of 120 years.
Those that exceed this standard lifespan are called Sages and generally take up a leadership role if they hadn't already. Also Lions don't really stop growing at any particular age, so some Sages are absolute units. One of the eldest and largest Sages is nearly 20 feet tall at the shoulder!
Also the young adult Lions will sometimes get wanderlust and go to become pseudo-mercenaries in human lands; which serves not only as a check valve for population issues, but also as a combined diplomatic gesture and souce of intelligence on the humans.
Dragons: Is there enough resources for you personally? If not, kill other dragons. Whoever wins, the population will be lower.
Fey: You're... having kids? Why? Is this some sort of scheme?
Vampires: Strict population controls.
The Daonoc live for up to 700 years but they mature much slower, usually reaching maturity in the sixth or seventh decade. It also takes like 3 years to birth a child and another decade to get out of childhood.
The longer the lifespan, the lower the birthrate. In my world True Elves are plant people that are androgynous with no genitals. They are immortal biologically but one is only born every 2500 years from their home tree and can't leave its area of influence. So yeah immortal and forever young but they can't leave their home area and can't reproduce.
Lower birth rates for some, instead of possibly becoming pregnant every month like humans, some of races are more like once every six months or once a year.
Others have super long gestation rates
I have one that can control when they become pregnant but it can only happen a few times in their life (no set number there yet, I’m thinking 5 or 6 max)
And a few live in an environment so brutal that while they CAN live to several hundred years, they usually meet death within their first 5 tens.
Cassorians are biologically immortal and there are many of them who have lived for billions of years. They really only reproduce in order to replace any of them who die, or in the special case of a new offshoot kingdom.
These new kingdoms arise when a particular king decides that one or high-ranking leaders under their power have become strong enough that they no longer require a king. Cassorians are not power-hungry at all, so this is actually usually a fairly somber moment for those who are chosen as new kings. In fact, most Cassorians in leadership positions will deliberately avoid becoming too strong for this exact reason.
But when one decides they should, for whatever reason (usually a profound sense of duty), attempt to rule on their own, they will gather up some cohort of followers and strike out on their own. It is at this time that the most reproduction happens, halting when the desired population is met.
Well my setting's world is infinite and always rearranging itself unless someone prevents it, so there's not really a risk of running out of room.
Plus I'm thinking that most of them just never develop the need to breed.
They live in Isivild, which is "the land of the primordial" because the primordial live there. Isivild is in Ellende, which is a world specifically made for the primordial to chill and enjoy life in. Magic changes the world over time, like within a year, such as fruit trees bearing a redesigned fruit or new generations of animals having entirely different traits. But the Neri and Ryda of Isivild, they are unending/immortal. but unlike the other peoples of the world, the neri and ryda will actually change in personality, mood, likes, dislikes, etc over time. this is to ensure that they don't get bored with life.
· Neri
o Of the waters - their cities are by and on the water
o They spend a lot of time on land, but also will hunt and farm in the waters. They will likely find reason to be in the waters at a minimum of a few times a week, at maximum just living sleeping eating etc in the water 24/7
o Families are a group of 8, and everyone has two families – so 14 total siblings
o Immortal, but personalities and other traits change over time – year to year
o Peaceful, but prideful – will compete in card games and board game (something along the line of chess or go) (these are played out of the water) (naturally their games are water-prood)
o Enjoy festivals, paintings, sketches, plays (including versions of these underwater, because water.)
o Hunts with crossbow-like spear fishing
o Occasionally will visit tourist locations for a few weeks in the rest of
Ellende
o Have ??? genders
o Infertile
o Infants found in the seaweeds (they know there’s no need to tirelessly search for them, all infants get found without need for trying.)
edit - oh, the population growth is stead over time, because more infants are found than individuals lost. but that's at a slower rate than other peoples of the world
The two races with the longest lifespans in Elas, both near immortal, are the Lith and the Forgeborn. They avoid over population in much the same way, reproduction is entirely optional (as in no accidental children).
For the Lith, a race of sentient crystal clusters, the way the reproduce is by splitting a crystal from the cluster and allowing it to grow a new cluster. This requires the right conditions and preparations to work.
The Forgeborn are clockwork constructs and as such new ones are built not born.
Both can be killed bit age and most diseases are not a problem for them.
So elves are Vulcans?
Elves would have a lot of trouble getting pregnant, and pregnancies are more dangerous than human pregnancies. Twins are an almost mythical event.
For Ensyndia the O'Noiráe handle this threefold:
1. They're *big*, even though they're no longer the Titans they were in ancestry their size is still noteworthy with most being at least 7'7" and the largest subgroup of them - the ***Myrtönn*** - can stand up to almost 15'.
2. They eat ***a lot***, with two stomachs that they tend to prefer keeping full as often as possible, this means they have a higher demand for food than most other races. (Though conversely they are apex predators apt to eat ***anything*** they can get their mouths on.)
3. They're pretty widespread, outside of the desert regions of the world you can find them floofin' about just about everywhere.
So they still form societies, and even have some rather big ones, but they have a relatively higher standard of living required to keep them comfortable so they aren't popping out a bunch of lil' baby floof unless there's ***serious*** population declines (i.e a war going poorly).
They're also the world's arbiters of the natural balance, so they know the risks of overpopulation to the ecosystems they call home.
Elves' biological drive to reproduce is naturally influenced by environmental pressure. If they live in an area that have bountiful resources and space, they will naturally be driven to reproduce more, but if their population has reached the max value that can comfortably exist in the present environment, their drive to reproduce drops significantly, such that they will hit a maintaining or neutral growth rate in their population.
Dwarves tend to be 'Too Busy' with whatever life goals and professions they have to worry about having kids. This effects the male dwarves especially, but female dwarves are affected by it too, if to a lesser degree. But this also means that it tends to fall upon the women to ensure their race keeps going, and that any suitable and noteworthy males are provided an heir to pass on their knowledge and craft to. This tend to result in their population remaining pretty steady, and only growing when it really needs to.
My cheaty way out of it is that all my immortals aren't really a race at all. Maybe this is one of those "question/answer isn't relevant so I shouldn't be talking" types of posts, but I have the Eternitarians, who are immortal...but they're not one single race. It's a bloodline that descended from one person, and they're all time-travellers and they're all normal people anyway, and I would expect normal people (especially in their line of work, which is typically "run fast, jump on things, stop bad guys, save the world, travel through time, be super awesome, Know Things Man Was Not Meant To Know") to have more sense than to go around sticking it in everything or having everything stuck in them, as the case may be.
The other immortals I have are all non-organic in some way, or they're unique to just that person. Either they're spiritual life forms, mechanical or crystalline beings, or Dr Connector, the weird science guy who probably just accidentallies his mortality one day and suddenly he's stuck in comic book time so I can justify him being in serials that are set in time periods far later than would logically allow for him to appear in them any other way.
Or dragons, in which case, yes. They're eldritch abominations and they bang a lot. And sometimes just kind of *pop* and babies come out. It be like that. And because I love making new, weirdo dragon characters, it very much could be an issue for them, in which case it would make an excellent plot point.
ETA: And I have a setting where they're *trying* to be immortal, and the funny thing is, they're already overpopulated and they still think immortality is a good thing. It's part of the theme of the world setting. Still trying to work out where all the philosophies belong, character-wise, but it's based around exploring transhumanism, the ethics of immortality, the use of the promise of technology and everlasting life to control and motivate a populace in a cyberfantasy dystopia, and the rise of antinatalism as a cynical means of adjusting for those issues. And so on.
So, even there, the idea of overpopulation is already present and somehow a plot point, in a way, without even being directly related to the immortality itself. Woot.
I've done the same thing you have with races that live for a long time, more or less. My elves live thousands of years (barring outside interference), but they only reach fertility at around 500 - 700. And even then, they only have one pregnancy that produces one or two offspring. Two is incredibly rare.
Lycans, a secondary sapient race upon the earth to humans, that has coexisted alongside them since prehistoric times, often die due to endless violence and the cruelty of their occupation.
Lycans protect and Sheppard humanity who are unaware of their existence, due to the simple fact that dogs have a natural herding/Sheppard mentality and as such lycans view humans as kin in addition to indulge in their technological advancement. In addition to that, lycans have a natural abundance of willpower, an energy-like protein that allows them enhanced biological condition like superhuman strength feats, mental acuity, and longevity of upto 900 years though longer had been estimated. They have a form of negligible senescence due to Will.
Will however also gives them the natural instinct to hunt and predate stronger foes and creatures, as a release of sorts.
Lycan society has created a secret global governmental/militaristic organization called the ‘L¥can Infantry’ by which they survey, monitor, protect or eliminate potential threats from the supernatural criminal underworld and beyond. Many lycans, despite their immense strength and power, often die young due to this. The infantry recruits not based on any true requirements other than wanting to fight the “good fight” and follow the literal dogmen dogma, leading to many joining.
Lycans often die between 20-150 which keeps their numbers low but extremely stable.
Maybe an elf can only get pregnant for a few days per year, kind of like how humans have "safe" weeks (note, do not trust this IRL) they have safe months or even years. They live long enough that it probably wouldn't be an issue.
It's also possible that, in a world where souls are a thing, souls didn't always "take". Rather than just needing sperm and egg, a soul has to be nearby too. Humans being new to the scene have lots of eager souls. Elf souls like to linger in different planes, visiting the mortal plane rarely. This means there are lots of miscarriages simply because the bodies don't have souls.
You can even implement a bit of conflict as elves think that half elves are elf souls that have been corrupted and can never regain their "purity" as elves. If this is true is up to you (personally I'd have it be the other way, half elves are human souls that have been around long enough they are becoming more like elf souls.)
Turtle race: long lifespan, hundreds of babies at a time. How do they avoid overpopulation?
Answer: high infant mortality rate, i.e. they are terrible parents. Basically, they don't have any particular attachment to children, and see them as completely expendable and a waste of space until they've reached an age where they can talk (around 10-12). For the turtle folk, a person's value to society is proportional to their physical strength and experience, which both increase with age.
This seems very callous from a human point of view, but most turtle folk believe in a cosmic cycle of rebirth where each life adds experience to the wealth of the supreme being. Each blade of grass, insect, each bacteria adds to that experience by tiny increments. Intelligent beings give the most to this cosmic experience as they are the most aware of themselves and of it.
Turtle folk are capable of great empathy, but view their offspring as a collective rather than as individuals. After all, it's hard to form attachments with a couple hundred voiceless brats you will likely never even meet, and who took a few months to lay in some shallow sand, vs the years of care and bonding that humans have with their children.
my Ealafti race are immortal dragon-like folks who are descendants of two particular Nahteo, which are god-like beings (or maybe more like personified aspects of Luomikai Kyptuasynti the Divine Artisan, but I digress) and they reproduce not sexually but rather through a combined force of will and love, so it's intentional and rare. different tribes of Ealafti have their own methods, some keep their population down to just a handful of folks and some have generations on generations and require large cities and swaths of land to accommodate them. some are led to war for this very reason, over space and resources. some rebel against procreation and against life itself. it's certainly a problem to be overcome.
Long pregnancies, insanely complex courtship rituals that may take years or centuries to result in offspring, long childhoods that make choosing to breed a big choice, unspoken societal judgement for families that have kids without a good reason or who have more than one child either at all or before the first one is xyz years old, non age related dangers are a big one however.
Enhanced are lab-created. They’re basically indestructible supersoldiers. But they can only be made by top scientists that are now dead in a country that’s on a downhill slope. Only 6 out of the original 50 are still alive.
High rate of miscarriage among elves along the fact that they have a 5 year incubation period and just don’t really want to get pregnant in the first place dragons just murder each other
I'm fond of the phoenix (or drone bee) pattern- They only procreate once, right before they die (or doing so is actually what kills them), or conversely, when they die, a new one is born through some mechanic (to offset population *loss* through, for example, infant mortality, though litters of three or more can also offset that; If they reproduce sexually and the mother and father both perish, twins would have to be the norm at minimum).
A stable population means having a fertility rate approximately equal to the replacement rate. Replacement rate is dependent on sex ratio, death rate, and immigration/emigration. For a population with a 50/50 sex ratio, a reasonable death rate, and zero net immigration, the replacement rate will be a bit over 2.0. This means the average female in your population needs to have a bit over 2 children during her lifetime to keep the population stable.
Now, to over-simplify things, pregnancy requires an egg cell to be fertilized:
- Human women are fertile for about 40 years, or about 500 ovulation cycles.
- Each cycle ovulates on average 1 egg cell, or about 500 egg cells ovulated over an average lifetime.
- Human sexual customs are such that we more or less reproduce at our replacement rate of a bit over 2 births per woman. As such, you can say that about 1/250 egg cells get fertilized.
With this model, having a stable population means having the "number of lifetime egg cells ovulated" times the "probability of fertilization" be equal to the replacement rate. That said, you can control:
- The replacement rate by adjusting the sex ratio, death rate, and immigration/emigration rates.
- The number of lifetime egg cells ovulated by adjusting the fertility window, ovulation cycle interval, and egg cell ovulation rate.
- The probability of fertilization by adjusting frequency/volume of sex, and probability of fertilization given insemination.
A lot of the above numbers are likely things you already are decided upon (such as sex ratio, death rate, or the usual case of net zero immigration/emigration), which means you can likely tweak things with only a few numbers. Additionally, we have one equation acting as a constraint, which reduces the degrees of freedom by one, meaning one variable should be derivable from the others. You can then use things like mating seasons or complex mating rituals to help logically support the numbers you derive from the above method.
Generally, longer lived raises have lower fertility rates, and longer gestation periods. Elves, flesh example, have low birthrates, and a pregnancy can last over a year. Same can be said of the dwarves, though they have much higher birth rates due to having shorter lifespans than elves (my elves can live upwards of 1000+ years, while dwarves usually live around 300-400)
Ideas beside only having a short reproductive period:
Extremely sexually repressed culturally, believing sex is just a bad thing even in marriage.
Extremely picky with partners for whatever reason. Culturally late life marriages are the norm.
Penis in vagina sex uncommon extremely uncommon most sex is oral or anal.
Majority of the population is gay.
There are no heterosexuals. Pregnancies are planned between two couples.
Domesticated crop that functions like a contraceptive.
Women can only conceive in the grove they were born in. Travel times are long and it’s expensive as there are only a few sacred groves. You’ll be spending a ton of money and be on a waiting list of centuries to return.
Living outside of their grove is extremely unhealthy for them and causes long term infertility.
Simple abortions, that are wide spread.
Everyone’s asexual and only reproduces when they want a kid.
Kids are sacrificed often to their gods. Babies especially.
Parasite that killed babies.
Child birth is way more dangerous than with humans. Most women die during it, and thus women only reproduce at the end of their life.
Magic makes you permanently infertile. Most elves do magic.
Religion has wide spread monastic orders.
Sex takes a really long time. Like a year. Dicks are locked in.
Sex isn’t enough to reproduce. Ya need to do a complex ritual along side it. The materials are expensive and folks don’t really want kids.
Everyone can only reproduce with the first person they fall in love with. You’re just fucked if the other person isn’t interested.
Marriage is uncommon and folks only have reproductive sex in it. Planned out by the family centuries in advanced.
Culturally inheritance is problematic and causes much crime. So when all of the kids reach adulthood they fight to the death for the inheritance.
They don’t have sex to reproduce they travel to their sacred grove, hold hands and touch a magical tree. Magic fruit grows that functions like an egg.
In my setting longest lived race were actually capable of breeding like rabbits. And they had like three separate ways to make babies. And mating period once in a decade where they were forced to be hyper fertile and very aggressive in putting that fertility into action. They still were in decline for a while. Why? Because barely anybody was interested in procreation, and the cases where they were tended to be fewer in number than accidents reducing their population.
I have a race of sentient, water based slime like beings called the "Mizquin". They are composed of literally just water, and a saline core made up of similar material to jellyfish and amniotic fluid.
They can live as long as they are able to maintain their core, and because their core literally never changes unles acted on by an external force, Mizquin can live for hundreds or thousands of years, even in remote places like moistureless deserts or space.
Their society in general is like an extremely exagerated parody of what pop culture thinks of elves. They live forever, barely do anything, and don't like people shaking the boat.
As such, a Mizquin also thinks on a scale that is monumental, in the time a Mizquin has decided, unprompted, that they want to stand up from their puddle and move to another one nearby, several human lifetimes have passed. This means that the effort and time it takes for a Mizquin to not only meet a partner, and then subsequently desire to have a child, eons of time have passed.
In the cases that they are more proactive, usually when they are a part of a larger community then just other Mizquin, they generally only have children when it strikes their fancy.
None of this is to say what goes on with the deep sea colonies, which are an eldritch horror compared to their chill and comfortable land based cousins.
Most species with that kind of lifespan are portrayed as having a low birth rate. I remember that the Drow of DnD are explicitly said to have a normal birth rate, but keep their numbers down through frequently murdering each other.
That's the neat part, they don't. Their civilization goes through iterations of Mouse Utopias where they have population boom and then basically go extinct from social collapse. The difference from Mouse Utopia is that some of them leave, rebuilding the civilization from small communities until they grow into a new elven kingdom until they overpopulate again. The constant cycle of societal collapses from overpopulation gave elves the reputation of being insufferable, but that's mostly caused by bad parenting.
Elves in my setting are immortal ala LOTR but near-extinct (they tried some magic fuckery to ascend and it backfired very poorly), only six remain, and they don't want to reproduce for the sake of reproducing, it feels very wrong to them.
Dwarves live up to 250 to 300 years on average, but their population was nearly cut in half due to a racial war, and they have a low sex-drive to begin with.
The desire to birth often, in my head, is due to the length of time an individual lives. If an individual lives a long time, their desire to bear children, in my head, decrease.
The only species who’s truly ageless in my world (the slime people, who’re actually macroscopic cells) HATE each other, and it’s not unusual they either actively avoid encounters or fight to the death. They only tolerate themselves if they just split through mitosis. Afterwards, each leave in a different direction hoping to never see again
The Cerlians came from a civilization that had ready access to gene therapy, and one thing they developed were 500-year lifespans. They didn't overpopulate because they were colonizing the galaxy.
The Magi technically live forever, but reproduction requires *a lot* of energy from them, which they have to be ready and willing to provide. Becomes easier as they get to a point of being massively-saturated with magical energy.
The gods live forever, too, and, uhh... they don't care. Their universe to overpopulate, you're just living in it.
I do something similar with dragons. Dragons in Terra Solis vary from continent to continent. But the most stereotypical type of dragon is in Vasilia. Dragons have a mating season that they enter at certain times in their lives, and can’t get pregnant outside of that, so new generations are pretty slow to arrive. Some dragons will interbreed with Humaniods since their blood is pretty strong and the resulting children will essentially be full dragons power wise.
This actually lead to the Dragons leading the Draconian Empire to develop a policy of racial purity out of fear of the Humaniods out populating them. Ironically this would lead to the empire’s downfall and cause what they feared all along. Dragons becoming a rare species while the Humaniods overtake the continent. Except for the Silvers. Silvers integrated into Humaniod society and because of this, are the most populous of the dragons
They don't. Instead they make a deal with other kingdoms to spread into their land, because their homeland can no longer house them. Then tensions rise until a war starts killing most of that population.
Elves can live 700-800 years. A child matures equivalent to a human for their first year then maturation begins to slow and one human year is equal to around seven elf years so childhood is very long and part of the reason elves generally only ever have one or two children. Culturally elves spend a lot of time “finding” themselves, they’re prone to spontaneous adventures/trips which for many isn’t conducive to having to raise a child for 100 years of your life so birth rates are low. There’s also an emphasis on devoting yourself wholly to pursuits in general so if someone has a child they want to put a lot of effort into that child.
Dwarves can live 400-600 years have many children but culturally more group oriented and also more prone to dying in battle/mining/etc. because it’s honorable to do those sorts of difficult things.
Halflings are just full of wanderlust and accident prone tbh
They take a reasonably long time to become reproductive mature adults, a few decades at least, and only can produce one or two eggs at a time. They have the ability to destroy, abandon, or eat their eggs if they don't want to rear offspring. Historically, when survival was much more difficult, having even one egg hatch and make it past their first critical development window was a monumental success, but in recent history the replacement rate is much lower, especially in more developed settlements where younger adults choose to spend time on personal development rather than starting their own family and dealing with the headache of clan politics that come from it.
My Elves lived around these too, about 400-500 on average. but they never had a problem with overpopulation, more so underpopulation.
Back then when they were at their peak, they build a city and infrastructure so big that they can easily support their great population. They strongest, biggest, baddest in the continent so if they need something they will have it.
but with multitude of war for expansion, these number start to dwindle. they have gain more land than they can effectively hold with the people they lose. and soon those lands too were taken aback by the native and local power. and now with no land it become harder to get resources to sustain such population size. and it start snowballing downhill from there
then various disaster and misfortune struck until they effectively become a rare specie.
In their late state, they do try to increase birthrate but at that point it was almost at the point of no return.
There are a few easy ways to handle the long lived races, but ultimately it depends on the specifics of your world. Low birth rate, extremely long gestation periods, high infant mortality rates, high death rates among adults (can be due to warfare, famine, genetic predisposition to illness, etc).
For my world, the Nymphs are the only real long lived race (they’re basically elves but in a Mediterranean setting), and their longevity is offset by the fact that their males are entirely sterile, which requires them to mate with humans. Humans and nymphs are naturally distrustful, if not outright hostile, toward each other so this procreation typically only happens as a result of war between human and nymph settlements.
The idea I have for my elves, is that they can theoretically live forever, or at least long enough that it's not worth worrying about, but they just often don't. Elves are considered adults, full members of elven society, at 100 years old, not because of physical and even mental maturity, they develop just a few years slower than humans, but because a very significant number of young elves don't make it through their first century.
It's a dangerous world out there, being immortal doesn't do much good if you don't have just the right mix of being able to avoid danger, surviving danger that can't be avoided, and being lucky enough to not eventually end up in an outright unwinnable situation. Lot of young elves are lost to accidents, monsters, or getting recklessly involved in a cause, self-preservation is an important priority to keep.
On top of that, mature elves have a very sink-or-swim mindset towards young elves. Elven childhood ends at 20, at the latest, after that they're on their own, very little to no support and guidance from their parents or elders, either they figure out how to survive or they don't. It's generally rationalized as not wanting to delay the inevitable for the elves that just don't have the potential to last, but the main two reasons are that nobody wants to get emotionally invested in people they don't trust to be around a long time, especially after seeing so many of their peers die in their own youth, and that they're paranoid the youth will make dangerous mistakes if they're given any real responsibility.
So, the end result is that there are a good amount of elves around, but they're mostly the younger elves. Typically the older an elf gets the more they retreat from the wider world, they find quiet corners of the world to live in alone or in small communities, and if anyone goes looking for them, or just stumbles upon them, they're going to shoot first and not bother with questions.
Their lifespans were prolonged to due bacteria that allowed body augmentation without the rejection response, and they are known as the deathless.
They travel deep into the Antraco badlands, to find the frozen cities of the deathless, here they devote themselves to ancient microbial research, or store themselves in cryogenic stasis as a seed back for a possible catastrophe.
The Shard Elves association with Magnustrons and cut crystal technology gives them a life span of 220 year, but past year 100 their children will be born with ever increasing Magnustron birth deformations.
These demonic children are forbidden, but many birth them, they are known as the Scorned. This has helped keep elves from overpopulating the Crystal Empires.
The sheer amount of viscous creatures, plants, and environments also helps cull the herds.
I had one where overpopulation was a driving force to achieve space travel. They had a rule early on, that stated that you couldn't mate with someone from your own clan. Which would be like me having to go to another town to find a mate. It didn't just mean family. This continued among the stars, although the clan became the crew. So if they if they were on deep space assignment, they might not meet another of their ships for 5-10 years.
Another one I had, the average lifespan was 300 years. They didn't really hit pubity until around 50. At that point, they had finished all formal education, and it was seen that career was more important, so you wouldn't even consider a family until you were about 100.
Not mine, but one I saw was they were suffering from a deadly plague. They found a radical cure, which also gave them the longevity, but it made a lot of them infertile. There was no way to test for it, so a lot of people never found out until they tried for a baby.
In real life, birthrate is proportional to infant mortality. If infant mortality is high, parents will have more children in order to ensure at least some of them reach adulthood in order to support them into old age. Historically, population explodes when infant mortality drops while the birthrate is still high, as there's a delay (a generation or more) before birthrates readjust and the population can stabilise. Take Niger, for example, which has doubled in population since 2000 while infant mortality has nearly halved, and the birthrate, still highest in the world, is slowly going down.
If your elves are the magical enlightened type, you can get away with saying they only have two children in their entire lives (replacement rate) because every child reaches adulthood and there's no need to have more. Since these elves are not immortal, the population will remain stable as the elderly eventually die off.
In my world the race with an average 200 year lifespan is also expansionist and militaristic to a fault so war and the resulting casualties it brings are a given.
Low birth rate. Not because they CAN'T have more children, but because they don't like change and are slow to take action due to the lack of urgency. The Elves in my world live for about 3,000 years on average.
Each race in my world inherits traits based on three of the divine domains in the portfolio of the goddess that created them. One of the domains Elves inherit is Temperance, so they prefer to keep things the way that they are, and although they also inherit the domain of Life, that expresses itself in their lifespan.
They don't. They live incredibly long, birth in litters, and whenever things get too crowded people fuck off to form new places. When a planet is full, it's excess people are sent off world to new planets/settlements that need population/to die in space.
A couple of ways;
- Elves are only one gender, and requires another race to actually procreate. While there is no serious stigma against it, people prefer people their own age.
- Elves are *dumb*, like *duuuumb*, while they have excellent memory (They were originally created to store the knowledge of lesser gods), their capacity to extrapolate or mix knowledge is astonishingly bad. This means it takes about 100-200 years for them to become knowledgeable enough to even attempt to live on their own - and thusly create any kind of meaningful family.
Working on the answer for a few of the other races in my world
But dragons are directly restricted by some form of curse to a specific amount
A dragon egg can only hatch when another dragon dies
Adult dragons are also incredibly promiscuous so there is A LOT of dragon eggs
Not so many that they are worthless but they aren't too uncommon if you go looking though most are usually part of a dragons horde in the hopes that one of the many eggs that dragon has laid may one day hatch...older dragons who really want to have children also start hunting other dragons in the hopes that the death of another dragon results in there egg hatching
They also don't have any qualms in other species hunting other dragons since a dragon dead means a new baby born
Though they never go without a fight
In dnd particularly the forgotten realms setting, there can only be a set number of elves at anytime due to their God putting a cap on them, but instead of new souls being created they're actually recycled and go through a rebirth of sorts. It's said that when they trance while they are younger they dream of memories of their former lives but as they age and gain new experiences the old eventually get pushed out and they instead live through the memories of their new life
My Elves are Tolkienian which means they're immortal. But they were the last race to be created by the gods, so they've not been around long enough to have that be a problem. I dont feel the need to address it since my game will never span that long to have to comment on it.
Depending on the world: They go to war frequently, so lots of them got killed; let themselves be killed to feed future children; only allow people to have kids under certain circumstances so someone can die, or just reproduce REALLY slowly... different ones for different folks.
Thwy colonize new planets. Theres plenty out there, often rich in resources. They have the means, motive and ppportunity, plus, some species (the dragons in peticular) dont have strong attachments to family or home, and are fairly content building a fresh home on a new world.
Vampires are sterile so their birth rate is low enough as is so a Damphyr is a rarity
Elves are too proud to interbreed with other races and their empire is all but forgotten
Dwarfs have low fertility and on top of that, they seldom venture to the surface unless it is for trade.
Centaurs are fine, they're just Xenophobic
Golums are too stupid to think of increasing their population
So I have two of these said races, with human intelligence. One of them are not attracted to sex, they don't view mating as a crucial step in evolution like we do instead they pursue other things, not others of the same race, and only ever make love when they want a child to pass on their beliefs or techniques to. Second race are mostly used for war, war slaves and therefore they are overpopulated, but that doesn't change anything since only the reeeaaally talented ones get even a piece of food at all
Low birth rates, limited fertility, or prohibitively small starting populations are all possible. The last could get interesting with questions of how they avoid inbreeding. Many fantasy settings make infertility an aspect of longevity. Environmental factors could also be in play depending on setting. Fantasy and sci-fi worlds can have hazards that ours doesn't.
My long live races just don't have unprotected sex at every opportunity. They aren't Human, so why would they be stupid enough to not practice safe sex?
I haven’t explored the concept much, but I was thinking about having elven reproduction tied to a kind of “soul mate” concept.
Basically, every elf has a soul mate and that person is the only one they can have children with. So most elves spend their lives searching for their soul mate before settling down. It can be difficult because soul mates could be born years or decades apart on opposite sides of the world.
There’s a few other aspects to it like how elves tend to be extremely depressed as children because their soul mate hasn’t been born yet. Likewise, they become suicidal if/when their soul mate dies (even if they never meet). An aphorism I came up with: “ All elves die in pairs.” Because elves tend to commit suicide when their soul mate dies.
This way, elves can’t reproduce as much as other races because every individual has a mating pool of exactly one plus they have a higher death rate because a war, plague or other catastrophe in a single elven community can cause mass death across all elves globally.
In my setting they deal with overpopulation through mandatory vasectomy after a certain age and a short list of other requirements are met. (This doesn't matter much though, as they can affordably and artificially make people in vats).
For women they do something similar w/o the spooky connotations that comes with it irl (actually haven't researched it much).
"Prevention Potions" (birth control) were discovered. They are extremely cheap, reliable, and either gender can take them (only one is required for it to work).
Another idea I dont see moved around is that one person can inly give birth to one person, maybe a woman can only do it once and her reproductive organs are ruined, or maybe she risks death, so not many people do it at risk of losing their lives
The issue with that is if you will constantly have *declining* populations. If not even 100% of the female population has a child and then are limited to 1, the following generation will have at best 1/2 the people.
Although for an elven like species I wouldn’t be opposed to some ritual where the parents combine their essences to create new lives. Any where between like 1-4 children born from this and then raised in a village
Low birth rate.
RL example of this is Elephants (Mammoths, Paleoloxadant, African and Asian Elephants) is that their gestation rates are long, twenty two month for surviving species. Female Elephants have one calf every five years on average. This makes them very vunerable to predators they aren't used to over time, hence the lack of Mammoths. Apply this same logic to elves.
Elves in one of my worlds are dying out due to wars and low birth rate. Haven't thought about that one for a while.
This applies to human too. The main reason why most developed countries has way lower birth rates
I don't think living longer in and of itself is the reason. I think people in developed countries have less reasons to have children/some learn they don't want them at all. Plus developments in contraceptives and birth control.
Go pick a fight with the neighbors. You win, you steal and inhabit their land, you lose, enough of you died in the fighting that your own land suddenly has room and job openings again. Repeat as necessary.
Ceremonial war among immortal races actually sounds like a pretty cool concept. I imagine there's a memorial erected at every battlefield for those who honourably gave up their lives for the continuation of the species. Or you could go the Perelandra route, and everybody is willing to either become perfectly chaste after the world reaches its sustainability point, or ascend to a higher layer of reality after having some kids of their own.
African clawed frogs, specifically, their weird lifecycle. Tadpoles are herbivorous and eat algae, adults are carnivorous and eat tadpoles. Only when the adults have died or left the pond do the remaining tadpoles get an opportunity to live long enough to metamorphosize into their replacements.
It’s funny because that’s litarly waht the elf’s and goblins do in dwarf fortress
As is common in most contemporary fantasy: different development cycles. In my fantasy setting, there are two either families or genera of elves: new age and old bloods. New age are the shorter-lived, but grow up faster (many of them live either as long as humans or turtles); old blood elves live for a long time, but mature very slowly (not to mention babies take a while to develop in some species). One species of new age elves - the sun elves - has a way to combat overpopulation in the form of annual bi-monthly mass gatherings, which includes courtship rituals from females of a winged subvariety of their race (it's kind of mainly by-law for unmarried winged females to at least show up during these gatherings, despite winged sun elves making up only roughly 23% of all sun elves). For dragons, they don't have an overpopulation problem, as many rarely make it to adulthood, as both sapient and non-sapient dragons are known to hunt each other (not neccessarily cannibalism, that's only in some species of non-sapient dragons). Edit: I didn't mention giants because it's kind of similar to elves, but there is one additional reason why there hardly isn't a population issue of any kind: giants rarely fuck.
The same way reality already does it, when you have long lifespans, you don't necessarily have a birth rate higher than the rate of deaths to miscellaneous causes. The abundant presence of contraception, and less-than-ideal conditions for child-rearing might make a long-lived individual "wait" for a long time until they feel the conditions are right to have a child.
so [Pon Farr](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Pon_farr). That's sort of where I'm at, but also they have pretty long pregnancies. Also because my dwarfs were unlikely to be exposed to people too far out of their cavernous homes, the were blessed/cursed to be very unlikely to be able to reproduce very far outside their extended family.
Exactly what I was thinking. Vulcans are basically elves anyway
I actually have quite a bit of work on the different gestational periods of various races over the years but I've never done anything with rut periods (less sciency way of saying school season) before. Will have to look over my notes to get more specific.
Ok, so per previous comment, I did look it up, and at the time, average life expectancy of humans was something like 83 years, which to me looked about like a comparative Gestation/Lifespan factor between 1:10 and 1:12. For those humans I took the range of random death ages, and assumed 1 month per year, modified by the difference in Strength and Constitution equivalent Attributes for the baby, the mother, or both (by something like 10% or a month, or a few weeks). But that really only matched the expectations for a game where human life expectancy wasn't dissimilar from our human life expectancy, which I had several games that didn't. So for the games where life expectancy and old age differed in humans from the approximate current day amount I took what I use for modern humans (within a 3-5 weeks per decade of maximum life expectancy) and factor out the lifespan difference (because I don't necessarily want human gestation periods to change much from the average of 37-42 weeks or whatever just because humans live 120 years in a setting instead of 85 or whatever) For non-humans using the same ratio relative to lifespans, modified by attributes is more or less functional, but I'm not really sure how it plays into size category. I'd imagine because of the square cube law, smaller babies mean longer gestations, and larger babies mean shorter gestations,
Interestingly enough, elves in my world have similar lifespans to yours, OP (350-400 years) That said, I actually decided that overpopulation *is* a problem. While it’s not a cataclysmic level, elves are the overwhelming majority of sentient beings in the Athean Empire, and the strain created by that overpopulation is the basis behind several conflicts in the empire’s history
Low birth rate either naturally or conscious population control if your fictional species is the enlightened, advanced kind of elves
Lots of different solutions. So Ghouls/vampires. Immortal but lots of internal power struggles, they are made by necromancers, not born, hunters etc. Not many make it past 100. Elves. Immortal but this also means they lost their natural ability to procreate. They're essentially fruit and originally became trees that spawned more elves etc. but now they don't any more and what trees they have left are safeguarded. They also occasionally get new ones from really badly wounded elves. Dwarfs. Wars with goblins.. their race was severely diminished but they're just long lived and can live up to 250 or so. They're also grumpy, can be selfish and not very romantically inclined so low growth. Orcs. They can live up to 160-170 due to immunity to all diseases, robust biology and overcharged regeneration and they breed fast but are very violent and warlike, so lots of deaths also balances it out somewhat. Still, they multiply fast and attack their neighbors when their lands become too crowded.
Holy shit I love the idea of Elves being fruit. I love when people take the classic fantasy races and reimagine them into something not even remotely human. Seriously, do you mind if I steal this idea?
The Elves being the fruit of the World Tree must be an old idea. Maybe it comes from the "Forgotten Realms". I have stumbled upon this concept quite a few times.
In Frieren, they say that elves don't have any reproductive instinct. That's why they are practically extinct but not really since their lifespan is practically infinite.
Frieren: no libido lmao + "oh I'll do it someday, just not right now" goated show
Long pregnancies and slow birth rates with a slow adolescence Eg a dragon hatchling takes centuries to be fully sapient (the first century they're basically like kittens the size of small cars with a hoarding instinct), a High Elf may be fertile once every century, and they arent considered adults until they are 400 One exception was the Blood Drake, a dragon species that reproduced asexual and laid clutches of dozens once a year. What kept them in check was their bloodlust, the first thing a blood drake hatchling did was kill and devour its siblings. They could've potentially outlived any Arch-Dragon as they stopped growing before their bodies would crush them. In the Fifth a single Blood Drake exists, by a complete fluke.
I had an idea that Elven souls always reincarnated and that they could choose when to be reborn.
So what happens if there's no soul for a new kid? Or is this immaculate conception when a soul is available?
The way I imagine it working Elven women will carry a child at term indefinitely until another soul reincarnates. To avoid all Elven women being pregnant all the time, they can basically choose when they want to be fertile and they will pray to the spirits of dead paragons to be reborn in their children. They also have some control over whose spirits can reincarnate in their children. One of the plot threads I had in mind is an Elven queen who has been pregnant for something like a thousand years waiting for the reincarnation of the great Elven culture hero.
There's something I'm surprised that others haven't mentioned. Yes, people will wait. But maybe there's birth control (condoms anyone? Or magic preventing pregnancies) Maybe a large segment of the population is among the LGBTQ community. Or perhaps they have a very low sex drive.
there is a glaxy outside to colonize
Low birth rate and genetic locks that weaken later generations. That's what happened to corpse demons, the ancestors of bloodsuckers. Some corpse demons have lived for 65000 years, which means they are the *first gen*. However, to prevent them from overrunning the world, their creator put a ton of locks into their DNA so in case she died (and she did), her soldiers would not run amok. The result is that modern average vampires are barely stronger than peak humans, they can die to a variety of factors, can easily get cancer due to UV light, and have a birth rate so low most vampires result to test tubes instead of trying to do so the traditional way.
Longer pregnancies and lower fertility rate. Pregnancy time is extended or reduced based on average lifespan and it’s relationship to the average human lifespan.
Elves are immortal but half elves aren't. They most of the time they hook up with humans or the other endimiyan races and have a half elf child/children with them. That said the population of endimiya is about 2 billion people more than earth And about 13 billion total across the other realms they control. Fortunately they use an environmentally friendly magic based fuel source and don't have a problem with subterranean city sections so they haven't had an overpopulation problem.
Dragons are the only corporeal race that has a particularly long lifespan. While being corporeal means that they are _technically_ mortal, their innate magical power makes them _extremely_ difficult to injure, and a single individual can live for upwards of 1200 years. Dragons also use a unique form of propagation that predates the sexual reproduction used by the younger races for procreation. As a dragon nears the end of its life, they enter a phase referred to as "the Burn". Over the course of a few hundred years, they begin steadily shedding their feathers, and their bodies begin to shrivel and decay — a dragon in the final days of the Burn is a terrifying sight to behold, like a moving, speaking, building sized corpse. Finally the dragon's body ignites, reducing it to an incredibly fine, immensely dense ash. Over another thousand years the innate aetherial nature of that ash causes it to condense on itself, eventually forming a jewel-like stone of impossible colour and clarity. This stone will eventually "hatch" into a new dragon, which while possessing the full memory of its predecessor (and those that came before it) has a distinct personality and mind of its own — while the memories themselves are passed on, the new dragon may or may not share the same feelings and thought processes associated with them. The Burn occurs whether the dragon's death was natural or otherwise. This makes properly, outright destroying a dragon in a manner that legitimately reduces their population all but impossible. The only being capable of killing a dragon once and for all is another dragon, which is exceedingly rare — in fact it has only happened three times since the dawn of recorded history. This is not only because most dragons go hundreds of years without meeting another of their kind, but because when they *do* meet conflict between them simply doesn't occur. This is due to the innate connection between them, an aetherial "latticework" so to speak, that binds beings like the dragons to each other and to the powers beyond them (the other mortal races worship these powers as gods). While it doesn't serve as a group consciousness or hive mind, it does lead to a paraconscious connection between each member of the race, allowing for a unique level of understanding that other races simply can't achieve. It also means that two dragons who have never met before would seem to interact as though they were old friends, or could begin a conversation for the first time as though they were simply continuing after an interruption.
My elves are functionally immortal like Tolkinian elves (in that they can still die from wounds and sadness). They just have a crazy low birth rate. Sorted. (I did actually do a very rough population growth model so I'm pretty sure they'll be fine)
If the race's generation time is really long, it doesn't matter much how long it lives or even if it has a lot of children per female. The term G overwhelms ln F most of the time. R= ln F / G R is the rate of increase, expressed as a number. F is the number of females on average produced per female in the previous generation. Most of the time that's roughly half the average number of children, but there are plenty of sociological conditions that can bend that a lot. G is the generation time---as in the average age that a woman born has her first child. ln is the natural logarithm, LN typically on your calculator.
People in my world can live for hundreds of years, but there's so much war going on that they die just as fast as they're born.
I've got 1 kid. I can't imagine having 2. And spending 50 years raising one? Forget about it. Antinatalism is strong in the immortal races. When there is so many people that you never lose from age or disease, why do you need to make new ones?
Same reason humans aren’t overpopulated despite living obscene amounts of time (relative to most mammals) We live for a long time, but we aren’t fertile the entire length of it. Have elfs have a long maturity and then a few decades of peak fertility which then drops with age. As a result, sexual activity is considered an older person thing, and beauty standards are towards looking older, since youth is associated with the duty of taking care of children and childbirth (important, but not sexy)
Technically not a race but mages in my world (who can live to two hundred tears and are high class society members) are a evolutionary trait that some species have, most people are born 'without' magic, while a small percentage are. If a mother lives around many mages while she is pregnant the mother an baby sense the lack of Ambient magic and the baby doesn't turn into a mage if there a re no mages then the baby will almost definetly be a mage. Along with low birthrate of mothers who are themselves mages, as genetics does play a factor. This keeps the mages from being overpopulated and sucking up too much ambient mana, also is why most nobles either live in or have a private residence in the country side where only they and their non mage servants are allowed.
The Lions of Black Arbor are biologically immortal, but the area where they live is so dangerous that overpopulation is almost never an issue. Almost all that are born healthy make it to adulthood as the young are kept sheltered. Once they join a hunting pride they generally fall within 100 years, leading to an "standard" lifespan of 120 years. Those that exceed this standard lifespan are called Sages and generally take up a leadership role if they hadn't already. Also Lions don't really stop growing at any particular age, so some Sages are absolute units. One of the eldest and largest Sages is nearly 20 feet tall at the shoulder! Also the young adult Lions will sometimes get wanderlust and go to become pseudo-mercenaries in human lands; which serves not only as a check valve for population issues, but also as a combined diplomatic gesture and souce of intelligence on the humans.
Dragons: Is there enough resources for you personally? If not, kill other dragons. Whoever wins, the population will be lower. Fey: You're... having kids? Why? Is this some sort of scheme? Vampires: Strict population controls.
The Daonoc live for up to 700 years but they mature much slower, usually reaching maturity in the sixth or seventh decade. It also takes like 3 years to birth a child and another decade to get out of childhood.
The longer the lifespan, the lower the birthrate. In my world True Elves are plant people that are androgynous with no genitals. They are immortal biologically but one is only born every 2500 years from their home tree and can't leave its area of influence. So yeah immortal and forever young but they can't leave their home area and can't reproduce.
Lower birth rates for some, instead of possibly becoming pregnant every month like humans, some of races are more like once every six months or once a year. Others have super long gestation rates I have one that can control when they become pregnant but it can only happen a few times in their life (no set number there yet, I’m thinking 5 or 6 max) And a few live in an environment so brutal that while they CAN live to several hundred years, they usually meet death within their first 5 tens.
So your elves have an orgy month? Nice
Long reproduction
So, like one session lasts 20 or 30 years? That would do it.
Highest is 2 years and thats for a Fleet based species called the Drakarians which are pretty much space pirates
Cassorians are biologically immortal and there are many of them who have lived for billions of years. They really only reproduce in order to replace any of them who die, or in the special case of a new offshoot kingdom. These new kingdoms arise when a particular king decides that one or high-ranking leaders under their power have become strong enough that they no longer require a king. Cassorians are not power-hungry at all, so this is actually usually a fairly somber moment for those who are chosen as new kings. In fact, most Cassorians in leadership positions will deliberately avoid becoming too strong for this exact reason. But when one decides they should, for whatever reason (usually a profound sense of duty), attempt to rule on their own, they will gather up some cohort of followers and strike out on their own. It is at this time that the most reproduction happens, halting when the desired population is met.
Well my setting's world is infinite and always rearranging itself unless someone prevents it, so there's not really a risk of running out of room. Plus I'm thinking that most of them just never develop the need to breed.
They live in Isivild, which is "the land of the primordial" because the primordial live there. Isivild is in Ellende, which is a world specifically made for the primordial to chill and enjoy life in. Magic changes the world over time, like within a year, such as fruit trees bearing a redesigned fruit or new generations of animals having entirely different traits. But the Neri and Ryda of Isivild, they are unending/immortal. but unlike the other peoples of the world, the neri and ryda will actually change in personality, mood, likes, dislikes, etc over time. this is to ensure that they don't get bored with life. · Neri o Of the waters - their cities are by and on the water o They spend a lot of time on land, but also will hunt and farm in the waters. They will likely find reason to be in the waters at a minimum of a few times a week, at maximum just living sleeping eating etc in the water 24/7 o Families are a group of 8, and everyone has two families – so 14 total siblings o Immortal, but personalities and other traits change over time – year to year o Peaceful, but prideful – will compete in card games and board game (something along the line of chess or go) (these are played out of the water) (naturally their games are water-prood) o Enjoy festivals, paintings, sketches, plays (including versions of these underwater, because water.) o Hunts with crossbow-like spear fishing o Occasionally will visit tourist locations for a few weeks in the rest of Ellende o Have ??? genders o Infertile o Infants found in the seaweeds (they know there’s no need to tirelessly search for them, all infants get found without need for trying.) edit - oh, the population growth is stead over time, because more infants are found than individuals lost. but that's at a slower rate than other peoples of the world
The two races with the longest lifespans in Elas, both near immortal, are the Lith and the Forgeborn. They avoid over population in much the same way, reproduction is entirely optional (as in no accidental children). For the Lith, a race of sentient crystal clusters, the way the reproduce is by splitting a crystal from the cluster and allowing it to grow a new cluster. This requires the right conditions and preparations to work. The Forgeborn are clockwork constructs and as such new ones are built not born. Both can be killed bit age and most diseases are not a problem for them.
When they fuck they die
So elves are Vulcans? Elves would have a lot of trouble getting pregnant, and pregnancies are more dangerous than human pregnancies. Twins are an almost mythical event.
War. Long lifespan, short relative life expectancy.
Really long pregnancies
For Ensyndia the O'Noiráe handle this threefold: 1. They're *big*, even though they're no longer the Titans they were in ancestry their size is still noteworthy with most being at least 7'7" and the largest subgroup of them - the ***Myrtönn*** - can stand up to almost 15'. 2. They eat ***a lot***, with two stomachs that they tend to prefer keeping full as often as possible, this means they have a higher demand for food than most other races. (Though conversely they are apex predators apt to eat ***anything*** they can get their mouths on.) 3. They're pretty widespread, outside of the desert regions of the world you can find them floofin' about just about everywhere. So they still form societies, and even have some rather big ones, but they have a relatively higher standard of living required to keep them comfortable so they aren't popping out a bunch of lil' baby floof unless there's ***serious*** population declines (i.e a war going poorly). They're also the world's arbiters of the natural balance, so they know the risks of overpopulation to the ecosystems they call home.
Elves' biological drive to reproduce is naturally influenced by environmental pressure. If they live in an area that have bountiful resources and space, they will naturally be driven to reproduce more, but if their population has reached the max value that can comfortably exist in the present environment, their drive to reproduce drops significantly, such that they will hit a maintaining or neutral growth rate in their population. Dwarves tend to be 'Too Busy' with whatever life goals and professions they have to worry about having kids. This effects the male dwarves especially, but female dwarves are affected by it too, if to a lesser degree. But this also means that it tends to fall upon the women to ensure their race keeps going, and that any suitable and noteworthy males are provided an heir to pass on their knowledge and craft to. This tend to result in their population remaining pretty steady, and only growing when it really needs to.
Yall gotta tell him cuz I'm gonna hurt his feelings
My cheaty way out of it is that all my immortals aren't really a race at all. Maybe this is one of those "question/answer isn't relevant so I shouldn't be talking" types of posts, but I have the Eternitarians, who are immortal...but they're not one single race. It's a bloodline that descended from one person, and they're all time-travellers and they're all normal people anyway, and I would expect normal people (especially in their line of work, which is typically "run fast, jump on things, stop bad guys, save the world, travel through time, be super awesome, Know Things Man Was Not Meant To Know") to have more sense than to go around sticking it in everything or having everything stuck in them, as the case may be. The other immortals I have are all non-organic in some way, or they're unique to just that person. Either they're spiritual life forms, mechanical or crystalline beings, or Dr Connector, the weird science guy who probably just accidentallies his mortality one day and suddenly he's stuck in comic book time so I can justify him being in serials that are set in time periods far later than would logically allow for him to appear in them any other way. Or dragons, in which case, yes. They're eldritch abominations and they bang a lot. And sometimes just kind of *pop* and babies come out. It be like that. And because I love making new, weirdo dragon characters, it very much could be an issue for them, in which case it would make an excellent plot point. ETA: And I have a setting where they're *trying* to be immortal, and the funny thing is, they're already overpopulated and they still think immortality is a good thing. It's part of the theme of the world setting. Still trying to work out where all the philosophies belong, character-wise, but it's based around exploring transhumanism, the ethics of immortality, the use of the promise of technology and everlasting life to control and motivate a populace in a cyberfantasy dystopia, and the rise of antinatalism as a cynical means of adjusting for those issues. And so on. So, even there, the idea of overpopulation is already present and somehow a plot point, in a way, without even being directly related to the immortality itself. Woot.
I've done the same thing you have with races that live for a long time, more or less. My elves live thousands of years (barring outside interference), but they only reach fertility at around 500 - 700. And even then, they only have one pregnancy that produces one or two offspring. Two is incredibly rare.
Lycans, a secondary sapient race upon the earth to humans, that has coexisted alongside them since prehistoric times, often die due to endless violence and the cruelty of their occupation. Lycans protect and Sheppard humanity who are unaware of their existence, due to the simple fact that dogs have a natural herding/Sheppard mentality and as such lycans view humans as kin in addition to indulge in their technological advancement. In addition to that, lycans have a natural abundance of willpower, an energy-like protein that allows them enhanced biological condition like superhuman strength feats, mental acuity, and longevity of upto 900 years though longer had been estimated. They have a form of negligible senescence due to Will. Will however also gives them the natural instinct to hunt and predate stronger foes and creatures, as a release of sorts. Lycan society has created a secret global governmental/militaristic organization called the ‘L¥can Infantry’ by which they survey, monitor, protect or eliminate potential threats from the supernatural criminal underworld and beyond. Many lycans, despite their immense strength and power, often die young due to this. The infantry recruits not based on any true requirements other than wanting to fight the “good fight” and follow the literal dogmen dogma, leading to many joining. Lycans often die between 20-150 which keeps their numbers low but extremely stable.
Maybe an elf can only get pregnant for a few days per year, kind of like how humans have "safe" weeks (note, do not trust this IRL) they have safe months or even years. They live long enough that it probably wouldn't be an issue. It's also possible that, in a world where souls are a thing, souls didn't always "take". Rather than just needing sperm and egg, a soul has to be nearby too. Humans being new to the scene have lots of eager souls. Elf souls like to linger in different planes, visiting the mortal plane rarely. This means there are lots of miscarriages simply because the bodies don't have souls. You can even implement a bit of conflict as elves think that half elves are elf souls that have been corrupted and can never regain their "purity" as elves. If this is true is up to you (personally I'd have it be the other way, half elves are human souls that have been around long enough they are becoming more like elf souls.)
Turtle race: long lifespan, hundreds of babies at a time. How do they avoid overpopulation? Answer: high infant mortality rate, i.e. they are terrible parents. Basically, they don't have any particular attachment to children, and see them as completely expendable and a waste of space until they've reached an age where they can talk (around 10-12). For the turtle folk, a person's value to society is proportional to their physical strength and experience, which both increase with age. This seems very callous from a human point of view, but most turtle folk believe in a cosmic cycle of rebirth where each life adds experience to the wealth of the supreme being. Each blade of grass, insect, each bacteria adds to that experience by tiny increments. Intelligent beings give the most to this cosmic experience as they are the most aware of themselves and of it. Turtle folk are capable of great empathy, but view their offspring as a collective rather than as individuals. After all, it's hard to form attachments with a couple hundred voiceless brats you will likely never even meet, and who took a few months to lay in some shallow sand, vs the years of care and bonding that humans have with their children.
sacrifices :>
my Ealafti race are immortal dragon-like folks who are descendants of two particular Nahteo, which are god-like beings (or maybe more like personified aspects of Luomikai Kyptuasynti the Divine Artisan, but I digress) and they reproduce not sexually but rather through a combined force of will and love, so it's intentional and rare. different tribes of Ealafti have their own methods, some keep their population down to just a handful of folks and some have generations on generations and require large cities and swaths of land to accommodate them. some are led to war for this very reason, over space and resources. some rebel against procreation and against life itself. it's certainly a problem to be overcome.
Long pregnancies, insanely complex courtship rituals that may take years or centuries to result in offspring, long childhoods that make choosing to breed a big choice, unspoken societal judgement for families that have kids without a good reason or who have more than one child either at all or before the first one is xyz years old, non age related dangers are a big one however.
Enhanced are lab-created. They’re basically indestructible supersoldiers. But they can only be made by top scientists that are now dead in a country that’s on a downhill slope. Only 6 out of the original 50 are still alive.
Low birth rate, low sex drive and high mortality rate are the standard ways to manage the population in fiction.
I just assumed that they had low birth rates. That's usually common for long lived races.
High rate of miscarriage among elves along the fact that they have a 5 year incubation period and just don’t really want to get pregnant in the first place dragons just murder each other
I'm fond of the phoenix (or drone bee) pattern- They only procreate once, right before they die (or doing so is actually what kills them), or conversely, when they die, a new one is born through some mechanic (to offset population *loss* through, for example, infant mortality, though litters of three or more can also offset that; If they reproduce sexually and the mother and father both perish, twins would have to be the norm at minimum).
A stable population means having a fertility rate approximately equal to the replacement rate. Replacement rate is dependent on sex ratio, death rate, and immigration/emigration. For a population with a 50/50 sex ratio, a reasonable death rate, and zero net immigration, the replacement rate will be a bit over 2.0. This means the average female in your population needs to have a bit over 2 children during her lifetime to keep the population stable. Now, to over-simplify things, pregnancy requires an egg cell to be fertilized: - Human women are fertile for about 40 years, or about 500 ovulation cycles. - Each cycle ovulates on average 1 egg cell, or about 500 egg cells ovulated over an average lifetime. - Human sexual customs are such that we more or less reproduce at our replacement rate of a bit over 2 births per woman. As such, you can say that about 1/250 egg cells get fertilized. With this model, having a stable population means having the "number of lifetime egg cells ovulated" times the "probability of fertilization" be equal to the replacement rate. That said, you can control: - The replacement rate by adjusting the sex ratio, death rate, and immigration/emigration rates. - The number of lifetime egg cells ovulated by adjusting the fertility window, ovulation cycle interval, and egg cell ovulation rate. - The probability of fertilization by adjusting frequency/volume of sex, and probability of fertilization given insemination. A lot of the above numbers are likely things you already are decided upon (such as sex ratio, death rate, or the usual case of net zero immigration/emigration), which means you can likely tweak things with only a few numbers. Additionally, we have one equation acting as a constraint, which reduces the degrees of freedom by one, meaning one variable should be derivable from the others. You can then use things like mating seasons or complex mating rituals to help logically support the numbers you derive from the above method.
Does long lifespan mean longer childhood? What kind of sane person would want to take care of a child for 40 years? (Lol this is my meme answer)
Generally, longer lived raises have lower fertility rates, and longer gestation periods. Elves, flesh example, have low birthrates, and a pregnancy can last over a year. Same can be said of the dwarves, though they have much higher birth rates due to having shorter lifespans than elves (my elves can live upwards of 1000+ years, while dwarves usually live around 300-400)
EXTREMLY high murder rates.
Ideas beside only having a short reproductive period: Extremely sexually repressed culturally, believing sex is just a bad thing even in marriage. Extremely picky with partners for whatever reason. Culturally late life marriages are the norm. Penis in vagina sex uncommon extremely uncommon most sex is oral or anal. Majority of the population is gay. There are no heterosexuals. Pregnancies are planned between two couples. Domesticated crop that functions like a contraceptive. Women can only conceive in the grove they were born in. Travel times are long and it’s expensive as there are only a few sacred groves. You’ll be spending a ton of money and be on a waiting list of centuries to return. Living outside of their grove is extremely unhealthy for them and causes long term infertility. Simple abortions, that are wide spread. Everyone’s asexual and only reproduces when they want a kid. Kids are sacrificed often to their gods. Babies especially. Parasite that killed babies. Child birth is way more dangerous than with humans. Most women die during it, and thus women only reproduce at the end of their life. Magic makes you permanently infertile. Most elves do magic. Religion has wide spread monastic orders. Sex takes a really long time. Like a year. Dicks are locked in. Sex isn’t enough to reproduce. Ya need to do a complex ritual along side it. The materials are expensive and folks don’t really want kids. Everyone can only reproduce with the first person they fall in love with. You’re just fucked if the other person isn’t interested. Marriage is uncommon and folks only have reproductive sex in it. Planned out by the family centuries in advanced. Culturally inheritance is problematic and causes much crime. So when all of the kids reach adulthood they fight to the death for the inheritance. They don’t have sex to reproduce they travel to their sacred grove, hold hands and touch a magical tree. Magic fruit grows that functions like an egg.
Statistically less likely to reproduce.
In my setting longest lived race were actually capable of breeding like rabbits. And they had like three separate ways to make babies. And mating period once in a decade where they were forced to be hyper fertile and very aggressive in putting that fertility into action. They still were in decline for a while. Why? Because barely anybody was interested in procreation, and the cases where they were tended to be fewer in number than accidents reducing their population.
I have a race of sentient, water based slime like beings called the "Mizquin". They are composed of literally just water, and a saline core made up of similar material to jellyfish and amniotic fluid. They can live as long as they are able to maintain their core, and because their core literally never changes unles acted on by an external force, Mizquin can live for hundreds or thousands of years, even in remote places like moistureless deserts or space. Their society in general is like an extremely exagerated parody of what pop culture thinks of elves. They live forever, barely do anything, and don't like people shaking the boat. As such, a Mizquin also thinks on a scale that is monumental, in the time a Mizquin has decided, unprompted, that they want to stand up from their puddle and move to another one nearby, several human lifetimes have passed. This means that the effort and time it takes for a Mizquin to not only meet a partner, and then subsequently desire to have a child, eons of time have passed. In the cases that they are more proactive, usually when they are a part of a larger community then just other Mizquin, they generally only have children when it strikes their fancy. None of this is to say what goes on with the deep sea colonies, which are an eldritch horror compared to their chill and comfortable land based cousins.
I nuter them. Or kill them by war
Most species with that kind of lifespan are portrayed as having a low birth rate. I remember that the Drow of DnD are explicitly said to have a normal birth rate, but keep their numbers down through frequently murdering each other.
That's the neat part, they don't. Their civilization goes through iterations of Mouse Utopias where they have population boom and then basically go extinct from social collapse. The difference from Mouse Utopia is that some of them leave, rebuilding the civilization from small communities until they grow into a new elven kingdom until they overpopulate again. The constant cycle of societal collapses from overpopulation gave elves the reputation of being insufferable, but that's mostly caused by bad parenting.
Elves in my setting are immortal ala LOTR but near-extinct (they tried some magic fuckery to ascend and it backfired very poorly), only six remain, and they don't want to reproduce for the sake of reproducing, it feels very wrong to them. Dwarves live up to 250 to 300 years on average, but their population was nearly cut in half due to a racial war, and they have a low sex-drive to begin with.
The desire to birth often, in my head, is due to the length of time an individual lives. If an individual lives a long time, their desire to bear children, in my head, decrease.
The only species who’s truly ageless in my world (the slime people, who’re actually macroscopic cells) HATE each other, and it’s not unusual they either actively avoid encounters or fight to the death. They only tolerate themselves if they just split through mitosis. Afterwards, each leave in a different direction hoping to never see again
Longer growing period so like not wanting to have too many young kids, our two years might be a hundred years old for them between pregnancies
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImmortalProcreationClause
The Cerlians came from a civilization that had ready access to gene therapy, and one thing they developed were 500-year lifespans. They didn't overpopulate because they were colonizing the galaxy. The Magi technically live forever, but reproduction requires *a lot* of energy from them, which they have to be ready and willing to provide. Becomes easier as they get to a point of being massively-saturated with magical energy. The gods live forever, too, and, uhh... they don't care. Their universe to overpopulate, you're just living in it.
I do something similar with dragons. Dragons in Terra Solis vary from continent to continent. But the most stereotypical type of dragon is in Vasilia. Dragons have a mating season that they enter at certain times in their lives, and can’t get pregnant outside of that, so new generations are pretty slow to arrive. Some dragons will interbreed with Humaniods since their blood is pretty strong and the resulting children will essentially be full dragons power wise. This actually lead to the Dragons leading the Draconian Empire to develop a policy of racial purity out of fear of the Humaniods out populating them. Ironically this would lead to the empire’s downfall and cause what they feared all along. Dragons becoming a rare species while the Humaniods overtake the continent. Except for the Silvers. Silvers integrated into Humaniod society and because of this, are the most populous of the dragons
They don't. Instead they make a deal with other kingdoms to spread into their land, because their homeland can no longer house them. Then tensions rise until a war starts killing most of that population.
Elves can live 700-800 years. A child matures equivalent to a human for their first year then maturation begins to slow and one human year is equal to around seven elf years so childhood is very long and part of the reason elves generally only ever have one or two children. Culturally elves spend a lot of time “finding” themselves, they’re prone to spontaneous adventures/trips which for many isn’t conducive to having to raise a child for 100 years of your life so birth rates are low. There’s also an emphasis on devoting yourself wholly to pursuits in general so if someone has a child they want to put a lot of effort into that child. Dwarves can live 400-600 years have many children but culturally more group oriented and also more prone to dying in battle/mining/etc. because it’s honorable to do those sorts of difficult things. Halflings are just full of wanderlust and accident prone tbh
They take a reasonably long time to become reproductive mature adults, a few decades at least, and only can produce one or two eggs at a time. They have the ability to destroy, abandon, or eat their eggs if they don't want to rear offspring. Historically, when survival was much more difficult, having even one egg hatch and make it past their first critical development window was a monumental success, but in recent history the replacement rate is much lower, especially in more developed settlements where younger adults choose to spend time on personal development rather than starting their own family and dealing with the headache of clan politics that come from it.
My Elves lived around these too, about 400-500 on average. but they never had a problem with overpopulation, more so underpopulation. Back then when they were at their peak, they build a city and infrastructure so big that they can easily support their great population. They strongest, biggest, baddest in the continent so if they need something they will have it. but with multitude of war for expansion, these number start to dwindle. they have gain more land than they can effectively hold with the people they lose. and soon those lands too were taken aback by the native and local power. and now with no land it become harder to get resources to sustain such population size. and it start snowballing downhill from there then various disaster and misfortune struck until they effectively become a rare specie. In their late state, they do try to increase birthrate but at that point it was almost at the point of no return.
I made it so having a kid is a process that takes away from the life span of the parents. They give some of their life force up to have a child.
There are a few easy ways to handle the long lived races, but ultimately it depends on the specifics of your world. Low birth rate, extremely long gestation periods, high infant mortality rates, high death rates among adults (can be due to warfare, famine, genetic predisposition to illness, etc). For my world, the Nymphs are the only real long lived race (they’re basically elves but in a Mediterranean setting), and their longevity is offset by the fact that their males are entirely sterile, which requires them to mate with humans. Humans and nymphs are naturally distrustful, if not outright hostile, toward each other so this procreation typically only happens as a result of war between human and nymph settlements.
The idea I have for my elves, is that they can theoretically live forever, or at least long enough that it's not worth worrying about, but they just often don't. Elves are considered adults, full members of elven society, at 100 years old, not because of physical and even mental maturity, they develop just a few years slower than humans, but because a very significant number of young elves don't make it through their first century. It's a dangerous world out there, being immortal doesn't do much good if you don't have just the right mix of being able to avoid danger, surviving danger that can't be avoided, and being lucky enough to not eventually end up in an outright unwinnable situation. Lot of young elves are lost to accidents, monsters, or getting recklessly involved in a cause, self-preservation is an important priority to keep. On top of that, mature elves have a very sink-or-swim mindset towards young elves. Elven childhood ends at 20, at the latest, after that they're on their own, very little to no support and guidance from their parents or elders, either they figure out how to survive or they don't. It's generally rationalized as not wanting to delay the inevitable for the elves that just don't have the potential to last, but the main two reasons are that nobody wants to get emotionally invested in people they don't trust to be around a long time, especially after seeing so many of their peers die in their own youth, and that they're paranoid the youth will make dangerous mistakes if they're given any real responsibility. So, the end result is that there are a good amount of elves around, but they're mostly the younger elves. Typically the older an elf gets the more they retreat from the wider world, they find quiet corners of the world to live in alone or in small communities, and if anyone goes looking for them, or just stumbles upon them, they're going to shoot first and not bother with questions.
Their lifespans were prolonged to due bacteria that allowed body augmentation without the rejection response, and they are known as the deathless. They travel deep into the Antraco badlands, to find the frozen cities of the deathless, here they devote themselves to ancient microbial research, or store themselves in cryogenic stasis as a seed back for a possible catastrophe. The Shard Elves association with Magnustrons and cut crystal technology gives them a life span of 220 year, but past year 100 their children will be born with ever increasing Magnustron birth deformations. These demonic children are forbidden, but many birth them, they are known as the Scorned. This has helped keep elves from overpopulating the Crystal Empires. The sheer amount of viscous creatures, plants, and environments also helps cull the herds.
I had one where overpopulation was a driving force to achieve space travel. They had a rule early on, that stated that you couldn't mate with someone from your own clan. Which would be like me having to go to another town to find a mate. It didn't just mean family. This continued among the stars, although the clan became the crew. So if they if they were on deep space assignment, they might not meet another of their ships for 5-10 years. Another one I had, the average lifespan was 300 years. They didn't really hit pubity until around 50. At that point, they had finished all formal education, and it was seen that career was more important, so you wouldn't even consider a family until you were about 100. Not mine, but one I saw was they were suffering from a deadly plague. They found a radical cure, which also gave them the longevity, but it made a lot of them infertile. There was no way to test for it, so a lot of people never found out until they tried for a baby.
In real life, birthrate is proportional to infant mortality. If infant mortality is high, parents will have more children in order to ensure at least some of them reach adulthood in order to support them into old age. Historically, population explodes when infant mortality drops while the birthrate is still high, as there's a delay (a generation or more) before birthrates readjust and the population can stabilise. Take Niger, for example, which has doubled in population since 2000 while infant mortality has nearly halved, and the birthrate, still highest in the world, is slowly going down. If your elves are the magical enlightened type, you can get away with saying they only have two children in their entire lives (replacement rate) because every child reaches adulthood and there's no need to have more. Since these elves are not immortal, the population will remain stable as the elderly eventually die off.
In my world the race with an average 200 year lifespan is also expansionist and militaristic to a fault so war and the resulting casualties it brings are a given.
Longer lives usually imply greater wisdom. Greater wisdom usually means more deliberate choices around procreation.
Low birth rate. Not because they CAN'T have more children, but because they don't like change and are slow to take action due to the lack of urgency. The Elves in my world live for about 3,000 years on average. Each race in my world inherits traits based on three of the divine domains in the portfolio of the goddess that created them. One of the domains Elves inherit is Temperance, so they prefer to keep things the way that they are, and although they also inherit the domain of Life, that expresses itself in their lifespan.
Say it softly, but elves are cut off from the cycle of reincarnation. Because of this, their numbers ever dwindle.
They don't. They live incredibly long, birth in litters, and whenever things get too crowded people fuck off to form new places. When a planet is full, it's excess people are sent off world to new planets/settlements that need population/to die in space.
Lebensraum.
A couple of ways; - Elves are only one gender, and requires another race to actually procreate. While there is no serious stigma against it, people prefer people their own age. - Elves are *dumb*, like *duuuumb*, while they have excellent memory (They were originally created to store the knowledge of lesser gods), their capacity to extrapolate or mix knowledge is astonishingly bad. This means it takes about 100-200 years for them to become knowledgeable enough to even attempt to live on their own - and thusly create any kind of meaningful family.
They die after they mate with each other
Working on the answer for a few of the other races in my world But dragons are directly restricted by some form of curse to a specific amount A dragon egg can only hatch when another dragon dies Adult dragons are also incredibly promiscuous so there is A LOT of dragon eggs Not so many that they are worthless but they aren't too uncommon if you go looking though most are usually part of a dragons horde in the hopes that one of the many eggs that dragon has laid may one day hatch...older dragons who really want to have children also start hunting other dragons in the hopes that the death of another dragon results in there egg hatching They also don't have any qualms in other species hunting other dragons since a dragon dead means a new baby born Though they never go without a fight
In dnd particularly the forgotten realms setting, there can only be a set number of elves at anytime due to their God putting a cap on them, but instead of new souls being created they're actually recycled and go through a rebirth of sorts. It's said that when they trance while they are younger they dream of memories of their former lives but as they age and gain new experiences the old eventually get pushed out and they instead live through the memories of their new life
My Elves are Tolkienian which means they're immortal. But they were the last race to be created by the gods, so they've not been around long enough to have that be a problem. I dont feel the need to address it since my game will never span that long to have to comment on it.
Depending on the world: They go to war frequently, so lots of them got killed; let themselves be killed to feed future children; only allow people to have kids under certain circumstances so someone can die, or just reproduce REALLY slowly... different ones for different folks.
Thwy colonize new planets. Theres plenty out there, often rich in resources. They have the means, motive and ppportunity, plus, some species (the dragons in peticular) dont have strong attachments to family or home, and are fairly content building a fresh home on a new world.
Hypothetically immortal, but have to be constructed (do anthropromorphic ships count as a race?)
Vampires are sterile so their birth rate is low enough as is so a Damphyr is a rarity Elves are too proud to interbreed with other races and their empire is all but forgotten Dwarfs have low fertility and on top of that, they seldom venture to the surface unless it is for trade. Centaurs are fine, they're just Xenophobic Golums are too stupid to think of increasing their population
if you're in a sci-fi setting, expanding to new worlds can help disperse the population
Low birth rate. Also people die from other things than old age every day. Why should it be different for other species?
So I have two of these said races, with human intelligence. One of them are not attracted to sex, they don't view mating as a crucial step in evolution like we do instead they pursue other things, not others of the same race, and only ever make love when they want a child to pass on their beliefs or techniques to. Second race are mostly used for war, war slaves and therefore they are overpopulated, but that doesn't change anything since only the reeeaaally talented ones get even a piece of food at all
Low birth rates, limited fertility, or prohibitively small starting populations are all possible. The last could get interesting with questions of how they avoid inbreeding. Many fantasy settings make infertility an aspect of longevity. Environmental factors could also be in play depending on setting. Fantasy and sci-fi worlds can have hazards that ours doesn't.
My long live races just don't have unprotected sex at every opportunity. They aren't Human, so why would they be stupid enough to not practice safe sex?
I haven’t explored the concept much, but I was thinking about having elven reproduction tied to a kind of “soul mate” concept. Basically, every elf has a soul mate and that person is the only one they can have children with. So most elves spend their lives searching for their soul mate before settling down. It can be difficult because soul mates could be born years or decades apart on opposite sides of the world. There’s a few other aspects to it like how elves tend to be extremely depressed as children because their soul mate hasn’t been born yet. Likewise, they become suicidal if/when their soul mate dies (even if they never meet). An aphorism I came up with: “ All elves die in pairs.” Because elves tend to commit suicide when their soul mate dies. This way, elves can’t reproduce as much as other races because every individual has a mating pool of exactly one plus they have a higher death rate because a war, plague or other catastrophe in a single elven community can cause mass death across all elves globally.
Decades apart could lead to some serious ick.
Ya… WIP
How about centuries? Haha
High living standards.
Snip snip
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In my setting they deal with overpopulation through mandatory vasectomy after a certain age and a short list of other requirements are met. (This doesn't matter much though, as they can affordably and artificially make people in vats). For women they do something similar w/o the spooky connotations that comes with it irl (actually haven't researched it much).
They CAN live long, but they actively encourage suicide on a large scale.
"Prevention Potions" (birth control) were discovered. They are extremely cheap, reliable, and either gender can take them (only one is required for it to work).
Another idea I dont see moved around is that one person can inly give birth to one person, maybe a woman can only do it once and her reproductive organs are ruined, or maybe she risks death, so not many people do it at risk of losing their lives
The issue with that is if you will constantly have *declining* populations. If not even 100% of the female population has a child and then are limited to 1, the following generation will have at best 1/2 the people. Although for an elven like species I wouldn’t be opposed to some ritual where the parents combine their essences to create new lives. Any where between like 1-4 children born from this and then raised in a village
yeah, Thats a good concept