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[belone]

So, I've been wondering about character ages in Starsector, particularly how long some of these people have been around. For example, Kanta is famously very old—it's known she’s been around since before the Collapse, which would make her over 200 years old. That’s pretty wild!

Then there’s the bar historian, who seems to have knowledge and experiences that suggest he/she might also be far older than the average human lifespan. It got me thinking… how common is this extreme longevity in the Starsector universe? Is it just a select few who have managed to survive centuries due to advanced medicine, technology, or cryosleep, or is this something more common than we realize?

And if it’s somewhat common, does that mean the sector has access to anti-aging tech or something that allows people to live far beyond a "normal" lifespan? Or is it just that these specific individuals were lucky or well-connected enough to survive the Collapse and beyond? Curious to hear everyone’s thoughts!

[Bungee_man]

That is a very good question. Kanta's set up as being remarkably long-lived for the setting, to the point of being a living legend, at around 200, to the point where even the normally grounded bar historian speaks of her age with a sense of awe. Andrada, on the other hand, seems to have lived a relatively normal (in modern terms) lifespan, despite being the dictator of a polity that dwarfs any on Earth in terms of wealth and raw production capacity, and is hinted to be able to conduct workable (if not especially efficacious) research into the technology of the nigh-godlike 'Omega'.

I'm not sure of the math on other faction leaders. Tri-Tach's CEO is visibly quite aged, but doesn't have absolute power and has internal competitors that might not fund or authorize an extensive, questionably-profitable effort to extend her lifespan. The League seems to go for historical-standard generational succession when it comes to ensuring stable continuity of power, and the Hegemony seems to be a stratocracy that just appoints the guy they're most confident in as military leader. The Path's leader is young and obviously not likely to be interested in life-extension.

From what we can see, I'd guess that life extension beyond what we see today is more-or-less lost technology. A determined and very self-interested individual could make it their life's ambition to find and utilize it, but it'd require a lot of unethical and expensive experiments to get right even then, and having a working setup paints a target on your back not only for others of similar intent, but for established interests who might view an individual with a full century of life experience as a potential threat to their power. It'd also require a lot of luck to find the right technology and not experience complications that no living doctors can mitigate, which would explain why Andrada couldn't make use of it.

[nathan67003]

Y'all are forgetting about the harvested organs. With that + cybernetics + anti-senescence medicine that's probably commonplace in colonies (helps offset genetic damage etc.) and far from lost, as long as you're not one of the poor sods in the dregs of Chicomoztok, living over 150 probably isn't a long stretch at all.

[Bungee_man]

Y'all are forgetting about the harvested organs. With that + cybernetics + anti-senescence medicine that's probably commonplace in colonies (helps offset genetic damage etc.) and far from lost, as long as you're not one of the poor sods in the dregs of Chicomoztok, living over 150 probably isn't a long stretch at all.

Given how they talk about Kanta, you don't get the impression that it's especially common. You also don't really hear a lot about cybernetics, now that you mention it.

[nathan67003]

Cybernetics are shown to be relatively commonplace if you can afford it, as evidenced by people like Gargoyle and Kanta herself (very obviously cyber'd up). What makes it actually rare isn't that it's impossible to reach, it's the fact that the Sector is an eminently dangerous place and that anyone who's likely to be able to afford harvested organs, cyberization, longevity treatments etc. is also very likely to have a target painted on their back - the tricky part isn't the aging, it's the surviving.

Which, incidentally, makes Kanta's bicentennial reputation even more impressive since piracy isn't exactly a place where lifespans, on average, are measured in decades - let alone centuries.

[Sandor057]

There has been very little spotlight on Nomios, which according to the in-game description is lead by a "...ruling bureaucracy, a secretive fragment of the Mbaye-Gogol directorate which claims to have survived since the Collapse - in mind rather than body, if the rumors are true." This is no argument against Kanta's lifespan, haphazard as it may be, being a unique case. It rather reinforces the concept that some extremely wealthy individuals may in fact have access to technology, exceptionally skilled surgeons or simply an abundant source of spare organs in the form of the Cryosanctum. After all, if the M-G leadership somehow survived, we are talking about multiple beings older than 200 years.

The "in mind rather than body" part raises a few questions regarding the longevity of the Mbaye-Gogol execs. From the Story missions we know of the possibility of cloning, which would be a rather simple explanation. The "how" of it may be a bit more interesting. Is consciousness transference somehow being used? Are the clones taking over the roles after their predecessors die? (Thinking of the Weyouns from DS9 here.) Or would this be something more akin to transferring the minds of people into machinery, computers or possibly sentient AI cores?

Regarding Artemisia Sun, we only know for sure that she has been active as of cycle 189, orchestrating the 2nd AI War as CEO. Presumably she was active for a long time before that, rising to the CEO's office would most likely have taken a significant amount of time. However with the scarcity of news about her we cannot rule out the possibility of her being a persona made by an AI core. Obviously this is nowhere stated so it's just a conspiracy theory on my part, but as AI cores are acknowledged to be able to create multiple very plausible personalities, I think it's entirely feasible that some elements of Tri-Tach are just AI cores (or maybe just a single AI core) in disguise. As we know nothing about the possible deterioration of AI cores due to the passing of time (we know of them getting bricked in P-space), the Artemisia/Tri-Tach-construct may be hundreds of years old.

There's no real information on what the standard life-expectancy is in the sector, though some characters could have supplemental text added to help pinpoint this (thinking on Adonya Coureuse, or Archcurate Jaspis).

[nathan67003]

Don't forget to consider that they might just now be organic cores - in other words, brains-in-jars. Would fit the "in mind rather than body" bit, since the mind's pretty much all that's left apart from a single organ of the body

[Bungee_man]

Cybernetics are shown to be relatively commonplace if you can afford it, as evidenced by people like Gargoyle and Kanta herself (very obviously cyber'd up).

Kanta is the setting's most famous pirate, and Gargoyle is the setting's most famous hacker, and the player only meets the two because he's the player, so 'commonplace' isn't what I'd use. Gargoyle isn't implied to be all that old, either - seems to have cybernetics for hacking, in the same way that some older profile pics appear to have prosthetics that substitute for lost body parts and let them keep working, but don't necessarily make them live longer than usual.

If I had to guess, modern or '20 minutes into the future' - style modifications like robot eyes and limbs are probably reasonable to acquire, costing around as much as a cheap starship, but the expertise to live for more than a century requires both obscene amounts of money and the acquisition of very, very rare, likely eccentric people who know how to make it work. Something like modifying ship blueprints - the domain of people who are both rich enough to lead a polity and not all there mentally.

There has been very little spotlight on Nomios, which according to the in-game description is lead by a "...ruling bureaucracy, a secretive fragment of the Mbaye-Gogol directorate which claims to have survived since the Collapse - in mind rather than body, if the rumors are true." This is no argument against Kanta's lifespan, haphazard as it may be, being a unique case. It rather reinforces the concept that some extremely wealthy individuals may in fact have access to technology, exceptionally skilled surgeons or simply an abundant source of spare organs in the form of the Cryosanctum. After all, if the M-G leadership somehow survived, we are talking about multiple beings older than 200 years.

That's a good catch. It underscores that centuries-long lifespans are rare enough to be something of myth and legend, but that Kanta is not assumed to be unique.

[Sandor057]

Cybernetics are shown to be relatively commonplace if you can afford it, as evidenced by people like Gargoyle and Kanta herself (very obviously cyber'd up).

Kanta is the setting's most famous pirate, and Gargoyle is the setting's most famous hacker, and the player only meets the two because he's the player, so 'commonplace' isn't what I'd use. Gargoyle isn't implied to be all that old, either - seems to have cybernetics for hacking, in the same way that some older profile pics appear to have prosthetics that substitute for lost body parts and let them keep working, but don't necessarily make them live longer than usual.

If I had to guess, modern or '20 minutes into the future' - style modifications like robot eyes and limbs are probably reasonable to acquire, costing around as much as a cheap starship, but the expertise to live for more than a century requires both obscene amounts of money and the acquisition of very, very rare, likely eccentric people who know how to make it work. Something like modifying ship blueprints - the domain of people who are both rich enough to lead a polity and not all there mentally.

Yes, I think this is the gist of it when it comes to cybernetic enhancements.

The cybernetics that are commonplace are not the same as the specialty ones with life-extending capabilities.
In the bar encounter with the pirate contact that gives raiding disruption missions both your bodyguards and the bodyguards of the pirate contact are described as having cybernetics, albeit with those of the pirate's bodyguards being a bit shoddy. And at the time of such an encounter you may just be a nobody with no real connections or power to throw around. In a way, it's a bit alarming that everyone with a bit of money can shove in some kind of military hardware into their heads. But hey, signing up new crew members or marines isn't exactly expensive either, so back-alley cybersurgeons should have plenty of customers with how low the cost of a life is.

Compared to the usual schmucks, Kanta keeps around her own pet cyberdoc, the Mbaye-Gogol execs have their own organ farm, Artemisia Sun may not be a human at all, so they are so far above the average spacer, that their mythical reputation is completely justified.

Spoiler

Could be interesting to have this topic explored more in story missions, as in the continuation of the "Usurpers" quest's continuation. We might be able to get some life-support machine for Andrada, or digitize his consciousness, maybe get a brain-jar from Nomios and shove him in there.

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