"On a long enough time-scale the survivability rate of everyone drops to essentially zero..."
---quote from Archean days, "Information" age, re-translated at least ten or twenty times so some exact meaning might be lost.
However, essentially does not mean Zero.
There are exceptions to every rule and over enough time and frequency an unlikely event occurs more than a few times.
Some fictional and one perhaps non-fictional examples:
In this age far into the future there are more than a few "Immortals" - beings that simply do not die on a regular timescale. They are all unique with rich tapestries of stories on why and how they lasted beyond their natural lifespan and then the eons that followed. A few simply won a 'genetic lottery' and whatever trigger in Man's pattern of life that causes eventual death is off. These are rarer amongst immortals for every thousand years it is near certainty of some fatal event even in civilizations and worlds of very low war and personal danger. Others are more special but more believable - they were blessed or cursed by what Gods there be to not die and when killed they regenerate or reappear by some ancient divine Magick. Some have bodies enhanced by man's magick and occasional bouts of enhanced knowledge of natural law called "Technology" and they have tiny clockwork inside of them or are some kind of tiny clockwork in their entire body and will rebuild any wound and not age in appearance. Others are constructs of light, sound, energy, altered tissue that pretends to be a form of man or like man or woman.
Does this mean they are lucky?
A society in man's pre-dawn days had a curse - "May you live forever" - they were supposedly the best warriors in Man's history and while this certainly has been surpassed in the near thousand-thousand years hence of the Far-Tomorrows, the legend of their valor and sayings do remain. They had no 'Valhalla' to reward warriors, their religion had a gray and depressing afterlife and the best warriors got merely a gravestone to remember they ever lived if they died in battle. Yet even far back and living such a harsh life they knew that Immortality was not a boon but could be a curse. Thus this phrase would only be uttered to their worst traitors or the most wretched failures and cowardly amongst them.
Image insert - DieHard from Image Comics as he appears in the Far-Future of that universe - Prophet - notably from Issue #39 where he goes from the 40s to the 90s to the future one hard step, one battle, one loss at a time. He'd be a young 'immortal' by the standards we are talking here and only having just a taste of what is to come...!
-image used for review purposes and if anything to encourage sales, fair use and parody, mmmkay?
Immortals live. They are very rare and often alone in ways they envy some wretched prisoner confined to Oubliette and as cruelty given food and drink to put off starvation. One such as them has not only seen his friends, family, lovers live and die but all his children and great great great grand-children and the very civilization he came from rise and fall. Not merely the cities and nations but the religions, philosophy, sacred stories have all flared and died before his eyes to be replaced by others - often similar but always also different. And this has happened to many again and again and again.
Immortals are alone. Even in the face of other Immortals. Each might be friends, enemies, lovers...from one time to another - but by far they avoid each other and if meeting by accident usually acknowledge each other but depart relatively quickly. To see another Immortal is to see a mirror of their own alienation from time. They have not mastered time nor conquered death; they are outside time and have been abandoned by death.
Immortals usually hide themselves. Man is too jealous of them and most are very vulnerable to pain and imprisonment which is what the leaders often use to try to get information from them - including their 'secret' of immortality. They can rarely teach or give the latter but have never been able to convince a dictator or inquisitor that they are better without it. So they hide. As times change they can pretend to change with it, though it becomes a chore more than an adventure or challenge. They usually are very rich but pretend to be lower middle class in a low confrontation field, from farmer to librarian and have careful plans to pretend to die or move away and be replaced elsewhere by their 'son' or 'cousin' then move back after most mortal memory fades. Sometimes they hide so well they lose themselves in the illusion, gaining a brief respite from their eternal loneliness and ennui. Others can stand motionless, their bodies not needing anything of food or shelter or water and merely watch civilizations rise, thrive and be burned in wars and disasters to then watch the survivors build huts and then towns, cities...until something somehow gets their attention.
Some say there is reason for Immortals.
----Immortals in the Game----
Way back in the 1980s the first "Epic" game was "Immortals" for the main TTRPG system - this later became "Epic Level". The focus on this game is more to be a basic game but not really an Epic level. It can be played however they want and a long term campaign can become Epic. To long time TTRPG players this is usually when the campaign ends because it is going on for too long or the DM lets them level too fast. I saw the "Immortals" expansion to classic basic as a Cash Grab, but a beautiful one. Later the 3rd Ed had an "Epic" handbook that properly talked about such a campaign.
Obviously, unless running a "Cinematic" game the "Immortal" is way too overpowered. He'd be level 100 and if a magic user one of the "Wizard-Lords". However this game is both a tribute to TTRPGs and Science-Fantasy it came from in the 70s so why not have such characters in the Far-Tomorrows even ones a PC can play.
Some players can be immortal characters - perhaps an advanced player can handle one without turning it into an imbalance that make the other players jealous. Perhaps the player will not know he's playing an immortal...?
The most accessible of course are the "Flower-Women" who are biologically immortal.
As per the earlier chapter the "Brides" of the Cruel Emperor Tzon Chon did very well after his passing, save in the East, but spread through the shorter memory west and now are prized concubines of nobility when they aren't strange trees that sometimes move and can interchange at a whim.
The limitation is that they are non-human, rather modified plants and have an alien intelligence and slow reaction times. They are effectively immortal and if killed will likely come back inside a year and are fairly powerful. They are also limited and evolve very slowly over Aeons to prevent them overrunning the world. Flower-Women could make interesting adventurers though most would tire of it after a few trips for they don't need treasure and prefer being in the Sun and they'd be constantly proposed to by merchants and nobility who tend to have nice sunny gardens and servants to allow them to spend most of their time immobile save light conversation and occasional 'stimulation' of the protector animal.
So in the game the "Floral" based creatures - female in appearance and surface function - are immortals. They can die but being permanently killed is very difficult. They regenerate damaged tissue and slowly reproduce but keep a low saturation level.
These beings are:
Flower-Women - low intelligence living traps - a few are near mindless and a few are very intelligent. Most are "Monsters" who will try to eat the players if they encounter but also the powerful mages of the day will want to try to capture them to put in their own gardens as a status symbol.
Rose Girls - like the Brides of Tzon-Chon - they came from clippings of or a few actually were his consorts. Not unintelligent but very abstract minds.
The True Alarune - this is a deadly thing that could be a world ender.
These beings qualify as "Biologically Immortal" since they are very hard to kill and do not die naturally but have some level of sentience. Note there are plants and even bacteria that are technically on this scale save perhaps intelligence in the real world. These will almost certainly end at the Sun's death or at worst the heat death of the universe but can survive almost everything in between.
Others---
Constructs like Golems or ancient thinking machines and non-magical golems do not qualify nor do the "Undead". Undead tend to be very high risk and low long term survivability due to being entropic blasphemies against life gaining countless enemies by definition and most having strong weaknesses. Undead are those who live in utter terror of death and have Hell waiting for their life is bought by blasphemy against life, the Increate and parasitism of life itself. Some such as Liches may think they are immortal but they merely have a great spiritual cost in exchange for at best a few millennia. The lesser such as the zombies or animated skeletons are lesser blasphemies of mortals delving into the forbidden cursed arts and rarely last years. Sometimes in tombs such as eternal Aegypt north of Kush, land of the Savage Cannibals there are preserved kings - akin to Liches. These do live many thousands of years but are tied to their lands and culture and thus very vulnerable and only exist to preserve their civilization to teach it to younger beings down the aeons and long for their final true sleep.
Ancient machines might qualify but most merely have an entropy resistance at the cost of high energy, technological base and materials setup. A very advanced forward thinking technological base might make a machine to last near forever but if that machine is removed from the base it will likely encounter a breakdown that requires the civilization that created it to repair it. Even if it has the instructions inside its memory to repair it it will likely encounter a time where the civilization is at such a low ebb the instructions do not have the tools to make the tools to make the tools. In the "Far Tomorrows" the cycles are much slower, a thousand years for a century of development from a crash at best and the old world has been mined down near to the core for exotic minerals.
The True Immortals are unique.
Somewhere along the line an individual cuts the cord of fate and is free from the tapestry. Curses, sins, glorious deeds, strange potions, a lifelong quest that succeeds where to so many it only doomed them. They drink from the ever fountain of life and will not and can not die even to the end of the universe. It is the most wonderful and terrible thing. Each has a unique origin, means of immortality, method it might end and possible destiny. Most have been heroes and villains, oppressed and oppressors, poor and have had the wealth of the world.
Recommendation for gameplay:
Thus IF a DM allows them they usually are a very powerful background NPC. They might be the one behind the main events in the campaign, perhaps trying to set things in motion some great event they started many many lives ago.
It is not recommended they be very powerful wizards.
No more than 7th level but can be warriors, thieves of higher skill at the same time... But not ultra powerful high epic level wizards... This type exists already, the "Wizard-Lords" of the first, second and possibly up to the fifth generation. If an Immortal studies Magick they can become one and a few mere lifetimes is quite enough for even the least talented to graduate from being barely able to levitate a fruit to making a stampede of unicorns pass by with a wave of the hand. But they become a 'wizard-lord' and might live for up to a hundred of thousand years but will then transcend or be destroyed somehow. Some immortals might indeed seek hidden tomes of Magick they can read to follow this path, heralding a new "Age of Wizard Lords" millennia after the campaign.
There is one very notable exception to this rule, his name is Merlin but that is for the chapters on the Wizard Lords and their Ages...
An Immortal is someone who hides but if they so will it can steer the course of history even tilling the farm on some remote plot of land at the edge of a Provence.
As a player character an Immortal is mostly a non-skilled low level mage, or rogue... A few powerhouses of warfare with plenty of dirty tricks and some magick - but those tend to have ancient curses and be evil and bored to near insanity and thus best avoided. The 'typical' immortal would again read like a very low rolling Player Character with a boring story but have a backpage of dozens of pages with nearly EVERY skill and lore maxed out and if not having ten vast fortunes has the knowledge on how to find means to produce them rapidly.
If one went with players into a dungeon and did not fear revealing himself he'd lead them through it - "There is a trap in the middle stone of that hall, step around it lest we all drown in flesh eating bugs that hatched from hibernation when you pulled the handle to turn on the eternal lights versus just using your torch. Trust me, you do NOT want to die that way... I knew King Zorgon, he was a fruitbat and also as hateful and paranoid as he was cruel. Anyways he used the SAME code - 'Rumplestiltskin' on EVERY inner lock and put the keys in the 6th golem knight on all his safe-castles... Again we find the N-Element and you can HAVE the treasure, its pocket change to me, just listen to me so we all come back alive and in once piece. If I die I'll be reborn randomly within a few years or a century, but I do not want to wait 17 years then leave the family that raised me not daring to explain why I abandoned them... I've broken too many hearts abandoning those that loved me for an Eon's work..."
However, those that do this often find the local "Lord Protector" of the Kingdom wants them to stay as an 'honored guest' - at first with true honors. Even if the Adventurers swear silence, "Three can keep a secret if two are dead" said a man from pre-dawn times...it will get out and the local Lord will want them under their wing. Titles, money, women, their own sub-kingdom or grand library almost anything they could sanely ask. What an Immortal could teach them, bring civilization back to the days of Wonder Tales, help with crops, the economy, how to negotiate.. But they'd end up just helping them find weapons and means of control and they'd only make mankind more advanced in warfare. Then the King would look in the mirror and see he has wrinkles in his wrinkles and almost feel death coming for him and decide he has to get the 'secret' of his guest one way or another... Almost all of them have made this mistake at least once...
So - when an Immortal travels with Adventurers they are often the oddball they somehow keep finding reasons to protect. "These traps are just in fairy tales, let's WALK down the hall" - stomps till he hits the 'reset sliding stair in room 3A trigger' which brings no danger but makes a scary grating noise so the Adventurers usually step to the sides. "What IS this fancy armor, somehow it is not like the last four that attacked us!" and trips it over to find the key then goes raving how he'll take this as his treasure so they take it from him and try it in the locks first. They grudgingly give him a bearer's 1/4th portion and let him keep that shiny marble that doesn't read magickal amidst the generous loot now so weary of his chattering they do not notice the whole room had treasure but only that marble sat alone on a pedestal in the center of all of it.
There is one good reason why an Immortal would risk discovery and likely have to go into hiding - to fight the "End Dragon". It will emerge in the last days of the Universe far, far after the last star has been gone from the sky by such an epoch of time as to make the ages of the stars an eyeblink in a century. However the Dragon and the depraved and truly evil that follow him are starting to show up through history willing to do the most horrific of deeds to further its evil goals. The Immortals who have lived more than a mere thousand years start to feel this, the gaping maw at the end of time more dark than the end of all energy and life. Most have sworn to fight it though a few have decided to aid it hoping for some kind of better outcome than pointless ages of the same cycle.
Thus a Player Character immortal is:
1 - an "Idiot Savant" - an option for dealing with a rolled character with sub-par stats. He can pull things out of the air "Hey! Look! When I fell down I bumped this button for a hidden passage out of this cell we got tossed into!" - has higher ability for blind luck, finding items, pulling a possible out of impossible. Perhaps it is a very powerful immortal hiding, perhaps he hid so well he lost track of himself, perhaps both. Character can't find out he's an immortal or reveal himself or will have to leave and hide again, this happens at 10th - 15th level automatically, perhaps as part of unleashing true immortal powers for but one last adventure with his friends he'll remember till the end of days.
2 - Non standard PC - such as Flower Woman, Construct...
3 - Advanced PC - where an experienced player is allowed to play a much more powerful character with limits in game and out game to avoid a Monty haul ruin or other Players getting jealous.
This will be of course optional and stats in the game.
---MaxxFeral---
Note I'm incorporating a larger project - "Omega Crusade" - kind of my tribute to a famous cartoon of decades past to douse my strong despair with the current handling of it. Will be set at the End of Time and in a few ways ties to Orange Sun / Far Tomorrows
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