Ageless life cycle

The ageless life cycle is a ancient form of developed existance achieved to varying degree's by higher humans basically the DNA of the human individual is altered to such a degree that the human being no longer lives in a passive DNA phenotype but rather an active genotype. This means physicaly form and physical characteristics are modifiable “on the fly” during a life time to such a degree that aging becomes optional.

Ageless people do age. The ageless life cycle is a neccesary derivation of living agelessly, every seven years an ageless individual goes into a coma and “stalls” for 2 weeks. The skin becomes hardened and waxy in appereance and in fact will shed at the end of the cycle. The individual 's body temperature raises The internal organs and skelton disintegrate and reform, removing all scars. Effectively all tissue is unmade then remade. They awake seven years younger. Since all known ageless individuals are men, typically the indivudal appears mid twenties upon coming out the coma or stall, and they start to stall when they appear to hit their early thirties.

While in the “coma” the memories of that individual become reduced into a semi consious information form, then, tiny beads inside the human skull share this awareness partially with the Jéem who will compartmentalise them. This means that a human can live for tens of thousands of years but only really quickly recall things that have happened recently. If reminded by situation or experience the memory is able to more slowly recall events from tens of thousands of years ago into conscious awareness and the thoughts are present as if they happend only very recently, but then can be quickly disgarded.

In a sense the biological brain rememebers only that which is neccesary to facilitate recent awareness and continues now to collect memories in the inter cycle period. However extreme and mild forms of physical learnt skills such as rock climbing, dialect inflections, musical skills, arts and crafts, fishing, animal handling, gymnastics, rope tying, and even obscure once learn skills such tightrope walking, and rare dance forms are always retained though it may take a moment for the person to remember exactly why they know them. Previously learnt languages are recalled if they are spoken in or around the indivivual but they (excepting the “mother tongue” which is Illúme in the case of the Illúme) are not present immediatley after the coma or stall. If you spoke to a person coming out of a cycle coma in a language other that of the Illúme mother tongue they would be vague about replying until a few moments pass, they may even attempt to accidentlly speak Illúme back to you without being aware they did so, but they would increasingly appear much more comfortable and fluent in the language they once used. However their accent would be perfect from the first time they attempted to use any words.

Ageless people still have to learn things and this still takes time sometimes years of training. However once learnt, abilities and languages will forever remain retained, so in essence most Illúme field agents are incomprehesibly skilled in terms of sheer variety, but remaining on a par with feral humans who spent a life time learning to live a certain way.

It is typical for an agent to not operate on a previously unvisited feral world without dozens of years of training. Agents must covertly adopt the local lifestyle perfectly and for this reason most agents remain experts in 4 or 5 worlds only though they may have visited more in their lifetime.

Ageless people are not supernatural and can die and are very mortal in terms of fatal injury, suffocation, temperature and presure, starvation, thirst or even cetain types of poisoning but they never get viral disease, cancer or immunological disfunction, and are incredibly resistant to common poisons and agressive forms of bacterial or fungal infection. nor can any debilitating non-lethal trauma (eg: paralysis) effect them for longer than a cycle. Cycles can be induced by choice (after say a spineal accident, or being covered in 3rd degree burns, or loosing even a limb or many limbs) and the individual will be totally repaired but the length of the cycle wil potentially be extended and they may die without external supervision and nutrients. Cycles can also be consciously induced because of imminent pressure, temperature (to a lesser degree) or imminent starvation or water but it still takes a number of hours to achieve the hardene cuticle neccesary to stave of extremes of environment; also it would in no way protect an individual from a vacuum for example