Inquisitor age

[Morcus]

Granted a desk inquisitor might not be the norm in games but I'd imagine they'd make a substantial portion of the inquisition from those who have lived long enough in the field to be promoted out and to run the administrative side of things and oversee the field work (To a degree). Theres also the Leathal Weapon Four senario.

[Koval]

Humm... I agree that nobody gets a rosette in thier first flush of youth, so most Inquisitors are likely to be into the mid-late 30's for the gifted, and early 40's and up for the rest?

That's crazy young. None of my (living) characters made Inquisitor until they were, at the very least, well into their fifties or early sixties. Osmond Johm in the (pending) Price of Devotion RP didn't make Inquisitor until about 70. I'd say if they're really, really good, Interrogators might expect to make Inquisitor by their late forties, and only if they're really good -- you don't give the ultimate authority to just any schmuck with a good aim.

Granted a desk inquisitor might not be the norm in games but I'd imagine they'd make a substantial portion of the inquisition from those who have lived long enough in the field to be promoted out

In which case they'll probably be old enough to afford to retire from active field duty, say well into their second century (going on for 200, that sort of thing) and will have the authority and standing to be able to boss people around. If a Inquisitor that's much younger ends up behind a desk, then either he's got a very good reason for being there or he should've been an Administratum drone.

[GAZKUL]

i got round this issueby simply saying "unknown"

[Koval]

That is just so very lazy. I disapprove.

[MarcoSkoll]

Well, there is a "sort of unknown" for one of my characters - her birth records are completely absent, so while she knows pretty roughly how old she is, she can't be more accurate than a few months, so her age is now figured by a "best guess" birthdate.
There's also a character who, as a result of one of those quirks of warp travel, skipped over about 18 years. So when you ask quite how old he is, there's two answers depending on whether it's from his perspective or the perspective of most of the rest of the galaxy.

But I'd say completely unknown is pretty boring. It's also pretty silly from the perspective that even if the character doesn't know their birth year, they should at least remember enough to guess (and if you've written an amnesiac, shame on you for using such an overdone cliché*).
*Exception made for mind-cleansed characters, but I still think it's an excuse to not really write them background.
But even with an amnesiac type, bodies age, and you can work out an approximate age from that - even AFTER rejuve, which isn't perfect. A decent examination should be able to work out someone's age to within a decade or so.

For those of you who are horribly pedantic - yes I have written a character who doesn't biologically age in the slightest. But at the same time, she's as resistant to amnesia as she is to age, so she knows exactly when she was born, and can figure her age right down to the month (despite being over twenty-four hundred years old in that story).

[DapperAnarchist]

I get round this by not saying. My characters have rough ages - The Grey Man is old, Kolab is youngish, perhaps too young, Adelmar is average, etc. The closest I have to an age is that one character became an Inquisitor in her 88th year. What her year of birth is is known to her, and to lots of other people - but I haven't bothered to decide it, nor how old she is now.

[Shannow]

I've always thought that you can have a character not know there age through some reason or other, but that you should as a player know there age even if they do not; equally the other approach of Dapper where the character knows and you don't is also valid.

I think no one having any idea though is just very lazy. The above ones are a little lazy but a lot better than just not bothering.

[Heroka Vendile]

as warp travelling individuals, you also have to factor in the differences between time experienced real-side and in the warp - someone may have a real-side age of 50, but a physical age of 30 due to the natural distortions caused by warp travel for example.

[Kaled]

In general, an exact age is mostly irrelevant so I don't tend to bother to specify one - a rough age almost always is sufficient. So Kaled is (IIRC) well into his third century and any games I use him in are set during that phase of his life. Anything more specific than that rapidly gets complex as not all games are set in the same year and don't necessarily take place in the order they're played (and added to the complexities of dating events and the effects of warp travel makes being too specific more hassle than it's worth).

[Flinty]

as warp travelling individuals, you also have to factor in the differences between time experienced real-side and in the warp

I have a small-time ''pirate'' character who claims to have been born over 1000 years ago. This is mostly fiction on his part as he has been on so many ill-planned trips into the warp he is no longer sure (or cares) quite where in the galactic timeline he originated or how that relates to where (or even who) he is now.

I claim this explains his existential nihilism, but really he's just a miserable sod with a temper.

[Morcus]

I second Kaled on the In game timeline making exact age irrelevent.

[GAZKUL]

That is just so very lazy. I disapprove.

and proud of it

[DapperAnarchist]

An interesting point - how old was Franklin Roosevelt during his presidency? Well, obviously, he wasn't one age - dude was in the White House 13 years - and similarly, many Inquisitorial investigations could take several years - especially the sort that defines an Inquisitor. Looking to my characters, one is searching every library and cult he can find for information on how to safely banish a specific Daemon. That's gonna take decades. Another is hunting for that specific Daemon to find out where her Interrogator went. That also could take decades. Why, as they are defined in part by those two things, should I give them an age with can only apply to one part of the story?

[MarcoSkoll]

Eh - my characters are ageing in real-time (well, they have been for the last few months at least). Each has a "birthday" and clocks up the years in the same way as I do.

Sometimes I'll play games or write stories out of order, and sometimes there's some fudging to be done to keep track of things where there's a major real/game time difference (i.e. I might play a section of campaign that covers weeks or months over a weekend, or work on story that takes months to write but which happens over only a few hours), but I like to have a "current" version of the character.

If someone else perceives those events to have happened in another order - well, that falls under either EYHBTIAL or gets blamed on the warp.