FVC wrote:
Nah. That's true for the Shadowlands and maybe Cothique as well, but when was the last time the Inner Kingdoms were even threatened? The Great War Against Chaos. That's the only example of any invader entering the Inner Kingdoms since the Sundering itself.
The nation as a whole is under threat. Sure, it may be kept to the Outer Kingdoms
most of the time (although I think the Dark Elves have penetrated the Inner Kingdoms more than you think), but do you really think the Inner Kingdoms aren't sending troops to support, and thus having their own population bled off as well?
FVC wrote:
As such, I don't think that excuse for High Elf population decline works. As far as I can see, either you say the ABs are exaggerating and the High Elves aren't in population decline at all, or you make a hand-wave to explain how it could happen. My favourite hand-wave, as I believe I mentioned, is 'planned obsolescence scheme put there by the Old Ones'; because the decline makes no sense from an evolutionary perspective at all, and the Old Ones and Slann are already established to be jerks, so it's at least in character for them to screw over an entire race for no real reason. They've done it canonically once before. The High Elf population decline is much the same as the earthquakes along the World's Edge for the dwarfs, causing the Goblin Wars; the Slann decided to wipe them out. Why? I don't know. For the lulz, I guess. That seems to be the primary motivation behind most of the Old Ones' and Slann's actions.
While possible (the plan of the Old Ones does seem to be that humanity will do the heavy lifting, with elves and dwarfs as intermediary stages), I don't think that's the only interpretation. Another is, for example, that elven fertility is being adversely affected by the effects of the Vortex.
FVC wrote:
I also like that figure because it tallies with 40k Eldar, who canonically live for around a thousand years, give or take a few centuries from individual to individual. As they're to all intents and purposes the same race, I would find it very strange if the pre-industrial savages whose greatest technological achievement is a torsion-powered bolt thrower live twice as long as the enlightened, hyper-advanced space people who can blow up planets build giant space-faring habitats, and violate the law of conservation of energy on a daily basis.
On the other hand, the Elves don't suffer from the Thirst... and if you don't believe in that, at the very least the Asur still have their gods intact instead of being eaten by Slaanesh. In a universe where magic and gods are real, and where the race in question is one especially sensitive to such things, it makes a lot of sense that these things could make a difference.
Besides, there's evidence that particularly exceptional Eldar can live for long periods of time as well - there's a passage in the 3rd ed Eldar codex where a Ranger claims that Eldrad tried to warn the Emperor about the Horus Heresy, which would place Eldrad at ten thousand years old. Of course, that could have been bravado on the part of the source (an Ulthwe Ranger being interrogated by the Imperium).
That said, the impression I've always had is that elves (and Eldar, at least before the Fall) didn't really die of reaching a particular age per se. Asuryan's words were that (whatever iteration of Isha's children are being discussed) will "eventually grow weary of the world and die" which may indicate that it's a kind of willpower thing. It's somewhat like the elves of LOTR resisting the call to the West - there isn't an allotted lifespan which no Elf can exceed, but sooner or later, every elf succumbs to the call to die.
Thus, you can have an
average age around a thousand, a thousand and a half years, while still allowing for the likes of the Witch King living for seven millenia (because we all know he's not going to give up until he holds the throne of Ulthuan or someone stakes him through the heart, chops his head off, fills his mouth with garlic, and burns the rest of the body. (Because you just
know that if you just plain kill him he'll come back as a vampire or something...)