#Dicember 3rd, and the prompt is CHILD. Something that always bothered me in D&D was the long lived people because I could never wrap my head around the relationships between folk with such disparate lives. Are their life-cycles like humans? Does an elf remain a child for 160 years? Do they mature at the same rate (16-18 years) and then just have an extended adulthood? These things bother me (they shouldn’t).
Well, I came up with a solution for my game (expanding hard on Tolkien’s elven wood).
Different peoples don't have different lifespans. In wild spaces like faerie woods and the mythic underworld time
itself moves slower. These places are inherently cruel and capricious, places that
mortals have long known offer two things: power and death. A day spent in these
ancient locals will see the civilized spaces advance a week, a year spent in
these places of power will see 6 years pass in the rest of the world. Therefore, ancient kingdoms of elves and dwarves deep in these place will seem to be strange immortal folk, even to their own cousins living in civilized lands. However, those living in these magical places do not perceive the difference in the passage of time and gain no benefit of a fuller life or more experiences, it is only noticeable to those who pass back and forth between the two realms.
This is why magic users build their towers in such places, why elves rarely venture far from their woods, and why dwarves seldom descend from their mountains. It is also why adventurers are so rare and unconnected, over time they begin to see the world differently. Repeated excursions into these places have a lasting impact, the hours and days slowly adding up as they watch their friends and family grow old and infirm. Most are merely forgotten, wealthy mysterious strangers returning to homes that no longer remember them.