Immortal Procreation Clause: Difference between revisions

:: ''The fertility of a species is inversely proportional to its lifespan. Thus, as a species approaches immortality, their birth rate approaches zero.''

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes the beings in question are perfectly able to have children, but are not allowed to, by the laws of their society, because allowing immortals to breed will quickly lead to overpopulation. This usage tends to be found in [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness|hard]] [[Speculative Fiction]].

Another common aversion is to have immortals that are quite fertile/potent but whose children are completely or near-completely mortal. These examples are also included here because they fit in with the theme that unchecked reproduction combined with immortality is unsustainable.

 

 

This trope includes extremely long-lived characters and species with low birth rates, as they fit on the sliding scale properly. The most common example of this is elves; Tolkienesque elves generally have Type II [[Immortality]] and can have children; their population is mitigated by a low birth rate (a typical elf couple can live together for several thousand years and produce only one or two children in all that time), the occasional violent death, and the tendency for older elves to [[Put on a Bus|journey across the sea to a mystical land, never to be seen again]].

 

Related to [[Creative Sterility]]; this is a focus on sexual reproduction. Can result in a [[Dying Race]].

{{examples|Examples: }}

 

* In both the manga and anime versions of ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', homunculi, creatures created by alchemy, are stated as unable to reproduce. They exist outside of any ecosystem.

** {{spoiler|Hoenheim}} is immortal and can reproduce, but his children aren't any different than normal.

* Played straight in ''[[Mnemosyne]]'' until a last minute epilogue subversion: {{spoiler|Rin herself}} bears a child, proving that it is possible.

** Makie, Akira, Ako, and Yuuna were briefly vampire-ified by Evangeline in volume 3, but they were apparently cured.

*** {{spoiler|Negi himself, however, will stop aging "soon". He might still grow up for a few years, or be stuck with the same fate as Evangeline.}}

* The [[Filler Villain|Bounts]] from ''[[Bleach]]'''s Bount arc were a group of immortal, [[Our Vampires Are Different|soul sucking]] humans who could summon [[Bond Creatures]], but they were incapable of reproduction. The one Bount that did have the ability to reproduce was killed by her own people as part of some elaborate ritual to [[It Makes Sense in Context|summon an army of flying, soul-sucking insects]].

* In ''[[Dance in the Vampire Bund]]'' we discover that the "True Blooded" vampires can, in addition to [[The Virus|turning those they feed on]] into theoretically weaker ones, {{spoiler|reproduce sexually. Problem is that females can give birth once and they apparently reach adulthood very slowly. Bigger problem is that [[Complete Monster|Dukes Ivanovic, Li, and Rozenmann]] apparently killed off the other 97 dukes [[Stupid Evil|and their families]] ''then'' slaughtered the whole Royal House of Tepes [[Last of His Kind|save for the young Princess Mina]] (who is under obligation to produce a True Blooded heir).}}

* The Juraians in ''[[Tenchi Muyo!]]'' have vast lifespans (one prominent member of the royal family is over 5,000 years old; she looks 35-40, tops), but their birth rates seem to be quite low. The Juraian emperor, for example, has been married to two women (at the same time) for over 700 years, and only had 3 children between them. His mother-in-law (the above-mentioned 5,000 year old Juraian) has only one biological daughter; while she's raised several other children, they were all adopted.

 

 

 

* In ''[[Highlander]]'' and its various spin offs, the immortals cannot have children. If you believe [[Highlander II the Quickening|the second movie]], it's because they're [[Human Aliens|actually from another planet]]. In the later films (but not in [[Highlander the Series|the TV series]]), Immortals are capable of reproducing until they die for the first time. This is a plot point in [[Highlander Endgame|the fourth]] and [[Highlander: The Source|fifth]] movies.

* ''[[The Man From Earth]]'' fathered many children during his looooong life, but since he is forced to leave his families after a few years, nothing is known about their immortality, apart from one, and he is most certainly mortal.

 

 

* The Tucks from Natalie Babbitt's ''[[Tuck Everlasting]]'' cannot change; they don't age, they don't die. Mrs. Tuck was past childbearing age when she drank from the spring, so it isn't an issue for the elder Tucks. However, the eldest Tuck son got married in the years after they drank from the spring and before they realized its effects; he had children, but his wife eventually thought he'd made a [[Deal with the Devil]] and left him.

* Brought up in one of Joanne Bertin's ''The Last Dragonlord''. Dragonlords, the people who [[Voluntary Shapeshifting|shapeshift]] between [[Our Dragons Are Different|dragons]] and humans, have exceedingly long lifespans; as of the first book, the youngest is [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|really six hundred years old]], still looks the same, and is still called "little one." They cannot have children with ordinary humans, and while that does not apply between Dragonlords, they voluntarily do not have children, since when they do reproduce their offspring are very nearly always human. The same Dragonlords who enjoy their human friends and grieve and let go when they age and die have a lot more trouble with it when it's their own children.

** Also averted with hobbits, who often have large families despite living longer than humans.

** But played straight with Ents, who live nearly forever but are all male and thus can't reproduce. Presumably wherever the Entwives are they have the opposite problem.

** There is reference to several older princes who died "For the good of Amber" though.

* The immortals from [[The Company Novels]], though {{spoiler|Mendoza manages to have children later on in the series. Very, very weirdly.}}

* Played straight ''so hard'' it hurts in ''[[Fragment]]''. When the protagonists discover the {{spoiler|mandatory sentient species that seems to be a part of any [[Lost World]] or Alien planet, they discover that they are immortal ''because'' they don't have any babies in a combination of [[Cliché Storm]] and [[You Fail Biology Forever]].}}

* In ''Three of Heart, One of Blood'', the Legacies are incapable of breeding, though the [[Unusual Euphemism|systems]] still work. This is a fact that [[Really Gets Around|Doryn]] uses and exploits. A lot.

* Fairies in ''[[Artemis Fowl]]'' (who are not immortal but very long-lived) can only have one child every twenty years; humanity's faster reproduction is actually the main reason it was able to more-or-less take the world from them.

* Witches in Phillip Pullman's [[His Dark Materials]] trilogy live roughly a thousand years. They take human men for lovers and bear children; if the children are girls, they're witches and if boys, human and short-lived. Presumably, they don't have children especially often. One character suggests that a witch dies when her heart is so broken from watching her lovers and sons grow old and die that she can't go on.

* In [[The Witcher]] cycle the Elves breed much slower than humans, because their women ovulate once in a couple of years (or even tens of years). Not to mention that after a hundred or so years, the sex gets boring. It's also mentioned they're only fertile at young age, but as later in the books a girl is bred with an elf over 500, it's probably only the women.

* In Mikhail Akhmanov's ''[[Arrivals From the Dark]]'' books, Paul Richard Corcoran, being a [[Half-Human Hybrid]], and his descendants have unnaturaly long lifespans (150-200 years). However, this also means they are highly unlikely to have children until they are well in their 40s or even 50s. This could indicate a slower rate of maturity.

* In the ''[[Tide Lords]]'' Tetrology, the immortals cannot interbreed with each other (The union of an immortal egg and an immortal sperm would become immortal at age -9 months and thus never come to term), but they can and frequently have interbred with mortals (There are four entire ''species'' who are descended entirely from the mortal offspring of immortals). Said children are always born mortal, but {{spoiler|those children whose heritage makes them more than 50% immortal by genetics (Such as an immortal father and one or more immortal ancestors in the mother's line) can potentially ''become'' immortal}}.

* Goes beyond this with the "glorifieds" in the [[Left Behind]] book ''Kingdom Come'', since they won't even have the desire for sexual intercourse.

 

 

** The Goa'uld, as a parasitic race, is only very rarely capable of sexual reproduction, and the resulting child is very dangerous; thus the practice is proscribed. The normal life cycle of Goa'uld includes the spawning of new parasites by extremely rare slug-like queens, with Jaffa specially prepared to incubate the larvae; this almost always happens off-screen.

*** More specifically, procreation between two Goa'uld ''hosts'' is forbidden. Such a child, known as a Harcesis, would be born with all the genetic memories of the Goa'uld. Exactly why this would be a bad thing for the Goa'uld is never spelled out [[Fridge Brilliance|but it's probably to prevent Goa'uld secrets from falling into the hands of enemies like the Tokra or the Asgard]].

 

 

** It carries over into the [[New World of Darkness|new version]]; a [[Vampire: The Requiem|vampire]] can only give birth to a [[Dhampyr|Dampyr]] through the use of certain dark rituals and curses, and the [[The Fair Folk|True Fae]] of ''[[Changeling: The Lost]]'' are described as immortal, all-powerful, and utterly sterile. {{spoiler|That is, until you find out that the titular changelings risk ''becoming'' True Fae if they hit Wyrd 10 and Clarity 0 -- which means their abduction/MindRape was ''the reproductive cycle''.}}

* In ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'', the lifespan of elves has decreased somewhat over the various editions (from a maximum of two thousand years for grey elves in 1st edition to a handful of centuries now); perhaps this is appropriate, considering that they've become more and more common in their game worlds, suggesting higher levels of procreation. Okay, fine, they're still supposed to be majestic, long-lived, and rare, but [[Rule of Cool]] sometimes dictates otherwise.

** Another example is the 3.5 edition Elan, a race of psionically enhanced and modified humans who are functionally immortal. They can no longer procreate with humans due to their modifications (they are classified as [[Humanoid Abomination|aberrations]], not humanoids), and the only way to make more Elans is by modifying an existing human with a mixture of psionics and [[Super Serum|an alchemical conversion process]].

* In ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'', the same procedure that turns humans into near-immortal, superhuman [[Space Marine|Space Marines]] also renders them sterile.

*** Most likely Space Marines remove their... umm, you know.

** Space Marines are genetically and surgically modified. Even assuming that they are fertile (seems unlikely) and not poisonous, the children wouldn't be Space Marines, and might not be normal humans either.

** Similarly, the Eldar combine a low birth rate with a natural aversion towards any sort of extreme emotion; to the point where their population is likely below sustainability levels.

* ''[[Spycraft]]'' has a setting, 'World on Fire'. One faction is the Eternals, which are [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]. They can have children, but these are very very mundane.

 

 

* In the ''[[Fallout]]'' series, the two types of creature that are biologically immortal, Super Mutants and Ghouls, are both unable to reproduce. The former due to sterility as a side effect of FEV, and the latter... radiation sterility and, well... rot?

** Van Buren would have had "born ghouls," children born into ghouldom. To Drs. Sebastian and Clark, the masterminds of the breeding program, the born ghouls represent the future of the ghoul "species."

* The krogan in ''[[Mass Effect]]'' were infected with a virus that devastates their birthday (1 out of 1000 is live, the rest are stillborn) in order to prevent them from taking over to galaxy on sheer numbers due to a combination of being one of the longest-lived species in the universe and being able to breed like rabbits, which is necessary on the harsh environment of their home world but not so much on the colony worlds they were given as a reward for their help in the [[Bug War|Rachni War]]. And even with the high mortality rate, they're still capable of maintaining a population equilibrium if not for the species wide fatalism that followed the Genophage (kind of hard to keep you chin up when your allies annihilate a fundamental aspect of your biology and society).

** The asari, who live for one thousand years, don't seem to have a problem with this trope though. They happily breed all they want to.

*** Most of the time the asari don't choose to procreate before they pass their 300th birthday and become Matrons, and generally don't have that many children in their whole lifetime; nearly 1000-year old Matriarch Benezia only has one daughter, for example. Aethyta, who's as old, is implied to have had a good number, but then [[Fridge Brilliance|her father was a krogan]].

*** Asari under three hundred years old generally like being out in the galaxy and doing dangerous things, and they are also much easier to kill than krogan, not having multiple redundant organ systems. Therefore adventurous lifestyles are more of a check on their population than for krogan.

* True Ancestors in ''[[Tsukihime]]'' are noted in [[All There in the Manual|supplementary materials]] to have been rather on the decline. They did not even have enough children to replace the members they lost, so the birth of Arcueid itself was pretty big news even before people knew how powerful she was. Possibly tied to the fact that they were almost entirely all male.

* Played straight and Averted in [[The Sims|The Sims 2]]. Zombies and Servo robots are immortal but cannot have children, while Vampires can reproduce, but any children born will be completely normal.

* In ''[[Runescape]]'', the Dragonkin are nearly immortal, living for thousands of years at least, but can still be killed, and can't reproduce. This has lead to them becoming very afraid of death.

* A female dwarf in ''[[Divine Divinity]]'' mentions that she is pregnant, but she's only in her tenth month, so she's not showing any visible signs yet.

* In novels for [[Starcraft]], the [[Neglectful Precursors|Xel'Naga]] were incredibly long-lived but couldn't reproduce. {{spoiler|Instead, they turned other races into more of them!}}

 

 

* As a demonstration of why this trope is often necessary, the site ''Grudgematch'' had a [http://www.grudge-match.com/History/bond-indy.shtml hilarious take on the disastrous consequences] of James Bond winning immortality in the grudgematch: massive inbreeding due to James' libido.

* Elves in ''[[Tales of MU]]'' are true immortals in terms of lifespan, and generally quite sexually potent as part of their being [[Our Elves Are Better|better than everybody]]. They keep their birth rate low by doing things that don't produce children.