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Immortal Procreation Clause: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
On its surface, being [[Immortality|immortal]] is a pretty sweet gig. You have a lot of time on your hands and usually you never have to suffer the [[Blessed with Suck|effects of injury or old age]].
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Related to [[Creative Sterility]]; this is a focus on sexual reproduction. Can result in a [[Dying Race]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* 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.
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** He bring this up in Chapter 1 as well
* Specifically the reason for the Royals killing each other off in ''[[Princess Resurrection]]''. Since a fully mature Royal becomes a Phoenix who literally ''cannot die'', [[There Can Be Only One]] to become one.
* 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).}}
* Huey Laforet in ''[[Baccano!]]'' procreated after becoming immortal [[For Science!|just to see if this applied]]. His daughter doesn't inherit his immortality.
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== Comics ==
* In the ''[[Wildstorm]]'' universe, the effectively immortal Kherubim suffer from an abysmally low birth-rate. Subverted in that it seems they can breed with humans more prolifically than they can with their own kind.
* Most elves of ''[[Elf Quest]]'' can only breed after a "recognition" (which is basically the instincts of two elves deciding the two are genetically very compatible, and forcing them to conceive a child). One of the stories set before the Original Quest mentions that the tribe's [[Healing Hands|Healer]] tried, and was in one case successful, to break that limitation, because there were worries the tribe was too small. And later on {{spoiler|Leetah managed to induce Recognition for Nightfall and Redlance.}}
** One tribe of elves had no children for ''millennia'', partly because of stagnation (they were hiding from the world in a "fortress" and would not outgrow it).
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==
* Justified by a similar lack of desire in ''[[Undocumented Features]]''. Humans who have taken the Detian treatment can have children. It's just that the current crop of Detians haven't had very many. For instance, Gryphon has been alive for over 400 years, but only started having children in the last couple decades. Then again, he was incredibly busy as a galactic cop, and then on the run as a wanted man, for much of that time.
== Film ==
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** {{spoiler|There's a [[Half-Human Hybrid|way around]] that limitation.}}
* There is a cultural mandate against reproduction by immortals in ''Jitterbug Perfume'' by [[Tom Robbins]].
* Averted in [[J. R. R.
** The ''[[Cracked.com|Cracked]]'' article ''[http://www.cracked.com/article_18475_6-horrifying-implications-awesome-fantasy-movie-universes.html 6 Horrifying Implications of Awesome Fantasy Movie Universes]'' discusses this: "no one in the Elfish kingdom is getting any, anywhere."
** 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.
* [[Roger Zelazny]]'s ''[[Book of Amber]]'' series: as the books themselves comment on, the immortal lords of multiverse have been around for millennia, but are not particularly fertile: the first book is ''Nine Princes In Amber'', not ''Nine Hundred Thousand Princes In Amber''.
** 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.}}
* In [[Poul Anderson]]'s ''The Boat of Million Years'', the immortals are perfectly capable of reproducing. Unfortunately, the children are never immortal, even when both parents are.
* Completely ignored in [[Robert A. Heinlein
** It is worth noting that Tellus Secundus, the planet where the story begins, has an unusually high population of near-immortal "Howards" and in consequence has instigated population controls. The planet's chief executive mentions to Lazarus Long that he'll grant an exception to any woman Lazarus feels like having a child with. Lazarus himself is a special case as, being over two thousand years old and born at the start of the Howard experiment, he can claim over 80 percent of the galactic population and over 99 percent of Howards as his descendants to some degree or another.
* Sort of the case in the universe of the novels ''[[American Gods]]'' and ''[[Anansi Boys]]'' with two notable exceptions. In the former, Wednesday (Odin) tells Shadow that people like him generally "shoot blanks" {{spoiler|Shadow is Wednesday's son with a human woman, but rather than being a completely new god or simply human, he is an incarnation of the God Baldr}}. We are also informed in ''[[American Gods]]'' that Mr. Nancy (Anansi) has a son, Charlie, who is the protagonist of ''[[Anansi Boys]]'' and is seemingly completely normal. {{spoiler|His brother, Spider, who was split from him, is basically a god, although the protagonist turns out to have [[Reality Warper]] powers}}. Charlie ends up having children, who seem to be human {{spoiler|while Spider appears to be infertile}}.
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* 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.
* In the sci-fi novel ''The Declaration'' by Gemma Malloy, immortality has been made possible. Unfortunately, nobody who "opts-in" is allowed to have children because of this. Any children, or "surpluses
* 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.
* Straightforwardly stated in C.S. Friedman's ''[[The Madness Season]].'' The vampires of that book are only fertile when they subsist on a diet of ''willingly provided'' human blood. This is explained in-text as an evolutionary mechanism to keep them from reproducing in an environment that isn't willing to support new vampires.
** The Marra, as well, are subject to this. Energy beings who are not able to die but can also not create new Marra (or, if they can, they have [[The Fog of Ages|forgotten how]])
* ''[[The Culture]]'' generally discourages having more than a few children but no one stops those who wants dozens. Given that they have unlimited resources it's not really a problem.
* Averted in Wen Spencer's
* Unicorns in ''[[The Last Unicorn (novel)|The Last Unicorn]]'' (immortal but can be killed) live solitary lives in separate forests and mate very rarely.
* In Aleksandr Zarevin's ''Lonely Gods of the Universe'', the [[Human Aliens]] from the planet Oll arrive to Earth [[Ancient Astronauts|in distant past]], escaping from a power-hungry official. They plant some seeds they bring with them to grow food, and the seeds of a salad plant known as ambrosia grow practically overnight. After eating a salad made from ambrosia, they suddenly fall ill and wake up young and immortal. Somehow, an alien plant has acquired entirely new properties on Earth. They make a few locals immortal as well and establish themselves as gods on the island. While the females who become immortal are incapable of conceiving a child, this is absolutely not the case for any immortal male who sleeps with a human woman. That is, in fact, the cause of the many hair colors modern humans have. The original humans all had dark hair, while the Olympians (yes, [[Greek Mythology|those Olympians]]; they also call their island [[Atlantis]] after Atl, their home country on Oll) are all redheads. Immortality can only be achieved through consuming a sufficient quantity of ambrosia, which withered and died soon after blooming.
* In [[Larry
* In L. Jagi Lamplighter's ''[[Prospero's Daughter]]'' trilogy, since the immortality comes from an external source, they are fertile and most have had dozens of children. But the source is not extended to the children or spouses, and so some swore off it.
* The Elves of Katherine Kerr's ''[[Deverry]]'' series usually live around 500 years, looking young until the last year or two of this, but have very few children during this time.
* 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
* Averted in ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' as well. Wizards are ''mostly'' immortal (they can be killed, but left to their own devices and otherwise unmolested, they'll go on for centuries), and they can reproduce. Molly Carpenter and
* Georgie Kincaid, succubus, from the ''[[Georgina Kincaid Series]]'' by Richelle Mead, is unable to bear children since she became a succubus.
* 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.
** That's [[The Bible|canon.]] There is no marriage between humans in Heaven. With no marriage and no
*** [[Fridge Logic|So much for free will.]]
* In [[Isaac Asimov]]'s story ''The Last Question'', one person states that their supercomputer has solved a lot of problems, but all the solutions were virtually undone when it solved the problem of aging and death.
* The [[Our Dragons Are Different|Kantri]] of ''[[Tales of Kolmar]]'' can live around two thousand years and are considered mature at two hundred fifty. About two hundred of them fled to the Dragon's Isle five thousand years ago and never increased their numbers. One observes with frustration that they ''should'' have increased, but the species seems demoralized and getting more so. There are fewer mated pairs and even fewer births happening all the time. It's mentioned with great concern that there have been [[Dying Race|only three births in the past eight hundred years]] - and the Kantri with their huge claws are helpless in the face of complications of birth. If a human hadn't stepped in and midwifed during ''Song In The Silence'', [[Death by Childbirth|the first birth in three hundred years would have ended tragically]]. Also, Kantri only feel the desire to have sex a dozen or so times in their long lives, and the act is difficult and painful, not fun. Mated pairs enjoy 'joining souls', but this gets no one pregnant.
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** In one episode an alien race weaponized this trope. After making contact with Earth they offered a treatment that would cure all diseases and drastically (though not infinitely) extend our lifetimes. After everybody on the planet got the treatment SG-1 found out that, of course, it causes sterility and would lead to the extinction of humanity. This was that civilization's way of taking over planets without a fight, just a bit of patience. Fortunately, the main characters were able to cook up some time travel gimmick to warn their past selves to not allow this to happen.
*** The Aschen treatment didn't itself cause infertility; the Aschen used it on themselves to create the wonderful society Earth was so eager to ally with. They added something else along with the treatment to make Earth infertile.
* With one important exception, the immortal vampires in
** Mortal in the age-and-eventually-die way, but he had all the strength, speed, and super senses of a powerful vampire with none of the weaknesses (sorta like Blade, but white and with puppy-dog eyes).
* Averted in ''[[New Amsterdam]]'', where it has been established that John Amsterdam has had several children, who, unlike him, are mortal. One of these children, Omar, looks older than John himself, and knows about John's immortality.
** One episode shows that John keeps records of his descendants, so he can keep track of them and [[Incest Is Relative|avoid dating female descendants]].
* Captain Jack Harkness, from ''[[Torchwood]]'', is another aversion. He's immortal, but can have children. The children, again, are not immortal, thereby preserving the intent of the Clause.
** The fourth series, ''[[Torchwood: Miracle Day|Miracle Day]]'', is set to involve a thorough subversion of this trope; humanity mysteriously becomes immortal and one of the immediate problems is an impending overpopulation crisis.
* The Cylons from
** One notable exception exists, but
**
* An episode of ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' features a movie actress who remained remarkably youthful despite starring in films from the Silent Age (this taking place in the
== Tabletop Games ==
* Most of the various immortal races in the ''[[Old World of Darkness]]'' are like this. Only the weakest 14th or 15th generation vampires in ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]'' can have children, who end up as [[Dhampyr|dhampirs]], only extremely yang-imbalanced [[Kindred of the East]] can have children (their version of dhampyrs), and that's made increasingly complicated by the fact that a female Kuei-Jin has to remain yang-imbalanced throughout the pregnancy, and demons from ''[[Demon: The Fallen]]'' might possess human bodies, but they lack the spark of life to create true progeny.
** The original mummies were sterile too. However, their successors, the mummies of ''[[Mummy: The
** 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/
* In ''[[Dungeons & 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.
** They say now that Elves do reproduce, but it's a long pregnancy, and that they need to wait 5 years to get pregnant again. But, of course, [[Your Mileage May Vary]].
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* ''[[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.
* Invoked by [[Jerkass Gods|Tzeentch]] in ''[[Warhammer Fantasy]]''. The ancient race of Dragon Ogres asked the Lord of Change for a boon, to make them immortal. He did, but also rendered them sterile. Most of the still-living Dragon Ogres consider this to be Tzeench's idea of a joke.
== Video Games ==
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* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' has the Draenei, who live for at least tens of thousands of years (and may be immortal), and [[Word of God|very rarely have children]].
** Also, now that Night Elves are no longer immortal (their natural lifespan is still probably pretty long, but not infinite) they're starting to have kids more, as evidenced by some of their quotes.
* 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.
* The [[All Trolls Are Different|Trow]] in [[Bungie]]'s ''[[Myth]]'' series were created as an entire species by the god Nyx at the begining of the world. They have no natural causes of death, are eighteen feet tall, and have bodies that are as tough as stone. For many thousands of years they dominated the world, but entropy and a series of costly wars took its course, and now [[Dying Race|there are only a few hundred Trow left, if that]]. The ones that remain tend to keep to themselves, though prey you never have to [[Demonic Spiders|run into one on the battlefield]].
* 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!}}
* In Aselia's ending for ''[[Eien no Aselia]]'' {{spoiler|both she and Yuuto are Eternals}} and have a child together. This is apparently completely unheard of and they're a bit nervous about how they're going to explain it.
* In ''The Elder Scrolls'', the Elven races live considerably longer (how long is undisclosed), but have far fewer children. However, their chance of having children if they have a non-elven lover.
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* 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.
* The alien race known as the Silent Ones in [[Orion's Arm]] use a treatment that completely halts aging but severely stunts the development of their larvae, so they keep small groups of mortals to replace the few immortals that die. However most Terragen (human-derived and/or created) sophonts are effectively immortal and decidedly ''not'' infertile, the population being in the quadrillions about 10500 years in the future.
* [[Word of God]] (pun intended) has this as being the demographic issue with the angels in ''[[The Salvation War]]'' -- "angelic females simply are not very fertile and the chance of conception is extremely low
** Although as of Chapter 83, it seems that the low birth rate of the angels was at least partially due to Yahwehh's obsession with controlling sex and sexuality and now that {{spoiler|he's been killed}} there's been a rash of pregnancies among the angels
* [http://writersworkshop.wikia.com/wiki/Controlling_Populations_of_Immortals Dissected (and arguably deconstructed)] by the Writerium (and its successor the Writer's Workshop).
* [http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/03/why-vampires-would-have-a-popu.html This blog post] hilariously suggested that romances like the one in ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'' ''prevent''
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** Destania's clan leader Cyra is in a similar boat as Fa'lina. Destania is her ''last'' surviving "child" and she can't even speak with her anymore since Destania has given up dreaming—and Cyra mostly communicates in dreams. {{spoiler|So she's absolutely ''thrilled'' when she gets the chance to [http://missmab.com/Comics/Vol_1002.php speak with her "grandson" Dan]}}.
* The elves of ''[[Errant Story]]'' previously had an extremely low fertility rate, which is part of the reason why taking on [[Interspecies Romance|human]] [[Mayfly-December Romance|lovers]] was so popular among them; as Sarine put it, elves could "try for centuries to have an elven child with no success, or they could go fuck a human and have [[Half-Human Hybrid|the next best thing]]." In the wake of the Errant Wars, the elven fertility rate seems to have dropped from "low" to "zero," as the last elven child born is now some 1,500 years old.
* Parodied in ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]''{{'}}s "Fantasy" storyline, where it's pointed out that Elven longevity also means that young Elves take ''centuries'' to grow past adolescence. As a result, the Elves invented prophylactics before they discovered how to use fire.
* The Bradicor of Ghanj-Rho in ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' have, individually, [[Time Abyss|survived millions of years]] and watched the evolution of intelligent life forms, but are indifferent to the gradual extinction of their species.
** Our heroes end up accidentally flattening their last female during first contact and dooming them to extinction. The Bradicor react more with annoyance than anything else.
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* Thought experiments on population growth rates suggest that extending lifespan needn't necessarily produce an [[Explosive Breeder]], as it's really the age ''at first reproduction'' that determines how fast a population grows. Mathematically, having a breeding female live forever will do less to increase birth rates than having her produce a daughter (who'll breed early in turn) slightly sooner.
* This idea is truth in television in human communities insomuch as the childbirth rate of a country appears to be inversely proportional to its average lifespan. However, this applies only to communities, and is attributed to things like education and not seeing everyone around you die young (which tends to cause survivor lust).
** More likely it's a consequence of development. Good healthcare improves lifespans but also reduces infant mortality, meaning people don't need to have as many children to guarantee some survive. More
* Because human oocytes (eggs) are produced by a woman's ovaries before she, herself, is born, an immortal woman's capacity for natural reproduction would inevitably expire when her supply runs out, even if she never goes through menopause (assuming the science at some point won't be able to reboot the ova production mechanism, of course). She could, however, give birth to a baby conceived ''in vitro'' from a donor egg.
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