How do githyanki age?

[true_shinken]

OK, so githyanki live in the Astral Plane.
Time does not pass in the Astral Plane.
But how do gith get older? How do they mature their bodies? I can't find a source on this.

[Debihuman]

One day at a time whenever they leave the Astral Plane. :-)

[Urpriest]

One day at a time whenever they leave the Astral Plane. :-)

That seems...inconvenient for Githyanki babies. Extraplanar Creches are an interesting concept, but seem impractical.

Shinken, this appears to be a legitimate hole in how Githyanki work.

[true_shinken]

One day at a time whenever they leave the Astral Plane. :-)

That would actually be a lot of times at a time, I believe. Time spent on the Astral Plane 'catches up' when you leave it.

[Zaq]

If I may perform a minor threadjack, while we're talking about the development of githyanki, does anyone happen to know offhand where it's stated that the lich-queen kills githyanki who become too powerful? I just can't remember what book that delightful bit of fluff is in, but I'm sure I read it somewhere.

See, I think of that as a really critical part of the fluff of the game world. Let's say that the lich-queen kills 'yanki who hit level... 16. (I'm making 16 up. It may be a different number, since as I said, I can't find the reference.) So let's say that you're a githyanki who's been on a few adventures, and you're level 15. You don't want to retire (since the githyanki are pretty much Proud Warrior Race Guys, right? Warning: TV Tropes.), but you can feel that you're getting close to the magic "please report for termination, Citizen" number. So what do you do?

You start crafting like mad.

You get every crafting feat that you can get your hands on (through retraining if necessary) and start burning through XP like there's no tomorrow. Every time you feel yourself edging a little too close to the Ding of Death, you just say "HANG ON GUYS I NEED TO MAKE SOME POTIONS RIGHT NOW" and brew up a few kegs of potions of Haste, or make an entire fall lineup of Gloves of Dexterity, or scribe War and Peace in scroll form, or just make whatever random nonsense pops into your head ("a trident of fish command? Sure, why not!"). And since the other 'yanki know what you're doing, they totally allow it. Then you just nip off to Sigil or the City of Brass or someplace and sell it all.

Why is this important? Because it explains where all of those magic items come from. You don't have to postulate that some highish-level wizard is choosing to nonsensically burn a part of his essence by making a trident of fish command. There's an entire race who will literally be systematically terminated if they don't spend every drop of XP they have on making something, ANYTHING. So the next time you get some kind of weird random treasure, you don't have to wonder "what the hell kind of high-level caster would make such a useless thing and then sell it?" You can think "I hope that whatever poor githyanki decided to make this was proud of it. Now off to Sigil, where I can sell this crap for half gold and buy something useful." And that is why I like the githyanki.

Anyway, we were talking about them aging? Maybe they carry their babies along with them when they go on illithid hunts. Or maybe, being native to the Astral, they don't actually need time to age. It just happens. (Heck, without the flow of time, how would 'yanki pregnancies ever come to term in the first place? Whatever mechanism gives them babies in the first place probably also works to make those babies get bigger... though hell if I could tell you what it is.)

Ooh, ooh, I know! Powerful 'yanki druids turn all new 'yanki babies into plants, then cast Plant Growth, then turn them back into 'yanki! It's the circle of life, only not really!

[true_shinken]

If I may perform a minor threadjack, while we're talking about the development of githyanki, does anyone happen to know offhand where it's stated that the lich-queen kills githyanki who become too powerful? I just can't remember what book that delightful bit of fluff is in, but I'm sure I read it somewhere.

It's in the Monster Manual. And in every other D&D book I read that mentions githyanki. ^^