Githyanki

[Ali]

The githyanki are native to the astral plane, where creatures do not age.

How do they reach adulthood?

[Shhalahr Windrider]

Well, I'm not familiar with the official word, but several possibilities come to mind:

1. Children are raised on different planes. Although being native to the Astral, Githyanki do tend to spend a fair amount of time invading other planes and the like.
2. Githyanki have nurseries on the Astral Plane where magic has been used to negate the lack of aging.
3. Githyanki have special physiologies that allow them to ignore the timeless trait until they reach adulthood.

Any one of those could be used in your campaign. They all have potential adventure hooks, too.

One other thing to consider is that in 2e, aging occurred retroactively once you left the Astral Plane. If you were 16 years old, entered the Astral Plane, and didn't emerge until 30 years later, you would suddenly age to a 46 year old body. Likewise, if you used the Astral Plane's timeless trait to go the entire 30 years without food, you could find yourself starving to death almost instantaneously. The generic description of the Timeless trait in Manual of the Planes says such properties may apply to planes with the Timeless trait, however the specific description in the Astral Plane fails to say whether or not this is the case. This leads me to believe that the default state in 3e is that leaving the Astral Plane does not cause retroactive aging. However, if you wish to restore such an effect, it could play a part in Githyanki life cycles.

[Fhaolan]

Given that we're dealing with a creature that has gone through untold thousands of years of slavery and has probably been massively modified by their mind flayer masters (MMMFM? ) on a fundamental level, it's entirely possible they're *born* fully adult in some kind of bizarre psionic cloning system.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

I can't believe I missed that obvious answer!

[Munchy]

I suspect that was never considered by WOTC. The monster manual entry for Githyanki does make a reference about Githyanki children in their fortresses, but that is fluff and can be changed with no consequence.

Another alternative to the above would be to characterize the "timeless" nature of the astral plane. You could make a distinction between aging to maturity and aging past maturity. The plane would allow anyone to continue maturing at a normal rate until adulthood.

There is some IRL scientific basis for going with this approach (At least as I recall it). My understanding is that "aging" up to maturity is caused by hormonal and developmental driven changes, wheas "aging" once adulthood has been reached is driven by cellular and DNA damage. This damage is also present as a child grows, but is almost imperceptible due to the dominance and pace of developmental driven changes. Even so, there are some visible clues, such as the ocassional gray hairs on some teens.

[Ali]

Thanks for the help everyone.

[Darrin]

The githyanki are native to the astral plane, where creatures do not age.

How do they reach adulthood?

Annual application of the 2e version of Haste?