Time Abyss

"I was born about ten thousand years ago;
There ain't nothin' in this world that I don't know.
I saw Peter, Paul and Moses
Playin' ring-around-the-roses
An' I'll whup the guy what says it isn't so!"

—"Just the Facts, Ma'am" — Woody Guthrie

Basic Information

Time Abyss is a Characterization Trope that refers to a person who's had a mind-bogglingly long life, like 5000 years or more. We just can't wrap our brains around everything they've seen and done, and they don't really know what it's like to be a mundane human any more.

Good candidates for Time Abyss status are Immortals, Elves, Vampires, Precursors, Gods, and Eldritch Abominations. See also Julius Beethoven Da Vinci.

Sources

Bibliography

1. TV Tropes Wiki

Game and Story Use

• In a Time Travel campaign, you present an NPC in the modern day who seems just a minor background character. Then the PCs travel far back in time, and see him there. They assume he's a fellow time traveler, and either approach him or investigate from afar. Turns out he knows nothing of time travel, he just can't die. If the PCs try to give him a Time Machine, he refuses and even rejects them. "All those centuries of loneliness and horror? Whatever makes you think I'd want to experience any of that a second time? What simpletons ye mortals be…"
• Makes any creepy or mysterious character that much more creepy and mysterious.
  • He's seen civilizations rise and fall, so he's just aloof from the current calamity that the PCs are up in arms about. This, too, will pass, and he will still be around in its wake. "Why struggle to save anyone? You know you can't save them all…"