Wizards Live Longer

"What you learn here will last you a lifetime. Several, if you're talented."

— Savos Aren, Archmage of the College of Winterhold, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

For some reason, just because you wield magic (or Magick), even if you don't practice The Dark Arts, your life span is expanded. This can be reasonable if you practice healing magic (as you can heal your body's natural decay). This increased life span is not dependent on the suffering of others or any other questionable method — it's just a simple equation. Got magic? Live longer.

Likely relates to the notion that wizards are wise, and that wisdom comes with age. Characters that exceed a normal human lifespan can really play up the "aged wisdom" idea.

Expect long lived wizards, especially of the Wizard Classic variety, to have particularly impressive Wizard Beards.

This is a Justified Trope in Taoism, and the Spirit Cultivation Genre, since not practicing the dark arts would help one live longer. The energy from qi and the five elements is believed to be flowing through your body and supporting it. Practicing the dark arts would likely decay your body faster.

Subtrope of We Are as Mayflies, though it may not extend that far. Commonly a case of either Age Without Youth or Elderly Immortal. Whether this is straight up immortality or merely a few tidy extra decades (or centuries), it certainly is a nice bonus — assuming you don't get killed in action. Universes where Cast from Hit Points and Cast from Lifespan are in play are less likely to have this hold true.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Hunter × Hunter, nen practitioners tend to age more slowly because they can keep the aura that naturally leaks out of their bodies close to them, while a Muggle's aura just dissipates uselessly into the air.
• When Joey duels Yugi in the Duelist Kingdom arc of Yu-Gi-Oh!, he uses his Time Wizard to make Yugi's Dark Magician 1000 years older. Not only does this fail to kill the Dark Magician, it ends up transforming him into the more powerful Dark Sage because the magician simply spent those thousand years studying and training. This mechanism is imitated in the card game, but it only works if the controller of the Dark Magician uses Time Wizard and only if they call the coin toss correctly.
• Implied in Slayers when Shabranigdu tells Lina "Those who employ sorcery sometimes live for centuries". There are definitely limits, though, as Xelloss later makes clear.
  Xelloss: Rei Magnus was a sorcerer who lived five thousand years ago, you realize.
  Lina: Details, shmetails. What's a millennium or two among sorcerers? You can live as long as you want if you've got the guts!
  Xelloss: And what sort of life-extending magic guts might those be?
• Mu, espers from Toward the Terra, not only live longer than normal humans, but also age more slowly. It's implied that the more power they have, the longer they live. Blue, being one of the most powerful Mu, is three hundred and still looks like a young man, while his peers seem to be in their thirties or older.
• Witches in Soul Eater live extremely long. Medusa was alive eight hundred years ago and still looks like she's in her 20s.
• Fai D. Flowright in Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- looks to be in his twenties or so, but according to Yuuko he has already lived "several lifetimes".
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, one of the benefits of Ripple training is that it drastically reduces aging. Joseph Joestar is still relatively spry in Part III despite being a grandfather in his seventies thanks to the Ripple. In Part IV, time catches up with him and he finally starts looking and acting his age.
• Hades/Precht, Warrod and August from Fairy Tail are three of the most powerful wizards as well as the most ancient human characters in the series, discounting immortals like Zeref and humans-turned-dragons like Acnologia and Irene. The first two are old enough to be the father of Makarov, himself an 88 year old man and accomplished wizard (and were in fact friends with his father, Yuri Dreyar), and August is only slightly younger than Makarov.
• Witches in Little Witch Academia (2017) are implied to live very long lives. After a relatively normal schooling in their teens, they can live hundreds of years. The Headmistress looks like she's in her early 50s at most, and is well over 200 years old—one hint of this is that her deceased father (whom Akko and her friends accidentally raised from the dead) was buried in what looks like a bright red, Napoleonic-era military uniform.
• Adventurers in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?. While not wizards per se, though even those who aren't primary spellcasters tend to pick up a spell or two, have potentially longer lifespans than normal members of their race. It is explained that the same divine blessings that allow them to become stronger have a side effect of slowing the aging process and the effect gets more pronounced at higher levels. However being an adventurer is a high risk occupation, there's no guarantee that any given adventurer will actually get to enjoy their potentially extended lifespan.
• Implied in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid after it was revealed that Shouta's father is older than Tohru.
• The anime Berserk has a powerful witch named Flora, who has lived for several centuries.
• In Brynhildr in the Darkness it is horrorously inverted. If the witches do not take a pill there every day, their bodies melt. On the other hand, these girls are not real witches.
• Sheherazade from Magi: Labyrinth of Magic has lived through her magic for over 200 years. A "magical clone" of her pretended to be without age, while her real body was hidden in a secret place and got older.
• The Flames Hazes from Shakugan no Shana are humans who have made a pact with a powerful demon. From that moment, they will not be older. The anime even shows a Flame Haze, which was over 3000 years old.
• Fluder Paradyne from Overlord (2012) attempted a complex ritual to make him immortal but failed it though he was successful enough to be alive at 200. Ainz gave him a copy of The Book of The Dead that could turn him into an immortal lich but it's useless to him as he can't read Japanese.
• The witch, Fortune Teller Baba from Dragon Ball has been doing her job for 500 years. The reason for her longevity is never specified but she may have used one of her brother, Master Roshi's two methods. At the start of Dragon Ball, he mentions he had a pet phoenix that could bestow immortality but it has since died and in Dragon Ball Super he claims that eating Paradise Herb can let him live for another thousand years.
• Mages in The Ancient Magus' Bride can live for centuries while remaining in their prime.

Comic Books

• Thulsa Doom was made immortal to justify his Rogues' Gallery Transplant from Kull the Conqueror (1971) to The Savage Sword Of Conan set thousands of years later.
• In Fables, wizards can live longer if they learn and use the right spells. Frau Totenkinder, true to her name, powers her immortality with child sacrifice. She sets things up in the mundane world so that every abortion that occurs all across the world feeds into her power, so she's set for a long, long time.
• Wizards and witches in the Douwe Dabbert series of comic books can live for centuries and age very, very slowly.
• The Ancient One, Doctor Strange's mentor, lived to be over 600. Strange himself is The Ageless, having come to an agreement with Death as part of his trials to earn the title of Sorcerer Supreme.
• The Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Fray crossover ("Time of Your Life"), has Willow being still alive after having regained her powers. This takes place hundreds of years after Buffy.
  • Apparently it applies to many warlocks and witches, because the comics also show the two aunts of Giles, who are powerful witches, and have not aged over several decades.
• Nnewts: Anthigar and Denthigar, who are both magic users and were both born at the creation of the world, are both still alive in the present day. In the end, Denthigar survives the final battle and simply walks away after his Redemption Rejection, while Anthigar decides his time is up and willingly goes into the afterlife.
• The wizard, Shazam! is over 5,000 years old thanks to the power of the gods. Flashbacks show he was originally a young Flying Brick like Captain Marvel/Shazam. Some stories set thousands of years in the future show Captain Marvel as a Wizard Classic ready to pass on his powers to another kid.
• Wonder Woman foe Circe is the same one from Greek Mythology, and her longevity is due to her magic rather than the Amazon's immortality tied to their pocket dimension enclosed magical island, or the gods who exist on another plane.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen:
  • Oliver Haddo does this by Body Surfing. He'll train an apprentice mage and the last part of the training is a "Freaky Friday" Flip where he'll take the apprentice's body and leave them in his old dying one.
  • Prospero gained immortality by ascending to become ruler of the Blazing World.

Fan Works

• Avatar: Legend of the Guardian: The Guardian is noted to be incredibly Long-Lived. The real Min is over a hundred years old, having known Avatar Roku and Fire Lord Sozin personally.
• Child of the Storm has 'wanded' (Harry Potter style) witches and wizards, who mature in their late teens/early 20s, and live for up to about 200 years, and 'wandless' (Harry Dresden style) style practitioners, whose magical abilities mature when they're about a century old, and live for over 400 years (though they're pretty elderly by that point). This is explained as a trade-off between a greater degree of fine control and a greater connection to the magic of the natural world. The difference is compared to being right and left-handed, but while there is a degree of overlap (most obvious with some wanded practitioners having a talent for some wandless magic), and there is a way to become 'magically ambidextrous', it's not known whether this has any effect on lifespan, as in the latter case, the inventors of the art died in their early 30s, and their daughter, who mastered it, is in her 20s.
  • The Sorcerer Supreme and their anointed successor also learns how to master both kinds of magic, but they have their ageing process frozen, and even if they didn't, they usually die long before it has any major effect. Doctor Strange, the current incumbent (until chapter 27 of the sequel, when he abdicates the title and spends the next 7 chapters pretending to be dead for reasons of his own), is one of the exceptions to the rule, having held the position since 1645. He's even more of an exception than is usually realised, as he was, in fact, born around 500 AD, and was raised and taught alongside Merlin in Camelot. After Camelot fell, he was altered by the Time Stone, and became The Ageless and a Time Master without equal, resulting in a lot of time travelling that has pushed the best estimates of his age to somewhere around 500,000 years old.
  • Merlin, meanwhile, is about as old as Thor and Loki at 1500 years old, and if anything, he actually looks younger than them. No one's entirely sure why, though it's strongly implied to be due to his intense connection to the magic of the Earth - something supported by the fact that Nimue, Arc Villain of Unfinished Business jury-rigs a similar connection and promptly goes from someone who's about 80 (give or take a millennium and a half being Not Quite Dead) and looks middle-aged to looking like the gorgeous 20-something she once did.
• Paradoxus: On principle, fairies and witches have longer lifespans than earthling humans, but those with either the whole or just a spark of the Dragon's Flame are really, really longevous (~200 years old) — i.e., Domino's royal family and the nymphs. Played With since despite aging slowly, the godlike power they carry either makes them targets or causes them to be involved in conflicts. As a result, they are often killed young.
• It is brought up in The Weight of Jade that as the wielder of the turtle miraculous and future guardian, Nino's lifespan will be supernaturally extended and will outlive all of his friends.
• The Wizard and the Huntress: One characteristic all magic users seem to possess is that they are able to stop aging when they realize their magical potential, Douxie having ceased aging in the 12th-century and Barbara at some point before that.

Film — Animated

• The four wizards in The Flight of Dragons are said to be centuries old.
• In Ralph Bakshi's Wizards, the Elinore says Wizards can live over 10,000 years and Avatar, who already looks old, claims that he has at least another 1,000 years to go before he might expire.

Film — Live-Action

• In City of the Dead, The Devil resurrects burned witches, gives them immortality and makes them Immune to Bullets in exchange for sacrificing young girls twice a year.
• Thulsa Doom from Conan the Barbarian (1982) is a Sorcerous Overlord who claims to have been watching humanity for a thousand years. We don't know if this is true or something he says to impress his followers.
• Angelique the witch in Dark Shadows is centuries old and has to keep pretending to be her descendants.
• In Godmothered, Agnes, who is a fairy godmother, says she is at least 172 years old.
• Vigo The Carpathian from Ghostbusters II:
  • He was a Sorcerous Overlord who was still in his prime at 105 and only died after a Rasputinian Death where his head was still talking after it was cut off. In the movie, he's trying to come back and possess a new body.
  • In the earlier script, he'd never died and just lived to modern day using fake names. Though he did intend to die and transfer his soul into a baby.
• Going by Freeze-Frame Bonus Daily Prophet headlines, wizards in the Harry Potter movies live a lot longer than their book counterparts:
  • An article in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone says that a wizard called "Barry Wee Willie Winkle" is celebrating his 755th birthday.
  • Another Prophet article in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets mentions Dumbledore's predecessor, Armando Dippet is suspected of causing a broom accident on his 355th birthday. Given that his portrait can be seen in Dumbeldore's office with the other dead headmasters later in the movie, it can be inferred he died shortly after.
  • Ron says Dumbeldore is 150 in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince but everyone bursts out laughing so it's not clear how serious he is.
• The Labyrinth Expanded Universe says that King Jareth is older than he looks:
  • The novelization says he kidnapped Toby to distract himself from the fact that he was ageing but implies he's pretty old, saying he's used to an era where people asking goblins to take their children away was more common.
  • The Return to Labyrinth manga says he's been ruling the Labyrinth for 1,300 years and implies he roamed the multiverse for a long time before that.
  • The Labyrinth: Coronation comic said he was a human child kidnapped by the previous king in the 18th century. He was intended as a sacrifice in a ritual that would make the Labyrinth's previous ancient but dying ruler, The Owl King young again.
• Star Wars:
  • A possible explanation for Yoda's longevity expressed in Return of the Jedi (instead of a species trait). Star Wars Legends generally doesn't give ages, but agrees that Jedi have significantly longer lifespans than others of their species. This is justified by the healing explanation given above — one of the most basic Force techniques involves the manipulation of one's own bodily functions. It could also explain why Yoda seems to have suddenly aged quite a bit between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi even though only 1 year has passed (out of his total 900 years of life): once he reached the limits of Force-aided longevity, all those years caught up to him at once.
  • Also supported by the Legends character Fay, who is already several centuries old in her first-and-only appearance, and is stated to have such a strong connection to the Force that she might "live forever". Additionally, unlike Yoda, Fay is a Near-Human, and so doesn't have the potential species justification he does. The Sephi, the strongest candidate for Fay's species, typically have a maximum lifespan of four hundred, not the seven hundred that Fay has reached while not looking a day over twenty.
  • Obi-Wan, however, ages rather horribly, going from looking like he's in his late 20s or early 30s (at the age of 38) to an old man (at 57) in a timespan of just 20-odd years. ^note It should be noted that Alec Guinness was about 62 when they were filming A New Hope, he'd just gone white early, meaning it wasn't quite as egregious as it first appeared - he just looked older than he was. This was partly because he's living in a harsh desert and because he is depressed and not taking care of himself.

Literature

• The Thousanders in Anathem are implied to be able to hold their long lives steady despite living near piles of radioactive nuclear waste via scientific Biomanipulation and manipulating worldtracks so advanced as to approach Magic from Technology.
• Mages in An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride can control every aspect of their bodies, including controlling how much sleep they get despite how tired they are and can live for centuries with ease. Zagan notes that despite this, he's still human and the non-humans who make up his group will eventually all outlive him.
• In Art Of The Adept, this is the first power Will learns, and the foundation of true wizardry. A person's turyn is life-force, Mana, and lifespan in one, so most wizards Cast from Lifespan and are wiped out after a little magic. But a properly-trained wizard instead learns to discipline and compress his turyn and use essentially none of his own lifeforce in daily life, instead living off of turyn from the environment. This allows a wizard to recover much more quickly from spellcasting, and also extends his lifespan for centuries.
• The Belgariad:
  • It's stated that sorcerers live as long as they "need to," although notably even after the plot has been completely resolved, they show no sign of starting to die off, and it's strongly implied that barring unnatural intervention, they keep going as long as they have the will to live - which makes sense, since their power is literally based on "the Will and the Word". For reference, the oldest sorcerer is over seven thousand years old at this point, isn't much younger than human civilization, and has looked pretty much exactly the same for the last 5000 years.
  • The ageing process among Sorcerers is also discussed in one of the prequels, narrated by Belgarath, who observes how he - and all the other male sorcerers - look like vigorous men in their late 60s/early 70s, while his daughter, Polgara, looks about 30 at most despite being about 3500 years old, something that Belgarath speculates has to do with the social double standard of old men being considered wise elders to listen to, and old women being considered crones to be held in contempt and ignored. It's also implied that Sorcerers' shape-shifting powers work by forcing the body to adopt the form visualised by the sorcerer, so if they visualise un-aged organs they will have un-aged organs. They cannot practically heal acute injuries because of the energy required, but one sorcerer ages and de-ages himself as required for disguise and another undoes the effect of years of dissipation.
  • From the same series, witches (who use magical powers based on manipulating nature spirits, as opposed to sorcerers, whose powers come from within themselves) live quite a bit longer than normals, though not nearly as long as sorcerers.
  • Magicians, whose power is based on controlling demons, usually get eaten long before natural lifespan becomes an issue.
• In The Beyonders wizards could live for thousands of years, even minor Edomic practioners such as the Oracle's acolytes could learn techniques to slow aging.
• Less powerful wizards in The Black Company can live well over a century, and despite looking like very old men are as physically capable as a man in his forties. The really powerful ones are completely ageless.
• In the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, certain branches of magic serve to prolong the lives of their practitioners. In particular, this is seen with the Lords (the Old Lords could and did live for centuries; the New Lords, who are less powerful, are still fairly long lived, with Lord Mhoram being about eighty by the third book and looking around half that), Kasreyn of the Gyre (who, though not truly immortal, prolonged his life with Black Magic and a Deal with the Devil) and the Insequent (who are even more long-lived than the Old Lords, though exactly how long they live isn't clear), but even relatively weak elemental magic-users like gravelingases and hirebrands live longer-than-normal lives. Inverted with Drool Rockworm, whose magic visibly aged him (owing in part to the malignant nature of the powers he was trying to harness, and in part to his own ineptitude), and it's uncertain if the strange magic of the ur-viles and waynhim can produce extended life, as such creatures don't die of natural causes anyway.
• As warriors and magi in Coiling Dragon increase in rank, their lifetime extends from the normal 120-130 years to up to 500 years. To live longer than that, one needs to become a Saint.
• Accomplished village sorcerers live until about 200 in the Commonweal. If you're any better than that, you have to become immortal, otherwise people are at risk for wizard dementia.
• True in Nick Perumov's books set in the Consistent multiverse. Local mages of various worlds, who may be powerful for their home settings but aren't as significant in the multiverse as whole, have lesser longevity: the archmage Seges of Diamond Sword, Wooden Sword is fairly within human age limits, something around 80, however she's a stunning beauty and not an old crone. The world-travelling mages, such as Clara Hummel and Ignacius Cooper, more powerful than local hicks, have greater longevity still; Clara is several centuries old, Ignacius even older. The Mage Species known as the True Mages, the most powerful of the lot, are The Ageless.
• In The Cosmere setting by Brandon Sanderson:
  • In Elantris Dakhor monks have longer-than-natural lifespans, though how long precisely is never said. Elantrians have been confirmed via Word of God to be able to live forever, although they can still die from other means, and they generally do choose to die eventually
  • In Mistborn, the Lord Ruler is functionally immortal and his Steel Inquisitor servants are longer lived than normal humans, despite having metal spikes through their skulls. The former is by far the most powerful Allomancer on the planet and the latter are considerably stronger than normal as well. The Lord Ruler is revealed to be combining Allomancy with a lesser known Equivalent Exchange based magic called Feruchemy to violate said equivalent exchange limitations and generate unlimited health and youth. His Inquisitors have a lesser version granted via the metal spikes in their body in a form of Blood Magic.
  • In Warbreaker each person is born with a Breath, which can be given to others and used in Awakening. As a person accumulates more Breaths, they live longer and become resistant to diseases. With a few thousand Breaths they become ageless and are immune to virtually all ailments.
• The Old Ones in The Dark is Rising are immortal.
• Daybreak on Hyperion has mages routinely living to two centuries barring illness or injury. Samarans lives a comparable time and it is suspected this is because they are inherently magical to some degree. Dhampire's may live even longer, or at least enjoy an extended period of youth.
• In Dragon Wing, the first book of The Death Gate Cycle, Hugh the Hand remarks to King Stephen's court wizard how young he looks. He responds "wars and kingship age a man; magic does not." Further reinforced by the Sartan and Patryns, both Mage Species who can live for centuries.
• In Robin Jarvis' Deptford Mice books, the magic-wielding monarchs known as Starwives are given much longer lifespans than ordinary creatures. For example, one of them reigned for nearly three hundred years.
• In the Deverry Cycle, Nevyn the wizard lived over 400 years... but he was fate's plaything and that's not normal. One of his rivals, an Old Master, lived to over 200 due to extending his life with (Dark) magic. Typically wizards don't seem to live longer though; only really skilled wizards master the art of living long, and Light dweomermasters aren't afraid of death because they know they'll reincarnate.
• Averted in A Discovery of Witches where witches (male and female) have normal human lifespans. Unless they are "Bright Born" (descendants of the union between a vampire and a weaver) though their lifespans get shorter with each generation.
• Happens in Discworld. Barring fatal accidents (or less commonly "accidents"), most mages live well past their nineties, even despite their horrible Big Eater habits — though it's Age Without Youth and feels even longer. Windle Poons dies at 130 years of age and spent half his life infirm.
• Implied in the Dragaera novels. Dragaerans have an average lifespan of around 2,500-3,000 years but there are references to wizards living longer, and Sethra Lavode was over 10,000 years before it was discovered (at that time) that she was undead. Easterners have a more normal human life span, but powerful witches can live a good deal longer; Lazlo the Warlock was a young man during the Interregnum and still looks like he's in his early thirties 250 years later.
• In the Dragonriders of Pern series, dragonriders can live well past 100 during an Interval (a minor character lived to 130 and was at most slowing down). During a Pass, however, the constant combat against Thread tends to give them shorter lifespans.
• Wizards in The Dresden Files live considerably longer than normal. Dresden estimates it at around three or four centuries, which lines up pretty closely with the ages of the Senior Council (the oldest and most powerful wizards). Harry's doctor observes that wizard bodies heal perfectly — no faster than a normal human, but leaving no trace of the injury or ailment, even in the case of a severely burned hand that would normally require amputation — and theorizes that this contributes to their longevity.
• Wizards in Fablehaven live for millennia, probably due to the fact that they were once immortal dragons that took permanent human form in order to increase their magical abilities drastically. Oh, and witches (different) seem to live a while, for some reason.
• Downplayed in The Elenium: the Archmages Sephrenia and Zalasta are centuries old and the Delphae may live even longer, although the Magic Knights of the Church have normal lifespans. However, Religion is Magic and Magic is Religion, so those powerful and long-lived mages are the rare few that have gained the personal attention of a deity.
• Harry Potter:
  • Magical characters seem to naturally have a longer lifespan than average. Dumbledore is the picture of good health despite being 110 during the events of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and there are several living characters that are a generation older than him — Bathilda Bagshot and Griselda Marchbanks to name but two. It has been mentioned that the wizard life expectancy was about 137 and 3/4, and the oldest known died at 755 - though that's an Easter Egg in one of the films, so it's debatable as to whether it applies to the books. Dumbledore also didn’t die of natural causes and his brother, who’s two years younger, is still around and works every day.
  • Nicolas Flamel, the wizard responsible for creating the Philosopher's Stone itself, is said to be 664 in the first book — though this is explicitly due to the immortality serum the Philosopher's Stone generates. Plus, this was stated in a book that Hermione got out the library, so it is very likely that he was even older since we do not know the book's publication date. It's implied that without the Stone, Flamel and his wife Perenelle won't live for very long. As Dumbledore put it, they have just enough serum to put their affairs in order before "the next great adventure".
  • Hagrid is well into his 60s by the time the books take place, though he doesn't look it - Moody remarks in passing on a photo of the original Order of the Phoenix that Hagrid looks "exactly the same as always", and Harry mentions in the epilogue, that Hagrid is still working at Hogwarts in his 90s. Having both wizard and giant ancestry gives him an extended lifespan even by ordinary wizard standards.
  • Word of God says that wizards can live twice as long as Muggles, though apparently this isn't always the case — most of the Black family seem to have died long before their 100th birthday (probably due to all that inbreeding).
  • Gellert Grindelwald manages to outlive Dumbledore by a year. Even he didn’t die of natural causes but rather suicide by proxy.
  • The big irony of all this is that Voldemort, the series' resident Immortality Seeker, ends up dying in his early seventies. He could have lived decades more if he hadn't messed around with Horcruxes and world domination.
  • Newt Scamander, who wrote the textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and became the protagonist of the film series of the same name is still alive despite being born in 1897. His wife, Tina, who was born in 1901 is also still alive.
  • Word of God also states that Harry's paternal grandparents, Fleamont and Euphemia Potter, were elderly even by wizarding standards when they had James in 1960.
• Mages in the Heralds of Valdemar series, especially the Tayledras and others who work with node magic, tend to be preserved at late middle age some years beyond the average lifespan. The flip side is that when they do reach the end of their life, they burn out and die in a matter of days or weeks.
• His Dark Materials: The witches age far more slowly than humans with Serafina about 300 years old but looks about 30 while the oldest can get over 1,000 years old. This actually can be a problem as they must mate with normal men (because only women can be witches) and if they fall for the man, they have to live with watching him grow old while the witch barely ages. The same with having a son, who will have only a normal lifespan.
• Azusa from I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level died and asked for Complete Immortality when reincarnated in her next life. In response, the angel made her a witch whose body recirculates Mana and stops her aging. The woman at the guild reception says that some powerful witches can fine-tune their mana circulation to prolong their lives but is shocked that Azusa has immortality at level 1.
• In the Inheritance Cycle Dragon Riders live much longer than normal humans, and the witch Angela also mentions being "much older than she looks".
• In the Iron Druid Chronicles Druids have insanely strong regenerative powers when their bare skin touches earth. They are still subject to old age but they can heal any injuries or diseases which makes them long lived. The contrast between their lifespans and those of ordinary people must have been even greater 21 centuries ago when the Druids were wiped out by the Romans. Atticus has managed to become immortal by combining his druidic regeneration powers with a special rejuvenation potion, the Herb Lore of Airmid that can subvert - and even reverse - the aging process, meaning that he tends to stay looking 21 (though he was taught by Airmid when he was in his 70s, meaning he reached a fairly respectable age even before that).
• Appears to happen at least occasionally in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. The legendary Raven King ruled for 300 years without appearing to age, and footnotes mention that even the daughter of a charlatan magician who deliberately cultivated the uncertain magical nature of her father's house by deliberately letting it go to ruin managed to reach a respectable 149 years of age. Otherwise, it's somewhat ambiguous, since it's noted that a lot of powerful magicians went off into Faerie to explore and were never seen again.
• The Kane Chronicles: Iskandar lived in a time when the Romans conquered ancient Egypt and became 2000 years old. The books also show Desjardins, a magician over 200 years old. Apparently this is not uncommon for magicians and witches.
• Schmendrick in The Last Unicorn is temporarily immortal partially due to incompetence. His teacher decides there is no way he can reach his proper potential with a normal life span, since his talent for screwing up is even more powerful than his aptitude for magic. He's too potentially powerful to just let him pass on unfulfilled, so he gives him immortality with a clause: if he ever figures out how to cast spells properly, he will be mortal again. Schmendrick wants to be a magician so bad, he regards his immortality as nothing more than proof of his failure.
• In Richard A. Knaak's Dragonrealm series:
  • Human wizards can live on average for 300 years, with exceptionally powerful ones being able to extend that further and even those with little power having extended lifespans by several decades. This is due to both slowed aging and the use of rejuvenation spells, to the point it's not uncommon for a wizard who looks to be in his 20s or 30s to actually be over 100. As wizards near the end of their life, however, it takes more energy to maintain such spells, and they'll start aging much more normally.
  • Drakes can live even longer, with it being mentioned the strongest can live up to 1000 years. Though given the drakes' perchance for battle and treachery, it's hard to find any that live over 600. The Crystal Dragon King was an exception, being the first of his line and outliving several of his "heirs" through age alone, though he had the help of a powerful artifact for that matter.
  • The Vraad were even more impressive, their Physical God-like magic allowing them to live for thousands of years and still only look middle-aged. Their arrival in the Dragonrealm, along with the loss of much of said magic, also came with effects of age creeping up on them faster, which several found quite disconcerting after living for so long without signs of visible aging. Gerrod Tezerenne, one of the youngest of his clan, was about 900 years old when he made the crossing of worlds and would go on to outlive many of them when he became Shade, who's practically a Time Abyss, though he cheats in that regard.
• Inverted in The Lightbringer Series. Drafting (using magic) causes whatever color is being drafted to start accumulating in the drafter's eyes around the pupils. When the drafted ring pushes past the irises, the drafter, "breaks the halo," and is overwhelmed by their color, becoming a color wight. Color wights are considered monsters by the society of the Seven Satrapies, and they're killed on sight. As a result, there are very few drafters over the ago of 40.
• The Little Witch: The little Witch is a hundred and twenty-seven years old, but the big witches deem her too young to join Walpurgis Night.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • Justified with the "wizards", who are explained to be divine beings on the level of low-ranking Biblical angels in semi-mortal forms - they still age, just extremely slowly, going from middle-aged to old and vigorous over about 1000 years.
  • Also justified with the nine sorcerer-kings who became the Nazgûl, as the Rings which gave them their powers also anchored their souls to the mortal world. Unfortunately for them, this had the ultimate side-effect of turning them into soulless, undead horrors after a few centuries.
• In The Lost Years of Merlin, wizards can live a thousand years or more. Interestingly, their non-magical descendants (wizardry often skips a generation, as is mentioned many times, seen in how both Merlin's grandfather and grandson possessed powers, but not his father or son) can too, since in the Sequel Series, The Great Tree Of Avalon, we find out that Merlin's son died in a fight when he was over 900. It has also been seen the wizard's blood has healing properties, and grants long life to those it is transfused into.
• Inverted in CS Friedman's Magister Trilogy, where "ordinary" magic-users (witches) have drastically shortened life-spans because their magic slowly eats them up. Also played straight with the titular Magisters, who have learned how to latch on to the souls of others and use them as an alternate source of power, which has the side-effect of rendering them functionally immortal.
• The warlocks in The Mortal Instruments are the common children of humans and demons. At some point in their lives, which varies from warlock to warlock, they do not age anymore.
• In Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner series (and by extension the Tamír Triad set in the same universe) wizards can potentially live up to 400 years old. Mainly due to the (human) wizards of this world being genetic throw-backs to inter-breeding with the Aurenfaie (Elves, essentially), from whom they inherit the long lifespan and magical abilities.
• In Sergey Lukyanenko's Night Watch (Series):
  • The Others (mages secretly living among humans) stop aging soon after consciously using magic for the first time. Children still tend to age to maturity at a normal enough rate, but if you're old and not initiated until say 70, good luck with being 70 for a very long time (even though magic can make that be a very healthy 70). A few uninitiated Others refuse to undergo initiation and live out the rest of their lives as normal humans.
  • Several novels mention that it works different for witches, who are Closer to Earth and, thus, can't completely stop their aging process. They can sustain themselves indefinitely through magic, but taking magic away drops the mask, and they end up looking like old hags and will, eventually, die if magic is held off for too long. One witch is so old that removing magic from her is likely to cause her to crumble to dust. Naturally, magic makes her look like a young hottie.
• Wizards in Off To Be The Wizard are able to use their reality-warping computer code to freeze their ages indefinitely. Usually at 23.
• Old Kingdom: The Clayr tend to live for well over a century, for reasons not fully understood; Lirael's great-great-grandmother Filris is around 150 when she dies. In Clariel, Mistress Ader, the headmistress of the school Clariel is sent to, turns out to be a former Abhorsen who retired a century before, hinting that all of the Great Charter bloodlines have the potential to live as long as the Clayr but don't due to their more dangerous lifestyles.
• In German author Michael Peinkofer's Orks and Wizards series, mages are usually elves, but the only human mage also lives at least a thousand years without any explanation. On the other hand, his specialty is time magic, so maybe he's just lucky.
• Patternist: The titular Psychics can keep themselves in peak condition through Biomanipulation and an innate Healing Factor; Anyanwu, the best biomancer in history, is The Ageless. Zig-zagged in the Feudal Future of Patternmaster, where politics are so cutthroat that an ambitious Patternist is quite lucky to reach age 70.
• In the Realm of the Elderlings series, users of the Skill can use it to heal and improve their bodies, leading to much longer lifespans. Kettle in Assassin's Quest is revealed to be nearing three hundred and while she looks elderly is still spry enough to keep up on a long mountain journey. Chade Fallstar is probably in his 50s in the first book of the series and is only starting to wear down in the last trilogy, some 60 years later. Fitz himself is subjected to an overcharged Skill-healing in the Tawny Man trilogy that gives him a Healing Factor and keeps him from aging into the Fitz and the Fool trilogy some 30 years later.
• The Reluctant King: Those who remain teetotalers and celibate can double or sometimes triple their lifespan, plus gaining higher magical strength.
• Sufficiently powerful sorcerers in The Riftwar Cycle can live for several normal lifetimes; many evil ones use Black Magic on top of this to try for genuine immortality.
• Seems to be the case in Rivers of London, with the last English wizard being over one hundred years old. This appears to be a unique or at least recent phenomenon, however: he began aging in reverse sometime in the 1970s, and he's as mystified by it as anyone else. Other wizards did not have this trait.
• Inverted by chaos mages in Saga of Recluce — unless a mage is extremely careful with chaos energy, it will degrade their bodies more quickly than normal, leading them to age and die sooner than non-mages (unless they Body Surf out, as some eventually learn to do; their new bodies go even faster). Order mages, on the other hand, do tend to live longer. The few mages who understand both have a technique to stop aging entirely, so long as they don't screw around with pure chaos.
• The Scholomance: If the protagonist's offhanded comment is anything to go by, wizards can easily live to 150 if they don't fall to using Black Magic and rot from the inside out. They show no sign of being physically different from mundane humans, but can heal themselves with magic.
• Schooled in Magic: Wizards appear to live about two or three times longer than non-magical people. It is suggested that this is due to their power (most likely caused by spells) and so the more powerful wizards live longer than less powerful ones.
• In The Secrets of Droon, Galen and Sparr are both over 500 years old.
• The Druids in the Shannara series discovered a magical technique called the Druid-sleep that allowed them to live much longer than normal men, with the price that they had to spend much of that time inert, in a suspended state between life and death. Allanon explains to a young woman looking for her father it also makes them infertile. The plot of the first book, The Sword of Shannara, was touched off by the efforts of one Druid, Brona, to find a better way of extending their lifespans; he failed. Simultaneously inverted, as Allanon reveals to Wil at the end of the second book, Elfstones of Shannara, that all the magic he used in the war against the demons had physically aged him many years in the space of a few weeks, with his previously entirely black hair having turned all white.
• Implied in Skin Hunger, though the long life is the result of a magic spell, not something all witches and wizards have.
• The case of every mage in Skulduggery Pleasant, though how long they live varies from mage to mage. The worst one mentioned ages at only half the speed of a normal human while Word of God says that the oldest mages live to be around two thousand.
  • If a mage stops doing magic for a few years, they'll start aging again but will stop if they use magic.
• Star Wars Legends states that Jedi tend to age more slowly than normal folk.
  • Knights of the Old Republic lampshades it when someone remarks that the Exile doesn't look a day older than s/he did during the Mandalorian Wars a decade earlier. By contrast, most Sith seem to burn out faster, but are still able to extend their life past what it ought to be using the Dark Side, to the point where they're almost zombies, Freedon Naad and Darth Sion being great examples.
  • The dark side version of this is displayed in Darth Xedrix, a respected Sith Lord likely well over a hundred years old. Though he tries to convince everyone that he is every bit as powerful as in his youth, when he is actually forced to fight he quickly reveals himself as a frail and powerless old man once he overexerts himself.
  • Human ages in Legends vary Depending on the Author; in Timothy Zahn's works a governor can be forty and considered young, and sixty is middle aged, perhaps because they have better medical technology in the Galaxy Far Far Away. At least one later-set book states that Han should have until he's about a hundred twenty before his faculties start to fail, though other books regard human ages with more Earth-standard eyes. However, a Force-Sensitive woman in The Courtship of Princess Leia is stated to be three hundred years old (not quite clear-cut as Dathomari are a Human Subspecies and the Witches follow completely different rules from other Force users). According to the wiki, Tales of the Jedi has an example of a Force-sensitive human living to eight hundred.
• In Robin McKinley's Sunshine, the titular character has always thought of this trope as wish fulfillment. She learns from a retired professional magic handler that while most ordinary magic handlers won't notice much difference, those who are powerful and steep themselves in magic can live to be very old indeed. This is not a cheerful thought, given that The End of the World as We Know It is predicted within the next century.
• Sweet & Bitter Magic: Some of the witches have lived from one to three hundred years, which is not presented as unusual.
• Third Time Lucky: And Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World: Magdelene is the most powerful wizard in the world. She's lived for centuries. Her son, a wizard too, has also lived for centuries now. In her case, it's due to her magic stopping her aging. We can infer it likely was for him too.
• Sorcerers in Tigana are noted to be long-lived (much to the displeasure of the people of the Peninsula of the Palm, most of whom are subjugated to one of two sorcerer-kings who won't even have the decency to die in a reasonable span). One sorcerer, King Brandin, is in his sixties, looks like he's in his forties, and fully expects to still be alive and hale after another sixty years, though his upper limit for aging isn't specified.
• Titus Crow:
  • In "Lord of the Worms" Julian Carstairs, the titular Lord has been alive for 350 years by swapping bodies with younger men every few centuries. The ritual only works on people with certain birt dates and names with a specific numerological significance. Carstairs does during the ritual because he had the wrong with year for Crow.
  • Attempted in Elysia where the sorcerer, Exior makes a deal with Cthulhu to gain immortality. Being a Jackass Genie, Cthulhu said that the only true immortality is continuing one's bloodline and gave Exior dominant genetics that made all his descendants look exactly like him.
• Uprooted: Those born with the gift of magic live for centuries and show almost no signs of aging for most of their lives. This applies whether or not they use their powers; one character was identified as a wizard, to his own surprise, when he worked in a monastery for forty years and didn't age a day past twenty.
• Wild Wizards at least in David Weber's War Gods series. Wencit of Rum wasn't precisely young during the Fall of Kontovar, and is showing no signs of slowing down over a millennium later. The same "magic field" that gives Wencit his power is also responsible for the Hradani living twice as long as humans, and the immortality of the elves is explicitly linked to magic since they used to be a human strain of spellcasters with a specific natural gift rather than a learned ability.
• In Janny Wurt's Wars of Light and Shadow:
  • The Fellowship of Seven are over ten thousand years old. Their apprentices are also capable of avoiding aging.
  • The Koriathain process can only add up to 500 years to a person's lifespan and is only reserved for important members, which becomes convenient when one of them falls in love with the protagonist, who just happened to drink from a fountain that gives one an additional five hundred (strife-filled) years of life.
• In The Wheel of Time:
  • Women who can channel the One Power age more slowly the more powerful they are and can live for centuries. The age cap for modern Aes Sedai is about 300 years, though the Oath Rod on which they swear their binding vows is revealed to reduce the lifespan drastically: a channeler from Seanchan is still spry at over 400.
  • Inverted in the present day for male channelers, thanks to the Dark One's taint on the male side of the One Power destroying their bodies and minds early in adulthood, though it was played straight before the Taint and goes back to normal after Rand cleanses the One Power of the Dark One's influence.
• Wizards and sorceresses in The Witcher series can live for hundreds of years, and the oldest living wizard in the Saga is about five hundred. Season of Storms reveals this is thanks to a certain magical potion. Witchers can live for more than two hundred years due to their alchemic and magical enhancements, and Geralt himself is in his early 70s at the start of the saga.
• Wizard of Yurt: Daimbert's predecessor is around two hundred years old. Wizards can extend their lives with magic, though they'll still die eventually.
• In Wody Głębokie Jak Niebo the more powerful wizard is, the longer he will live. Sever who is one of the strongest mages in the book rules for over two hundred year and dies only because he himself wants to die. If a wizard starts getting ill it means that his power is decreasing. Some mages drink blood of their offspring to refresh their magic and prolong their own life.
• In the Young Wizards series:
  • Inverted by default. Wizardry is a high-risk occupation, since being a wizard makes you a personal enemy of the Lone Power. And as you get better at magic, the riskier the jobs get, and all the while the Big Bad keeps getting more and more pissed off at you. Cast from Hit Points and Cast from Lifespan are also viable ways of tapping into extra power in a pinch, such as once incident where a main character uses a shield spell that uses up a year of her lifespan for every hit it takes.
  • Played straight for magic users who join the Lone Power, as it invented death in the first place, jealously protects it, and makes sure anything a natural lifespan can be traded in for... is very ugly indeed. Although there have been hints that the few wizards the Lone Power merely likes (they oppose it, but make useful tools) do tend to live long and stress-free lives - because they never confront it when it wants to win.

Live-Action TV

• The Barbarian and the Troll: Wizards like Horus live for about 300 years.
• On Bewitched, witches and warlocks have extremely long lifespans, possibly thousands of years. However, they are technically a distinct species from regular humans, even though they can interbreed.
• Linoge in Storm of the Century says he "only" has a century or so left to live, which is why he shows up on Little Tall Island to select an apprentice and heir from the town's children (whom he says will also live as long as he did). It's implied he appears in The Bible as the demon Legion, which would make him at least 2,000 years old.
• Wizards and witches in Sabrina the Teenage Witch live for hundreds of years. Sabrina's aunts have been around at least since The Renaissance.
• In the series Supernatural especially powerful wizards and witches are apparently also able to get very old. The series shows several witches, which are apparently several centuries old. But it is implied that only powerful witches have this ability.
• Chilling Adventures of Sabrina has witches and warlocks who are many centuries old. It is mentioned that the pact with the devil gives them such a long life expectancy.
  • When Sabrina is due to stand trial before the Court of Witches, her aunts are stripped of their powers start aging decades in a day. They instantly get their powers and youth back when Sabrina wins her trial.
• The Witcher (2019): Yennefer seems to stop aging after becoming a fully-fledged sorceress, looking no different before and after a 30-year Time Skip.

Music

• Subverted in the Evillious Chronicles—the sorceress Elluka Clockworker is immortal in the sense that she can't age (she's still able to be killed, though). However, she isn't immortal because she's a witch. It was a side effect of her fiancee trying to bring her back to life after her jealous sister-in-law murdered her. It becomes even more confusing when it's revealed that Elluka was never actually brought back to life; she's actually an amnesiac goddess named Levia inhabiting her body.

Tabletop Games

• Ars Magica: Justified by a Longevity Treatment that any Hermetic mage can design. Mages can eventually get too old for the ritual to work, but most get partway through their second century before accumulating enough residual magic that Wizard's Twilight permanently glitches them out of reality.
• Deadlands:
  • All three of the "core" openly magical Arcane Backgrounds have some way to reduce the effects of aging. Hucksters get a year of their life added in the here-and-now (unless they suffer a Critical Failure) while the Blessed and Shamans have ways to greatly reduce the rate at which they age.
  • Mad Scientists, on the other hand, lack a method to slow aging, but can opt to go transhuman instead, like Darius Helstromme did. In the nineteenth century, "transhuman" equals "reanimated zombie brain in a jar in a clanky steam robot body".
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Zig-zagged in older editions with Wizards. On the one hand, they can craft life-extending potions, although most reach old age before reaching the necessary level of expertise — and an error can messily take back all the years that the potions delay. On the other, many powerful spells are Cast from Lifespan, meaning wizards are vulnerable to living shorter unless they're careful with their powers.
  • Some editions grant Druids the "Timeless Body" class feature at higher levels: in 3^rd, they simply don't lose ability points for aging and still die at the normal age; in 5^th, their aging slows by a factor of 10.
  • In 5^th edition, Oath of the Ancients Paladins, upon reaching a high enough level, outright stop aging and are unable to be aged magically.
  • Forgotten Realms: The Archmage Elminster is over a thousand years old, thanks in part to being Chosen by the goddess of magic.
• Exalted live much longer than mortal humans do, assuming nothing manages to kill them. On top of that, most kinds (except Sidereals, who have a preset death date Because Destiny Says So) can extend their lifespan even further through various kinds of magic.
  • Solars and Lunars: apparently average around 2,000-3,000 years, though use of various Charms and treatments can push it much higher; Solars can theoretically hit 10,000 years.
  • Sidereals: depends on when their Exaltation is due to move to a new host, but generally at least 3,000 years. One has been known to last 5,000.
  • Terrestrials: 200-500 years, those with good Breeding tend to live longer than those without.
  • Abyssals and Alchemicals: functionally immortal, as they are essentially The Undead and Golems, respectively.
  • Infernals: depends on Essence, going from 150 years at lowest to 2500+ years at highest. However, they can gain apotheosis — and immortality — before age becomes an issue.
• Shadowrun: The immortal elves are all stupendously powerful magicians, but the causality goes the other way around: they're that good because they've had thousands of years of practice, and because they know techniques from the previous magical age that everyone else hasn't (re)discovered yet. Some normal elves have unexplained genes that make them live longer, which are more common in powerfully magical elves.
• Magic: The Gathering: Planeswalkers used to be able to live indefinitely, and post-nerfing they still live for a very long time. Even wizards who aren't planeswalkers can extend their lifespans by drinking water from an area where time passes more slowly.
• Pathfinder: Wizards and alchemists can choose to become The Ageless once they reach the highest level. Sorcerers of the Imperious bloodline do so automatically.
• Starfinder: Mystics achieve Enlightenment at level 20, and thus cease to age any further.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Zig-zagged with psykers: the power of the Warp can keep them young and healthy for hundreds of years, or burn them to ash within hours, or mutate them into horrible creatures, or grant them Age Without Youth, or turn them into a planet-dooming Hellgate, or just leave them to live a normal lifespan with the added ability to set people on fire. It varies as the power of sheer unreality tends to do.
  • In general, it seems to be a rule that races with psychic ability live longer. The Tau have almost no warp presence, and live 40 years. Humans have some warp presence, varying from person to person, and live hundreds. Eldar, the standard psychic powers race, can live to be over 1,000 (with specialized fortune-tellers living far longer, one even managing to stay alive for over 10,000 years). The two races most connected to the warp, the Orks and Chaos proper, are both effectively The Ageless. The rules are muddied by extensive life-prolonging technologies — rumoured to be fuelled with the lives of children, mind.
• Warhammer Fantasy: Wizardry appears to have some correlation with a longer life both amongst elves and humans, and Black Magic (like that practiced by Morathi) can keep one eternally young. Although the sheer danger of practicing wizardry past a certain level does mean most human wizards are killed in battle or by an experimental accident long before succumbing to old age.
  • On average, Skaven have a maximum lifespan of about twenty years, but most die a lot earlier than that due to backstabbing, starvation, industrial accidents, being conscripted as cannon fodder or a hundred other different things. However, magic-users such as Grey Seers and plague priests can live to be hundreds of years old through combinations of life-extending magic and the blessing of their god, the Horned Rat.
  • Zig-zagged by the lizardmen. The Slann Mage-Priests who rule their civilization are The Ageless are some of the oldest living beings in the world — not a single one is less than 8,000 years old. However, the Skinks, the other magic-using caste, are shortest-lived lizardman species, while the other ageless one are the entirely magic-blind Saurus.
  • Dwarfs do not have wizards; they can only sense the Winds of Magic in the most rudimentary ways and their bodies cannot conduct it at all. They do, however, have Runesmiths; dwarfs trained in creating runic circuits in stone and steel that they can pour magical energy into to create permanent magical items. Provided they're not killed in battle or by expermentation into novel runes, Runesmiths have dramatically expanded lifespans compared to normal dwarfs although mostly this is believed to be because old Runelords are simply so stubborn and perpetually overworked they refuse to die while there's work yet to be done. However, non-Runesmiths like Snorri Whitebeard and Gotrek Starbreaker are also known to have lived more than a thousand years despite Dwarfs normally only making three or four hundred. While still younger than what Runesmiths have been known to live to — Kragg the Grim is almost two thousand years old — it's still a potential indication that any Dwarf can vastly extend their lifespan if they are stubborn enough.
  • Fimir are very long-lived as a rule, with a lifespan measured in centuries, but the sorcerous balefiends have about twice their species' usual lifespan and the meargh witch-queens can live for multiple thousands of years.
• Witchcraft: Those with strong Essence age more slowly. Becoming The Ageless isn't possible with magic, though — that takes Mindheal.
• The World of Darkness: In the Classic and New World of Darkness:
  • Changeling: The Lost: The changelings get longer lives as their Wyrd rises and they become more closely linked to Fate — which has the side effect of making them addicted to Glamour, vulnerable to the Wyrd's fairy-tale logic, and, worst of all, much more interesting to the True Fae.
  • Mage: The Ascension: Life magic works much as in Awakening. There is also an option to select "Unaging" as a merit when creating a Mage, which gives eternal youth. This merit is quite inexpensive, because very few mages live to die of old age anyway.
  • Mage: The Awakening has many life-extending options. The Life Arcanum can maintain perfect health and enhance the body's performance, with more advanced levels increasing the user's lifespan by 30 to 130 years and even suspending aging entirely for short periods. Mages with mastery of Death magic can steal the lifespan of others, and mages with mastery of both Life and Death can Body Surf — though at the cost of tremendous Immortality Immorality, unless they're targeting non-sapient victims like golems or homunculi.

Video Games

• Aeons from Threads of Fate could live much longer than a regular muggle and wizard, due to their magical artifacts known as [relics] but, even though most lived for over 1000 years (an example is Fancy Mel), they were not immortal, so they tried to evade death as much as possible. Also, one of Valen's apprentices, was skilled enough to imitate a Valen Doll to perfection, however he had a soap opera disease, and even though he was taught by the in-game greatest sorcerer of the world, he still died prematurely.
• Zig-zagged in Warcraft:
  • Some powerful mages have hugely extended lifespans, though magic use can also accelerate aging. Aegwynn is young (and fertile) after millennia; though she looks her age after sacrificing her youth-sustaining magic, Medivh later restores her with his power as Guardian of Tirisfal. The fallibility of the magic is mentioned as being a risk.
  • There's also Meryl Felstorm (formerly Winterstorm) from the expanded universe, who used his magic to become one of The Undead separate of the Scourge's plague that created the Forsaken. It's explained the only reason he hasn't crumbled to dust is because of the sheer power of his magic.
  • Fel Magic comes with a guarantees of an endless natural lifespan, but because Fel is naturally corrupting, someone who's lived past their first century will most likely be a shriveled husk with twenty different deformities that reveal them to the world.
• Wizards in the Zork series display this thanks to the unashamedly named Long Life Spell. Semi-subverted in Zork: Grand Inquisitor where a wizard becomes suicidal but is unable to die because of casting this spell on himself.
• In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade the only 2 heroes from the Scouring that are left alive, nigh a millennium later, are the spell casters.
• Archmages in Bungie's Myth series of Real-Time Strategy games are known to live for very long times. Alric, a heroic archmage from the first game, was still alive and healthy enough to stride the battlefield in armor during the second game that takes place sixty years later. Even more than this, the Fallen Lords of the title, are even older, having been heroes from a millennium ago that have undergone an inverse Heel–Face Turn due to a cosmic system of cyclic fate (though they may be reincarnations rather than long-lived individuals.) Bungie has stated in interviews that some of the most powerful wizards in the Myth universe simply cannot be Killed Off for Real, as one could chop them up, burn their bodies, mix the ashes with salt, and drag them to the four corners of the world, but if someone put them all back together again they would simply reanimate. Indeed, after beheading the Big Bad in the second-to-last mission in Myth: The Fallen Lords, you must then use the next mission to carry his head (still alive and taunting you) to a Bottomless Pit and thow it in, thus preventing its retreval and restoration.
• Played straight in Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, where elves, the most magically inclined race, have the longest lifespans, and humans who practise magic tend to live slightly longer than technologists. Elves who actively practice magic live even longer and can apparently watch an entire millennium pass by. Also subverted, since orcs and halflings, who were created by magical mutation, have shorter lifespans than their non-magical cousins, the humans and gnomes respectively.
• In The Elder Scrolls:
  • Throughout the series, the Altmer (High Elves) are stated to be the most magically inclined race in Tamriel and are also the most naturally Long-Lived out of the already long-lived Mer races. Living for several centuries is fairly average for them, while extreme examples have lived for thousands of years.
  • In Morrowind, all of the Great House Telvanni councilors are implied to be extremely old by way of magic. Special mention Divayth Fyr, who at around age 4000, is said to be one of the oldest non-divine beings in Tamriel.
  • In Skyrim, the headmaster of the Mages College in Winterhold promises that the lessons you learn at the college will last a lifetime... or possibly several, if you prove particularly talented. Indeed, the Telvanni mage Neloth from Morrowind makes an appearance; even younger and sprier than he was 206 years before.
• Usually the case in Dominions, where most mages start out older than usual and plenty live longer or never die. An exception are fire mages, who lose maximum age with more power.
• Mages in Dragon Age can pull this off if they are willing to use Blood Magic. Zathrian and Avernus are the primary examples.
• It's not directly addressed in as story-light a series as Super Mario Bros., but Kamek, Bowser's Magikoopa retainer and Dragon, raised Bowser from childhood and looks no visibly older now than he did back then (and is much more direct a fighter now than in the past, to boot).
• Puyo Puyo briefly touches upon this by some small talk between Ms. Accord and Popoi. The two mention that everyone has access to (and been using) anti-aging magic, meaning that anyone could be many years older than they really are. In a case before this, Schezo's been around for at least 180 years and looks no older than 18 or so.
• Implied for Laharl's mom in Disgaea Dimension 2. We never get her exact age, but there is a 376 year difference between Laharl and Sicily.
• Intentionally averted via Word of God in Final Fantasy VIII in order to joss a fan theory that Rinoa ends up becoming Ultimecia centuries later.
• Necromancers in Dwarf Fortress stop aging as soon as they cast the spell that turns them into necromancers. The transformation also makes them Perpetual Motion Monsters who don't need food, water, or sleep, but prevents them from developing their Attributes any further.
• Vaguely implied in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. When Zelda is finally freed from Calamity Ganon's grasp after a century of keeping him a Sealed Evil in a Duel, she looks no older than she did when she was first Swallowed Whole by him, and unlike Link wasn't in a Healing Vat that otherwise would have kept her in physical stasis. The implication is that the same Royalty Super Power that allowed her to keep Ganon from destroying Hyrule also kept her from aging.
  • The Sheikah tribe, if you consider their technology to be Magitek, can live over 10,000 Years (at least in the case of the Shrine Monks who spend that time meditating; the mundane Sheikah NPCs live to the comparatively mundane age of 130).
• Dawn of War II: Retribution: While Space Marines live longer than regular humans (the oldest truly living one is around a millenium old), Azariah Kyras spent a few centuries in the Warp aboard a space hulk, which eventually got him promoted to Chief Librarian and Chapter Master. Shame he also turned to Chaos while in there.
• Magicians in Touhou Project stop aging when they master the "Shachū no Mahō" (roughly "Abandon-the-Worms Magic"). This has the side effect of turning them into youkai.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: There are "witches" who live for hundreds of years and have extremely powerful magical abilities.
• The Witches' Tea Party: The inherently magical "monsters" all seem to have immortality. Witches, who are all magical, live centuries at least.
• The Sims 3 plays around with this, with various supernatural creatures that Sims can become in the myriad of expansion packs, many of which have extended lifespans, but ironically, wizards don’t get such an extension. On the other hand, wizards are naturally better with the alchemy skill, which makes it easier for them get a Fountain of Youth potion, which effectively does increase a Sim’s lifespan by resetting their age to the series’ equivalent of 18.

Webcomics

• In Code Name: Hunter, in Astoria, Mages can live up to two hundred, peasants, thirty. Gadel is surprised it's different elsewhere.
• Felicia, Sorceress of Katara: Magi can live for hundreds of years, though Felicia is cagey whenever the subject of her own age comes up. Felicia's adopted mother, The Sorceress, was one of the Firstborn created directly by the setting's god of light and is outright immortal.
• Inverted and Played With in Sorcery 101: sorcery takes a toll on one's body, meaning practitioners often have heart attacks at a fairly young age (though other kinds of magic work differently). As such, many people, including the protagonist, only start learning sorcery when they already have another means of immortality/preternaturally long life.
• In Zebra Girl it's stated that Wizards age more slowly the more magic they know - those who master it are nearly immortal. Plus they can occasionally "pull a Gandalf" to come Back from the Dead in the right circumstances.
• In Evon the titular character is 18, but looks a little younger. While the Cabal (those who will admit their ages) ranges in age from 100 to over 700.
• Inverted for the trolls of Homestuck: the lower a troll's rank on the hemospectrum, the shorter their lifespan and the more likely they are to manifest Psychic Powers.
• In Daughter of the Lilies, wizards — unlike normal mages — gain a lifespan several times longer than is normal. Their gifts are strongly implied to be provided by the setting's Crystal Dragon Jesus.
• The witches of Hemlock are very long lived, to the point that taking a ten year nap while mourning is perceived as a couple of years too short.
• Unsounded: Inverted by people born into the Fantastic Caste System of Alderode. The longest-lived castes have the weakest connection to the Background Magic Field, while the Platinums are famously powerful spellwrights and only live to 30.

Web Original

• Zig-Zagged in Suburban Knights. It turns out that magic is actually Cast from Lifespan, so using magic will actually shorten your life. However, we then learn that Malachite has lived for millennia because he has magic but simply hasn't used it for a long time. So it extends your life, but only shortens it if you use it to excess. He's after the Hand of Malachite because it contains a gem that will allow him to use magic without the costs, and extend his lifetime indefinitely because of it. His long survival is because he cast a spell of eternal youth using the gem long ago before it was taken from him, the spell being too powerful to survive the casting otherwise.
• Elementals in Phaeton start of aging much faster than humans, then around adolecence at the same rate as humans, before finally aging much more slowly, this aging process is both physical and mental.
• In Void Domain, mages will tend to live longer if they are not killed. Not due to the ability to use magic, simply because there are ways of extending life by using magic and potions.

Western Animation

• It' unclear if this applies to the Avatar in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Avatar Kyoshi, most badass Avatar ever, lived for roughly 230 years, the longest of any known character in the setting at the time. The assumed reason was that Avatars naturally lived longer. The only other Avatar to be given a definitive date of their natural death, Aang, died at the biological age of 66 (but the chronological age of 166, counting the time he spent frozen), but this was explained in ancillary material as being caused by spending a century frozen draining his life force. However, the novel The Rise of Kyoshi implies that her long life was due to a secret technique she learned from a seemingly immortal assassin, not due to her being the Avatar, so it is unclear if Avatars actually live longer then normal people.
• Merklynn from Visionaries. He was a prominent figure during the first Age of Magic... which was over a thousand years ago as the series begins.
• Leonard Powers of Ugly Americans is over 400 years old, and looks every decade of it. His "apprentice" is 50 and appears to be a young teenager. His older brother, a parody of Chris Angel, looks much more youthful than he does... Yeah, Leonard is not a very good wizard.
• The Emotion Lord in Bravest Warriors: Lives to be 3,000. Primed in his first century. Hangs out with his younger self. Great at parties.
• Selwyn and Tallulah are a mage couple in The Smurfs that in one episode were celebrating their 200th wedding anniversary.
• The crown from Adventure Time that gave the Ice King his powers has also let him live for thousands of years.
• The Fairly OddParents! implies this. We meet two wizards during the series through Time Travel, Merlin in Medieval times and Alden Bitteroot in the 1600s. Both of their episodes show them to still be alive in the modern era, after centuries.
• Ultimate Book of Spells: Headmistress Crystalgazer claims to be several hundred years old.
• Witch lifespans in The Owl House are comparible to that of a modern day human, though there are ways for them to use magic to extend it further. That said, the only person we know of who has done this is (or rather, was) human.
• In Marvel's What If…? (2021), Doctor Strange magically suspends his own aging to spend centuries absorbing demons in the Library of Cagliostro. Fellow sorcerer O'Bengh, who he met at the start of his quest, is still alive, albeit barely, when Strange finally comes out.

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