Let's assume some Gloranthan guy is, say, the mayor of a prosperous, peaceful, good sized town in a country that doesn't have a big war going on, in a political situation that doesn't cry out for assassinations. Someone reasonably important, money to spend... and 97 years old.
He has a healer on his staff. A good one. He may have paid for a wing of the Chalana Arroy/Deezola/whatever hospital, so you bet he has the connections to get the healing he needs.
His ancestral spirits and family wyter are strong. Bad spirits are kept away. If a particularly nasty one gets in, he knows how to contact a shaman.
Assuming no violence and that he doesn't trip, fall down the stairs and break his neck, ***how does this guy die?***
Anything taking more than a day or two to kill him would be handled by the healers. Disease spirits would get banished. Infections would never set in.
Many of the difficulties of age in this world come from things that never healed right: Bad back, broken hip, torn up knees. These lead to sedentary lives which bring their own problems. Such would not be the case where there is magical healing for those who can afford it.
But does a sedentary life bring its own problems in Glorantha, where a bad heart isn't caused by clogged arteries and high blood pressure, rather by being elf shot by a fairy?
All I can think of is a stroke or aneurism. Both are fast enough to make the healers too late. (Though an aneurism, being a wound, would be easy for a healer to cure if quick enough.) But what causes those in Glorantha?
Remember, Chalana Arroy (at least) takes the attitude that being alive is always better than being dead, so her followers would have no qualms about working magic on an old, worn out guy, even if they can't make him young again.
Mike
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