The Press at Honaseka

In an ancient land that thought of itself as the ‘Known World’ until recently, there lies a group of cities only a day’s hike from one another that are the cultural melting pot of this ‘known world.’ Thru most of it's history few paid any attention to the outside world. Then, two centuries ago this area was discovered by an outside group, a civilization of Elves with many advances in technology. They brought advanced crops that banished hunger until the population grew. They brought advanced medicines that allowed those with the means to overcome diseases that had taken many in former ages and allowed them to enhance their beauty and strength. They brought machines that could record music, machines that could paint pictures incredibly lifelike and detailed, machines that could communicate over vast distances nearly instantaneously.
But two of the boons they brought have been especially disruptive to the cultures of the 'Known World'. One was extended youth. At first the medicines that extended youth were very expensive so that only the wealthiest could afford them. At first they were secret so very few knew of them. As time went on, the price came down and more of the population knew of them and could take advantage of them, with the result that cheating old age and death is no longer secret.
The second great change was a plague that made people sterile. At first the sterility plague was distant. It is spread only by exchange of bodily fluids, most thought it was spread only by sexual union. As we will witness, the plague has now reached the area where the people we will observe lived. For seven generations the poor have known that the wealthy live on. They resented it, and there was often trouble, but their preachers tell them that living on is a sin that keeps the ageless from their reward in the afterlife. Until now they've always lived on thru their children but today the plague is ending all that. The generation that will have no one to care for them in their old age is already born, and all the resentments, both social and religious, are coming to a head.
When we of Earth get to this point in biological science, let us hope that we come thru it as cleanly and easily as we see in this story. There is no doubt that the treatments will be only for the privileged and secret for quite some time. We will probably never know when they become available to the elites of Earth but already many parts of this have been kept from us. A cure for grey hair exists today, but Clairol has bought the American rights and does not allow it to be imported to this country. Telomere treatments have been researched, but news of them has already been suppressed.
In this story we see how the transition from ephemeral to eternal was made in one of the most backward areas of Kassidor, and one of only two where there was a long delay in bringing the benefits to nearly all of society. We follow the lives of six people thru the forty years when that transition occurred, 11ad. To 51ad. Two of them have made the transition long ago, three are affluent enough that they knew they would live on even when they were young and one of them longed to stay young but was too poor to ever suspect he would make it.