Immortal folks from myths and legends. Like Koshchei, the Wandering Jew, and so on.

http://www.thewhitewillow.com/history.html

did you ever see the photo "The Unexplained" ran of some chancer in the 1970s who claimed to be the Count of St. Germain? He looked like some chancer from the 1970s.

Agastya. Trishanku. Yayati...

Hercules. Sisyphus (but in a bad way). and yes Prometheus:

Chiron was immortal and could not end by death the intolerable pain of the wound he received from the arrow of Heracles (see M/L, Chapter 22). He exchanged his immortality with Prometheus, dying in place of Prometheus when he was released by Heracles
http://www.classicalmythology.org/chaptertopics/25/summary.html

Osiris was supposed to be immortal but there were mad problemz!!

Atrahasis and Ut-napishtim:
Like the Sumerian Ziusudra (the Xisuthros of Berossus) or Noah from the Pentateuch, were the long-lived survivors of the great flood which wiped out the rest of humanity. In Atrahasis' case, Ellil had grown tired of the noise that the mass of humanity was making, and after a series of disasters failed to eliminate the problem, he had Enki release the floodgates to drown them out. Since Enki had a hand in creating man, he wanted to preserve his creation, warned Atrahasis, and had him build a boat, with which he weathered the flood. He also had kept his ear open to Enki during the previous disasters and had been able to listen to Enki's advice on how to avoid their full effects by making the appropriate offerings to the appropriate deities. He lived hundreds of years prior to the flood, while Utnapishtim lives forever after the flood.

Utnapishtim of Shuruppak was the son of Ubaratutu. His flood has no reason behind it save the stirrings of the hearts of the Gods. As with Atrahasis, Utnapishtim is warned to build an ark by Ea. He is also told to abandon riches and possessions and seek life and to tell the city elders that he is hated by Enlil and would go to the watery Abyss to live with Ea via the ark. He loads gold, silver, and the seed of all living creatures into the ark and all of his craftsmen's children as well. After Ea advises Enlil on better means to control the human population, (predators, famine, and plague), Enlil makes Utnapishtim and his wife immortal, like the gods.

im havin fun researching your homework 4 u!

(He was briefly in the Avengers in the late 80's/early 90's, oh and it's some epic poem too)

Lots of excellent suggestions (and I need to read more of the Mahabharata, I've only read selections). Count St Germain is one I keep vacillating on because of Yarbro's book(s?) about him; I'm not doing vampires, but I'm not sure how many readers realize she didn't make him up, and I don't want to come across as derivative of her. There's good material there, though.

saturation nuke Mount Olympus from orbit.

saturation nuke Mount Olympus from orbit.

Dirty Vicar, I think you're thinking of the Aurora and Tithonous story, in which the guy grows so oldto become a grasshopper? From some "goddess" website:

Like the dawn, whom this goddess personifies, Aurora, also known as Eos, lives her life in brief encounters, outshone and obliterated by the majestic Helios, whose golden chariot she heralds each morning.

Her fleeting, but eternally recurring beauty, is expressed through her sad and ill-fated love affairs. Her most famous tragic affair of the heart is with her own husband, Tithonous. Tithonous was a mortal, one of the leaders of the Ethiopians in the Trojan War. Falling hopelessly in love with him, Aurora begged Zeus to make him immortal. Her wish was granted, and for a time the lovers were deliriously happy, bearing a son, Memnon. But soon Aurora recognised her fatal mistake. She had pleaded for immortality, but not for eternal youth. Poor Tithonous, as a lesson to us all perhaps, inexorably ages. When his first grey hairs appear, Aurora rejects his caresses, and as he ages more and more, she confines him to a single, closed room until his cries diminish, but never cease. The myth writers eventually took pity on him and turned him into a grasshopper. The sad story of Aurora and Tithonous is beautifully told in Tennyson's poem "Tithonous", and the message best conveyed by the single line, "And after many a summer dies the swan."

That was pretty mean of Zeus. So many of the Greek gods were just selfish bastards. Oh another candidate for this is Aurora's other lover Ganymede, a hot youth Zeus kidnapped/immortalized, turning him into his sex-slave-bitch and ambrosia-server-boi.

I could be misremembering this, though.

I'm almost certainly using Dracula, for instance, but not as a vampire. (This story originated in part because of a conversation about what worked about my vampire story, and how those notes could be hit without vampires, since the "vampire story" tag is keeping me from selling it.)

I'm really intrigued by the Nephites, and am going to have to read more about them.

explain again? i'm probably alone but that made _no_ sense to me

It's always good to have a "shutoff switch" for a rampaging clay monster.

I am so disappointed that I am too young and female to create a golem.

http://golem.plush.org/

Also Cain?

Either way, though -- good call. So's Indy :)

(I'm clearly now writing Indiana Jones vs. Daredevil in Golems-a-Go-Go!)