Talk:Deva (aasimar)

I fixed the spelling on the Religion title. Should tieflings be referred to as the Aasimar/Deva's evil-aligned counterpart if (and conversely should a Deva be explicitly called good-aligned?), in the tiefling article it is stated that they can be of any alignment, just like a deva?--DarastrixUxBahumati 17:37, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I have made this edit in an attempt to clarify that particular sentence. Fw190a8 01:03, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Aasimar
This article seems to combine devas with aasimar. Is there any actual official source that says devas and aasimar are the same thing? ➳ Quin 00:13, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Should most of this article be moved to the Deva (Angel) and the article renamed.
--Cliffracerslayer 20:57, October 9, 2009 (UTC)

I too am uncomfortable with the apparant confusion between Aasimar and Deva. As I understood it Aasimar are mortal beings, the angelic equivalent of Tieflings, not beings that have a society of their own, nor with a special relationship to life and death.

As I understood it they are conceived in the normal way, born in the normal way and die in the normal way.

I feel uneasy about doing so but I will try establish that Deva's are separate from Aasimar, the former being the semi-mortal servants of the celestial planes and Aasimar should have their own section within the Deva article explaining that Aasimar are the product of unions between Deva but that while Deva are sometimes referred to as Aasimar these are not what is normally understood by the term.


 * After reading the article, I understand your concerns here. I am totally confused however. This appears to be yet another 4th edition moment of madness. So far, I have been able to establish that in 3e, these things were called aasimar (Races of Faerûn, p.112, and they were renamed devas in 4e (Forgotten Realms Player's Guide, p.21). The pictures on this article look nothing like the aasimar picture in Races of Faerûn (again, p.112). In 3e, was there already a creature called a deva? Does this mean that in 4e, we have two completely different creatures with the same name? Or does this mean that aasimar are devas? Fw190a8 (talk &middot; contr) 22:20, October 9, 2009 (UTC)

--Cliffracerslayer 23:28, October 9, 2009 (UTC)

I believe that Devas *are* Aasimar but that not all Aasimar *are* Devas. I tried to edit the entire article as follows.

The Devas are spiritual beings that are immortal as it says. However rather than creating a new body from scratch which is silly, they possess the bodies of Aasimar in the following manner.

They don't overide control over the Aasimar body which would be evil. Instead they merge themselves with the soul of the Aasimar. The Aasimar's soul loses it's seperate existence and becomes a part of the Deva, but in the return the Aasimar becomes immortal as a part of the Aasimar and will not die and go to the Fugue plan but remain attached to the Deva forever.

This does not alter the Aasimar's body however, so to all other intents and purposes they are the same creature.

I rewrote the entire article along those lines, but my edit went all wrong so nothing got saved. Anyway this is pretty sound if creative solution in my opinion for the Aasimar/Deva question.

As for the pictures, they are outsiders and very diverse in appearance. It doesn't matter much what they look like in the pictures since they could just be descended from odd looking Celestials and still be Aasimar/Deva.


 * Do you have a source that says this, or is this just speculation on your part? Please sign your posts at the end instead of the beginning. Fw190a8 (talk &middot; contr) 02:49, October 10, 2009 (UTC)

It's 'speculation' but it's the explanation that makes sense of the information and requires the least changes to the article, keeping in a modified way the majority of the sourced information. It allows a distinction to be made as is necessary between Aasimar, but without them being different races as such.

Given Aasimar and Deva are already merged, then it follows that the logical solution is to merge Aasimar and Deva by making the latter in some way the 'evolved' form of the former. At the moments bits of the article seem to refer to Aasamar and others to these new Deva creatures. Thus I will draw a distinction in the article between the two but one that does not require them to be separate creatures with a separate article.

--Cliffracerslayer 09:07, October 10, 2009 (UTC)


 * I do appreciate your desire to clean up this whole aasimar/deva business, and I share a stake in it also. The wiki puts a high priority on reliability, and that means going back to the original sources. If a statement cannot be attributed to a particular source, it should not appear on wiki.


 * In the context of maintaining a single-article approach, provided that each statement still maintains its original source (disregarding any unsourced information in the article as inconsequential), I agree that splitting it into "things we can assert about aasimar" and "things we can assert about devas" is a good idea. The aasimar/deva issue will most likely be a bone of contention between 3rd edition fans and those who have adopted 4th edition, so we ought to maintain neutrality by avoiding the implication that one is "right".


 * With regard to your editing, I understand that Wikia have recently introduced a rich text editor, which will probably be turned on by default on your account, and is completely at odds with wiki editing, so I am going to blame that for your difficulties in editing the article. You can turn it off by going to your preferences (should be at the top right), the editing tab, and unchecking rich text editor. You might then find it easier to edit. Fw190a8 (talk &middot; contr) 10:05, October 10, 2009 (UTC)

The edit has been done. I decided against my original idea of having Deva possess Aasimar in in favour of having them assume bodies upon incarnation as in the source but Aasimar bodies. In this way Deva and Aasimar are the same race, but in such a way that all Devas are Aasimar but not all Aasimar are Devas.

I kept most of the sourced material, even the bits the irritated me a bit, but have changed Deva to Aasimar, except where the immortal reincarnating beings are clearly being referred too.

They are the same being but their origins are different. I added a paragraph to explain this admittadly not a sourced paragraph but a neccesery one for clarity.

However I appear to have deleted the creature summary and the alignment board. I have put the image back in though. --Cliffracerslayer 10:42, October 10, 2009 (UTC)

I seem to have screwed up the references as well. Is it possible to revert the article, copy the references and then revert the article all over again having copied the references back? --Cliffracerslayer 11:26, October 10, 2009 (UTC)

References now fixed. --Cliffracerslayer 11:26, October 10, 2009 (UTC)

Creature box back in. No longer neutrally aligned since creature alignment refers to the typical alignments of a creature which should be good for devas, not all alignments that a creature of that type may have. The can be neutral but they can also be evil so why should they be consider neutrally aligned specially? --Cliffracerslayer 11:54, October 10, 2009 (UTC)