Deva (aasimar)

Devas, also known as aasimar in Mulhorandi, are a human-based planetouched, native outsiders that have in their blood some good, otherworldly characteristics. They are often, but not always, descended from angels and other creatures of pure good alignment and while predisposed to good alignments, devas are by no means always good. Although their celestial ancestors may be many generations removed, their presence still lingers. Tieflings were once the evil-aligned counterparts to the devas, although as the years passed, tieflings of all alignments emerged.

Unlike tieflings, who come from a variety of origins, devas are, in fact all angelic souls contained within mortal bodies. These souls are reborn again and again, meaning that devas have access to the experiences of several lifetimes in their subconscious and, sometimes, waking mind as well. These souls are obliged to fight in the cosmic war against evil, though some stray from this path and are reincarnated in their next life as rakshasas.

Physical characteristics


Devas bear the mark of their celestial touch through many different physical features that, like tieflings, often vary from individual to individual. Most commonly, devas are very similar to humans, like tieflings and other planetouched. Nearly all devas are uncommonly beautiful and still, and they are often significantly taller than humans as well. Although exact appearance varies widely, all devas are marked by patterns of light and dark on their skin. These patterns may vary from more mundane hues like chalk white or black to otherworldly shades like pale gray or purple. Either the light or the dark color may be dominant, meaning that a deva might appear as white on blue or blue on white, neither being particularly more common. Whatever the case, the dominant color makes up the regular color of skin, while the lesser shade appears in patterns across the face, chest, and shoulders. The hair of a deva is often the same color as either of the two.

While several devas are immediately identifiable as such, others are even less distinguishable than tieflings from their human ancestors, standing out with only one unusual feature commonly. Most devas have golden eyes or silver hair but those descended from planetars might also have emerald skin, while those descended from avoral celestials might have feathers mixed in with their hair. Those descended from ghaeles often have pearly opalescent eyes. Solar-descended devas often have brilliant topaz eyes instead or silvery or golden skin and devas with couatl or lillend lineage most commonly have small, iridescent scales. Many devas also have a light covering of feathers on their shoulders, where an angel’s wings might sprout. As in tieflings, deva bloodlines can sometimes run dormant for generations, reemerging after being hidden for some time.

Devas, like godly avatars, cannot be permanently killed. Just as an avatar will return to the home plane of the god it is a manifestation of to be reabsorbed and perhaps sent to the Prime again so do devas’ souls inevitably return to the mortal world in new bodies as reincarnations of their old selves. However, devas do not typically remember their past lives and are born as new individuals, therefore being subject to the same dangers of mortality as other races, while being prevented from passing on into the afterlife permanently. Some devas are born as infants, while others are born into fully formed adult bodies. Each deva has, in fact, been reincarnated countless times over the period of four millennia in which devas have been known to exist.

Devas have a similar life expectancy to humans.

Psychology
Devas are naturally refined and are drawn towards virtue, rather than sin or neutrality. The typical deva is good, though few could be called meek. However, this is not something that can be taken for granted and the danger of a deva falling to evil is far greater than that of most races. If a deva falls, they risk becoming a rakshasa and find it uncommonly hard to find their way back to the path of good. As such, most devas, in spite of finding it easier to be virtuous than most races, are taught to fight against the temptation of evil within their own souls constantly.

Most devas grow up cautious around others and, like tieflings, are sometimes misunderstood, though never to the hateful extent many of the fiendish bloodlines are. Even those raised by understanding parents cannot escape their strangeness, or the curiosity (or even fear) that their unique nature sometimes results in. Many devas are even prejudiced against, something that deeply hurts the soul of the deva in question since most have an inherent bend towards empathy for others.

Though many devas are good in nature, thanks in a large part due to their celestial ancestors, not all are, just like not all tieflings or fey'ri are evil. Some devas fall into the trap of evil, corrupted perhaps by experience or the counsel and aid of an evil god. Shar and Sseth in particular take pleasure in corrupting devas and turning them from the ways of their celestial forbearers, nursing grudges fueled by prejudice by others. Most devas avoid this path, however, and even a few receive direct counsel from their celestial ancestor or a creature in its service. These individuals are the devas most likely to manifest the stereotypical virtues of a celestial.

Because of their past, if subconscious, lives devas are driven to find new experiences and new lands. Devas, as a result, have visited all corners of Toril. But in spite of this strong drive for fresh experiences most devas have few ambitions beyond living, loving, and striving in whatever life they are born to. Similarly, since devas once served the gods as immortal warriors, most devas find a subconscious urging towards a religious life and are typical devout worshipers of the gods. However, for this very same reason few devas feel the draw towards organized religion and mighty temples, rather seeking a connection to the divine through private worship.

Culture
Devas are exceptionally rare throughout the Toril and, as such, have no true cities or societies of their own, much like other planetouched. Devas can live for the whole of one of their lives without ever meeting another of their kind and, as such, are resigned to living amongst other races. However, in spite of this, there is a strange sense of cultural affinity amongst devas, a result of the fact that, beneath their subconscious, they all share memories of a time when they were a united people. As such, dress habits, fashions, and cultural attitudes prevail to some small extent amongst all devas, despite the vast distances usually between one member of the race and another.

Very few devas have siblings who are also devas, in large part due to the rarity of a celestial or god mating with a human but also due to the fact that devas who spring from ancient bloodlines long left dormant are even rarer. As a result, not many devas meet others of their kind, though of course these meetings were more common in Mulhorand due to the large number of devas located there. On the rare occasions where two devas did meet, they often felt a kind of kinship and unspoken understanding with one another. Most devas are likely to take the side of another instinctively, regardless of personal feeling and there is a strong bond between devas of all stripes.

Magic and religion
Because of their ties to the goodly gods and celestial beings, many devas are drawn to a religious path and most deva spellcasters call on divine magic as opposed to arcane magic. A great many become paladins, most in the service of good, and the philosophy of lawful good paladins often resonates strongly with devas. Those descended from non-lawful outsiders, on the other hand, most often become clerics, though a few also become paladins and some evil paladins even become blackguards. However, while many are religious, relatively few devas feel drawn to the temples in which gods are most commonly worshiped. Instead, many devas reject organized religion and instead practice privately in a series of rituals common to most devas, such as meditation or leaving an empty seat for the gods when eating a meal.

Like other half-breeds devas do not feel, as a whole, beholden to any one god or pantheon but prior to the Spellplague many devas worshiped the Mulhorandi pantheon and a large proportion of the race was descended from the goodly gods of Mulhorand. Many of these devas in particular often felt a strange bond to the animals whom their divine ancestor was a patron of. Others, particularly those born outside of Mulhorand or its neighbors, often took on gods appropriate for the nation in which they lived.

Relations with other races
Devas, in spite of their human ancestry, do not typically feel a strong draw to their kin but instead feel a stronger bond with other half-breeds. Many devas enjoy the company of races as varied as half-elves or half-orcs, though very few devas get along well with tieflings, whom the celestial-descended race is instinctively wary of. Genasi are likewise alien to devas, who find the elemental race strange even by their own standards. Of the other common races, devas have little overall opinion, since dwarves, elves, and the like have little history of persecuting devas but neither do they have a history of befriending them.

History
Though often the result of breeding between humans and celestials devas were unheard of in the local multiverse prior to the arrival of the Mulani from a forgotten plane. Drawn to Imaskar by powerful wizards the Mulani slaves called upon their gods for aid. Just as the gods could initially appear only as avatars so did their celestial servitors initially require mortal bodies, resulting in the first devas. Since then, devas, also commonly called aasimar, have been created through other means but all of the race share certain qualities with these first individuals.

Homelands
Devas were most commonly found in the eastern lands of Unther and Mulhorand, where they were the descendants of the good deities who once walked among the mortals. Since the Spellplague however and the devastation of both lands devas have become wandering nomads bound to no land or god and spread widely over the face of Faerûn, as well as other parts of Toril. Those from outside of Faerûn are often drawn to it, perhaps by the ancestral lure of Unther and Mulhorand, and so many devas can be found in borderlands such as Durpar, Murghôm, Thesk, or Waterdeep, though none of these places are considered traditional homelands.