Aasimar

Aasimar, derived from the Mulhorandi word "aasimon," are 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, aasimar are by no means always good. Although their celestial ancestors may be many generations removed, their presence still lingers. Tieflings were once considered the evil-aligned counterparts to the aasimar, although as the years passed, tieflings of all alignments emerged.

Physical characteristics
Aasimar bear the mark of their celestial touch through many different physical features that, like aasimar, often vary from individual to individual. Most commonly, aasimar are very similar to humans, like tieflings and other planetouched. Nearly all aasimar are uncommonly beautiful and still, and they are often significantly taller than humans as well. When a aasimar’s features are unshapely it is often the result of extreme circumstances, such as grave injury or severe illness.

While several aasimar 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 aasimar have pupil-less pale white, gray, or 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 aasimars 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 aasimar also have a light covering of feathers on their shoulders, where an angel’s wings might sprout. As in tieflings, aasimar bloodlines can sometimes run dormant for generations, reemerging after being hidden for some time.

Abilities
As a general rule, aasimar are a wise and charismatic race, possessed of strong insights and a powerful allure that most races cannot compare with. Aasimar are also quite preceptive, noticing things that others do not, and many can see largely unimpeded in perfect darkness, while also possessing the ability to cast magical light to aid those who cannot. Aasimar are also, like many of their celestial forebears, resistant to the effects of acidic elements, extreme cold, or electrical charges.

Psychology
Most aasimar 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 aasimar are even prejudiced against, something that deeply hurts the soul of the aasimar in question since most have an inherent bend towards empathy for others.

Though many aasimar 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 aasimar 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 aasimar and turning them from the ways of their celestial forbearers, nursing grudges fueled by the prejudice of others. Most aasimar 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 aasimar most likely to manifest the stereotypical virtues of a celestial.

Culture
Aasimar are exceptionally rare throughout the Toril and, as such, have no true cities or societies of their own, much like other planetouched. Aasimar 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.

Very few aasimar have siblings who are also aasimar, in large part due to the rarity of a celestial or god mating with a human but also due to the fact that aasimar who spring from ancient bloodlines long left dormant are even rarer. As a result, not many aasimar 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 aasimar did meet, they often felt a kind of kinship and unspoken understanding with one another. Most aasimar are likely to take the side of another instinctively, regardless of personal feeling and there is a strong bond between aasimar of all stripes.

Religion and magic
Because of their ties to the goodly gods and celestial beings, many aasimar are drawn to a religious path and most aasimar 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 aasimar. 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.

Like other half-breeds aasimar do not feel, as a whole, beholden to any one god or pantheon but prior to the Spellplague many aasimar worshiped the Mulhorandi pantheon and a large proportion of the race was descended from the goodly gods of Mulhorand. Many of these aasimar 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
Aasimar, 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 aasimar enjoy the company of races as varied as half-elves or half-orcs, though very few aasimar get along well with tieflings, whom the celestial-descended race is instinctively wary of. Genasi are likewise alien to aasimar, who find the elemental race strange even by their own standards. Of the other common races, aasimar have little overall opinion, since dwarves, elves, and the like have little history of persecuting aasimar but neither do they have a history of befriending them.

History
Though mortal aasimar are 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 in Mulhorand, (a term then adopted for the mortal progeny of celestials and mortals by others), have been created through other means but all of the race share certain qualities with these first individuals.

Homelands
Aasimar 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 Aasimar 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 aasimar can be found in borderlands such as Durpar, Murghôm, Thesk, or Waterdeep, though none of these places are considered traditional homelands.