Deva (aasimar)


 * This article is for the planetouched. For the subtypes of angel known as devas, see deva (angel).

Devas, also known as aasimars 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.

Physical characteristics
Devas bear the mark of their celestial touch through many different physical features that, like tieflings, often vary from individual to individual. In many ways, devas 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 opaescent 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. 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
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 forebeareres, nursing grudges fueled by prejudice by others. Most devas avoid this path, however, and even a few recieve 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.

Culture
Very few devas have deva siblings, 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.

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 aasimars, 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.