Planetouched: Tiefling, Aasamir, and Genasi
Aasamir: DMG and Volo’s Guide to Monsters
Genasi: Elemental Evil Player’s Companion, Maelstrom Genasi
While it is fair to say that no two people are exactly alike, this adage holds even more true among the planetouched of Soril, the main world of The Shattered God setting. Even among one of the three broad classifications, making generalizations beyond “usually between five and seven feet tall” and “humanoid body plan” is difficult. A planetouched child can spring from the lineage of any mortal people, and most typically when an ancestor is a planar entity, such as an angel, a fiend, or a genie, resulting in an aasamir, tiefling, and genasi, respectively. There have been isolated reports of planetouched arising from in-utero contact with powerful sources of planar energy.
A planetouched’s parent species determines little more than their general size and shape. However, the influence of their planar heritage means that even planetouched born to halflings, goblins, kobolds, and gnomes are tall enough to be considered Medium sized creatures. Planetouched, much like their extraplanar ancestors, are capable of having children with any mortal race, with the child being another planetouched, the race of the other parent, or the race (or races) of the planetouched parent’s parents, and so on, if necessary. This has lead to some fairly complicated family trees, and on one notable occasion, a dwarf family ruling, by birthright, a small elven kingdom. Among themselves, planetouched will breed true with other planetouched, resulting in planetouched of either of the parents’ type.
Angels are messengers from the forces of good, and Aasamir, as their descendants, often view themselves as the message, devoting themselves to some mission they, and hopefully by extension, their ancestor view to be important. Without access to a communion spell or a summoning spell, however, an aasamir will not know with absolute certainty what their ancestor desired. Angels tarry with mortals less than any other planar being, and usually focus on their mission; as such, aasamir are the rarest of the planetouched. Aasamir vary in form as greatly as their angelic ancestors, and though some have traits that seem alien, they also seem beatifically perfect in form. Some possess extra eyes or sets of arms (or luminous wings, when they manifest), though this grants them no statistical advantage, and imposes interesting challenges to tailors. Some seem to glow with a corona of holy flame. Others are gaunt and pale, with speech deep as the grave, descend from angels of death. Yet others have heads that resemble animals instead of their humanoid parents. All inspire some amount of awe in those that meet them.
Tieflings, the descendants of fiends, are the most common variety of planetouched for two main reasons. First, the forces of hell discovered very early that lust is a very powerful tool to drag mortals into sin, and second, in the ancient past, a city-state, in desperation and facing annihilation by a powerful foe, made pacts with several powerful fiends. As part of this bargain, the entire population of the city-state was marked by one of the archfiends, becoming tieflings. Through this profane ritual, this ancient land handily defeated the foe that threatened to overwhelm them, but not even a decade later, the city fell to infighting and collapsed; many of its citizens were dispersed across the globe. Most tiefling have a supernatural beauty to them, as they are the descendants of incubi or succubi, though any fiend can give rise to a tiefling, and the child will bear traits of their hellish ancestor. Tiefling are not evil, though they feel temptation far more keenly than other mortals.
Genasi are the descendants of powerful elemental spirits collectively called genies; they exhibit even greater diversity than the other varieties of planetouched and tend to group into five major types, based upon their elemental affinity: Water, Earth, Fire, Air, and Maelstrom. This is reflective of the Maelstrom, the chaotic elemental plane, within which the four other elemental planes planes live, move, expand, contract, and clash. Genasi tend to have physical forms that are indicative of their element; for example Fire genasi tend to have skin tones in the red, orange, and yellow range, and typically lack hair, instead possessing harmless flame in its place. By contrast, an earth genasi may appear to be a marble statue when standing still. Maelstrom Genasi, the descendants of either the janni, the most powerful of the genies, or mixed elemental genasi heritage, do not have a single elemental nature, instead shifting chaotically between all elements. Genasi of all types are typically individualistic and tend towards chaotic alignments.
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