Races of Akasha: Avead (Patreon)

Avead

Occasionally a daevic’s bond with their patron will grow so powerful that it corrupts their very blood with the daeva’s power, passing some of it along to their offspring or distant descendants. These beings become suffused with that daeva’s akashic powers, becoming a being that isn’t quite mortal and isn’t quite daeva. Avead (pronounced ah-ved) often possess traits of their daeva bloodline above and beyond their altered appearance, often having a personality tinged by their daeva bloodlines emotional requirements. This natural alignment to a passion often draws daeva of that passion to them, and many avead become daevics themselves.

Physical Appearance: Avead are born looking identical to their birth species, the power of daeva blood within their body not fully manifesting until they reach puberty. At such a point, their body begins to change as their powers manifest and their innate veil takes physical form. Due the the wild differences in the appearances of daeva they draw the effects of their blood from, these physical changes can be very minor, from slightly odd eye or hair colours such as ruby red, or changes that would cause the avead to stand out distinctly, such as wildly different skin pigmentation, horns, strange eyes, or altered hands or limbs. Their innate veil also differentiates them from others of their birth species; their innate veils take on a physical form unlike those shaped by veilweavers. Each avead’s veil manifests differently, and rarely follows the standard appearance of their veil. An avead’s Daevic Aspect attuned to Desire may appear as a pair of faintly glowing wings or energy emitted from their back, as an example.

Society: Avead appear so infrequently that the given number in any society is so low that they rarely form unique societal structures amongst only avead. Avead will generally integrate into their birth society, or be shunned and ostracized and forced into a life of solitude. Because avead live their young life without knowledge of their birthright, they often pick up the mannerisms and societal expectations of their birth society, even if they are later shunned once their powers and physical alterations manifest.

In societies where daeva are revered and daevics are particularly common, avead are often revered as blessed by the daeva and often find themselves in positions of religious or political power.

Relations: Within more traditional or conservative communities, avead can face a significant amount of prejudice or ostracisation due to their strange or alien appearances and innately dangerous abilities. In such cases, they often seek out communities that will accept them, often those formed up of other ostracised folk such as tieflings, half-elves, or half-orcs. Those rare avead who congregate to form communities of other avead rarely last more than a single generation, the effects of daeva magic on their bloodline rarely being passed down to their children, though for their brief lifespans those communities often thrive and produce all manner of akashic discoveries.

Alignment and Religion: Though an avead’s natural attunement to a specific state of emotion can have an affect on their actions, it rarely affects their alignment or choice of religion. Avead will generally follow the same religions of their birth society, though sometimes a particularly bigoted or ostracising community may drive the avead to forgo a religion they were born in to.

Adventurers: Due to the high rate of abandonment after their powers and appearance changes manifest, many avead are left without a true home once they reach adulthood. Many of these avead use their innate powers for adventuring in a hope to find themselves, or to find a new place they can call home.

Names: Avead are often named based on the society they were born into. Human-born avead would have human names, elven-born avead would have elven names, and so on. Sometimes an avead will adopt a new name based on their passion, or their appearance.

Standard Racial Traits

• Ability Score Modifiers: Avead are strong of both body and personality, but their passions' consistent impact upon their minds affects their willpower. They gain +2 Strength, +2 Charisma, and -2 Wisdom.
• Type: Avead are outsiders with the akashic and native subtypes.
• Size: Avead are Medium creatures and thus receive no bonuses or penalties due to their size.
• Speed: Avead have a base speed of 30 feet.
• Languages: Avead begin play speaking Common and one of the following languages: Abyssal, Aquan, Auran, Celestial, Draconic, Ignan, Infernal, Sylvan, or Terran. Avead with high Intelligence scores can also choose those languages as bonus languages. Alternatively; an avead can choose to use the languages of their parent race when determining their starting languages.

Defense Racial Traits

• Akashic Resistance: Avead are akashic creatures, granting them immunity to magical sleep effects.
• Emotional Resilience: Aveads are particularly resilient to effects that would attempt to alter their emotions. They gain a +2 bonus on Will saves against effects with the emotion or fear descriptors.
• Hardened Form: The flesh of an avead is hardened by their essence, granting them a +1 bonus to their natural armor.

Magical Racial Traits

• Innate Veil: Avead are always treated as if they had the Daevic AspectAM veil shaped. This veil does not count against their normal limits on veils shaped, or their veil slots. They use their Charisma as their veilweaving modifier for this veil, and their character level as their veilweaving level. At 1st level, the avead chooses a single passion available to the daevic and treats that as their selected passion for their Daevic Aspect. If they later gain levels in the daevic class, they may choose whether to use their selected passion or their daevic passion with the veil, chosen when they first take a level in the class. This veil is formed directly from the avead’s body, blood, and soul; it is not invisible when uninvested, and the avead cannot willingly suppress it or unshape it. It can still be suppressed through other means, such as by being dispelled or sundered. If it becomes unshaped through other means, it is automatically reshaped after one hour (and re-bound, if they have the ability to bind it) without requiring any actions on the avead’s part.
• Innate Essence: Avead gain 1 point of essence.
• Passion-bound: Avead treat their veil granted by their innate veil racial feature as a passion veil if they take levels in the daevic class, allowing it to be affected by their class features that would affect their passion veils. If their passion modifies what ability score they use as their veilweaving modifier for their daevic veils, they may use that veilweaving modifier for their innate veil as well.

Senses Racial Traits

• Darkvision: Avead can see perfectly in the dark for up to 60 feet.
• Low-Light Vision: Avead can see twice as far as humans in conditions of dim light.

Alternate Racial Traits

The following alternate racial traits may be selected in place of one or more of the standard racial traits presented above.

• Born from the Smallfolk: Some avead are born from one of the races of the smallfolk, such as halflings or gnomes. These avead are Small creatures and gain a +1 size bonus to their AC, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, a -1 penalty to their CMB and CMD, and a +4 size bonus to Stealth checks. Their base speed is also reduced to 20 feet. This trait replaces the avead’s size and speed.
• Wildborn Bloodline: Avead are sometimes born from minglings of daeva in their bloodline, rather than from the influence of a daevic bond. These avead are particularly unpredictable, embodying emotional aspects unknown among daevic bonds and using abilities far outside the norm. These avead do not gain the emotional resilience, hardened form or passion-bound racial traits, but instead may choose any one veil to have shaped in place of the Daevic Aspect veil granted by their innate veil trait. This veil is chosen at 1st level, and cannot be changed. This veil can be of any slot, including esoteric chakra such as Blood or Ring. If a veil can be shaped in multiple chakra slots, you choose which chakra it is treated as shaped in at 1st level. This choice cannot be changed. This replaces the emotional resilience, hardened form and passion bound traits, and modifies the innate veil trait. A variant avead can take this alternate racial trait, replacing their altered passion-bound and alternate innate veil traits instead of the base avead’s, in addition to their emotional resistance and hardened form traits.

Variant Avead Heritages

Sometimes the daevic bloodline that influenced the avead’s birth will have any even greater impact on them. These avead have dramatically different manifestations of their daeva heritage, even further resembling the appearance and abilities of the daeva whose bond their embody.

Variant avead may still select alternate racial traits that replace abilities modified by their heritage.

Avead of one of these heritages have the following modifications:

• Ability Modifiers: Variant avead use the ability modifiers presented by their heritage in place of their normal ability score modifiers.
• Passion-bound: Variant avead only treat their innate veil as a passion veil if their heritage matches their daevic passion. For example, Justice-Born avead would only treat their innate veil as a passion veil if they take the Wrath passion.

Alternate Innate Veil: Variant avead replace their Daevic Aspect veil with the veil listed by their heritage. It otherwise follows all other rules of their innate veil racial trait. If a veil can be shaped in multiple chakra slots, you choose which chakra it is treated as shaped in at 1st level. This choice cannot be changed.

New Feats

Innate Binding

Your control over your body's innate veil grows in strength, allowing you greater command over its abilities.

Prerequisites: Avead, innate veil racial trait, sufficiently high character level

Benefit: You gain the ability to treat your innate veil as bound to its chakra slot.

Special: Your must have a sufficiently high character level to select this feat based on the chakra slot of your innate veil, as per the following:

• Feet: 2nd level
• Hands: 4th level
• Wrists: 7th level
• Shoulders: 10th level
• Blood, Head: 12th level
• Belt: 13th level
• Ring, Storm, Voice: 15th level
• Neck: 16th level
• Headband: 18th level
• Chest: 19th level

Non-Humanoid Avead and Daeva-Born

Daeva can feed on the strong emotions of any type of mortal, not only those of sentient humanoids. All living beings possess emotions, even if their emotions are not as complex and nuanced as sentient beings, and can draw daeva to feed on them. Daeva of simple emotions, such as fear, hunger, or desire, will form symbiosis with non-sentient creatures, infusing them with their power and slowly affecting their bloodline. This bloodline can rarely form a non-humanoid avead, otherwise known as a daeva-born creature. Daeva can also form bonds with sentient beings that do not fit the normal shape of a humanoid creature, possessing unique limb arrangements or shapes.

Non-Humanoid Avead Characters

Avead who are born from a non-humanoid species without racial Hit Dice (in this case, referring to a non-bipedal creature who does not possess two arms and two legs) are even rarer than normal avead, and only appear amongst species that produce offspring naturally.

Such avead grow to the same size as their parent species, and have the same number of limbs and physical characters (such as movement speeds, ability to breathe water, natural attacks, etc), but no other traits from their base species. In some cases, they may be able to alter these traits using the base species’ alternate traits, assuming thos alternate traits only change their physical body and grant no other bonuses. These avead are still outsiders with the native subtype. Non-humanoid avead may have a higher power level than a traditional avead, and should only be allowed with your Game Master’s discretion. The abilities such avead retain from their base species should also be at the GM’s discretion.

An avead merfolk, for example, would be a Medium creature and have a base land speed of 5 feet, a swim speed of 50 feet, have no legs and an immunity to trip, and have the ability to breath both water and air. They would not gain the merfolk’s armor racial trait. They could take the Strongtail alternate racial trait as well.

An avead wyvaran, for example, would be a Medium creature and have a base land speed of 30 feet, a fly speed of 30 feet (clumsy maneuverability), and the slapping tail ability.

Daeva-Born Template

Avead born from species with Hit Dice instead gain the daeva-born template. The daeva-born template can be added to any living being that would be able to produce offspring and possesses blood, or a blood-like equivalent.

Challenge Rating: Same as the base creature +1.

Armor Class: Natural armor class is increased by +1.

Senses: The creature gains low-light vision and darkvision 60 feet.

Defenses: The creature gains a +2 bonus on Will saves against effects with the emotion or fear descriptors.

Abilities: Cha +4.

Special Qualities: The creature retains all of the base creature’s special qualities, and gains the innate veil ability:

Innate Veil (Su): The creature gains the ability to innately shape a veil of their choice. This veil does not count against their shaped veils or their veil slots, and is always treated as invested with its maximum amount of essence. The daeva-born uses their highest mental ability score when determining their veilweaving modifier with this veil, and using their Hit Dice as their veilweaving level. The creature is counted as an avead with a character level equal to their Hit Dice for the purposes of meeting the prerequisites of the Innate Binding feat, and that feat applies to the veil granted by this ability. This veil is formed directly from the daeva-born’s body; it cannot be sundered. It can still be suppressed through other means, such as by being dispelled. The daeva-born cannot otherwise choose to unshape this veil. If it becomes unshaped through other means, it is automatically reshaped after one hour (and re-bound, if they have the ability to bind it).