Tiefling

Tieflings are a fairly new race, in terms of the cosmological scale of Rakuen. Long ago, when The Vestiges and the Draconic Pantheon unified in fighting away The Bale, there was a war on a scale that most cannot even fathom. During this time, Voidspawn crept into the world, terrorizing all that they could touch, corrupting everything, with the goal of having as much corruption as possible so that they could not ever be fully destroyed. It is said that during the harrowing times of the Voidspawn invasion, women who were pregnant and touched by The Void birthed horrible abominations.
These children were born with horns and fiendish eyes, having a dash of The Void within them. This race evolved extremely quickly within human society, culturing through the genes of the fast-mutating humans. Soon tieflings were being born not simply with stumpy horns and odd eyes, but with strange skin, fangs, tails, and horrifically colored skin.
Tieflings, on the whole, were rejected from human society. Many were killed at birth for their fiendish appearances. Those who lived were almost never accepted into society except for those most closely resembling humans, which featured the least amount of fiendish characteristics. Those pressed out of human societies eventually gathered in tribal societies. These societies were allowed to proliferate only insomuch as other races allowed them, meaning the majority of Tiefling tribes remained nomadic throughout their history.
Eventually, when The Age of Law was enacted by The Eternia, this rising pantheon chose to banish all those they saw as undesirable, and this included any of the most distinguishably voidtouched of the Tiefling races. The event of the splitting of tiefling culture was known in their terms as The Sunderance, and decimated many traditional tiefling communities.
With a bizarre fortune, tieflings that were allowed to remain on Rakuen due to their minimized infernal appearance were treated far better than those that were sent away. Although still receiving discrimination in the ways they always had prior, many tieflings tribes flourished in ways they never were able to previously, forming semi-permanent landholdings throughout the world, while always retaining their nomadic heritage.
For those that were banished to their abyssal bloodline, they were subjected to a much crueler fate. The harsher reality of culture that developed in The Dirge was cruel at best. Many tieflings found themselves enslaved by their neighbours, while others were simply ostracized to the furthest reaches of the world. Those that survived maintained their abyssal traits, especially in a land graced by The Abyss. Their features developed significantly further, giving them pure magic in their bloodline graced by their infernal ancestry, and physical aesthetics to match, looking truly demonic in many ways.
In more recent times, after the reopening of The Dirge and the invasions of fiends upon The Tidelands brought about a resurgence in traditional tiefling culture. With the War in Heaven came a decrease of power for humans, who were fought viscously by manly enslaved tieflings. Now tieflings hold a fair modicum of power throughout the Tidelands, while those on the Prime Material - despite their newfound lateral freedom - have progressed more toward their traditional nomadic roots.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Humanoid, but with distinct horns of various sizes that grow from the forehead. Lesser anatomy such as claws, fangs, strange colored eyes, and other such features can present as well. Some take human appearances with horns, while others take on more fiendish traits, with tails and vibrant skin tones.

Genetics and Reproduction

Tieflings are born directly through their ancestry, as their blood has been tainted by that of The Bale eons ago. Unlike traditional fiends, also descended from this Void lineage, Tieflings have taken more from their mortal, human characteristics.
As such, for a Tiefling to be born, a humanoid of some sort is required. Any humanoid can birth a Tiefling, but it most frequently happens through Human ancestry, with Elvish lineage being the least likely to produce Tiefling offspring; this percentage of Tieflings that come from Human ancestry is somewhere around 95%.
A tiefling child could be predicted with varying accuracy in a Human pairing. A non-tiefling father mating with a tiefling mother would almost always result in a Tiefling child. A Tiefling father mating with a non-Tiefling mother would not guarantee a Tiefling child, but would increase the chance of that person's ancestry in the future to have a Tiefling child later in life (by small percentiles). The reserve would be true for two Tieflings; two Tieflings mating would most frequently result in a Tiefling child, but would occsaionally result in a Human child, or in significantly rarer instances, a cross-breed race.
This is to say that Tiefling genetical potential was concetrated in women, which often gave women a primary role in traditional Tiefling societies as those who could carry on pronounced Tiefling family lines.

Growth Rate & Stages

Tieflings aged very similarly to humans, but with lifespans that were slightly longer than that of most humans.

Additional Information

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Remarkable night-vision properties.

Civilization and Culture

Culture and Cultural Heritage

Rakuen Tieflings were graced with a largely nomadic lifestyle. Tribes follow few strict limitations culturally, as they were largely banished from the majority of prominent cultures throughout the world. The only cultures they interacted with regularly were that of Orcs, and even then, the warlike nature of Orcs threatened tieflings at a tribal level, and the two generally stayed apart.
Tieflings tribes were led by an elder. The elder was designated upon the passing of the previous elder, and this was an event that was said to be marked by nightmares by someone in the community telling of future curses that would befall the tribe. Anyone who experienced these nightmares - regardless of age - was nominated as the elder; those not of age were groomed to be ideal elders that would serve the tribe, while those that were of age were essentially thrust into the position, for better or worse. It was usually seen in bad course to attempt to nominate a new leader of a tribe, although this did happen in individual tribes, with some infrequency. 
Women in tribes were treated with more respect than men in a cultural context, as women were the foundation of pure Tiefling births. Women were frequently seen as leaders and matriarchs of tribes; for those who did not seek leadership, they would often be considered oracles and given comfortable lives in positions of prominence. 
Tieflings of The Dirge originally had little culture to define themselves. Larger contingents of Tiefling culture that existed tended to exhibit more qualities of demons, with all the bickering politics, violence, and warmongering one would expect from demons. Although Tieflings were not inherently brutal and warlike as their ancestry seemed to dictate, many of the Tieflings in The Dirge were aggressive by nature, due to their hatred for their slavers and all those who criticized them for what seemed like an unjust punishment by gods that they never worshiped. Those in positions of powers tended to flaunt their prominence proudly, with decadent acceptance of their positions above others.
Eventually, The Dirge was opened, and many tieflings rushed to Rakuen Prime. A mixing of tieflings of both ancestries formed over time, but Rakuen Tieflings tended to favour their nomadic roots, while Dirge Tieflings trended toward more kingdom building, attempting to forge homes on Rakuen for their abyssal brethren.
Those left on The Dirge quickly ascended to significant amounts of power in the power vacuum created in the chaos. Although their perceived savagery always kept them from the highest echelons of society, it was their influence that created the great hatred of humans in Dirgian culture.

Lifespan

90-150 years

Average Height

4'11"-6'0"

Average Weight

114 - 240 lbs.