Tiefling

[Lysha]

Tiefling

Regions: Mulhorand, Unther, Thay.
Racial Feats: Deepening Darkness, Fiendish Bloodline, Improved Energy Resistance, Outsider Wings, Planetouched Animal Affinity.
Level Adjustment: +1.

Carrying the taint of evil in their very souls, tieflings are persecuted and feared in most parts of Faerun. Those with gross physical alterations are often killed at birth, and those with less noticeable physical traits are sometimes killed by their own horrified parents. Occasionally a tiefling is born to someone indifferent to its appearance, determined to redeem it, willing to exploit it, or evil enough not to care about its nature, and these tieflings are most likely to survive to adulthood. Most tieflings are evil, but a few have managed to overcome their bloodline's influence to make their own choices about good and evil.
Tieflings are the distant descendants of a human and some evil outsider, such as a demon (usually a marilith or succubus), devil (usually an erinyes, gelugon, or pit fiend), night hag, rakshasa, or even a servant of an evil deity (some of these creatures must use magic to assume a form that is compatible with a human mate, of course). Fiend-touched and similarly tainted mixes of elves (notably the fey'ri), orcs (such as the tanarukk), and other races are known, but those are distant lines and are not true tieflings.
Tieflings look human except for one or two distinguishing traits related to their unusual ancestor. Some examples of these features (and the ancestors that cause them) are:

small horns on head (demon, devil, night hag)
fangs or pointed teeth
forked tongue (demon, devil)
glowing red eyes (demon, devil, night hag)
cat eyes (rakshasa)
more or less than 5 fingers (demon, devil)
goatlike legs (devil)
hooves (devil)
non-prehensile tail (demon, devil)
furry, leathery, or scaly skin (demon, devil, rakshasa)
red skin (demon, devil)
bruised blue skin (night hag)
casts no shadow (demon, devil)
throws no reflection (demon, devil)
skin is hot to the touch (demon, devil)
smell of brimstone (demon, devil)

Tieflings are aware at an early age that they are different from the people around them, and often have strange urges, desires, or needs because of their evil heritage. Because tieflings are born of many different creatures, it is difficult to tell if any two of them are related, and because many of them come from demonic bloodlines, even two tieflings descended from similar demons or the very same demon might look very different.
Tieflings have the same life expectancy and age categories as a human.