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 ancestors. 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.
* **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.
* **Akashic Resistances:** 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.
* **Innate Veil:** Avead are always treated as if they had the Daevic Aspect 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.
* **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.

### 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.

**Table: Variant Avead Heritages**

Obsession-Born:\* An obsession-born avead must select the Obsession passion when they shape this veil. 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. If the obsession-born avead has the passion-bound racial trait and takes levels in daevic with the Obsession passion chosen, in addition to the normal benefits for that passion they increase the essence capacity of this veil at daevic level 9th, and daevic level 15th by 1. This replaces the normal benefit granted by the passion-bound racial trait.

#### 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.

### Favored Class Options

The following favored class options are available to all avead who have the listed favored class, and unless otherwise states, the bonus applies each time you select the favored class option.

* **All Classes:** Selecting this favored class bonus three times increases the essence capacity of the avead’s innate veil by +1. When selected nine times, it increases by +2. When selected 15 times, it increases by +3. This doesn’t stack with the improved essence capacity class feature, or similar abilities.
* **All Classes:** Gain +1/3 points of essence that can only be invested in the avead’s innate veil.
* **Daevic:** The avead’s passion is treated as if it were invested with 1/10 additional points of essence. This essence does not count against the maximum essence that can be invested in their passion, and can bypass their essence capacity.
* **Eclipse:** Gain +1/3 points of essence that can only be invested in the eclipse’s darkvision ability.
* **Guru:** Gain +1/3 points of essence that can only be invested in the guru’s gentle touch ability.
* **Huay:** Gain +1/3 points of essence that can only be invested in the huay’s veil of nature.
* **Kheshig:** Gain +1/3 points of essence that can only be invested in veils shaped using the kheshig’s akashic arsenal class feature.
* **Nexus:** For every two times the avead selects this favored class bonus they may increase the damage of their planar detonation ability without taking a point of essence burn. When they meditate to recover essence burn they regain all uses of this ability, and they may meditate to recover this ability even if they have no essence burn.
* **Promethean:** Gain +1/3 points of essence that can only be invested in forbidden knowledge.
* **Radiant:** Gain +1/3 points of essence that can only be invested in akashic bonds.
* **Rajah:** Gain +1/5 of an additional heraldry.
* **Spellweaver:** When the avead shatters a veil, they treat it as if they burned an additional +1/4 points of essence when determining the bonuses they gain from doing so.
* **Stormbound:** When the avead rolls initiative, they gain +1/3 points of temporary essence that may only be invested in their Storm veils or storm powers. This temporary essence lasts until the combat ends, and then for 1 minute afterward.
* **Soulforge:** Gain +1/3 points of essence that can only be invested in their forged soul.
* **Vizier:** Gain +1/5 additional use of veilshifting each day.
* **Volur:** The hardness of the volur’s Brand veils increases by +1, and their akashic spirit gains +1 maximum hit points.