NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 4465078" data-attributes="member: 20323">Awesome <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Thanks! You definitely present two options for their sudden appearance, being hidden in ruined cities deep in the Haunted Lands (perhaps it wasn't until the Great Unbinding that the gods were merciful to them) or having their appearance concealed concealed by magic.Another might be that tieflings of AL-QADIM were literally slaves in hell, whose servitude was ended by the Great Unbinding.Also, there's many references to "horns" reflecting a powerful religious person in Arabian/Persian lore, so we could have some fun with that.Oh! What if the First Caliph undertook a journey into hell to preach to the shaitan (according to Muslim belief, the message was for humanity and the jinn). Naturally they derided him, but the tieflings believed and the First Caliph promised that all their crimes would be forgiven in XY years and at such time they would be free from the curse (paralleling Muslim belief that unfaithful Muslims sent to hell are eventually forgiven and may enter paradise).Two ways we could go with this: (1) The curse means "slavery to devils" and liberation from hell.(2) The curse means "devil's blood" implying that tieflings carry the hope of regaining their humanity.I'm thinking that AL-QADIM has a slightly different backstory for devils (shaitan), and Iblis could be protrayed as a fallen jinn. In Islamic theology, angels have no free will so the idea of a fallen angel is a paradox.Good point, Jon. That brings up the tangled question of cosmology which I'll need to research some more as I'm not clear on Arabian analogues to the Feywild, Shadowfell, Elemental Chaos or the Abyss. Also, it's clear that genies are elemental beings, so living in the feywild breaks with the symmetry. I do know that some schools of thought distinguish the terrestrial Garden from the celestial Paradise, which could be an interesting interplay.</blockquote>

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