D&D 4E The 4e PHB : Cheesecake Y/N?

[Dausuul]

"Points of light" doesn't automatically equal "parochial dark age of ignorant huddling racist peasants who kill anyone who doesn't look like them."

It looks like WOTC intends one of the assumptions of the core setting to be that the typical person is familiar with the existence of other types of sentient humanoids. While a setting could include prejudice against tieflings, it doesn't necessarily have to. Remember, a tiefling is supposed to start out with relatively small physical abnormalities (horns, etc), which then grow more prominent if/when they obtain power. It wouldn't be beyond the pale for the typical person to be aware that sometimes people are born with little nubby horns, and that it doesn't mean anything.

It does mean something. It means you belong to a race that made a deal with the lords of the Nine Hells for power. It means you have an affinity for nasty magic (i.e., warlockry). It means you are intimately associated with some very, very bad mojo.

The thing about the Drizzt novels is that the peasants and townsfolk who react with fight-or-flight at the sight of a dark elf are behaving in a perfectly logical and sensible way. They aren't ignorant bigots. The vast majority of drow are horribly evil creatures who will kill surface dwellers without a second thought. It would be utterly stupid to gamble your life on the possibility that this was that one-in-a-thousand nice, friendly dark elf.

Similarly, it's entirely rational to react with instant hostility to a creature you know to be closely linked to devils. Devils are notoriously tricky, subtle creatures, and the tieflings made a deal with them once. Maybe they've since repudiated that bargain, but devil's bargains aren't usually that easy to get out of. And if you're ignorant of tieflings' origins... well, then, you're looking at a guy with horns, fangs, a tail, and glowing red eyes. That all fairly screams "EVIL MAGIC." If you didn't know tieflings were humans tainted by devils, it would not be unwarranted to conclude that they were devils themselves.

If "points of light" means anything, it means small, isolated communities under constant threat from the big dark wilderness all around them. Those communities aren't going to risk their survival for some ideal of inter-species tolerance. At best, I'd expect to see tieflings refused entry at spearpoint. At worst, burned at the stake.