Aasimon, Soul Child

Soul Child

On all the planes, petitioners go about their lives, learning more about their deity, and eventually merging with them. Most of these petitioners have human form, but not human functions. They simply not possess many common biological functions, including the ability to reproduce. But what about petitioners of gods of love, fertility, childbirth, and family? If these petitioners were incapable of reproducing, they would not be following their god’s doctrines.

So good powers of these spheres of influence somehow grant their petitioners the ability to reproduce as mortals do. But what is the result? Surely not more petitioners, because then these gods would have self sustaining populations of believers, and become massively more powerful. Yet not mortals, either, since the petitioners no longer have true mortal material in them to create mortals. No, the real result of a union of petitioners is an species of aasimon called a soul child.

Soul Children have two phases of life. In the first phase, they look exactly like a normal mortal of the race their petitioner parents seem to belong to. In the second phase, soul children appear to be humanoid forms made up of scintillating mist.

COMBAT: In their first phase, all soul children behave as though they were a mortal of 0 level of the race they appear to be. Treat them as such with regards to hit dice, THAC0, attacks and defences, etc.

All soul children in their second phase have the following abilities:

• They are never surprised.
• They can only be struck by a +2 or better weapon.
• They can concentrate the life energy that exists within them into a potent force. When it strikes another being, it has the same effect on the flesh touched as too much contact with the Positive Energy Plane. The flesh touched explodes in a flash of light, and disappears. This attack does 1d6 damage normally, and double damage to undead.
• In addition to the spell like abilities common to all aasimon, all soul children can cast the following spells, once per round: charm person (3 times per day), colour spray (once per day), protection from evil, 10′ radius(once per day), and aid (3 times a day).

Soul children only fight when someone threatens the person or group they are guarding. Even then, they prefer to use their charm abilities and protections skills to defend, rather than attack.

HABITAT/SOCIETY: The soul children do not fit into the normal hierarchy of aasimon. They are neither Warrior aasimon nor Celestial Stewards. They exist only to protect their charges and to learn more about their Power. Although soul children do not have a society as such, they do help each other.

Almost all soul children guard families in their Power’s realm. Since some of these families are composed of petitioners, with first phase soul children in them, the soul children protect and guard the future of their race. However, they do not guard any other family any less.

Like petitioners themselves, soul children are very rarely found outside the realm of the Power where they were born. Inside the realms of Powers that create soul children, they are rare. Outside, they are very rare.

When a soul child enters its second phase, it automatically learns all it needs to know to survive as a soul child. Its memories of its first phase fade into misty, half-glimpsed scenes, although it always tends to feel more attached to its petitioner parents, and untransformed siblings, than to anyone else. Outside of that, the soul child has no real contact with others of its kind. Each soul child works alone. If two are in the area when a good person is attacked, they will both come to defend him or her. However, they will not co-ordinate their activities, both fighting as though they were the only one there.

ECOLOGY: Depending on the area of control of the Power that created them, soul children have different lengths to their life cycles. Powers of love tend to want their petitioners back into the love game as soon as possible. Therefore, a petitioner’s pregnancy will usually only last from a week to a month, and the soul child often enters its second stage after only a few weeks in the first, while it still appears to be a baby. A cutter might expect a promiscuous power like Sune to have a veritable army of soul children at her disposal, but this isn’t the case. If her soul children servants are numerous, they don’t show their faces often, because they’re still rarely encountered.

Powers of childbirth let their petitioners have a normal gestation period. However, the Powers are not usually concerned with the child after it ceases to be a baby. Thus, most of these soul children enter their second stage after only two or three years.

Powers of fertility also have a normal gestation period. However, to demonstrate the fertility of a petitioner, the child must be kept for a while longer. Thus, most soul children of this persuasion enter the second stage at puberty. 

Finally, Powers of family have a normal gestation period, and keep the soul children in the first phase until they reach adulthood, when a mortal would go out to seek their own family.

Soul children, in their first phase, have exactly the same contribution to the ecology as a normal child of that race. In their second phase, they do not consume things. Instead, they live to guard something their Power values. In the realms of Powers of love, this would be lovers, or prime trysting areas. Powers of fertility and childbirth would have soul children guarding pregnant women, midwives, and places for giving birth. Powers of families would have soul children watching over families and homes.

It is said that if a soul child gains enough knowledge of their god’s principles, they are granted a reward, similar to that of a petitioner who merges with his or her deity. The soul child is taken by the god, and its intellect is dispersed. Its essence is then added to the newborn child of one of the Power’s mortal faithful. The soul child becomes an integral part of the new being, and the child is much more likely to take up the religion of its parents, and remain more faithful than the average mortal. When the mortal dies, his or her soul is that much closer to merging with the Power. When it finally does merge, both the mortal and the soul child essence within it join the god.

Soul children are apparently not useful for any magical items or spells. This is good, since there aren’t many of them in the first place, and having unpleasant mages come in and kill them for parts would certainly not help.

CURRENT CHANT: Rumours have it that an evil counterpart to soul children exist in the realms of Kali, the Black Earth Mother, of the Vedic pantheon, and Inanna, of the Sumerian pantheon. These evil soul children use their dark powers, twisted versions of their good opposites, to hurt and kill their parents, those who aren’t destroyed at birth. It is uncertain whether this is accurate or not.

Source: Kelly Pedersen