Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Tieflings - lore question

I know a bit about the setting, but that's 2/3rd ed stuff.
No Tieflings then.
Then I started playing BG3 EA ... I'm confused ...
As in the DnD movie Thieve's Honor the ZOMG! OMG!WTF 2 CUTE!!!11 Doric is a - to use Warhammer termingology - a Gave, i.e. a Beastling ... erm ... Tiefling born to Human parents, a mutant, I thought that the Bg3 Tieflings are some sort of fresh mutants too.
That Karlach was a human street kid from Baldur's Gate sold into soldier-slavery in Avernus where she was mutated (go Clan Moulder!) into a Devil Stormtrooper, that the refugees in Druidville are formerly Human inhabitants of Eturiel who mutated while in Avernus.
But playing as Karlach and actually talking with other Tieflings made me question that - I now suspect that the refugees and Karlach are Tieflings born into existing, established Tiefling communities in Faerun.

Was my first conjecture correct, or the second?

The refugees from Elturel are indeed a special case, we'll get into them, but first, background:

Tieflings first appeared in 2e, the the Planescape Campaign Setting, as two of the main new "planetouched" races (the second being Aasimar).

in 2e, and 3e, They are literally just part-fiends (devils and demons are fiends, but there are more than just them). Cambions and Alu-fiends are both forms of half-fiends, but if a half-fiend has a baby with a human, it'll most likely be a Tiefling. Fiend blood at 1\4 or less = Tiefling. Di'Terlizzi style Tieflings like Doric were the norm, and they were described as being mostly human, but with a few fiendish appearance traits, and the roll table for those different traits was MASSIVE. The reason Doric was most likely abandoned, is that back then it was possible for the fiend blood to become very diluted over time, to the point were people might not even know they had fiend blood, and then suddenly, oops! Tiefling baby! Looks like one of you had an ancestor who dallied with fiends. I've used that exact orphan plot for a character in a past game.

In 4e and beyond the lore was shaken up, as we had a number of realm-events that caused bug changes. In reality, this was WOtC homogenising a lot of Tiefling lore, and trying to make them a "true" race, despite them already being massively beloved by large numbers of the player base. Short story: Asmodeus became a god and as his first act, made all tieflings his direct blood descendants, and changed the rules for how Tiefling babies happen (no more diluted fiend blood). This came with a huge appearance change for Tieflings into something more like what 5e has, but with even less options. This kind of homgenisation was not taken well by fans.

Now 5e happens, and Tieflings are in the PHB as a standard race again, just like 4e, and just like 4e, they have the same standard appearance. But, fans were absolutely not using their standard appearances and just making Tieflings however they wanted. WotC attempted to walk back the homogneisation of Tielfings using some of their side books, where they gave options for different Tiefling appearances and racial attributes, but it wasn't until Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes that they gave us the separate bloodlines, which once again indicated that Tieflings weren't just one bloodline under Asmodeus.

NOW, the refugees. There is such a thing as "spontaneous planetouched", where a planetouched person could be created, but instead of being a descendant of a planar, they have been changed by the energy of a plane. This can both change an already living person from what they were into a planetouched, and also make any children they have be born as planetouched. With the fall of Elturel into Avernus, I imagine that both happened, people being changed, and also later, humans giving birth to Tiefling babies. Traveling to a hard-aligned plane like Avernus might have also changed people's alignments temporarily, so they would have acted like different people until they left. Planar travel is dangerous, things can happen to you.

I have always thought the way the lore reads, mashing all the various versions together, that fiends either raped or had willing relations with supplicants. These created the half fiends that subsequently had children, the Tieflings. When a Tiefling has a child the "tiefling" gene is dominate and the characteristics pass on to the child even if both parents are not Tiefling. However Tiefling children are shunned by most of society as they are seen as spawn of evil. This is not however true as the inherent evil of the Demon or Devil has been diluted by the human genetics. The result is while they could be evil, nurture plays more of a role than nature.

This means if a Tiefling child is raised in a family that has direct worship or fealty to a Demon or Devil, then those evil tendencies will be nurtured and the Tiefling will likely be evil. If however the child is raised in an environment of love, community and taught such lessons, they will likely turn out to be "good".

Modern day tieflings don't even have 'evil tendencies' - they are no more inclined towards a particular alignment than humans are, and carry no intrinsic evil. Not everyone knows or accepts this, however, and they are often treated with mistrust or shunned, and that in turn leads many tieflings towards darker paths, or towards accepting invitations from lower plane entities who are always willing to reach out to the vulnerable with 'help'.

As Piff mentioned - while a lot of teiflings do come as a result of physical unions, that's not the only way it occurs. Ritual and pact-forging are just as common as being sources of tiefling blood or ancestry, and most of the Elturel refugees we meet in the game were likely not always tieflings at all, but ended up that way as part of the planar event that was the Descent - though short of an individual telling you their story, there's no way to tell whether they were born that way, or changed by the planar incursion.

Tieflings have only been inclined to evil alignments in 3e and 3.5e. In 2e their alignment restriction was only "can't be lawful good". 4e and 5e don't actually have racial alignment restrictions, just lore text stating the overall average trends, and the trend of Tielfings is usually that while they have no inherent inclination for evil or chaos, they often live with fear and prejudice being used against them, and this leads many into lives of crime or having to make questionable life decisions, similar to the lore trends associated with Half-Orcs.

Honestly the Preferred version, every Tiefling PC, I made in D&D 5e was this type, 4e ruin everything with their stupid Pact Garbage, I just want my Devil race who are biologically related to Devils,

However what I don't want is waterdowned humans who were transformed by grand daddy's pact, because WoTC decided to fuck up one of their coolest races for no apparent reason, This Pact garbage makes me want Playable Cambions despite them being OP at least they're still related to Devils aka the whole point of playing a Tiefling character in the first place.

Sorry I lost myself with my rant, but please continue on with Tieflings Lore.

The point is that all of the possibilities are on the table, as of 5e, Sai - if you want your teifling to be tiefling by direct blood lineage that's perfectly acceptable, and is just one of the possibilities; there are other possibilities, and other ways it comes about, but they didn't say no to the original ones. If you prefer your tieflings to have evil in their blood, intrinsically, you can have that too - though if you're running in a world that is based on the current realms lore, you have to understand at a player level (not necessarily at a character one) that that won't be the case for all tieflings you may meet.