Hold your swords and spears, draw not the ire of the Asura

When you first see an Asura, what first strikes you is their commanding physique. They are long-limbed and powerfully-built, muscles rippling under translucent clay-brown skin. Upon their head is a mask of bone, which is shaped in the rough approximation of a  face, with a shock of thick, spiky hair. They speak calmly, with a smooth, deep cadence that echos in your bones. As any discussion with the Asura goes, it quickly becomes a heated debate, a battle of words and minds. Their "face" opens up into a vast maw of teeth and eyes as the asura gets progressively more impassioned. This bloom of fangs and flesh is the Asura's true face, the mask-like skeletal growth merely a keratinised growth of horn and scale in a roughly humanoid shape. These masks are often also shaped like animals or insects, and are unique identifiers of an Asura.

Mantis-head Asura

The Asura are are beings of passion and desire. They live life with a joie de vivre unlike any other, a product of a certain degree of impulsivity and trust in the sturdiness of their physiques. As mutable as their physical body, the Asura can be mercurial and erratic. Yet, this is tempered by an open-mindedness and willingness to experience new things. The Asura thrive in states of passion and conflict but fundamentally do not seek it with (much) malice. While they might delight in ridiculing a stubborn wizard in verbal warfare, for them any conflict is a chance to change, a chance to adapt. On first glance, they might be perceived as mere brutes but they have a passion for discovery and learning, and indeed many famed philosophers have been Asura. They are inclined towards chaos, repulsed by overtly restrictive laws and rules that restrict their freedoms and desires. Rather than evil, it is easier to call them self-possessed, wilful and unwilling to live as others would dictate. 

A brief sketch of the "blooming" of an Asura's face

Notably, they are also one of the few sentient Resurrected, usually arising from the deaths of great heroes or fighters. Most Asura currently living in Liurza originate from battlefield Resurrections, from the days of city-states and warlords. The Asura have formed a small (but vocal) minority in Liurza, successfully arguing for citizenship amongst the Exorcised Cities. They have integrated the best amongst human society, given their shared love for fine foods, fighting and alcohol. Famously, Yasa Vaisram founded the Epicures, an organisation devoted to the discovery of new and exciting cuisine.  

(For those wanting to play an Asura in DnD 5e, the Goliath is very easily reskinned into an Asura, simply by replacing Mountain Born's cold damage resistance to a resistance to poison).