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While reading some of the archives of the Mimir.Net mailing list I encountered the "CMV Hypothesis". In short, it says:
Under the CMV hypothesis, Eladrin, Guardinals, Asuras, and Aasimar are all one race; Aasimon and Archons are not. [Galen, 1999 archive part 3]
After reading several posts about this hypothesis, I still can't figure out what 'CMV' is supposed to stand for. Web searching is confounded by a biology hypothesis of the same name.
So what does the "CMV" in "CMV hypothesis" stand for?
You can find the full planescape mailing list archive at archive.org. In it, there is an email from author Galen, dated 16 Nov 1999. It goes:
It is proposed that the Eladrin and the Guardinals are subgroupings of a single race, herein termed CMVs.
The next day, author Doug Meerschaert comments:
CMV? Wow... an acronym that he doesn't bother telling what it means... "Celesitally Mortal Vehicles?" (sic)
To which, author Michael Truman answers, the day after:
Mentioned in the original CMV post - Celestial, Mortal Variant.
It appears that the hypothesis assumes that celestials are initially mortals, who die and get re-incarnated as Coure, remain in that stage for 50 to 500 years, and eventually advance to some Mature form. Depending on which plane a CMV is in its Coure form, its Mature form becomes a type of Eladrin, Guardinal, or Asuras.
