More folklore accurate names for the genie tribes

While reading Legends of the Fire Spirits by Robert Lebling, I learned than Tunisian folklore tells of genies associated with the air, the sea, and the land. (This is also repeated in Between Sand & Sea for Ars Magica, if you want game-ready details for a "medieval authentic" game.) This inspired me to assign new names to some tribes of genies in the OGL rules, as an optional rule for those who prefer folklore authentic jargon rather than the inventions of Gygax and co.

In the OGL rules, the five tribes of genies are Djinn (air), Efreet (fire), Marid (water), Shaitan (earth), and Jann (n/a). Under this option, the Djinn, Marid, and Shaitan would be renamed Leriah (الرياح), Baharia (بحرية), and Siadna (سيادنا), respectively.

Genies of the lamp

In Arabic folklore, genies were incredibly powerful beings. They had incredible riches and magical powers. King Solomon bound a number of them into objects like rings and lamps. If the binding was permanent, then the genie would be forced to serve whoever held the prison. This was typically phrased as granting their master's wishes, i.e. orders.

At some point, popular culture forgot that genies were powerful in their own right and started depicting them as being given arbitrary wish granting by their imprisonment itself. It became a common convention for a master to be limited to three wishes before the genie's lamp magically whisks itself away to find a new master (or, less commonly, releases the genie). In many cases the genies were no longer depicted as a race but as human beings who were magically imprisoned and empowered.

Even D&D fell prey to this, as it employs a bizarre compromise between these two diametric opposed approaches. D&D genies are powerful magical beings in their own right, but they also have the limited ability to cast the wish spell on behalf of mortals. The part about being imprisoned in lamps, rings or other small objects is completely ignored for whatever reason, because D&D always warps its inspirations like that. Tradition!

This is ultimately a re-skinning of the Grimms' fairy tale "The Fisherman and His Wife." In that tale, a prince was inexplicably cursed into the form of a talking fish with the ability to arbitrarily grant wishes. People bound into lamps and thereby granted arbitrary wish granting are the same formula. So many stories have put their own variations on this formula so I can't make too many generalizations. The "wish granted by demon in exchange for your soul" is a common variation, for example.

While the tropes of "powerful being forced into servitude" and "arbitrary wish granting" are sufficient on their own, I feel that combining them waters down the whole concept. It raises the question of why these powerful D&D genies can arbitrarily grant wishes in the first place and why they don't seem to exploit that for their own benefit. Arbitrary wish granting only makes sense if you want a monster to be much weaker than it would be if it could arbitrarily warp reality, or if the source of the wish isn't important to the story. If the monster is already a high level monster and some kind of absurdly rich sovereign, like the noble class genies who grant wishes in the rules, then the wish granting becomes a bit superfluous.

Anyhow, I'm surprised that the "human cursed into wish-granting genie trapped in lamp" trope doesn't seem to show up in fantasy gaming. It sounds like a really good plot hook. What about having both in the same story? On one hand you have powerful genies who are imprisoned and forced to serve whoever holds their prison. On the other you have wish-granting lamps that enslave some hapless mortal as a glorified user interface. How do you suppose they would feel about one another?

Elemental humanoids

So a weird aspect of pre-5e D&D editions is that the taxonomy of elementals was pretty nonsensical. Azer, genies, salamanders, etc were not typed as elementals despite originating from the elemental planes. So this led to a number of attempts by third party products to introduce elemental humanoid equivalents.

The Slayer's Guide to Elementals introduced CR6 "higher elementals," described as "the sentient denizens of the Elemental planes, quite capable of building a civilization hidden from regular planar pathways." These included the gnomides of earth, royal salamanders of fire, sylphs of air, and undines of water.

Monster Encyclopaedia I introduced CR8 "emergents," described as "Not all elemental life is quite so simple – just as oozes and slimes give way to higher forms such as elves or humans, so too do primitive elemental forms lead to the rise of the higher elemental entities called emergents."

Legends & Lairs: Elemental Lore introduced CR11 "noble elementals," described as "Whereas normal elementals are the everyday inhabitants of the elemental planes, noble elementals consider themselves the more civilized elite." They held court on a demiplane at the center of the elemental planes called "Nexus."

Tome of Horrors 4 introduced CR20+ "elemental lords," described as "For every type of elemental, there is a ruler, a huge elemental of massive size and strength that holds dominion over its own kind. These rulers are often worshiped by elementals and some are even worshiped by cults on the Material Plane." The fire lord was Inder, the water lord was Lypso, the earth lord was Onyst, and the air lord was Susir.

In 4e, the elemental type was changed to an "origin" that could apply to beasts, humanoids, and so forth. In 5e, the nuance from 4e was discarded and all these elemental beasts and elemental humanoids are now simply typed as elementals. Hence, the emergent/higher/noble/lord elementals are no longer distinguished from azer, genies, salamanders, etc.

For example, I incorporated the royal salamanders in my post on salamanders. The gnomides could likewise be reflavored as earth-centric azer. I'd like to explore elemental humanoid races in future posts.

Etymology of hinn and jann

There is an obscure Arabic folklore creature called a hinn. The exact meaning varies depending on which story you read.

• In the Alawi creation myth, the age of man was preceded by previous ages. These were the ages of beings called hinn, binn, timm, rimm, jann and jinn. Aside from being personifications of evil, no details are given about these beings.
• The Revelations of ʻAbdullah Al-Sayid Muhammad Habib present a model of four elemental beings similar to that proposed by Paracelsus. Earth is represented by humanity, fire by jinn, air by hinn and water by binn.
• The hinn and binn are extinct in that account. Ibn Kathir explained that they were exterminated by the jinn.
• According to Tabari, the hinn were created from "scorching fire" whereas the jinn were created from "smokeless flame." In this account, the hinn under Iblis supported the angels in a battle against the wicked jinn.
• In other folklore, hinn take the form of wild dogs. A hadith warns that should a wild dog (really a hinn) approach a muslim, he should throw food at it and chase it away.

The word jann is typically a variant spelling of the word jinn. However, sometimes it has a distinct meaning in obscure folklore.

• In some contexts, jinn refers to supernatural beings in general whereas jann refers to genies specifically.
• One account attributed to Mohamed (referenced in Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth by Carol Rose) describes different types of jinn: those that inhabit the depths of the earth and manifest as monsters like serpents, those that manifest as monstrous black dogs, hofafa that fly with wings, so'la that devour humans, the nocturnal ghoul, the aquatic ghawwas, etc.
• The first genie created from "scorching fire," and father of all others, is named Jann. He may be identified with Iblis or Azazel.
• A primitive kind of genie, or genie that normally takes the form of animals, is called jann. (This is similar to the definition of hinn as transformed wild dogs.)
• According to Encyclopedia of Spirits and Ghosts in World Mythology by Theresa Bane, a jann is the weakest class of genie. They are a type of familiar spirit (compare qarin or hamzaad) and steal animals from farmers.
• According to Encyclopaedia Iranica, the genies raise their own livestock. (These may or may not be the same as the bestial hinn/jann.)

Ghouls, Vampires and Zombies

Although originally fairly distinct in their original mythologies, these three creatures have been blurred in modern popular culture. The modern idea of the zombie as an infectious flesh-eater is actually due to conflation with ghouls and vampires.

The ghoul was originally a type of demon or genie that consumed corpses and could disguise themselves as human. Some stories depict disguised ghouls marrying humans and having children with them, before inevitably being discovered when their spouse investigates their unusual behavior.

The vampire was originally a reanimated corpse or ghost that predated on humans, stealing breath, consuming flesh, etc. They spread sickness and disease, including vampirism.

The zombie was originally a corpse reanimated by an evil sorcerer to use as slave labor. This was culturally relevant because these tales circulated during the height of the Colombian slave trade.

There is overlap between ghouls and vampires in some instances, such as if the vampire is actually a corpse possessed by a demon. Folklore is often vague, so it is difficult to tell when this is the case unless explicitly stated.

My genies are different

D&D makes genies out to be some kind of competition for the gods, which I am going to throw out right now. In my setting, genies are just elemental humanoids and just like player races they can dramatically vary in power. This is taken from Arabic folklore on the subject, in which genies or "jinn" (depending on romanization scheme) are considered to be just another race created by Allah. Now I shall launch into a tirade on the subject and how it relates to D&D.

Mythological and folkloric roots of hungry dead

Zombies

Zombies originate from Haitian voodoo. Evil sorcerers use magic to capture the souls of the dead, reanimate their corpses and use them as labor slaves. This was especially terrifying to the Haitians: at the time they were enslaved by the colonists and thus it made sense they especially feared being enslaved after death. Haitian folklore has attributed other supernatural powers to zombies, such as transforming into smoke to get around barriers.

A similar belief appeared in Chinese culture, where funeral directors were once believed to use magic to reanimated dead bodies to make them easier to transport to their homelands where they would receive last rites. The reanimated were called 僵尸 jiāngshī meaning “stiff corpse.”

D&D zombies and skeletons are more or less identical to the Haitian zombie.

Ghouls

Ghouls originate from Arabic folklore, where they are a type of genie that haunts graveyards and consumes corpses. They are said to have traits of donkeys, like pelts, tails, hooves, and large ears.

The wendigo from the folklore of the Algonquin peoples bears similarities to the ghoul due to their carnivorous nature, though the wendigo is sometimes claimed to be a human transformed or possessed by a wendigo as punishment for cannibalism.

Ghouls appeared in some of the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and his followers, where they were attributed to kidnap human children and replace them with their own (similar to the changeling, a European fairy) and to transform humans into ghouls through some manner of black magic (similar to some stories of the wendigo).

D&D ghouls drawn some inspiration from Lovecraft's ghouls, but are mostly conflated with the "ghouls" from Night of the Living Dead.

Vampires

In 20th century fiction and beyond, both zombies and jiāngshī would be attributed ghoul- or vampire-like hunger for the flesh or vitality of the living. Meanwhile, ghouls would be conflated with zombies as a kind of flesh-eating undead creature. These modern monsters bear more resemblance to the vampires of folklore than to the zombies and ghouls of folklore.

The modern vampire retains the hungry nature of its predecessors, but has acquired overtones of power and sexual lust. This movement started with Dracula, was refined by Interview with the Vampire, and reached its nadir in the Twilight books. That being said, the folkloric vampire has made resurgence in counter-cultural fiction.

D&D vampires are taken straight out of Dracula.

Pronouncing djinni, genie and janni

The genie family has a number of homophone names. What is the difference in pronunciation between genie and djinni? There isn't one! Genie, djinni, janni and so forth are actually alternative spellings of the same word. The same goes for efreet and ifrit. In this post I will provide a scheme for pronouncing the names of the genie tribes.