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.

Ifrit, Final Fantasy VIII

Genies have a fairly expansive history in the OGL era. (I have appended superscript letters to the name to indicate their elemental affinity: "a" means air, "e" means earth, "f" means fire, "w" means water. A number of them lack a specific or classical elemental affinity.)

In 3.x/d20/OGL:

• The SRD v3.x gave us the djinnᵃ, efreetᶠ, jann and maridʷ.
• Monster Encyclopaedia II: The Dark Bestiary gave us the dev, evil genies opposing the celestial devas.
• The Tome of Horrors series gave us abasheenᵃ, burning dervishᶠ, hawanarᵃᶠ and seraphᶠ.
• The Dragonstar SRD gave us the elem planetouched in flavors of air, earth, fire and water.
• Children of the Planes by Tangent Games gave us the fireslyᶠ, efreet/halfling planetouched.
• Aasimar & Tiefling: Guidebook to the Planetouched gave us the janjanni planetouched.
• Endless Sands: Arabian Adventures gave us four tribes of djinn named jann, ifrit, ba-jehn, and yemman.
• The Legacy of Heroes: A Fantasy Role-Playing Game Player's Guide names the genie-touched "jinnai."

In Pathfinder-OGL:

• The Pathfinder supplements gave us black jinni, div, ghul, shaitanᵉ, and zhyen plus a geniekin planetouched in no less than five elements including non-elemental (?!). The latter were confusingly named ifiritᶠ, oreadᵉ, suli-jann, sylphᵃ, and undineʷ.
• The Genius Guide to Races of Fire and Fury gave us the silaᶠ PC race, efreet-blooded humans.
• The Genius Guide to Races of Wind and Wing gave us the silfideᵃ, who are basically airbenders.
• The Traveler's Guide to the Elemental Plane of Fire gave us an efreetᶠ PC race (balanced of course).
• Monster Menagerie: A Council of Genies gave us around a dozen para-elemental genies I will not bother to name here named afaraᶠ, electricusᵃ, guayota, hrimthurᵃʷ, inhabitorsᵉ, mireimerᵉʷ, obscurial, prince of beasts, spell fetches, tephranᵉᶠ, and yazata.
• Player's Options: Aasimars, Tieflings, and Elemental Templates gave loads of options to planetouched characters, including different elemental bloodlines.

In 5e-compatible:

• Tome of Beasts for 5th Edition gave us the al-aeshma.
• Genies (5E) by Tribality Publishing gave us four elemental courts for the genie society.
• Unlikely Heroes for 5th Edition gave us the jinnborn planetouched.
• Genies Great & Small by Kobold Press introduces no less than twenty-one (21) new genies!

There are probably loads of other supplements that I am forgetting, but that should be the gist of it.

A note on names: D&D named earth genies as "dao," but since that name is closed content some publishers use the open content name "shaitan" from Pathfinder instead. Just in case you are unfamiliar with the word. Additionally D&D refers to elemental planetouched as "genasi," but that name is closed content unlike aasimar and tiefling so third-party products had to devise new names to get around this. These include elem, elemarn, genai, geniekin, janjanni, jinnai, jinnborn and so forth. So just in case you read an unfamiliar word, now you can mentally treat them all as synonymous. D&D and derivatives have a stupid history of using variant spellings of the same word as names for different monsters (genie=janni=jinni=djinni, afrit=efreet=ifrit, etc); but I already wrote a post harping on about how annoying and stupid that is so I will not repeat myself.

Where was I? Ah yes, genies...

Water Djinn, Guild Wars

What are genies?

In Arabic folklore, Allah created humans from the earth and genies from "the fire of a scorching wind". Samuel Marinus Zwemer describes them as "nymphs and satyrs of the desert." Back in 1928, occultist Manly P. Hall connected the genies with the salamanders from the writings of the alchemist Paracelsus since both were composed of elemental fire. In D&D, the authors bizarrely treated genies as synonymous with elementals and thus we got ridiculous ideas like water-genies, earth-genies, and non-elemental-genies.

It is too late to fix that, so the only recourse I have now is to explain what sets genies apart from other elemental humanoid races like the azer, the "higher elementals" from The Slayer’s Guide to Elementals, the "emergents" from Monster Encyclopaedia I: Ravagers of the Realms, the "noble elementals" from Legends & Lairs: Elemental Lore, or the "elemental lords" from Tome of Horrors IV. All of these are variations on the same basic idea of civilized elementals and even ignoring third-party products D&D paints a truly byzantine picture of elemental planar demographics.

The best I can think of right now is that genies are the elemental planes' equivalent of humans. Maybe I could even expand azer to have variants for the other elements, too (e.g. earth azer equate to "gnomides" from The Slayer’s Guide to Elementals). Maybe include third-party monsters like shae (Pathfinder Bestiary) or yaksha (Monsters of Porphyra) under the genie banner to avoid redundancy.

Taking a page from 13th Age, I would rule that genies bigger than medium-size gain the giant type. I know that 5e does not allow a monster to have more than one type, but that is a stupid rule so I am ignoring it. Yes, this makes them compete with the Norse-inspired elemental giants but I do not care because fantasy kitchen sink settings make no sense! If the Norse and Arabic people ever met they probably would have considered genies and giants to be different names for the same thing. As a matter of fact, the Arabic word mārid is translated as "giant" by Google!

"Sand Genie" ©2016 gramczasami

EDIT 12/30/2018: When Islam was exported to other countries and cultures, native peoples combined the belief in genies with native belief systems. West Africans tell tales of men with genie wives living in the ocean, and of a terrifying genie with three heads, six arms and one leg. Malay folk medicine blamed disease on genies disrupting the four elements within the human body (a la humoral theory, which I mentioned in prior posts).

Where do genies come from?

This one is simple. Every edition has its own ideas for where genies come from, and since I have an open mind unlike typical OCD fantasy game writers, I will treat all of these as true. Genies spontaneously arise from the elemental chaos as fully-formed adults, they are born to genie parents, they are created from elemental chaos by genie parents, they are born to human parents with genie ancestry, blah blah blah. Anything is possible.

Depending on where they came from, the genies may have one of many different elemental or pseudo-elemental affinities such as air, earth, fire, water, ice, mud, magma, ash, lightning, shadow, etc. Genies of the same affinity (both elemental and cultural) organize themselves into tribes like afrit/efreet/ifrit, seraph, abasheen, tephran, dev/div, and so forth. I feel there may be too many tribes and they are pigeonholed as it is (hooray for racism!), so I am very open to less straight-jacketed organization.

The genie family includes not only a bazillion varieties of elemental and pseudo-elemental genies, but also tiny genie familiars. These may be called by a variety of names like gen, zhyen, spell fetch, and (in Arabic folklore) qarin or hamzaad. They share the same variable origin as other genies and additionally may be promoted to or demoted from full-size genies.

"Djinn," World of Warcraft Trading Card Game

What kind of society do genies have?

The exact same sorts of societies than humans and other humanoid races do. I have already said in past posts that my setting tries to make the elemental planes into viable locations starting from level one and this plays into that. They have cities, farms, trade, professions, yadda yadda. Watch Avatar: The Last Airbender or read The Traveler's Guide to the Elemental Plane of Fire if you want ideas for elemental societies.

In my setting the pseudo-elements have been condensed into the classical elements. This means that the tribes have specific affinities, but virtually all may be placed into one of the four elemental courts. There might be a fifth court for "quintessence" or something, since D&D loves to add pseudo-elements like positive/apodiction/radiant, negative/abnegation/necrotic, achromatic, etc.

The elementals, at least the elemental humanoids (elemental beasts, plants and so forth are not civilized), are organized into courts for each classical element and at the heads of these courts are the elemental lords. Very Moorcockian and obviously D&D has cribbed from him in the past only D&D is unnecessarily complicated. That is not the say the elemental lords hold the final sway in the politics of their element; for example, the efreet and seraph genies are both fire tribes but they are locked in a perpetual blood feud.

Taking another page from Arabic folklore, genies may also be divided between followers of Allah or Iblis, and those harnessed/imprisoned by Solomon. There is no arbitrary distinction between elemental, demonic/fiendish and undead genies as there in the absurd d20 taxonomy. Yes, the devs/divs and black jinni/nisnases/ghul are genie tribes in my setting, but that does not make them cartoonishly evil (since evil is not an alignment in my cosmology).

I guess that is sufficient writing for now. I might try to explore this topic further in later posts, but this is the gist of my ideas.