@bmdragon why not use the Miracle spell instead of wish?
Ah. Speaking to my taste buds, er, heart. Genies indeed are Arabian mythos whose tone clashes with Athasian mythos.
By transforming them into purer elemental beings do we not lose their colorful essence as well as impinge on that of primordials (using a 4e term)? It’s a conundrum.
I wrote this on the Piazza. Change “gold” to “ceramic” or “silver”, depending on what the Athas gold piece equivalent is in your campaign.
The Al-Qadim setting made it clear that genie wishes are not really the same as the arcane wishes cast by powerful mages. Here is a 3.5e adaption of the genie wishes, including differentiating the wishes of common genies and noble genies. The resulting material is closer to folklore.
People that cannot see the pictures can download the PDF file here. Also, the PDF is the most updated version. Check that before commenting on errors.
I think western culture has over simplified genies, leading to unfortunate misunderstandings about their origin and nature.
Jinn, romanized as Djinn, and anglicized as genie, are actually spirits or demons. They predate Islamic culture as well as Arabian culture.
Islam acknowledges jinn as one of the few creatures besides humans that are not born innately good or evil, thus being able to choose between the two. Most are troublemakers and often take the forms of animals. They were apparently worshipped despite being explicitly mortal in pre-Islam cultures, and sometimes associated with desert, defiled, and/or other unclean locations (yes, on earth not Athas). They were more powerful than humans, but not so powerful that a great human couldn’t defeat one in single combat. They were feared for their “invisible form”, which was considered part of their shapechanging. Some were vampiric, and all were generally stronger and faster than most humans, plus their various powers of mental control, possession, transformation, and elemental control, often wind or fire. They are often repelled by salt or iron.
The story of the magic lamp isn’t even from Arabia at all, and was not included in the original 1001 tales… it was actually added to the collection by the translator, was told to said translator by a Syrian, and was explicitly a Chinese boy who got the lamp (and a ring!) both with jinn bound inside, and fought with the evil wizard and the wizard’s even more evil brother. There is also a Russian version of the tale, which I have seen a movie adaption of, where the jinn is more mischievous and grumpy, and must be coaxed into doing things. In any case, Galland’s version of the jinn, including using the French word genie instead of jinn, stuck with westerns… and then a certain 60’s sitcom followed by Disney happened, pretty much cementing that westernized version.
Sigh.
In Mesopotamia, where it is thought that the concept of jinn originated, there are a number of demons that match both abilities and habitats, if not always the attitudes.
Islam claims the jinn are real, and many today still believe and blame various medically unexplained ills upon jinn. Political enemies sometimes accuse others of conspiring with shaitan or ifrit, two of the five sub types of jinn which have dedicated themselves to evil and rejected God. They are said to love abandonded structures and wasteland environments, but otherwise are like mortals despite their powers: they are born, age, marry, have jobs and families, worship (at least the good ones do), choose between good and evil, form communities, and eventually die to be judged by God, just like humans. They are considered to have been created from smokeless fire, much like humans were created from dirt and angels were created from light. Some claim that jinn were created first and inhabited the world before humans were created, and God demanding the jinn be subject to Adam, is what caused some to choose to rebel and become evil, because they thought they were superior to humans.
Jinn are almost the same as shedim in some Jewish traditions, up to and including some of them converting to follow God, being mortal despite their powers, and thus becoming good. Often associated with one of the three Books of Solomon (not the song). This is also the origin of the concept of asmodeus, who was originally depicted as a jinn that opposed King Solomon, as well as pazuzu, who was a demon or wind spirit of the mesopotamian variety.
In buddhism, deva and asura correspond to jinn.
The only appearance in christianity related texts is a specific translation of the Arabic version of the old testament where the term in Hebrew usually translated as “familiar spirits” is rendered instead as the plural jann.
So here is your dose of history, religion, mythology, and factoids for the day all in one post!
Thus, I think they can be made to fit into Athas just fine… with just a little tweaking.
On the topic of jinn, has anyone used ukoven in their campaigns?
I have used genies in my Dark Sun campaign. I treat them as the creations of the Elemental Lords, which are god-like elementals.
Genies serve the elemental lords as generals in the elemental war. Sun, Silt, and Magma like to capture the genies and use them as magical batteries.
The elemental war is a central theme to my Dark Sun game.
Never used them as I think they have issues. That said, if I ever did I’d reskin them as using divine not arcane casting, no wishes (but geis). I’d needs to go through them more carefully but on this basis I think they could fit very well in the setting from the elemental planes.
I read through all the responses thus far. I found a lot of very helpful ideas. To put it simply, I have never used genies in Dark Sun. To be fair, not deliberate on my part. Just never got around to it. I have not played it since high school.
However, I am going over a future possible campaign, and I am putting a lot of mental effort concerning the role of the elemental forces. Athasian genies would put a face and personality on the forces they represent. However, is that a good thing? Are the elementals better completely faceless?
I would say I do not think they would represent a united front in any way. Imagine one earth genie wanting to build a mountain where another wants to build a ravine.
I do lean towards them having some kind of broken or fallen culture. Mere shadows of what they once were.
That is how you handle them. A bit of a narrative below.
Aric stared at the clay jug. Inside was a genie. Aric was afraid of the genie, for Aric was only 12 and had found the jug completely by accident in the ruins a few leagues from his village. The genie told Aric that he had three wishes. The genie had told Aric other things too.
“In the before times, the thoughts of my people became reality. If I thought that I wanted a palace full of servants, such a palace full of servants appeared before me. If I thought I wanted wealth, food, wine, such was granted for my people were strong willed. Then came the destruction of your world, and the imbalance in mine. Now my people are degenerate. We have but a fraction of the power that we had formerly, and we can only use these minor powers, these ‘wishes’, in service to your kind”.
Aric didn’t really understand. What Aric did understand was that the genie could give him some money or perform some tasks, three times before the genie would go free. Gingerly, Aric opened the stopper on the clay jug and witnessed the genie emerge in a jet of smoke.
The matter of genies in Dark Sun has recurringly seemed to me an important problem needing resolution within the campaign setting. Phil here hits the point clearly and succinctly:
“I don’t think conventional genies fit the tone of Athas in any way.”
I am loathe to challenge much of anything from the original boxed set, but despite my various attempts, genies indeed have never fit, and I have never introduced my various attempted drafts of such beings into a DS campaign (fun question: would they have psionics or not, and if so how mightily?). Even if un-Arabized, their powers and their general nature have for various subtle reasons never fallen neatly within the Athasian milieu. After much reflection, IMHO they do not sit well with the general tone and description of the Elemental Planes as given in Earth, Air, Fire, & Water, nor are they referenced there even once, and as I hold EAFW in quite high regard for its development of the unique style and particular nature of the Dark Sun Inner Planes, I am inclined to delete genies as such from the campaign setting.
Formally published details of the Elemental Planes are rare indeed, though the details that are offered are very often very tantalizing. The variety, nature and powers of the various elemental spirits must surely be fascinating to explore, especially for very high levels of play. If to rise in level a 26th level dragon must first consult an Elemental Lord in quest for mighty arcana, and come before such a being presumably as an inferior for its wisdom and aid, such an Elemental Lord must surely be a tremendous figure. But I dislike that a great efreet Grand Caliph, or anything like such a fire genie overlord, should be on a rising dragon’s list of potential mentors. There should not be a City of Brass, nor anything like it.
To me, EAFW wondrously depicted the Elemental Planes of Dark Sun as raw, unfinished, barbarous, and certainly uncivilized. Versions of these elemental spirits might abound in great variety, but a separate if parallel race of anything like a genie is confusing to the theme and oblique to the flavor of the campaign setting.
Niijineko has usefully elucidated on the real-world origin of genies. I would stress that the Abrahamic faiths have set their seal on genies in much of our imagination, and that ultimately genies are loosely considered Divine creations, that belong as part of a mythos that includes an afterlife of heaven and hell. Efreet, in the Ishmaelite legendarium for example, are much thought of as devils of hell trapped in iron bodies by the derivative power of the Ring of Solomon, but whatever their exact origins and nature, Islam is quite clear that upon their deaths djinn of all sorts go to either heaven or hell. This aspect alone, of genies being associated with an afterlife beyond the Sheol of the Gray, does not compliment Dark Sun well. It begs the question, why are there two distinct “races” of intelligent spirits on the Elemental Planes, elemental and genie? In traditional campaign settings, this is easy, for genies have souls that might be ennobled in the Upper Planes or damned in the Lower, whereas the Elementals are spirits that merely meld back into their Plane or into the fabric of the PMP if destroyed, and have no possible share in any Outer Planar afterlife. But in Dark Sun, there would be no easy metaphysical explanation, and an Athasian planar philosopher might conclude that even if there were “genies”, they were merely but another form of “elemental”, much as are sandlings, aerila servants, xorn, etc. And this would not make much sense in the setting.
But whatever the case, bottom line I believe I shall continue to remove genies from the setting, and reluctantly ignore their mention in official publications, as I do not believe the designers properly thought out their presence in Dark Sun. Their roles, such as they are, I will give to various elemental beings, all of whom will of course be without the ability to grant wishes.
Genies could be lesser elemental lords, or fallen elemental lords. There is a huge question about the exact nature of elemental lords, so we have some leeway. If I recall correctly, the 4E lore says that elemental lords are primordials, which I take to mean they are demiurges, that is the creators of the physical world, be it purposefully or by accident.
I agree that genies seem to be a poor fit for the Dark Sun setting, due to the setting’s implicit materialist premise. Even “magic” is energy in, energy out. In this sense the mystical on Athas has the same scientific feel as an Internal Combustion Engine. Genies granting wishes feels somewhat at odds with this.
That said, genies in Dark Sun are definitely canon. I think they just need to be thematically adjusted.
My Take:
The planes, although the basis of life on Athas itself, were devoid of life in the beginning, just the pure element existed in a perfect balance during the Blue Age.
When the Nature Masters of old created the Pristine Tower to destroy the Brown Tide, a copy of this living material, mixed with the pure element, grew on each of the planes, from the four elemental, to the four paraelemental, to the eight quasielememtal planes and even the negative and positive energy plane. Only the
inner grey, where the souls linger on between Athas and the outer grey, where no one ever returned from, no towers grew.
This is also when the planes changed to mimic
the athasian topography, each plane being a perfect copy of the athasian continents, just made out of the native element. However, even before this, depending on the change on Athas, the inner planes themselves changed, grew or declined, water for example was once the biggest power and declined when the brown tide
grew.
What the towers also triggered was the mutation
of the lifegiving elements themselves. At first elementals rose into consciousness, basic and animalistic but still alive. Pure neutral and powers to be behold of, they were the only ones till the Rebirth.
Then, something changed within the towers, the elementals that woke now were different, intelligent and on each plane, two of immense powers, elemental and psionic, came to be. Those beings surpassed even the power of the primordials and became the prime Lords and Ladies of their respective plane. During this Great Awakening they “birthed” a pair of neutral children, one male and one female to replace them, should they perish, those children are the Archomentals and Qsalsuzalaxa is the heir to the domain of her mother, the domain of salt.
During the Cleansing Wars, Rajaat considered the life on the inner planes an impurity that had to be exterminated and so, almost a thousand years ago, the Purifying began. All beings from the inner planes were nearly exterminated by powerful Artifacts create by Rajaat, the 18 Obisdian Men. Artefacts made out of living obsidian, completely immune to the power of the
element and even to the psionic powers of the elemental rulers, they were designed to destroy. On the plane they were even more powerful than on Athas and so they began to purge their elemental plane from the life that was created through the Mirror Towers. The Purifying
was almost completed and the lords, primordials and elementals that were left prepared for the final stand. The lords of magma, through great sacrifices, succeeded to send their Obsidian Man to Athas but it was a matter of time, till
Rajaat would send him back. But then, without any notice the Obsidian Men just stopped and moved into the Mirror Tower of their plane, where they guarded it for almost a thousand years, till one day they woke and the carnage began anew. Luckily it didn´t last long but no one could guarantee that Rajaat won´t return, and with his return the Obisdian Men will awaken.
During the Calm Time, when the Obsidian Men
slept, the Mirror Towers and their magic started to work in unpredictable ways. The new elemental beings that rose from their planes, mimicked the races and beings of Athas. Flamelike humanoids similar to dwarves,
pure elemental drakes, that mimicked the Dragon, Demon and Devil like beings on the negative planes, and other animal and humanoid like elemental beings rose to build cities and communities (Efreeti, Dhaot etc.). Not purely neutral they waged wars like the races of Athas do, good versus evil, order versus chaos and even plane vs plane. Only the absolute power of the Lords kept a certain balance that to this day prevents and out all war.
Taken from my Belgoi of Athas.
Goodness. This is surely an original take. I have taken to enjoying these alternate grand narratives, MindCosmos. I don’t think any of the game designers meant the novels and such to be a leash or vice for us.
Interesting idea, about the Pristine Tower being the catalytic event to split the cosmos of Athas from the rest of the Multiverse. Always an interesting topic to explore.
Indeed redking. They are certainly canon, as they are very much present in a handful of the core game books. But to my knowledge they were never introduced. We never “saw” them in any of the adventure modules or short stories, at least as I recall. I suppose that would mean we would have to “gin” up a story about them.
Lead the way sir. I would enjoy being sold on an appropriately Athasian “genie” in his own adventure module, short story, or even lore fluff.
Indeed, your earlier picture you posted on this thread, a Brom I think, does open the door a bit.
The only, “Genie”, in my games was the Dragon of Tyr; you don’t want to summon him and he doesn’t grant three-wishes.
Tasked genies also are a thing and could be interesting on Athas, though I don’t think they’ve been officially updated out of 2e.
Yes. Architect genies and the like could be quite interesting. To make them work, you have to remove them from their original cultural context. No big deal there; D&D has done that from the beginning.
I’ve been enjoying the concept that genie are higher up the elemental tree, and basically function as the ruling classes of each. They would be the ones to manage the Unseen War, and are the ones that actually end up giving power to the mortals. The planes of the Elements/Paraelements are very lethal and dangerous to navigate in Dark Sun, so I take it that there’s just not a lot known.
This allows for Elemental clerics to be pawns of genie in a war that doesn’t really care for them. If the DM allows for Sha’ir, they in turn are mercenaries to edge out the competition. I’ve found it rounds out the experience of the Unseen War to include genies. I had been thinking about using the various elemental giants as the souls of priests enslaved after death, the way Shadow Giants relate to the Black. The idea of “Souls are supposed to go to the Gray” met with a “yes but…” because things always get hazy when magic gets involved.
On the “Spirits” of Genies: To set the stage for our discussion, let us consult Planescape MC III for an authoritative review of the metaphysical properties of elementals:
The Monstrous Manual tome presents elementals from a prime-material point of view - as creatures summoned to the Prime by spellcasters. On their own planes, however, elementals’re treated a bit differently. At home, their frequency is common, they’re often encountered in bnds of 1d6, and many of them have high Intelligence (13-14) or better. What’s more, they’re free-willed creatures with societies, leaders, fears, and aspirations. Some of the more intelligence elementals have even changed alignments, so a planewalker might encounter the rare on that’s become good or evil - or the even rarer elemental that’s given itself over to law or chaos.
An elemental in the strictest sense of the word is a spiritual creature found only on the planes of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water that inhabits its respective element. It flows freely throughout its plane, when it wants to interact with its environment, it can assume a material form by wrapping a portion of elemental force around itself. (This resultant “body” isn’t really the elemental at all.) And the same is true of paraelementals and quasielementals. Both are free-willed spirits that shape bodies for themselves out of their environment.
(Planescape Monstrous Compendium III, p. 4)
Metaphysically, one of the key distinctions between an elemental and a genie is that the elemental has a spirit, whereas a genie has a soul, in the AD&D sense of the spirit and the soul. A spirit may inhabit a body, but when that body is abandoned (dies), the spirit returns to its plane of origin (or even simply enters a new body). A soul, on the other hand, is born into a mortal body, and when that body at last dies, the soul migrates to the Outer Plane most congruent with the alignment of its life, normally never to return. Genies were widely understood to have souls, and though very powerful as a race of beings were destined after their deaths for either Heaven or Hell. This is complicated by the notion of efreet, who in deep Semitic lore were the souls of evil genies (or devils) who were imprisoned in bodies of brass or bronze, sealed therein by the power of the Ring of Solomon.
The notion of Athasian genies having “souls” in this manner is troublesome. There is no mythological baseplate from which they might emerge to provide them with a suitably esoteric explanation for their existence. They are simply there, like Athasian elementals are simply there (as are all the PC races, presumably without a Creator…). Presumably, there is no Heaven or Hell on Athas, but rather the Sheol-like nothingness of the Gray. It seems to me then that one of the most important changes we can make for Athasian genies is their having spirits, and not souls. Indeed, I consider simply making them simply another variety of elemental spirits. In traditional campaign settings, slain genies go to either a Heaven or Hell, but for Athas, I propose for your consideration that their spirits simply abandon the ruined body they have inhabited, and if they are upon the Prime Material simply return to their Elemental Plane. There they may slowly regather their strength until they may manifest a physical form once again (much as fiends and angels may do).
If we accept this, I might argue that certain elemental spirits might fuse themselves more tightly to the elements, pouring more of themselves into their physical nature, and making the bond tighter, so that they are in some respects more powerful, but also more restricted in their adopted physical forms. Certain spellcasters might even compel them to enter into such a state. I speculate that while holding such forms, such as a body akin to an efreet or marid, they might maintain memories and develop personalities more relatable to PC races than the esoteric entities of normal elemental spirits. In such bodies they retain a temporal reality more relatable to normal mortal beings. They might live and learn much as we might. But I speculate this is somewhat of an unnatural state, and although perhaps not necessarily painful, and may be constraining, and not as free as the fleeting forms inhabited by traditional elementals.
If we accept this metaphysic, a genie may be better explained, and be better divorced from Arabo-Islamic culture, and spare us from an Athasian City of Brass, and the like (though perhaps different such citadels inhabit the Athasian Elemental Planes…). I could imagine, for example, a defiler casting a specialized summoning spell for an elemental, and then a subsequent spell forcing that elemental spirit into not simply a body of flame, but into a mass of rock and brimstone. A “fire genie” is thus conjured, and locked more tightly and intimately into a physical body, it no longer simply “returns home” when a spell ends. The wizard has ported a genie more permanently into the Prime Material world, and presumably through further magic may attempt to compel this being into action. And indeed, perhaps by this method of conjuration and manifestation, so tightly is it bound with Prime Material that it retains its intelligence, being forced to be a part of the physical Athasian world.
This might more palatably explain “genies” on Athas, as listed in the encounter tables in the original boxed set. Surely from time to time the conjurer might lose control of this genie, and now trapped in a physical form it cannot by its own power return to its native Plane. It may then be free to haunt and terrorize, or live in power, as traditional genie legends from 1,001 Nights often depicts, but without the Islamic overlay. I speculate that once “slain” or forcibly abjured, their spirits would return to their native Plane, though severely weakened, all the more so because of the great power it was forced to expend in manifesting in such a concrete manner, and without its memories, save perhaps emotions, as it is divested of its Prime Material link.
I believe this proposal would address many lore and flare issues, and I present it for your consideration.
I speculate such “genies” might also be created on their native Planes, but this would not be a natural phenomenon. Either an alien spellcaster (or psionicist?) or its fellow elemental spirits would drive a specific spirit into foreign mass not completely native to it, sealing it far more solidly and completely than any normal elemental might manifest in forms of freer water, air, earth or fire. Done upon the Elemental Planes, it may have the opposite effect upon the retention of any kind of intelligence, perhaps driving it mad with pain/entrapment, or numbing its free spirit as it is entombed in substance. This would prevent races of these things peopling the Elemental Planes, and becoming a standard “body” to be encountered there. It is not something they would voluntarily do, if they could even do it by themselves at all. Rather it would be involuntary, and cruelly entrapped and transformed so they might instead become automaton guards, or as some punishment, or need to create weapons in extremis. Extremely powerful spirits might even do this to themselves (or with the help of many other lesser spirits?), and given their very great power preserve more of their intelligence through force of will. Such may be an explanation for certain epic elemental monstrosities, or even demigod-like beings, as has oft been reviewed by our curiosity.
Anyhow, I solicit your thoughts on this proposal for an explanation of Athasian genies. Perhaps I shall make a proposal regarding jann next…