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…