Shaitan

I’m at a disadvantage writing genie posts.  Since I didn’t play Planescape or Al-Qadim, I’m always approaching them with less background knowledge on hand than I’d like.  The good news is, Pathfinder’s shaitans are not D&D’s dao, so it’s okay that I’m starting from scratch.   Dao were evil slavers whose gem-mining operations in the Great Dismal Delve truly lived up to the name.  Presumably shaitans aren’t saints—they are lawful neutral, described as proud and boastful, and their name has inescapably dark antecedent—but they aren’t as grim as their D&D cousins. 

They’re still nasty fighters, though.  Unless PCs attack from aloft, they’re attacking the shaitan on her home turf.  And a few bull rushes combined with some bad saves could easily leave a party temporarily encased in solid stone—bad news if your spellcasters are the first to get engulfed, or if your PCs can’t handle the 5d6 damage cost of getting expelled a few minutes later.  Meanwhile, stoneskin makes her tough and plane shift makes her hard to pin down.  In other words, good luck.  (And that’s not even taking into accounting a shaitan pasha’s ability to grant wishes to non-genie allies).

One final thought: With the other genies, it’s pretty easy to mentally just transpose the Arabian Nights onto the Elemental Planes: djinn live in cloud palaces, marids in undersea palaces, efreet in brass palaces, etc.  With shaitans that doesn’t work so well.  Thanks to their stone glide and metalmorph abilities, they don’t need to provide doorways, hallways, or even air in many parts of their domains.  So as a dungeon designer, it’s not enough to dump a bunch of onion-domed towers underground to represent a shaitan’s home.  Other models are close at hand, however—I’m thinking, for instance, of the dark, hemmed-in vision of Tangiers that appears in the film version of Naked Lunch, and the cave complexes of Cappadocia in Turkey are perfect.

A county literally has its foundations rocked—not to mention ripped apart—by shaitan miners.  They see nothing wrong with their actions, as their permits are all in order.  The question is, who signed them?

Just as sea captains will impress able-bodied hands sailing under the flags of enemy nations, shaitans will sometimes press rival elemental creatures into service in their mines—mephits and azers especially.  While not the outright slavery of the efreet, it can still mean months of arduous, backbreaking labor.  The leaders of an azer settlement object to this high-handed treatment, and seek adventurers who will help organize a resistance against the earth genies.

A greedy xorn devoured a magical bejeweled pheasant statue, then sought refuge in a shaitan settlement.  Adventurers hired to track down the xorn and retrieve the statue (if it hasn’t already been digested) will need to contend with the legalistic genies to get safe passage…and if they need the use of the genies’ earth magic as well, they can expect to owe some pretty hefty favors.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 143

Marid

In print, marids seem to be the least talked-about genies—djinn are frequent allies; the efreet are frequent antagonists but their City of Brass is a common planar destination; and 3.5’s dao had their terrible Great Dismal Delve while Pathfinder’s shaitans have popped up in a number of Darklands adventures.  Which is a shame for PCs, since marids are relatively benevolent, if as capricious as the ocean itself.

As the Bestiary notes, “[m]any marids become dancers, storytellers, performers, or other types of artists,” when traveling—all careers that allow them to indulge their whims and conceal their identities.  Able to travel the waters of the multiverse, they may be potential goldmines (er…oyster beds?) of information.  On their own turf (coral castles and kelp forests, to be precise), they are gracious hosts—largely since they can afford to be thanks to their natural power (CR 9, the best of any genie, with shahzadas at CR 14), watery mastery, magical might (though their wishcraft is weak), and the wealth of many worlds’ oceans at their disposal.

That said, marids are impetuous, stormy, and can be quick to anger, especially if insulted.  And those that do lean chaotic evil can bring powerful magic and allies to bear on the situation, assuming they don’t drown offending parties outright.

A troupe of acrobats has set up shop in Tailor Square.  One of their newest acts is a gymnast who does high wire acts, then dives safely into a seemingly impossibly small barrel of water.  She is actually a marid, and the acrobats are high-level shadowdancers.  They are practicing for the heist of the queen’s rod of office and a tapestry depicting a sea battle, both reputed to be magical. 

A nation of tritons wishes to repatriate back to the Plane of Water.  The proposal outrages a sizable percentage of the marid shahzadas (primarily because their royal leave was not asked, but they do have valid concerns about the plane’s power balance being upset).  Impartial mortal adventurers are sent to find a tojanida memory keeper who may recall old treaties between the two water powers; meanwhile piscodaemon and sahuagin insurgents seek to drive the races to bloody war.

Adventurers stranded on a desert island become pawns in an escalating game of risk and ruin played by a marid gunslinger and a shark-toothed larabay bard  (Isle of the Shackles) who wants their skins for his drums.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 142

I’m on staycation!  I’ve never done one of these before, except Christmas breaks, so we’ll see how this one turns out.  I’m going to try to keep up the posts, though.

More on genie culture, including marids (with bonus erroneous description of them) can be found in Pathfinder Adventure Path #21: "The Jackal's Price."

Any Al-Qadim/Planescape fans want to weigh in on how those settings handled marids?

And yes, I’m as eager as you to figure out what’s up with that marid gunslinger.  Anyone inspired to write a backstory?

Janni

Jann may live in the Material Plane, but they are genies—and you would be wise not to forget it.  They can be gracious hosts, whirling dervishes, planar tour guides, and implacable enemies—all in the course of a single lavish dinner.  Better brush up on your Diplomacy.

Like a lot of monsters with a strong cultural heritage, the easiest way to make jann more interesting is to really get into and draw from the Arabian and Sindh myths and stories in which they feature.  Or you can go the opposite route and locate them in another cultural context—the proud jann would make perfectly good samurai, paladins, or Native American-influenced spirit folk as well.  Or you can play up their special abilities: What if jann loathe interlopers from the Ethereal like phase spiders, or have a fierce trade war in the Astral with the mercane…?  It’s up to you.

In the Land of the Blazing Sands, men rule the cities, and the jann rule the wilds. Not counting the camel-riding nomads, jann account for almost a third of the people one encounters in the desert, and almost every significant oases and spot of natural beauty or elemental power has its own jann protector.  Many travelers will never see them, as they often remain invisible to avoid having to play host, but their vengeance on despoilers and infidels can be swift.

Having fallen in love after being fostered together, a jann and his human bride are set to wed.  Chaos and tidal waves erupt when the groom’s marid godfather objects to the match at the 11th hour.  Then efreet slavers try to abduct the entire wedding party…

A jann sheik is bound to offer hospitality to his night hag and mercane guest—as his arbiter vizier keeps reminding him.  But even extraplanar guests wear out their welcome after three months!  The sheik is quite ready to hire adventurers to “encourage” the pair to leave.  Of course, if they are not subtle or persuasive enough, he may be obligated as a host to kill them for their insolence.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 141

I’m about to get myself in trouble for making a sweeping generalization I’m not qualified to make:

I don’t feel like jann have ever gotten the attention and props they deserved.

But here’s the thing.  I’ve never read any of the Al-Qadim or Zakhara books.  (I bought the Al-Qadim: Arabian Adventures Box Set PDF when Paizo was having a gone-at-midnight fire sale, but I’ve haven’t yet cracked it—and I had meant to buy the Land of Fate Box Set PDF anyway, since I was more interested in the setting than the rules set.)  So I could be totally wrong; there might be reams of material on the jann I’ve never read.  If you’re an Al-Qadim fan and can enlighten me (or better yet, want someone to give your books to…hey, I’m just sayin’) let me know!

With that caveat out of the way.  I think jann are super-interesting (ditto sulis from Bestiary 3 and the Advanced Race Guide).  What does it mean to be a genie of lesser stature…?  To be both more and less than your single-elemental counterparts…?  To live with one foot in the Material world and one foot on the Planes…?  Jann make your game world’s deserts more magical in the same way that fey do the forests, and that makes me a fan.

Efreeti

Every cruel sultan.  Every treacherous vizier.  Every wish gone horribly wrong.  The efreet are the worst of geniekind—the living embodiment of every bad thing that ever occurred in a One Thousand and One Nights tale.  Still, unlike devils they are beings of fire, not evil, and their first loyalty is to their own power, pleasure, and luxury.  All of which means they can be dealt with—if one is very careful.  Indeed, they have a range of spell-like abilities (the ones that don’t involve fire, that is) that almost oblige them to interact with mortals—like wishes that do them no good and plane shifts that only effect willing targets— and their brazen cities are practically the only places worth visiting on their plane.  Of course, the very fact that they seemed tied to mortal life could be the very reason the proud genies hate it so…

When dealing with devils—or evil beings in general—it’s best not to do so yourself, especially if you have a soul worth keeping.  Efreet can be valuable go-betweens, for they have little to fear from the powers of the Lower Planes, and much in common with them.  When a group of azatas needs to negotiate the release of prisoners with some demodands, they turn to the efreeti Mubalak the Fixer.  But his rival Sim, another efreeti, is determined to both humiliate Mubalak and kill anyone he associates with—especially the mortal adventurers sent by the azatas to escort the prisoners.

An efreeti is trapped in a fresco on a mausoleum wall.  Freeing him turns every building in a half-mile radiance to bronze, and magma bubbles up from the sewers.  A magical iron ship-in-a-bottle in the local museum could re-trap him, but meanwhile he is busy using cowed slaves’ coerced wishes to reshape the city according to his tastes.

Not every efreeti seeks to be a malik.  Estar’s operation straddles two worlds, with a luxurious iron hotel and gambling hall on the Plane of Fire, and a mortal semi-secret crime family the controls three coastal cities.  A prodigious breeder and even more prodigious fosterer, Godfather Estar’s network of efreet, ifrits, jann, and mortal cutthroats and evokers continues to grow.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 140

Last week Metafilter introduced me to the Tome of Awesome.  I’ve only skimmed a little, but so far I like the way the writers have handled monster societies.  Like we try to do here (if in a less snarky way), they quickly get to the heart at what makes each species tick and why you should care (or not).

Djinni

For players, djinn bring to mind whirlwinds and wishes—probably not in that order.  Djinn also bring some Arabian flair to an otherwise generically Euro-ish multiverse (unless you choose to give them some other flavor, which might not be a bad idea).  Djinn make great adversaries, because while they’re usually chaotic good, sore pride, a high-stakes bet, gold, sworn oaths, ancient enmities, or frustration at having spent too many years inside a lamp could all set them up to oppose your PCs.  And then there’s the wish thing.  In a globetrotting, Indiana Jones-style adventure, a djinn noble’s wishes offer pure possibility; in a darker, “Arabian Nights meets noir”-style campaign, PCs must weather the horror of facing adversaries who can alter the very fabric of reality.

A devil has commandeered a floating tower out in the wastes.  To cater to his mortal aides, he has contracted two djinn to provide them with created food and win, as well as transport them in and out of the tower.  By now the djinn have tired of the bargain, regretting the gold they earned forces them to serve such a vile master.

Rings, bottles, and lamps are the typical vessels for containing genie kind.  But in astrology-obsessed Marien, a djinni is housed in the orrery, appearing when the model of the moon is put into proper alignment.  His elemental anger at his confinement is what powers the orrery’s mechanisms—and is responsibly for the tornados that occasionally plague the city, leveling the poorer quarters.

A djinni vizier’s wishes all reveal themselves to have ill consequences.  Investigation (divinatory or otherwise) reveals the djinni has been cursed.  The proud djinni immediately recruits a party of sellswords to exact satisfaction from his efreeti archrival, but a hag coven unknown to the two is actually to blame.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 139

A little tidbit that caught my attention in the 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting was a note that genies had shaped the culture of Calimshan.  I liked that—it was a tidy explanation that implied real consequences to trafficking with other worlds.  You can picture court wizards and architects (probably the same persons, actually; just look at Leonardo da Vinci’s résumé) desperately trying to sketch blueprints of the Plane of Air palaces they’d briefly glimpsed through the scrying pool, or imagine a marid noble consulting for some merchant prince.