The su kürü was a beautiful ship, slicing through the warm waters of the Shining sea
as it set out from the coast of Calimshan, riding the hot desert wind with bright red
sails straining in the complicated rigging.
The sailors onboard scampered around the ropes and ran across mast beams fearlessly, pulling
in sails and tightening ropes as we picked up considerable speed.
Down below decks, I could hear the men who sat chained to the oar benches singing, relieved
to not have to be rowing anymore.
I was free to wander from my cramped little cabin space and stood not too far from the
captain, a barrel-chested man in loose, regal clothing, who studied the horizon and felt
the wind like it was a living thing he was riding.
He noticed me regarding him and asked me to bring him a flask of hot tea, which I did.
We drank and watched the waters and he told me of the mysterious lands of Zakhara, where
he was born, and told me it was not a land of men, but that it all belonged to the genies.
I asked him what he knew of them, and he talked at some length about them.
It seemed I had struck on an area of some interest to him and I was very well pleased,
its always a delight to hear an expert speak on a subject they are passionate about.
He said that he had met with members of the Jann race many times, individual janni are
impressive people, he was quite effusive in his praise of their magnetic eyes, like a
fire was within them, a passion for life gives their eyes a supernatural intensity and a
range of colors greater than that of humans.
Their skin is the color of golden sand or earth and they have very tough skin, impervious
to all the effects of the desert, highly resistant to flames and always much stronger than any
human.
Jann are composed of all four elements, air, earth, fire and water, they live for an average
of 300 years and, although they are genies, they are connected to the material plane,
they can still be resurrected if they die of unnatural causes.
Appearing as powerfully built humans or half-elves, they stand between six and seven feet tall.
Jann have innate spell-like powers, along with darkvision and great strength, they are
highly intelligent and use their supernatural powers to infiltrate, acquire and occasionally
just to shock and impress.
They can increase or decrease their height from as small as two inches tall all the way
up to 24 feet, they can also shrink or enlarge anyone they are touching, willing or unwilling,
although the victim does get a saving throw.
Jann can turn themselves invisible, create a magical gruel of bread and water that can
feed people and horses or livestock.
They can step out of the veil of the material plane and delve into the Astral plane and
into the border and deep ethereal realms, they are also able to fly and can breathe
underwater at will.
Flight and breathing underwater are critical skills in dealing with the Djinn, whom the
Jann strive to maintain a strong relationship with, often calling on the aid of the majestic
air Djinn in dire circumstances, they return the favour given any opportunity.
The Jann don't deal very much with the Efreet and the Dao, nor do they want to, so they
are not filling the streets of the City of Brass, but they do sometimes serve the Marids,
this is a relatively recent development, for a very long time the Jann treated the Marids
the same as the Dao and Efreeti.
Jan in service to air and water still favor their flowing capes, turbans and flamboyant
pants, wet or dry the Janni is at ease in more extreme weather and conditions.
Travelling the inner planes and elemental planes the Jann are usually protected by planar
travel magic anyway.
Jann are able to dwell in air, earth, fire, or water environments for up to 2 days.
This includes the Elemental Planes, to which any jann can travel, even taking up to six
individuals along, if those persons form a hand-holding circle with the jann.
Failure to return to the Prime Material Plane within 2 days inflicts 1 point of damage per
hour on the jann, until death occurs or a return to the said plane occurs.
Travel to other Elemental Planes is possible, sans damage, providing at least 2 days were
previously spent on the Prime Material immediately prior to the travel.
Jann on the prime material plane are a nomadic people but they do maintain permanent locations
hidden throughout the desert.
Their favourite locations for these settlements were hidden oases, ancient ruins, and abandoned
temples.
Tents were prevalent in these locations, but the jann also constructed beautiful buildings
such as mosques, bathhouses, smokehouses, and audience chambers.
Normally they will be camped in bright tents guarded by the prized Saluqi dogs they breed,
along with exceptional goats, camels, sheep and horses.
Skilled animal breeders will always have something to learn from Jann who are happy to talk about
the art, it's something they talk about among themselves all the time, so, animal husbandry,
riding exotic animals and the trade in exotic animals is always a good choice of topic,
otherwise Jann don't tend to talk to the mortals, in Zakhara, that attitude is kind of mutual,
the history of the land has taught people that, genies may look a lot like humans, but
they are not the same.
While on the one hand, using magic, a genie can be bound supernaturally on their promises,
on the other, a genie in service to a lesser being finds it darkly amusing to use a mortal's
lack of brains and caution against them, twisting any promise and ensuring the outcome is something
of a nightmare for the mortal involved.
It serves them right for daring to dominate a genie!
A common tribe of jann includes ten to thirty individuals led by a sheikh, who has one or
two viziers.
Warriors of the tribe will typically wear ornate chainmail or an ancient and very effective
style of armor called lamellar, which is much more common in the lands of fate than most
other places, though I can't speak for Kara-tur, they may have examples of it in use as well.
Lamellar is similar to scale armor, made of overlapping metal plates called lamellas connected
via metal links which makes it much lighter in weight than standard scale mail and costs
a lot less to produce.
In Zakhara the style called Do-Maru, which consists of a corselet of lamellar covering
the stomach, chest, shoulders and back is the most common, but there are as many versions
as there are styles of fashion.
The first appearance of the Jann or as Gary Gygax called them, the Jannee, was in issue
66 of dragon magazine, published in october 1982, they are armed with large scimitars
and are able to attack with them twice per turn, +10 to hit one target within 5ft and
inflict 2d6+6 slashing damage.
Anyway, unlike the Djinn, the Jann can't grant wishes and they don't have a noble ruling
class, just ordinary prominent tribes and familys, going about mostly their own business
with very little to do with mortals.
They do respect some creatures though, anything capable at besting them in magic is very high
on that list, and anything that can control and harm them, for example, all zakharan genies
are very cautious around the Ghul-kin, but especially great ghuls.
This is because the great ghuls can command genies like a sha'ir, a power which all genies
highly resent them for.
Given the opportunity, any Genie would happily destroy a great ghul's home whenever it was
discovered.
Despite all this animosity, genies occasionally had great ghuls serve them, just for the delicious
irony and insult that it is.
Exceptionally powerful sheiks called amirs rule the larger tribes and houses.
Amirs are counseled by brilliant viziers who possessed spell-like abilities.
Additionally, smaller clans who are not aligned with any tribe are scattered throughout the
deserts.
Males and females have the same status in jann society.
Both males and females can have a number of different spouses.
These days the tradition is that the married males live near the tent of their family and
married women live near the tent of their spouse, every Jann gets their own tent when
they are old enough not to share with other kids or the rest of the family.
Jann tend to keep immaculate care of their tents and display their wealth in pride in
every part of their furnishings and attire.
Like all genies, some flattery is absolutely required once you are invited into a jannis
tent.
Every object on display will have a story about it, all the stories will paint the Janni
who tells it in a very positive light.
The more you listen to the stories, praise their truth and ask the Janni to tell you
more about their heroic life, the more relaxed and generous the Janni will be.
They are not only powerful and magical, they also have all sorts of connections.
On the elemental planes, jann are typically servants, mercenaries, or slaves of the greater
genies.
However, on the Prime, they have adopted the role of guardians of the wild reaches of the
world.
As a whole, the jann are the physical embodiment of the desert's virtues.
They are a proud people who repay insults and impropriety accordingly.
They are hospitable to travellers who show that they deserve the treatment and who treat
the jann with the same respect they are afforded.
Jann travel between fertile lands to feed their herds and have territory that extends
for hundreds of miles.
They are usually friendly toward strangers within their desert territories.
For the most part, they don't show preference or malcontent toward any particular race over
the other, preferring to judge people based on their actions, and their individual merits
and flaws once they get to know them better.
As with all genies, it is possible for them to become so habituated to a set pattern of
behaviour, that they undergo a transformation into a Task Genie, the Jann are not excluded
from this, and there are many Task genies located in the lands of Zakhara of Jann origin.
but their origins fade from their memory as task genies, its a part of the genie psyke
that is so alien to mortal humanoids.
Jann see the mortals with souls, as sort of naturalized outsider creatures of a mixed
spiritual and physical nature, the jann are elemental, but can be returned from death
with divine magic if they wish to return from pure elemental spirit form.
They see dragons in the opposite way, dragons are elemental spirits within mortal, but powerful,
bodies made up of the prime material plane, no part of a dragon is bound to a divine or
infernal outer plane, they don't have a heaven or hell to go to when they die, their elemental
spirit becomes part of new strata of the prime material plane, the same way Jann genies do,
and the same way they can be called back from this state and resurrected from the dead,
is exactly the same for Jann genies, therefore the two species must get along great right?
Both creatures of magic, all about ego and ownership and such?
LOL, oh hell no, dragons and genies, if it were not for the giants, the dragons would
invariably have started a massive war with the genies, and even now, there are almost
no dragons present in the lands of fate, they are also less common in Calimshan, as the
genies are much more active there and have quite a lot of history with the regions around
the Shining sea and the central regions of Tethyr, Amn and Turmish.
Its odd really, the further south you go, the more you realise that it is in fact genies,
not dragons, who control the greater portion of Toril's landmasses, the strong impression
one has, learning mostly about northern faerun, is that dragons are in thick numbers, all
over the place.. this is not actually true.
The role and number and type of dragons found along the sword coast and around the lands
of the Sea of Fallen stars is more similar to what you would normally find on planets
or regions without a lot of genie activity, and it that part of faerun, for a very long
time, the giants were a dominant force with a powerful pantheon who mastered a lot of
elemental magic and made life pretty difficult for the genies, so they just stayed down south.
In other words, if it were not for the activity of dragons, giants and particularly the gods
of the outer planes, the planet of Toril would most likely be controlled by Genies.
This is of course, a topic of slow but heated debate among sages who take interest in global
politics and history, something very difficult to study or gain any sort of mastery of on
Toril.
We don't even have a map for one of the major continents on the planet, its hardly like
anyone has a complete and accurate book of history or even a sharp grasp of current events.
In Zakhara, genies are the age old enemies of that region's jungle, reef, island, desert
and ogre giants, for these true giants, distant kin of the true giants of faerun, once ruled
much of the land and over time there had been many clashes between genie and giants that
led to a steady decline in the giants' population.
Genies refuse to recognize the traditions of these giants and don't talk about them
at all, considering them unimportant these days in the larger scheme of things.
Zakharan giants in turn refuse to give genies tribute or sacrifice and will not acknowledge
them as being superior to the giants themselves.
Giants are not in the habit of seeing reason in that regard.
Genies are sometimes bound to magic items and forced to serve others.
Examples of these items include a ring of genie summoning, a lamp of genie summoning,
and an astrolabe of entrapment.
All genies resented this kind of enslavement of course and they do fight against it.
It is possible to free a genie trapped within this kind of magical servitude by either destroying
the device binding them, or using a wish to free the genie.
Genies freed from this imprisonment are almost always incredibly grateful to whoever freed
them, though they typically don't hang around for long once set free.
When you see that Tasked genies can be transformed into such by being magically forced to perform
the same task over and over again to inhuman levels of concentration and endurance, this
is why all genies fear being entrapped within magic items, bond to mortal masters or commanded
by Sha'ir, night hags and Great Ghuls.
The more powerful genies have enormous willpower, although jann can't grant wishes, they often
attain peculiar magic items and employ rare, specialized spells.
In addition to their innate spell powers, many train to gain spellcasting abilities
like a sorcerer pathway dedicated to one of the four elements, the Jann get to choose
and attain further damage resistance to that element.
All Jann are basically super adapted to living on the prime material plane, I know this sounds
odd, but they are more at home on a planet than they are on an elemental plane, they
are also far more comfortable in harsh deserts, the bottom of a frozen lake, the peak of a
mountain, the dank and teeming environment of a tropical swamp.
They are made of elements, not the same way we are, but in a more raw and direct form,
their vitality is based more on elemental power, which their body contains and flows
with, while our bodies extract power from materials we take in, and the energy from
that flows through us.
A mortal is aware of the world through taking in energy, a genie is aware of the world through
feeling the flow of that energy which they form a part of, so, their connection to the
world is far more integral and they find gathering and directing that energy to be an innate
process as natural to them as breathing.
not many mortals reach a point of mastery of energy that they can sense the world in
the same way, liches, grandmaster monks, and the occasional psion certainly do, demigods
tend to have that connection via their divine will impacting the morphic traits of the world
around them.
in a nutshell, when playing a genie, assume they are using prestidigitation all the time,
and they can sense the use of magic just like we can sense someone lighting up some incense
or igniting a lantern.. they can strongly sense conjuration and evocation magics going
off, but won't be any more aware of a spell of that type is being cast because they don't
pay as much attention to the nature of Mystra's magical weave, they would much prefer a world
without a weave, to them its nothing but divine hubris and interference with THEIR property.
To the gods, genies exist, they can be useful, they saved the ass of the multiverse in the
ancient battles between law and chaos, but, genies have no real place with the gods, they
are not really that welcome in the other planes, and the genies feel intensely uncomfortable
in such places anyway.
Over an enormous amount of time, the gods and the genies have come to terms with one
another.. neither of them is going anywhere and conflict would be pointless, so, while
a genie may rage and hurl insults at the sky and blow up the occasional shrine in a fit
of mood, the gods don't take this too seriously, its like, what the genie gets up to in the
confines of its own home is not the god's concern.
I'll be talking more about the Jann and particularly the task genies coming up, but next, a relatively
simple creature native to the southern lands, not so common in the north, requested by a
patreon supporter.
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In the meantime, thanks for watching and I will be back with more lore for you, very
soon.