Dao Genie [Al-Qadim]

Male and female dao alike are heavily muscled and bald, with polished skin the color of soil, sand or granite and finger- and toenails of tough, gleaming metal. Their fingers stay wide and stubby in any form. Males grow mustaches and angular beards. Dao love jewelry, from nose studs and earrings to chokers, bracers, anklets, rings and bells, and many wear shirts of lamellar plate. The name serves as both singular and plural.

Simplest and coarsest of the genies, dao can often be tricked into service. Their limited telepathy lets them talk with anything of low intelligence or better, but as translators they make each party sound hostile and arrogant. They also speak the common trade tongue of the desert lands and the shared genie language, which in their mouths rumbles with grinding consonants and trilled vowels.

At 18th level, once each per day and one at a time, a dao can use detect magic, detect good, misdirection, passwall, gaseous form, invisibility, spectral force, wall of stone, attract evil eye and change self, the last letting it shrink to 2 feet or swell to 20. Three times a day it turns rock to mud or back again, and six times a day it can dig.

Its daily limited wish carries heavy limits. Only someone born on the Prime Material can receive it, never another genie (jann included) or a planar hybrid such as a cambion, and it is always fulfilled in some twisted, harmful way the dao itself cannot fully predict: lost hit points drained from friends, a new spell bringing the evil eye, a palace with a monster inside. An evil master who forces such a wish should expect it to hurt him.

Earth-based and earth-affecting magic, including sand spells, cannot touch a dao, but holy water deals double damage and leaves scars that last for years. A dao carries 500 pounds tirelessly whether walking, flying or standing; double tires it in three turns, plus a turn per 100 pounds under 1,000 (600 pounds lasts seven turns), and then it rests six turns. It burrows at 6 through earth but not solid rock or worked stone, the tunnel closing behind it; it can haul objects, perhaps even a very uncomfortable passenger.

Dao stand and fight unless outmatched, then fly or burrow away and return with reinforcements to crush whoever insulted them; enclosed worked stone makes them uneasy since it blocks escape. Evil but honorable, they repay fairness with fairness while grabbing whatever else they can, and they hunt down genie-callers who imprison their kin.

They travel freely to all elemental planes and the Astral, Ethereal and Prime Material, mostly staying home but trading with efreet, and can be summoned by magic.

Their plane's pockets of fire, water and air have been tamed into knotted cavern networks called mazeworks, each with 4d10 dao and 8d10 slaves: xorn and other stone-swimmers who scout new digs, subterranean captives and luckless adventurers. An ataman (or hetman) rules with a seneschal and a court of 1-6 nobles or maximum-hit-point dao. The seneschal, appointed by the Great Khan, collects taxes and slave levies, while atamen often rebel, so punitive campaigns are common.

The Khan rules from the Coiled Labyrinth at the heart of the Sunless Delve, the greatest dao city, packed with most nobles and markets selling gems, metals and mortal lives. Industrious above all genies, dao dig and build endlessly, enslaving others while dreading slavery themselves. They come to the Prime Material alone to scout resources and markets, favoring mountains, deserts and jungles over cities.

Dao need no food or drink and can fast for years or lie buried under rubble barely breathing, though poison and air attacks still affect them. They savor hedonistic pleasures, sprinkling gold leaf and powdered gems on food like spice. Unrivaled engineers, they forget their malice while building and are hired for palaces and fortresses. Far north, evil yak-men have bound dao who cannot attack them. Dao trade with efreet, hate jann, djinn and marids, and other earth natives avoid them.