Tasked Genie Overview

Tasked genies may once have belonged to one of the four elemental races, but they have done one kind of work so long that their bodies have reshaped around it. The job defines them; taken from it, they grow sick and weak. Proud of their skill, they value achievement over birth, so humans who share their interest in a craft and defer to their greater knowledge can deal with them safely.

Like faerie folk, genies are more than mortal and less than divine: free-willed, civilized, highly intelligent elemental spirits serving the indifferent forces of nature. They eat, drink, breed and die as humans do, yet primitive desert tribes still worship them as gods, for they can raise buildings overnight, move armies in and out of battle and whisk someone across hundreds of miles in an instant.

Tasked genies live equally well in cities and wilds. Genies native to the elemental planes seldom visit the desert lands uncalled, but those who live there haunt ruins, wastes, empty houses, graveyards, rivers and old wells. Trespassers are first scared off by invisible stone-throwers or sudden blinding sandstorms; those who persist are attacked without mercy. Genie camps, often whole mansions or fortresses, can vanish at dawn or dusk when a tribe moves on, or when discovered; sometimes the genies instead pelt intruders with stones or blow them miles away. Wise travelers call out to ask the genies' leave before crossing desolate land.

Among tasked genies there are no nobles, only master craftsmen, and they care nothing for human rank, working as readily for a pauper as a sultan. They are flawlessly polite even to masters they dislike, though when free they love turning etiquette upside down on someone who offended them.

Two kinds exist. The helpful ones, bound to a place by their work, make wondrous food, art and monuments. The others, such as warmongers, slayers, guardians and deceivers, sit idle between services, are slowly maddened by magical isolation and revel in bloodshed once released.

A tasked genie works for a nongenie only if paid or enslaved. Architects, artists, guardians, herdsmen and winemakers are nearly always paid, since enslaving them shortens their service and spoils their work. Slayers are nearly always enslaved, too dangerous and untrustworthy to bargain with. Warmongers may be either, but their true wage is victory, and the wars they start can outlast their service.

Only a genie-caller can learn the binding rite for a specific type, researched like a spell of level equal to half the genie's Hit Dice, rounded up: a herdsman equals a 2nd-level spell, a guardian a 7th. After that it is bound as normal for genie-callers. One spell binds one genie, but for big rush jobs like shearing vast flocks or fortifying before an invasion, herdsmen and builders especially call kin, who work unpaid to free their cousin sooner. A genie-caller who binds more than one a year angers the genie princes.

All are long-lived. Guardians live longest, serving terms of 1,001 years; winemakers and herdsmen, tied to the seasons, live only twice a human span; the rest fall between, with wide variation. Kept from their tasks, they die young.

Genie-human romances are usually tragic, the mortal losing all judgment and often being destroyed, though some couples find peace after a stormy courtship, nearly always far from human society. Any rare children share the gifts of twin-bound spirits, minus the human double.