Djinn

Djinn are extra dimensional spiritual lifeforms who left the Earth long ago to settle on a new planet they named Kaf. Born at the beginning of the world, they are spirit beings who forms behave as invisible and immaterial fire. As such their true bodies are incorporeal; instead they can assume whatever physical form they choose and discard it afterward, rather like wearing a set of clothes. Traditionally, Djinn are a long lived race, very nearly immortal as they aren’t affected by old age.

Quick Species Profile
الجني, al-jinnī   “Hidden Ones”
Life Expectancy
Average: 50,000 years
Max: Ageless
Average Height: Variable
Average Weight: Variable
Creature Type: Jinn Spirit (Incorporeal; Shapeshifter)

Biology

Physiological Traits

Incorporeal: All Jinn, formed from electrostatic ectoplasm, often known as “smokeless fire” and can create strong electric charges in the physical plane and thus exist as a mass of plasma there as well. In this form they can enter conductors like metallic objects to “recharge” and recover from physical damage.

Psychic: As a spirit, the very life force of the djinn is a property known as psychokinetic energy, referred to as “psi“. This allows them to perform common psychic powers from birth and learn more complex ones as they age. An extension of their psi is using it as telekinesis to manipulate physical objects from a distance using this energy they produce. The amount and size of material they can push or pull depends on how well or how much life they have within them. Another extension of their psi, djinn can communicate with other beings mentally aka telepathy. Djinn can also understand and communicate in any written or spoken language, including sign language, Braille and Morse code. However, this doesn’t grant the ability to decipher encrypted messages or to understand programming languages, nor does it mean that a djinn can speak any language at will. If a djinni sees a deaf person using sign language, it can understand what’s being signed and respond in kind, but a djinni can’t confound eavesdroppers by signing to another djinn, unless both of them have learned the language in the normal way.

Possession: Djinn can enter the bodies of physical beings while in their spiritual state and over take their hosts functions. Due to the nature of a djinn, their spirit can invade a host’s consciousness while its electrical particles can override their hosts electrical impulses to move. As such as djinn can use another being’s body as a vessel but are bound to the creatures physiological needs.

Regeneration: In general Jinn are beings made of “smokeless fire” that won’t ‘burn out’, similar to how living beings can ‘grow back’ from injuries. As such the mass of charged particles that is a djinn can normally reassemble themselves to maintain homeostasis. This dynamic carries over in their physical vessels, and allow jinn to regenerate their body at a molecular level, granting those with high stamina being able to repair most forms of physical damage.

However, even djinn regeneration has its limits; after repeated destruction within a short time frame, more and more effort to restore will be needed or the process can fail for a longer periods of time or completely. Also a djinn cannot seem to regenerate their vessel if their nodes channeling their life force are directly attacked and will instead completely disintegrate. A djinni in this weaken ethereal state loses the energy regained when normally dispelling its vessel, and is no longer able to manifest so it has to find a place rich with spiritual energy or a material conductor to inhabit in order to heal or its life energy will continue to leak out until there is nothing left of it.

Biological Immortality: Djinn don’t die from natural causes like aging or infectious disease so many can live for centuries and millennia. They can still be killed if their charged particle mass runs of energy or is destroyed.

Invisibility: Djinn in their natural spirit forms cannot be seen in the visible spectrum of light. A djinni vessel can bend light in such a way that it passes through them and thus retain invisibility in visible light.

Biomagical Attributes

Manifestation: Although born as incorporeal beings, djinn can create physical forms. They do this by causing the energy of their plasma form to suspend and charge ambient dust particles that self-organize into microscopic helical structures capable of replicating themselves, interacting with other neighboring structures, and evolve into stable forms like false proteins. These molecules exist in the material plane to create an acellular corporeal body known as a vessel that is physical in nature, being able to interact in a tactile manner with people and objects and likewise be acted upon.

This physical form is maintained by the spirit’s lifeforce, channeled through the energy nodes within it. The djinni can reuse the same energy that created their construct to dispel it and regain their incorporeal form just as easily.

However if an outside force causes a djinn’s vessel is disrupted, destroyed, or damaged past the point of being able to regenerate, it will quickly disintegrate and a weakened wisp of ectoplasm will exit to quickly find a place to recharge before it runs out of energy.

Shape-shifting: Djinn have the ability to shapeshift and customize their physical forms at will. A Djinni can potentially have full control over every aspect of their physical make-up, able to stretch, liquefy, and otherwise manipulate their vessel construct; useful as both as a natural defense mechanism and aiding intentional attacks. Despite this a djinn’s biological sex will remain constant, even if taking on the guise of another gender.

Popular Manifestations

Humanoid is most commonly used.
Wisp: Demihumanoid that ends in fog like trail below waist and 2nd most used.
Multi Arms: Four (or more) Armed humanoid
Colossus: 30-100 ft. creature (hard to sustain; unstable)
Guise of an object, plant, animal, magical beast or flora, faye or physical form of another spirit

Flight and Super Speed: With their charged mass, a Djinni can spread a positively charged particle swarm (a group of their own positive particles) away from the main ‘body’, and thus able to prepare an electric field of a certain span. The being can control the swarm and thus the field itself. When the field is actualized, the spirit’s negatively charged main body (particle mass) will be powerfully drawn towards the positively charged particle swarm, due to the electrical potential difference between them. Essentially, the djinn uses an electrostatic discharge as a medium to achieve electromagnetic levitation and extremely high agility even when in a vessel.

Super Strength: A Djinni can increase his or her vessel’s electrical activity to speed up the recruitment of motor neurons and the effects of their muscles. In addition, the djinn construct’s reflexes can be enhanced by a moderate increase in the stimulation of the nervous system. A djinni’s vessel’s fatigue will carry over to their spiritual form and vice-versa.

General Diet

Djinn do not require typical food or drink to live. As spiritual beings, they acquire sustenance from the ambient spirit matter that passes through the planet from the cosmos or from the mana in the environment. As such to non-spirits they appear to be completely self sufficient.

Djinn who take on a physical form can consume plasma in various forms like flames or lighting purely for energy. Those who shape-shift an internal digestive system are also capable of eating organic food, drinking and eliminating the waste products if they replicate the proper digestive organs. Those who enjoy the sensation of eating food seek out rich flavors, smells, and commonly desire succulent fruits, great feasts, pungent wines, fine spices, sweet pastries and similar fare.

 

Reproduction

Originally djinn would reproduce in their default ethereal forms. A male and female would conjoin their nebulous masses like two trails of smoke. After spinning around in a sort of dance for sometime, they would separate, leaving behind a small cloud of charged ectoplasm as their baby. Although this version was used long before the migration to the Arcane Realm and after, the process is slow, requires a lot of spiritual/mental concentration, and could only produce one infant at a time.

With more djinn having contact with the corporeal creatures and taking on their physical forms, they discovered that through shape-shifting, they can perfectly replicate reproductive organs of organic beings in order to reproduce as well. Coitus became a more common method of reproduction for these physical djinn due to being physically rewarding with sexual pleasure and potentially producing multiple offspring. Also unlike purely spiritual reproduction, sexual intercourse could be engaged purely for pleasure and with different species of beings. After shape shifting a womb, a pregnant jiniri will gestate her child for a year. Once the baby’s spirit is adequately developed, the mother can softly and slowly expel the nebulous baby through her birth canal like a mist.

Lifespan and Growth

Birth: Once a baby exits it mother’s womb or parents spirit combination, it ‘ignites’ or produces it’s own electron avalanche to sustain it’s own independent energy. The parents will nourish the baby with supplemental sources of background electromagnetic energy or spiritual matter.

Childhood: By childhood, many djinn already have the intellectual capacity of an adult, they only lack the emotional maturity that comes with experience.

Most djinn spend these formative years developing their psychic abilities, through psi building activities. Much of this includes practicing with sending telepathic signals, manipulating objects with telekinesis, or remotely viewing events.

These djinn will also begin to develop their magic, often starting their ethnic groups signature elements such as fire for ifrits.

Adolescence to Adulthood: Growing up for many djinn involve gaining a deeper emotional capacity than before. Djinn will take their magic even further, learning and performing a larger variety and learning how to perform more complex rituals and how to use magical items.

During this time of their lives is when most djinn undergo the ritual to unlock their 7 main chakra. Doing this not only greatly increases their magical capacity and output, but also allows them full control with switching between a corporeal or incorporeal state at will. The spiritual and emotional enlightenment will also manifest as greatly enhanced psychic abilities.

For djinn who take on corporeal forms, they are learning to experiment with them via shapeshifting. Younger djinn will often experiment with various styles and appendages for their vessels as well. Often older aged adults are more likely to be accustomed to a certain personal form which often acts more or less like a default.

 

History

The story of all jinn begins not on Kaf, but our very own planet Earth. Before humanity, jinn where one of the sapient beings along with angels. After the rise of humans, jinn lived among them in a parallel world invisible to man, but sometimes being called through the work of magicians.

A known example was King Solomon who was said to have been given by the creator unparalleled wisdom and a ring that allowed him control a legion of jinn under his command. However it was around this point in human history that many jinn planned to do something about their lot in life. Some jinn planned to cause more warring among humans, other met with the angels to propose their own separate world. Surprising to them, the creator told his angels how the jinn who could prepare to travel among the stars for their own world. Even more surprising was the creator giving them the Akasha Records, the essence of every once living soul on their journey. By the fall of the Roman Empire, preparations were complete and every jinn that planned to go left.

The spirits traveled through the Milky Way Galaxy with magical artifacts that carried the plants, put the animals they were bringing to sleep, and carried the Akasha for the world. Once they arrived at a planet, they implanted the Akasha into it to transform into one that could support life and make its own magic. After letting the plants and animals of the Earth populate it, the jinn of Earth were now the Djinn of Kaf.

With this djinn were able to explore places within the continent. Various bands and tribes settled in various areas, some encountering new species that sprung form this world. For most of Kaf’s history, djinn civilizations had a profound effect on other spirits, faye, even magical beasts and flora.

Djinn first established themselves as the Jinn Kingdom within a territory surrounded by a crescent shaped emerald mountain range they named Jinnistan. Djinn society in non-Islam dominated regions of the empire had a caste system, borrowed from the deities known as the Devas as a process of placing people in occupational groups. Based on a division of labor, the caste system, among other things, dictates the type of occupations a person can pursue and the social interactions that she may have.

Unlike the Devas, the Djinn variation was simpler in that it only maintained four main classes based originally on personality, profession, and birth. In descending order, the classes are as follows:

Quraysh: Consist of those engaged in scriptural education and teaching, essential for the continuation of knowledge.
Umayyad: Take on all forms of public service, including administration, maintenance of law and order, and defense.
Abbasid: Engage in commercial activity as businessmen.
Dhimmi: Work as semi-skilled and unskilled laborers. Often followed other monotheistic religions that were protected under Islam but historically only in private.

Caste members lived, ate, married, and worked with their own group. A person born into one caste rarely changed castes or mixed with members of other castes. Social rules defined how to behave within a caste and when in the presence people from other castes. Djinn governments all over have officially outlawed caste discrimination and made widespread reforms starting toward the end of the Jinn Empire due to a combination of civil rights movements and economic stagnation.

As trade increased and deities revealed the resources and treasures of far off lands, only the Islamic leaders and their descendants could gather enough community trust to lead them to spreading their territory and incorporate non-jinn as the Jinnistan Caliphate. Even though Muslim caliphates officially rejected the caste system, many were raised following the social cues and it has pervaded several aspects of those society for millennia.

After the environmental disasters of the Ghulat Wars, leading to various civil wars, the caliphate lost major power and territory. During the Guilded Age, djinn took advantage of increasing funds and mercantilism as the Jinn Empire but after the Globalization Age, nationalistic surges ended the entire system of colonies only leaving a few Jinnistan territories as a testament to a huge empire. Now the nation is investing in its own infrastructure and technology to compete with the standard of living of other nations and regain its former glory as a world superpower.

Culture

A roughly detailed log of the species or find and major influence on the world into the modern day.

Ethnotypes

• Marid
• Ifrit
• Si’lat

Architecture

Marid houses, often consist of white marble structures vibrantly painted with patterns and colors according to the neighborhood. They often have a whimsical design: though at their core, practical for the ocean heat, with their rounded shapes, large doors, and vibrant appearances.

As Ifrit traditionally live partially underground or within the caves of large mountains, they live in a network of cavernous cities with earthwork walls and buildings that descend deep into the ground and can span 18 floors. Originally defensive refuges from the Ghul Wars; they are now places for living, working or shopping with transit system and a network of tunnels that connects buildings beneath street level.

The majority of Si’lat jinn travel and live in caravans with large wheels set outside the body, whose sides slope outward considerably as they rise toward the eaves. They differ in shape, size, placement of the wheels relative to the bed, where made, and maker. A small cast-iron cooking stove  is a common fixture of the wagons which necessitates a chimney to vent smoke. Vardos were elaborately decorated, hand carved and ornately painted with traditional symbols which incorporated aspects of the Si’lat lifestyle such as horses and dogs, as well as stock decorative designs of birds, lions, griffins, flowers, vines and elaborate scroll-work. The sedentary Si’lat settlements that are often welcome those that travel are constructed from sandcrete walls and compressed earth support.

Spirituality

As a whole, the Djinn people are adherents to a large number of different religions and creeds, perhaps constituting the most religiously diverse spirits. For most of history however the majority of Djinn are Muslim, and mystical practices and participation in Sufi orders are also widespread among Djinn.
The second largest following from djinn are from dharmic faiths such Hinduism, Buddhism and a few Jainists.
There are also smaller followings of djinn in Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Taoism, Christianity and those who are non-practicing at all (Secular or Lapsed).

Gender/Family

Djinn men and women enjoy the freedom of choosing their partner. Nevertheless, parents can put sufficient pressure on their children to arrange their marriage. If there is no father to speak for the girl/woman, a brother or other male relative will speak for her. If a male from the family doesn’t agree with the choice of a spouse for his daughter, sister or even cousin, he is able to stop the wedding.

The three-generation extended family is the ideal domestic unit. Although this group, averaging between nine and eleven persons, may sleep under more than one tent or shelter, its meals are generally taken together. The newly formed nuclear family of husband and wife tends to remain with the larger domestic unit until it has sufficient manpower to survive on its own. On occasion, a combination of brothers or patrilineal cousins will join forces to form a single domestic unit. Property is divided in accordance to Quranic precepts: among surviving children, a son receives half, a daughter a quarter, and other near kin the percentage specified in the law.

Dress/Modesty

Commonly existing as intangible spirits, djinn generally don’t have strong feelings of modesty or shame about their bodies among themselves. They do relish the social impact that their clothing can have on other races and thus design it mainly for that purpose, even using it as a status symbol within their own kind. Articles of clothing shared between nearly all djinn clans are linen or cotton Harem pants, long baggy pants caught in at the ankle and embroidered vests.

As shapeshifters, djinn can change their physical appearance to make it seem like they are wearing clothes, even though it is just an extension of their body. This is often done by those without access to clothes or too poor to afford it. The later commonly do this in front of non-spirits, but their own kind typically won’t fall for the ruse.

Socialization

Djinn developed the conventional model of formal education. Primary education goes over the basics of reading, writing, history, math, and science and fundamental spell casting. For those who want to take the next step in their education there is secondary education. Free to attend, however, you do actually have to apply to get in, though the entrance exams tend to be rather easy. Different schools have different reputations, and there are specialized schools for certain trades, though the majority are for general education. The majority of people go through at least some secondary education.
Tertiary school is basically “college”. Again, it’s free, but it’s only for those who are really, really committed to their education; it takes 6 years to complete. This is where you go if you want to become a doctor or a teacher or any kind of professional really. Just like secondary education, you have non-affiliated institutions that are or are not specialized. Completing Tertiary education has the same sort of prestige as getting your Master’s degree. Becoming a professor one spend years writing a dissertation and send it to some academic committee, and if it’s approved they’re given the label “expert” in their field and can teach at a institute or run a lab.

Magic Use

Djinn are taught to be extremely powerful spell-casters and can master basically every type of magic, from necromancy, to elemental, dark, light, even dimensional magic. However  known djinn ethnotypes are known for encouraging expert knowledge with a particular element they are associated with. For example Marid are expected to know water spells, Ifrit to know fire spells, and Si’lat to know wind spells, as such those who are specialists with those elements respectively are highly revered in those cultures. And djinn of those cultures are fully capable of magic beyond those particular elements, but each one serves as as distinction that gives the group a sort of identity so it stays

Contrary to popular belief, djinn whether enslaved to grant wishes or not, can not pull things out of nowhere, they can take an object faster than the eye can follow or store those objects on their person at miniature sizes.

Science and Technology

Transportation

Although most djinn are content with quickly flying to where they need, enchanted objects like flying carpets are useful when they have to carry large amounts of items or multiple people.

Weaponry

Curved swords such as scimitars were traditional and carried over from earth by their ancestors to fight against other beings. Magic spells were the only way to combat other jinn until the development of enchanted containers for entrapment and devices generate electromagnetic pulses that disrupt a djinn’s physical form no matter their innate defenses.

Communications

Most rely simply on their sonfar ether to telepathically communicate locally. Eventually they adopted cellular phones and computers for long ranges and globally.

Medical Treatment

As incorporeal spirits, the inflictions relevant to their being are more spiritual in nature and thus more often treated through energy medicines. As such energy healing such as qigong and reiki have had the most dramatic effects and coverage in djinn societies. Yoga and Ayurveda are popular techniques for djinn aliments of the vessel.

Manufacturing

Djinn ancestors originally brought with them classical Arabic human technology and magically enchanted artifacts. On Kaf, djinn had to rely on their innate abilities until the world’s magic kicked in to power them again. Because of this they were content with only using them until the Ghulat Wars forced them to develop new forms of technology. Although energy was historically provided by oil wells and burning natural gases, the majority of power plants have switched to solar energy using solar collector farms and oceanic windmills.

 

Author’s Notes

The djinn are the first race I thought of when creating this fictional universe. In story, they are the ones who left Earth to create their own world where instead of humans, mostly fantastical creatures first came into being on accident. With research on the djinn I learned a lot not just about  their western counterpart “genies” but the original jinn of lore, Islamic/Arabic/Mughal lore,  and spirits in general. Its because of the djinn that the Arcane Realm is a thing and what I based the world around.

Djinn society being one of the first great civilizations, on par with Egypt or the Ottoman Empire, or the British Empire after the Ghulat Wars. They also have a slew of biological powers, making them one of the most formidable species, power wise. As spirits, their way of life is different from organic beings until they experience life the way we do fro themselves.