Genies and the First Shi'ars

The 2e book The Inner Planes has the djinn hunting for the Seal of Solomon, or at least "a magical seal said to have the power to command any of their kind." Efreeti bottles are sealed with "special seals," suggesting that if there's an original such artifact, it may be empowering efreeti bottles all across the planes.

In my personal history of the planes, I have the djinn as originally neutral, along with the efreet, under the rule of the vaati during their period of expansionism and Prime empire. After the Battle of Pesh, with the Wind Dukes declining, the djinn came to regret their history of conquest, and feared falling in to evil even as they saw their opportunity to stand on their own. They turned to liberty and freedom as ideals to pursue, to combat this.

At that time they did not have the ability to grant wishes. But, in rejecting conquest, they bound themselves to mortals with oaths to serve rather than be served, and through the medium of these oaths, to which every djinn who recognizes the Caliph is bound, they were able to tap into mortals' divine energy. This upgraded their basic air-elemental powers, allowing them to create anything, including organic Prime Material forms (their major creation ability, and their peculiar ability to create wine). A noble djinn sacrifices even more when imprisoned (by force or willingly), and gains proportionately more, including the ability to grant nongenies' wishes. I figure that doing so diminishes a given noble djinn's store of divine energy, meaning that it's a rare and precious thing for them to grant.

The efreet refused to take this path and instead upheld those Wind Duke traditions they found useful, remaining lawful and progressing further into tyranny and slavery, just as the djinn had feared doing. (Also giving them a rival claim to being the legitimate inheritors of the government the vaati were abandoning, making this one of the causes of the war.) They traded with Asmodeus to give devils the secret of complete immunity to fire in exchange for knowledge on how to extract divine energy from living slaves. Any of their race sworn to the Sultan is empowered through this oath structure, to the tune of a couple of HD and the ability to grant wishes, though to their chagrin Asmodeus only went so far as to reveal how to match the djinns' ability to grant wishes to nongenies -- a mortal temptation that the efreet have embraced, much to Asmodeus' long-term profit in souls. (This oath means that a good efreeti who grants wishes is doing so by drawing on the energies of the races' slaves, a situation which can discomfit them severely, and they will typically prefer to do so only for very good cause.)

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Putting aside my personal indulgence there, I'm afraid I don't know too much about gen, though it seems that there's some similarity there with the Complete Divine's spirit shaman, whose spirit goes and fetches spells for her. If you take the stories above, then each of the genie races has some reason to offer its adolescents (I wouldn't make them children, but rather right about the stage when they'd be apprenticing if they were humans) a chance to get some experience working with humans, manipulating magic, and learning about the world outside their planar homes.

Actually, in Islam, jinn are portrayed as having received instruction from Muhammad, and can choose to be good or evil as men can: there is a chapter of the Quran called Surat al-Jinn, relating this story. It's also stated that every man has a jinn (possibly unique to him, possibly not) who whispers to him and tempts him, Iblis (the Devil) being a jinn and ruler of many jinn.

We did until 1984 under NATO. Also under NATO we gave the UK nuclear weapons until 1992, Greece until 2001, and we still give nuclear weapons to Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, and Turkey. And while it's ostensibly under US control now, that's only legal trickery so as to avoid violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which prohibits giving any non-nuclear state access to nuclear weapons. The arrangement is that control would cede to the host nation immediately in the event of any sort of nuclear conflict involving that nation, as under those circumstances the NPT would no longer hold. It's part of the general NATO policy of nuclear deterrence; by giving more people access to nukes, they make everyone less likely to use them. (Whether or not you think that's a wise policy, that's the US government's and NATO's reasoning.)

That might also hold a possible solution to your quandary too. People acting wholly in self-interest are still more than willing to give people power that puts them on equal ground with them, if it means it helps serve as a disadvantage to their opponents, or serves as a disincentive to others to do something you don't want them to do. Perhaps that's why the sha'ir relationship started? Each genie race entering into the agreement only because each genie race was entering into the agreement. Something like magical...not MAD exactly, but something to keep them on equal ground. Something like the deific pact that prevents direct involvement. No genie race was willing to say no because then the other genie races would say no, and they each wanted their traditional opponents to hold that disadvantage.

...Eh, this reasoning falls apart if you look at it funny, but I think there's a kernel of an idea here. Don't think in terms of "why would the genies individually agree to this", but "is there any reason why the genies would want it to affect the other genies?" Or "is there any reason the genies would agree to enter into this contract in order to ensure the other genies would as well?"