Jinn

Jinn are a race of fey peoples descended from the creation of the spirit Alfhen. They have several ethnicities within their race, but all are characterized by ram-horn heads, tall stature, and varying levels of innate magical power. Jinn have exceptionally long lives, the oldest average age being between fifteen hundred and two thousand years, and adolescence occurring around forty or fifty. Mature jinn (eighty to a hundred years old) do not begin to show significant outward signs of aging until the last two or three hundred years of life, and these signs are physiologically precise ways to measure how much longer a jinn likely has to live.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Jinn share primate ancestry with humans, and so have similar anatomy and morphology. They feature, as opposed to modern hominids, a pair of horns rooted in the forehead and crowning the sides of the head.
Jinn have a semi-corporal thoracic organ called a solic core, which acts as a high-energy conduit for Nether energy. This gives them direct physiological access to magical endowment, but comes with immense strain on the body. To compensate, jinn cells and organs are lined with high-tensile carbon structures, and their bones are reinforced with tetrahedral carbon structures.

Genetics and Reproduction

Jinn procreation is slow; female menstrual cycles are roughly a decade long, with peak fertility occurring for only one to two years in that time and outward signs of this remaining subtle. Females in estrus produce increased pheromones and a subtle sheen of oil from their horns; males likewise produce an oil from their horns when aroused.
Conception occurs through sexual insemination, and takes several days to root in the womb. Gestation lasts for 90-100 weeks and takes a much lesser toll on the body than human gestation. Jinn females can produce many offspring, but in most modern cultures they commonly produce two to four.
By population, roughly 3 in 4 jinna will reproduce. Most will have 2 or 4 offspring, with a minority of 1 or 3.
Human-jinn procreation is not possible; human and jinn wombs do not even register attempts by the other species.

Growth Rate & Stages

Jinn are born the equivalent of a human at 30 weeks and require another 40 weeks to latch and eat independently. Male and female jinn have sufficient mammary glands to feed an infant for several years. Between ages 7 and 10 jinn are usually ambulatory and developing language, and by 20-30 have fine motor and linguistic skills.
Adolescence occurs at 40-50 years with intense hormonal and mental development; the subsequent years also see development of a jinn's solic core and gem-hand. If a jinn is a sekhrin, or jinn magician, those traits will reveal themselves in the second half of adolescence between 70 and 80.
Physical maturity is reached by age 100 and brain development plateaus at 130-150. Jinn remain remarkably youthful in appearance and beauty standard during these years, though such things are regarded as immature by older jinn; cultural maturity is not reached until menopause between 300-400 years. This is the largest average range for jinn development stages and is affected greatly by health and lifestyle.
The peak of a jinn's life is between the ages of 400 and 1200, which is the bulk of their lifespan. What humans regard as physically "middle aged" usually sets in at this time, with the body and immune system beginning the first inward stages of deterioration. Jinn at this age still show remarkably youthful outward features.
Old age typically sets in between the ages of 1400 and 1600, but the physical signs of age do not emerge until the last two or three hundred years of a jinn's life. This is brought on by hypersolia, a condition conventionally believed to be exclusive to jinn. Though the organs of jinn are reinforced to withstand the energy from the solic core, the toxicity cannot be kept at bay indefinitely, and 1500-2000 years is the range in which that deterioration finally sets in. Jinn at advanced stages of age can become susceptible to illness, though jinn illness is not common due to the lack of spread - that is, prior to contact with humans.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Jinn are omnivorous with bias towards proteins. The average adult diet requires 5500 Calories with an emphasis on protein and carbon intake. To this end, jinn diets often include charred plantstuffs as a staple. Without a high calorie and high carbon diet, the carbon structures of their reinforced organs would deteriorate, leaving them more vulnerable to errant energy from their solic cores.

Additional Information

Social Structure

See ethnicities

Average Intelligence

Intelligent

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Jinn sense with the same capacity as humans. They are perhaps sharper over time, as their slightly larger minds and different brain makeup train the senses better than those of humans.
Some jinn "sekhrin" or magicians possess psychic abilities channeled through the mind. See entry on magic systems.

Civilization and Culture

Beauty Ideals

Jinn fashion and beauty is far more vocationally oriented than sexually oriented, since procreation is less of an evolutionary priority for such long-lived peoples. Beauty standards also stem greatly from the last few generations of cultural split between the ethnicities, with beauty standards of the more powerful classes tending to push out the beauty values of the lesser.

Gender Ideals

The jinn are rather androgynous as traditional elves tend to be. Physical differences include typical mammalian sexual and reproductive ones, but because jinn female anatomy is better equipped for childbearing than humans, these differences do not manifest in quite as obvious outward appearance. This means that jinn tend to have fewer gender-divided vocations, duties, traditions, and beauty ideals. The military is gender-neutral, the state has a relatively gender-blind distribution of power, and industry tends to ignore gender when discriminating roles. That discrimination falls more along caste and class.

Courtship Ideals

Sexuality among the jinn varies a little by region. The jinn of Kher Mar, where the bulk of the race resides, are surprisingly conservative when it comes to sexual relations and courtship. Procreation is not a huge priority, but romantic partnership and creation of a household partnerships are beneficial for social reasons. This is more distinctive in the lower classes and castes, who are more eager to find support in their lives and seek out partners with less discernment than those in the higher class. In the higher classes, including members of the state and governance, courtship is more about power dynamic. Jinn in this position tend to discriminate over partners and court far later in life than those in lower classes, and homosexuality is quite frowned upon because the furthering of family legacy through procreation is a big deal. Homosexual jinn tend to face scorn and disownment by their peers and betters.
These values are less stringent the farther from urban centers jinn settle. The upland jinn, living in the mountain valleys of Kher Mar, have smaller towns and tend to not worry about family furtherance; they also discriminate less on household partnership, which means the occasional same-sex household is not remarkable. Likewise, outside the jinn empire Elion, regional clusters of jinn tend to have less focus on who courts whom. Without a need for lots of procreation, and with the androgynous anatomy and aesthetic of the race, sexuality is far more about recreational pleasure than anything else - and it isn't even that big a cultural thing, since libido is not a huge evolutionary trait for jinn as a species.

Relationship Ideals

As with courtship, relationships develop for different reasons among different castes and classes.

Major Language Groups and Dialects

Janessa is the universal language among jinn. The race is so slow to evolve and migrate that dialect does not evolve much between different regions.

Origin/Ancestry

Divine origins, several million years of lengthy phylogeny creating minor changes in ethnic makeup

Lifespan

1500-2000 years

Average Height

6.5 to 7.5 feet

Average Weight

300-400lbs

Average Physique

Jinn have incredibly dense muscle structure as a further byproduct of their solic cores. In order to withstand the nearly constant stream of energy their bodies recycle from the Netherwhere, jinn naturally maintain very strong bodies. Those who do not tend to lose their health earlier in life.

Body Tint, Colouring and Marking

Jinn skin and eyes are influenced by the same melanin as human beings.

Related Organizations

• Elion

Related Ethnicities

• Blackhorn Jinn