Elemental Beings

The Elemental Planes were intended to be simple, mechanistic, and above all, lifeless, but as they changed into landscapes, living creatures also emerged from the basal miasma.
Elementals are the most rudimentary form of elemental life, mere coalescences of basal energy, held together by a force of will. While not necessarily unintelligent, they are more slaves to their base, elemental nature than most beasts, and highly susceptible to magical control. While they may be unintelligent, elemental flora have a complexity of form beyond simple elementals, often extending into complex fractals and crystalline shapes. Likewise, elemental beasts have a specificity of form that distinguishes them from base elementals.
Refined elementals - including mephits, myrmidons and shapers - possess a specific, but not necessarily fixed, shape, superior intelligence and some degree of free will. Such advantages do not automatically come with power - mephits, for example, are singularly feeble creatures - but do provide both purpose and flexibility.
The higher levels of elemental society are the genies, intelligent and ambitious. The four congregations of genie - the dao (earth), djinn (air), ifrit (fire) and marid (water) - dominate the culture of their respective planes. It is their palaces and cities that stand resplendent over the eminences, and their fortresses that stand guard over the maleficences. The lower orders of genie form an officer class, while their upper echelons - the noble genies - control magics capable of reshaping the world. Few genies are part of the working class of the elemental planes. Instead, these ranks are filled out by refined and base elementals, and also the Genasi.
These last are mortals who are invested with an elemental aspect called a gen, usually inhereted from one or more genasi parents. The first genasi were granted their gena by the Elemental Princes. Lacking true divinity at the time, the Princes were unable to create a lineage whole cloth, and so instead chose to transform those mortals willing to follow them.