Elemental Princes

The Elemental Princes were a group of elemental deities which sought to take the place of the Old Gods. Lacking true divinity, they were not able to create their own mortal servants, but instead invested some of their elemental power into chosen mortal bloodlines to create the first Genasi. Joining these mortal followers with an army of genies, the Princes set out to spread their influence, and to gain the divinity they initially lacked.
Their goal was pure, at first, to restore harmony to the world, but as with so many who tried to do so, the chaos wrought by the Colossus War defeated them and they descended swiftly into tyranny in their struggle to control the uncontrollable. They commanded their servants to war against the servants of other gods, perhaps initially believing that by acquiring more divine power and more worship, they could achieve their worthy goals, but swiftly coming to pursue power for its own ends. As the Princes demanded greater and greater acts of dominion and cruelty, the genasi rebelled against them, with the aid of various genies and elementals. Unable to destroy their now-divine patrons, they instead cast them into the depths of the elemental planes, where their corrupted nature weakened the boundaries with The Abyss to create the Malificences.
There were and are four Elemental Princes, who continued to be worshipped by certain misguided cults, and by failing genasi bloodlines who believe that they can restore their elemental power.

• Apyris, the Dark Flame, stands for the uncontrolled, all-consuming nature of fire. Their quest for harmony was corrupted by their increasing willingness to simply eliminate anything that stood in the way of a perfect world, ultimately leading them to seek the harmony of a world swept bare of all that lived or grew.
• Namis, the Crushing Wave, stands for the force of water that heedlessly drives all before it. They see harmony as perpetual motion, without settlement or fixed form, seeking to break down all solidity, such that no one thing has a privileged position over another.
• Sessaris, the Howling Vortex, is the eradicating fury of air in motion. They see all form as disharmony, but rather than the uniform motion of the Crushing Wave, they seek complete, undifferentiated chaos, with meaning as the ultimate enemy of harmony.
• Gravis, the Smothering Ground, is the remorseless, crushing weight of earth. They despise all motion, all direction, and seek to restore universal harmony by petrifying all of Existence in a single, frozen moment of perfection.