The Gens of The Al-Qadim

In the Al-Qadim campaign setting for 2nd ed AD&D, there is a character kit called the Sha'ir. They are magic users, but rather then studying spells, they control a small elemental familiar. This creature is called a Gen, and is in fact a young djinn. Gens are elemental beings, and sha'irs can summon and them and ask them to fetch spells from the other planes.

Gens are only a foot tall or so, and operate independently of the Sha'ir who summoned them, but are compelled to do their bidding.

In the picture above, from left to right, are my Earth, Air, Water and Fire Gens.

It was a difficult to find appropriate minis for this. It is really easy to find large elementals, man sized elementals. But when it came to something only a foot or so tall, not so much. Now Rebel Minis recently released their 15mm elementals, and we were able to find some very old school ones on a great webstore called Noble Knight Games. But we wanted a more mystical feel.

Something a little less direct, and maybe more metaphorical.

So Elijah and I scoured the web for animal minis and selected one to represent each Gen. Reaper Miniatures provided us with everything we needed.

The bases are from Artizan Designs. Very flat and easy to work on top of. And of course they let me do some fun stuff. Especially with the Air Gen.

To make my animal Gens seem that much more magical, I put an accent of gold on each them. And I think it turned them from their usual animal kind into mythical elemental beings.

Of course, for some of them, that wasn't that hard.

My Gens are for Sha'ir NPC and any guest of JADE who wishes to be the same class, however two of our players are Sha'irs and summoned their Gens. Jeff summoned an Earth Gen, and he painted his mini a shining gold with a few jade accents.