Janni

The elemental fey related to air are called Janni. They are deeply intelligent, clever beings who love to bend and twist rules to suit their joyful, sometimes mischievous nature. Ancient stories say that once they were able to fly, to soar freely among the clouds as wild as any bird, as fast as any Pixie, but modern days have seen a change in their physiology. These days, the most a Janni can accomplish is levitation. On average, a Janni can levitate as high as their own height doubled, though some have recorded instances of Janni surpassing that thanks to extremely good health and great concentration.

Janni have a wide variety of appearances. They do not usually have the strong shoulders of their Sylvani cousins, nor the musculature of their Ifriti neighbors, but like clouds, appear in a vast range of shapes, colors, and sizes. Janni have skin colors ranging from pale snowy white to deepest, richest purple, and every shade in between. Some Janni even bear marbled skin tones, e.g. bold blue opposed by sunny yellow, or dark red balanced with light orange, and so on. Their eyes come in many colors, too, and their hair colors can be changed at will. Though many adult Janni do not enjoy promoting that skill, it is commonly fashionable among Janni youth to allow hair colors to change swiftly and violently depending on mood, setting, or weather conditions.

Janni prefer smell over all other senses. They adore perfumes, colognes, incense, scented oils, but most of all they cherish raw, real scent in the wild: rain on soil, wind and snow from the mountains, sun-warmed clean sheets on the laundry line, etc. There are many competing scentmakers in Ammingrad who are Janni; it is their greatest contest to magically capture and cultivate the ‘realest’ scents.

The high house is House Fleet, led by Jardane Fleet (Chief Director of the Wardens) and his wife Irine. Their children are Neema, Kadeas, Brella, Ulfo and Chelsi. Other famous Janni are Peer Stigli Cham of the Weather Guild, Director Deysh Dilatri of the Arcanica Guild, Tyrund Burq of the Mercantile Guild, and Evin Mykald, master of the Janni martial technique known as wind-boxing.
A Janni lifespan is an interesting one. Their lives move quickly, and they are most focused on joy as their drive in life. Young Janni are inclined to outrageous parties, riots, and displays of public wildness. As they mature, this proclivity declines, but overall it is good humor and quick thinking that stir Janni’s imagination. They do not take things too seriously, at any age.

It is difficult for Janni to conceive a child, but if they do, the gestation period is very brief. Within a matter of weeks, the pregnancy (which is simultaneously experienced by both parents) has peaked, and a child can be born of its parents’ shared, exhaled breath. The newly-formed Janni child is captured in a special kind of glass container, and there they are kept while the rest of their body solidifies over the next few months. At a year they have reached a solid mass, and can be released from the jar – carefully. Janni children are notoriously fast and very easy to distract. Janni reach adulthood at age 80, but at their very oldest, Janni can live up to 500 years. When they die, Janni expire suddenly, dissolving into a fine mist or fog which hangs in the air for a little while before dissipating. “To let the window open” is a Janni idiom describing death – not unlike the human phrase “to kick the bucket.”