While the PCs have been distracted by Kakishon and the palace of Bayt al-Bazan in the City of Brass, Jhavhul has not been idle. Bribed by the Pactmasters of Katapesh to leave their city without causing more destruction, Jhavhul and his liberated army of jann and efreet relocated to the Brazen Peaks to recover and take stock of the situation.
He sent the Scroll of Kakishon (still containing the PCs) away with two of his efreeti lieutenants, ordering them to return it to his treasury in the City of Brass. In fact, he was using the two efreet to test what reception he would receive upon a theoretical return, and when those two were captured in Bayt al-Bazan, Jhavhul received confirmation that his palace was still denied to him.
So the powerful efreeti turned his attention back to his original plan—to use his own wishes, siphoned through mortal lips, to absorb and infuse himself with the essence of a great monster of yore, Xotani the Firebleeder, one of the numerous and devastating Spawn of Rovagug. Jhavhul returned to the site of Xotani’s grave, only to find a human village thriving nearby—the village of Kelmarane. After he augmented his forces by conscripting the shattered tribes of the Carrion King under his banner, Jhavhul mounted an assault on Kelmarane. Without the PCs’ protection, the village swiftly fell to the invading army and its populace was enslaved. It was then that Jhavhul met an unexpected ally: Davashuum, a janni and traitor to the Templars of the Five Winds.
Once a loyal servant of the powerful djinni Nefeshti, amoral Davashuum had long since grown dissatisfied with his role under her as enforcer and occasional executioner. Only he was willing to undertake the necessary, sometimes dirty tasks that the other templars found morally questionable. Always obsessed with the templars’ (and his own) reputation, Davashuum had grown impatient and displeased with Nefeshti’s strategy in recent years, and after he learned that Jhavhul had escaped Kakishon and fled into the Brazen Peaks, he and his mistress engaged in a heated argument. Davashuum pressed her to attack the efreeti at once, but she replied that such an attack would have been suicidal—with only himself and his brother Pazhvann remaining alive and loyal to the templars’ cause, the templars had effectively become a dead society, with no ability to stand against the efreeti. Pazhvann argued that they should instead recruit new templars, to build up an army and let Jhavhul continue his actions in order to learn more about how he might have grown in power during his exile, and Nefeshti found wisdom in Pazhvann’s words. Those same words drove Davashuum into a frenzy of frustration and he broke away from the templars, calling Nefeshti a coward and Pazhvann a worm. He told them that they had murdered the templars through this cowardice, and vowed that the templars would rise again under a new master. A fight ensued, and Nefeshti eventually forced Davashuum to flee, but not before Pazhvann was slain by the traitor.
Davashuum did not remain idle—his promise was true. Yet after abandoning Nefeshti, he felt his wishcraft-granted powers fading quickly. Knowing that before long he would be reduced to a shadow of his former power, just as his other brothers Kardswann, Vardishal, and Zayifid had lessened before him when they had broken off service to Nefeshti, he made a fateful choice. He traveled to Kelmarane and presented himself to Jhavhul as a servant, asking only to be restored to his former power by the efreeti’s own wishcraft.
Jhavhul agreed, pleased to have made an ally out of his erstwhile enemy, and with the aid of loyal gnoll minions, he used his own wishcraft to restore power to Davashuum, instating him as the acting ruler of Kelmarane and retreating to the depths of the House of the Beast and below, to Xotani’s grave, where he began to rebuild the defenses of those deep caves and renew his ritual of wishes—now funneled through the mouths of giants and other terrible beings. Many of Kelmarane’s notables, including the PCs’ old patron, Almah Roveshki, now suffer as slaves or worse in the caves known as Xotani’s Grave.
Now, only a handful of wishes remain before Jhavhul can overcome the ancient restrictions on genies granting themselves wishes—and when he utters this final wish, he hopes to complete his transformation into the Firebleeder.
Having made their escape from the City of Brass, the PCs discover that Kelmarane is now occupied by Jhavhul’s genie army under the command of Davashuum, the former Templar of the Five Winds. With the aid of the djinni Nefeshti, the PCs defeat the occupying force of genies and gnolls led by the traitorous templar, only to discover that Jhavhul is nearing the completion of his ritual to awaken Xotani. If the efreeti prince’s ritual is successful, Pale Mountain will erupt in a magical volcanic explosion, destroying Kelmarane and much of the surrounding area.
The PCs must brave the guardians Jhavhul left behind in the House of the Beast, including their old foe, the Carrion King, now a dangerous undead guardian. The PCs enter Jhavhul’s secret lair, a place called Xotani’s Grave, and soon confront Jhavhul himself amid the Firebleeder’s bones. If the PCs fail, Jhavhul becomes the new incarnation of Xotani, and Rovagug’s fury is unleashed upon the world as Pale Mountain explodes in a violent deluge volcanic ash and lava.
The Templars of the Five Winds is an ancient cabal dedicated to the opposition of reckless manipulation of reality and mortal enslavement of geniekind. At its height several centuries ago, the templars numbered thousands strong, and were led by a powerful noble djinni named Nefeshti. She founded the Templars of the Five Winds to oppose meddling on the Material Plane by all geniekind and to combat the practice of mortal spellcasters capturing and enslaving her kin. As proof that genies could work with men as equals and not merely as slaves, Nefeshti granted several potent wishes to her five favored soldiers, transforming them from men into immortal janni generals—each representing the strengths of the five winds. This brazen act scandalized many of Nefeshti’s superiors, and even though she and her templars had achieved great success against the efreet, the templars and Nefeshti were exiled to the Material Plane for daring to give mortals such potent gifts.
Since then, Nefeshti has held a tight reign on her wishcrafting powers, and keeps a close ear to the symphony of reality, constantly listening for others that abuse this gift. Over the years, she and her templars have been a potent force against disruptive genies and genie binders alike throughout Osirion, Katapesh, and Qadira.
Nefeshti’s alliance (and eventual romance) with the wizard Andrathi (a “reformed” genie binder) further strengthened the templars in that it gave them access to many of the genie binders’ tricks and secrets.
The Templars of the Five Winds saw their greatest victory in the defeat of Jhavhul and his armies on the slope of Pale Mountain, but this great triumph would also presage their doom. Andrathi sacrificed himself to see the brotherhood succeed, and Nefeshti was never the same after his death.
In the centuries that followed, she slowly lost interest in maintaining the templars, and her five champions fell increasingly to bickering.
Her general Vardishal was first to abandon the templars—he felt strongly that the templars should settle permanently in the Pale Mountain region to stand sentinel against the possible return of Jhavhul, and when Nefeshti refused (in part because the region still grieved her so), he left the templars to become the patron guardian of the region. As he left the templars, so did he give up much of his power, for Nefeshti’s gift of immortality lasted only as long as the templars remained hers. Vardishal was eventually slain, and his spirit suffused the site of his charge and likely now resides within the PC referred to as the windspeaker (see Pathfinder Adventure Path volume #19).
Next to leave the templars was Zayifid, Nefeshti’s spy and diplomat. Having seen the power Jhavhul wielded in battle, he felt he had allied with the wrong side. He abandoned the templars after a bloody battle that resulted in the near death of one of the other templars. Zayifid went into hiding for many years, and only recently emerged, much weakened after having lost even more of the power granted him by Nefeshti. He sought out the House of the Beast, infiltrated it, and was near recovering the Scroll of Kakishon when the PCs stopped him (see Pathfinder Adventure Path volume #20).
Third to abandon the cause was Kardswann, Nefeshti’s scout and messenger. When Vardishal perished, Kardswann realized that the templars were truly done and set out to find a new destiny. He spent some time traveling the wilds of Katapesh as his wish-granted power ebbed and faded, only recently returning to the Pale Mountain region, as if drawn back by ancient tides. There he succumbed to the daemon Xulthos and became the leader of the Kulldis gnolls of Kelmarane—he was likely slain by the PCs in the first adventure in this campaign (see Pathfinder Adventure Path volume #19).
The most recent to abandon the cause was Davashuum, Nefeshti’s assassin and executioner, now a loyal minion of Jhavhul. When her last remaining templar, Pazhvann, succumbed to Davashuum’s treachery as the executioner and the templars had their final, violent parting of ways, Nefeshti became the last surviving member of the Templars of the Five Winds.