[3.5 Question] Sha'irs, Gen, and what happens if they don't have them.

[Thedez]

So reading through the description of the Sha'ir, it becomes pretty obvious that their familiar is central to their casting of spells.
However, reading through it I also noticed that the Gen's ability to grab spells isn't native to the Gen, but something that's described as a part of the Sha'ir's spellcasting ability. That leads me to the question--Does the Sha'ir's familiar specifically need to be a Gen in order for him to retrieve spells, or would any familiar theoretically do?
If a Sha'ir were to, say, enter into the Arcane Hierophant Prestige Class, would the Companion Familiar have the same powers as a Gen, or as a typical Familiar?
Would the Sha'ir basically become a Commoner if their Gen were to ever be traded away for a non-familiar-related feature? Is it possible for a Sha'ir to have both a Gen and a regular familiar, if they multiclass into Wizard?

[DrMotives]

For this you really have to dig into the fluff and see. The gen is basically a "my lil' genie", who fetches your magic from the elemental planes specifically. It seems another, non-gen familiar won't work for the most part. If I'm a wizard with a cat, and I multiclass into sha'ir for a weird ultimate magus style build, it won't make sense for me to say "I'm keeping my housecat familiar, adding my levels to make it stronger, and my cat is going into the Crematorium to fetch my sha'ir side more fire spells". That's just not happening. Planar travel and deal-making with genie lords is something the gen does.
Now, if the wizard had improved familiar & a mephit, I could see that happening a little more easily. Really you have to adjudicate this based on in-game world logic.

[Thedez]

Okay, cool, that helps a lot.

[Falontani]

The two things gen have that your average familiar doesn't: an innate way to travel the elemental planes, and immunity to the bad stuff on the plane. Couple this with the ability to speak and you have an envoy that can travel the elemental planes and request magic for you. If you have a raven familiar then it can speak, but traveling to and from is a difficulty that isn't easily done. I guess with a whole lot of scrolls of plane shift + planar tolerance...

[thorr-kan]

No gen, not spellcasting.