[Abyss]

Soulessdreamer, on Feb 20 2009, 08:05 AM, said:

D'rek, on Feb 20 2009, 10:25 AM, said:

Maybe most mortal human mages can only grasp/understand one warren with their minds expect for rare savants like bottle (QB using other minds to handle this), without going insane or something.

Or human perception maybe limited/flawed and the only way we can understand the elder warrens to to not see the whole but only part.

It sounds like the dragons seperated the raw primordial chaos of magic into manageable chunks allowing races/people to get to the stuff via whatever path resonated with them.

TTFN

A good try at an explanation, but unfortunately there's a lot of mages who use multiple warrens and surely aren't savants. Tayschreen can use at least 4 (Thyr, Telas, D'riss, Denul), Bottle uses a bunch (Mockra, Meanas, Thyr), and several others do so suspectedly (but not directly mentioned), like Ebron or Deadsmell.

The 'dragons shaped manageable chunks' theory is likely close to what happened. My take is that they and Krul created 'paths', basically refining the way the existing warrens could be accessed. Keep in mind the different warrens are also different in nature - Hood's, Meanas, Rashan and Ruse by example offer separate 'dimensions', while when we see QB use Serc and Driss in MoI, they are more 'shifts' from the world rather than worlds in their own right. Denul draws on personal energy (the healer or the patient's) while Mokra has no physical warren (per Corlo in MT) but apparently has a 'mind' (Seren in RG).

Plus the speculation that the warrens are human aspected while the Elder Warrens are aspected to other races, yet we've seen humans use Elder Warrens (QB, RIllish, the NOs) and the Jaghut Cynnigig suggested he could use more than just OP (HoC).

Beak, possibly more due to mind-set than any particular ability, accessed ALL the warrens, which suggests that while personal inclination may lead a mage to a certain warren, that is by no means a specific finite limit on what they can do.

Point being as with most things SE, there is no hard and fast rule.

Lisheo, on Feb 20 2009, 06:18 PM, said:

Or perhaps Rashan is the degenerated human Warren of Elder Darkness, and, as we've seen, all human warrens don't quite compare with their Elder variations. So it's not true Darkness, it's lesser darkness, ie, basically, a dark shadow.

As for why people consider it Shadow eyc, well, they don't know everything in the MBotF.

If there can be a human version of Kurald Liosan/Thyrllan in the form of Thyrr, I can't see why we can't have a human accesible Darkness.

Other than disagreeing with your use of the term 'degenerated', i tend to agree. But i suspect 'evolved' may be more accurate. Humans are the preeminent race on the lanet, so the warrens changed to reflect that.

Ain't_It_Just_, on Feb 24 2009, 07:32 PM, said:

Hmmm....you know the birth of Light created Shadow? Maybe the existence of Shadow and Dark has created Rashan, a bit of both, see?

I wonder if the Tiste Edur know anything about this...but I doubt it. So far they've exclusively used Shadow.

No exactly - draconic Tiste (Scabby, Shelty) use SD and the Letherii Tiste used Chaos and the Holds.

Trull's son, on Mar 3 2009, 09:26 PM, said:

Much speculation floating about I see. Can we relate Mockra more with Denul then with Rashan and Meanas? Because although illusion can alter someones perception, it does so indirectly. Whereas Mockra is a straight forward mindf*ck. I think the use of these warens for subterfuge and stealth have wrongly mangled mockra with those dealing with different shades of, ehh, shadow... am I wrong to treat mockra as something seperate?

No, but the abundance of mages using Mokra along with some/all of Meanas and Rashan and Thyr certainly suggests a possible link.

Lisheo, on Mar 4 2009, 05:25 AM, said:

Rashan was the supposed warren of the Sister of Cold Nights... It'd be more of a cold dusk if it was shadow.

That was Dujek and WJs best guess without being sure. More likely she used whatever Draconus in his 'Lord of Endless Night' capacity uses, probably a variation on Kurald Galain but Elder God accessed as opposed to Tiste Andii aspected. Given that both are 'darkness' warrens the confusion/relation makes sense.


- Abyss, could say we were all in the dark.

This post has been edited by Abyss: 04 March 2009 - 09:26 PM

[D'rek]

Addendums:

-Nightchills warren is guessed as 'High Rashan' by QB in MoI, and then he adds 'as far as I could tell'.

-When QB uses shadow in Capustan, Talamandas calls it Rashan, so SE's interview explanation about humans, especially 7Cs, being bad with semantics doesn't hold up.

-While there are serveral warrens that we've only ever seen as 'layers' (ie Serc), there's always the chance of new info coming along. For example, D'riss was only ever seen as a 'layer' or 'shift' as Abyss calls it in MoI, but then in tBH the QoD has a seperate dimensional warren thingy for Leoman to go into, which Cotillion says is D'riss warren. Stuff changes and who knows how it'll be by the end...

[Sinisdar Toste]

are you sure cotillion says d'riss and not t'riss? thats a name for the QoD

[D'rek]

Sinisdar Toste, on Mar 5 2009, 04:04 PM, said:

are you sure cotillion says d'riss and not t'riss? thats a name for the QoD

He (or someone) most definitely says that she took Leoman into her D'riss warren.

Of course the name D'riss is just a combo of T'riss and D'rek, the two gods who use the warren the most (Burn does too, but she also has Tennes so she doesn't get in on the naming convention)...

[Kenussen]

In GotM Quick Ben says that Rashan is the warren of illusions and is itself an illusion, it doesn't actually exist. Yet, in DG Bidithal is said to be a practioner of Rashan and yet is a shadow priest so it would seem that Rashan is shadow-aspected not dark. Meanas and Rashan are often taken in the same token also as the same because we know that in NoK Dancer's shadow cultists, the Talon, had Rashan inscriptions on their faces.

However, it is often said that the three warrens Thyr, Meanas and Rashan are children of the elder warrens: Kurald Thyrllan, Kurald Emurlahn and Kurald Galain respectively. I think this is a mistake and that there is no warren of darkness, Rashan and Meanas are one of the same perhaps illusions and shadow but not darkness and shadow as such.

Spoiler

Hairlock is said to use a warren very close to Chaos yet anathema to Thyr, which makes people think of Rashan but it's difficult to say, perhaps he uses KG.

[Kanese S's]

Lisheo, on 04 March 2009 - 10:25 AM, said:

Rashan was the supposed warren of the Sister of Cold Nights... It'd be more of a cold dusk if it was shadow.

As noted above, that info comes from Quick Ben, who might not be able to tell what exactly her (no doubt, archaic) sorcery is, or who might very well know that she's using Kurald Galain or some other sort of Elder dark sorcery, but not want to let on all he knows.

To most observers in the "modern" Malazan age, Nightchill's warren would probably resemble Rashan or at least some weird version of it. There's also the possibility that she intentionally disguises her sorcery as Rashan, if that is possible, to conceal actually using Kurald Galain or something similar, or even that she uses mainly Rashan instead of Kurald Galain, to keep her identity concealed.


One the subject of whether Rashan is a sort of human variant of Kurald Galain or if it's a fragment of Emurlahn... I have a thought on this. Isn't it said somewhere that some of the fragments of shattered Kurald Emurlahn drift? What happens if an untethered fragment of a warren drifts into another warren? Might this not have happened, if that's even possible? Perhaps there was a true human version of the warren of darkness at some time, but a chunk of Emurlahn drifted into it and merged, skewing it more towards shadow, in practice.

[Aertheron]

My personal Interpretation is as follows.
Put it in Spoiler quotes as I don't know if any of the information in it, spoils anything for anyone.

Spoiler

Kurald Emurlahn is the Elder Warren of Shadow.
Kurald Emurlahn is ripped to parts.

K'Rul then created the human Warrens.
From the ripped up parts of Kurald Emurlahn several "rival" warrens of Shadow have appeared.
Meanas and Rashan

The reason why Kelanved and Dancer have tried to eliminate Rashan, is that they could then gain that part of Kurald Emurlahn and increase the power of Meanas.

The fact that the Shadow Warren is heavily linked to the Warrens of Dark and Light, also explains why Meanas and Rashan are different.
Same Warren, but one closer to the Light side of Shadow, the other closer to the Dark side of Shadow.

this is all conjecture, because whenever I look up Rashan on the malazan wikia or here in the encyclopedia, it is listed as the warren of darkness, also there is no other warren of darkness except the Elder Warren.

This post has been edited by Aertheron: 19 July 2014 - 05:55 AM