[daniel]

What is up with the warrens and drawing power from them? Does each warren do something specific? How do you become a magician? What are the warrens exactmy? Are all warrens like Wu i.e. Burn?

[Aptorian]

Mages are usually born with some kind of magical affinity, you might be a magical prodigy or you might just be a guy who's nose itches some times when a warren opens near him. Most are born with or grow to have a special connection to one specific warren, which will become their aspect, but using any warren is possible, it is simply a question of skill, will and knowledge.

Warrens can and usually are two different things at the same time. They can be a world with its own civilizations and creatures and history (examples being Kurald Galain, Starwald Demelain, Omotose Phellack, you'll hear more about these places later in the books) and they can be a magical reservoir of power. It sounds strange when you think about it but that's the way it is. Some warrens are entire worlds like Burn, other warrens are smaller or more personal, most have an elemental connection. For example a god can have his own warren that is not a world, it is simply where this gods power is stored (At least that is my understanding of how that works).

Not all warrens are meant to be siphoned for magical means but most warrens have some special aspect.

Hood's path: Death magic.
Denul: Healing
Ruse: Water
Serc: Air
Meanas: Illusion and shadow
Aral Gamelon: Summonings and bindings of powerful entities
etc.

Mages usually use their own bodies to channel power from a warren. So to speak, their body is a gate into their warren. Power flows through them and they use their minds to shape the power. A mages potential is defined by how much power they can handle, meaning how much power they are able to let pass throuh them, and how well they are able to utilise that magic. The strongest mage may still be beaten by the weakest mage, if that mages knows just how to use his warren. Magic is often a lot more about subtlety than brute strength.

Mages can also use rituals, conjurations and magically imbued tools to their advantage. These kinds of preparations usually allow them to do things that they wouldn't be able to handle on the fly.

[worry]

Apt's description is pretty spot-on. I've included a wonderful visual to help. The Warren, as in the place, is akin to where these rabbits are. The pathways to them are akin to a wizard channeling the powers from that Warren, into some sort of sorcery in the mortal world.

[Hoods Breath]

FInally I fully understand the killer rabbit scene in Monty Python's Holy Grail.

[Kanese S's]

I was going to post an explanation of it. But then Apt already did.

[Use Of Weapons]

I wonder if the reason the Elder warrens have civilisations and are place-oriented rather than power-oriented is simply due to their antiquity. If the human-aspected warrens persist for long enough, they could eventually develop the same kind of attributes.

[Zenstrive]

it's connected to how waves and particles, on their fundamental quantum aspects are two aspects of the same coins. One in Wu realm manifested as solid material, while seeing the Warrens as waveform energy, thus being able to draw the power from them thereof. One's soul detached from the Wu realm went to Hood's realm, which in there it was manifested materially and seen only as waveform energy from Wu.

Soul, thereof, can be seen as a packet of information that is the frame of materializing between realms. Who knows, in entering a gate, one is transformed into waveform and then materialized as material at the same time.
Also that's why a rift can be sealed by souls: the packet of informations are disintegrated into its most basic parts, then the parts are used to convert materials from both warrens (in a rift, there are two bordering warrens) to seal it.

If one can see into a warren but not through gates, I propose, one would see the people on other realm as one would see ghosts.

And people with affinity of warrens, well, their souls may have wandered through a warren before drifted into the realm of Wu.

And K'rul, now he is the smartest quantum physicist in the Malazan world: he can convert a physical world into a warren, therefore changing its quantum properties...


So in sort: it all depends on where you are...

But that's how I see it, anyway...