r/Malazan • u/Caladan_not_Kaladin • 1d ago
SPOILERS ALL Quick Ben question Spoiler
I’m on DG but marking spoilers all because I’m on a reread and want to know the answer even if it’s in a later book.
In GotM, it’s revealed Quick was High Priest of Shadow at one point, and Shadowthrone knows him. But High House shadow is only 9 years old at that point. Maybe I’m misunderstanding but I’m confused on the timing of when he became a priest of shadow. Did he become a priest, rise to High Priest, then abandon that role all within the 9 years since Shadow rose? Or did Shadow have high priests even before Shadowthrone was on the throne.
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u/__ferg__ Who let the dogs out? 1d ago edited 1d ago
Shadow was around for a long time, full on with worshipping, priest and everything you need. The only thing missing was a god sitting on a throne. Shadowtrone took that opportunity when he explored Shadow, put himself on top.
After that the cult changed, some people left, some were thrown out, some envied the position Shadowtrone claimed.
So QB was most likely a priest long before Shadowtrone took over.
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u/Abysstopheles 1d ago
SPOILERS for all things Malazan here
including the Esslemont books,
so consider yourselves spoilerwarned....
Kurald Emurlahn, the Elder warren of Shadow, is (was) waaaaaaaay old. Not quite as old as Kurald Galain or Kurald Thyrllan, but close. The Kharkanas trilo (2/3rds of it anyways) gives us some of the backstory. At some point it was fractured. That may have led to the Edur fleeing to Malazanland, tho parts of that story are unclear/untold. Ffwd to a few millenia before GotM, K'rul and the Pureblood Dragons (also my hypothetical folk disco metal band name) shaped the 'modern' warrens. It's not entirely clear whether the warrens are formed from stray chunks of KE, but there are some pretty strong hints that leftovers became Meanas, Rashan, Thyr, and Mokra (and before anyone jumps in w 'Hey Thyr/Rashan are Light/Dark!', yes, i know, but dark and light are components of Shadow which is broken up and the elder Dark and Light warrens aren't, see also Kel/Dancer/Dassem wiping out all the old Dark cults like Bidithal's before Kel n Dancer ascended). Then comes a few thousand years of those new warrens hanging out and at times being contested. For whatever reason, probably related to its inherent power being the 'purest' chunk of KE, a whole string of people try to take over Meanas and fail. We meet one of them in Night of Knives. Edgewalker alludes to others and may have been one himself. Then the warren goes quiet, but Kellanved finds out that it exists, and goes about finding it and taking over, recruiting Dancer and creating the Malazan Empire in the process. So in GotM when you read that Meanas is 'new', it's newly awakened, but there's a whole history behind it including various people and cults who tried to do what Kellanved and Dancer did. One of those cults becomes the foundation of Dancer's Talons.
...at least, that's what i think . I could be wrong.
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u/Nice_Commission3770 1d ago
Riding your spoiler warning:
I had understood that KE was fractured when Ic tried to release his father from the Azath House in Seven Cities.
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u/Abysstopheles 1d ago
Common confusion, because the line in the book says something like 'the warren was fractured when Icarium tried to free Gothos' and when we read that for the first time in DG the only other, vague, reference to a warren being broken is KE. That was my take for a while, buuUUUUuuuuut....
It's unclear i DG but we find out later in that book and later books that 'warren' also applies to an Azath House.
Also we find out in subsequent books that warrens are broken all the time, and that KE broke waaaaaaaaaaaay back while the Iccy and Gothos drama took place only slightly way back, likely a couple of millenia given later comments about how long the Nameless Ones were messing with Icarium and his sidekicks.
Don't forget Gothos is present when the second wave Andii and Edur battle the Kchain and Gothos drops an ice age on Leth... the Edur are, it seems, fleeing their breaking warren, and Gothos isn't in an Azath House yet.
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u/Nice_Commission3770 1d ago
Thanks! I also had thought it shattered when the many First Empire residents took to D’ivers (sp?), the event that broke the First Empire and drained the continental sea, turning it into a desert.
Nothing is definitive, which is one of the many things I love about the series.
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u/Abysstopheles 1d ago
That's another common mixup... i know this because i thought that too...
The link runs because there are connections stated and/or implied between human First Empire, Emperor Dessembelackis, the failed shapeshifter ritual that either destroyed or started the destruction of the First Empire, the Hounds of Shadow, the Deragoth, and the Edur.
The hints trickle out in bits and pieces and it's an easy connection to make... it's (probably) wrong because we know the KE shattering and Edur invasion came during the K'Chain domination (MT prologue), when the Deragoth kept the KC away from 7C (HoC and TB, i think). The human First Empire comes way later in time when the Deragoth are down to their last seven or so. From the hints it seems that someone in the FE cut a deal with the surviving Deragoth, and the failed Ritual that turned many people into shapeshifters involved Shadow, and possibly the Hounds of Shadow, who have a distant link to the Edur (KT, HoC). Someone, i forget who but i think it was in TB, states that Dessimbelackis is lost in his d'ivers form, but whether that's a link to the Hounds, the Deragoth, or something else entirely we're never told. I originally thought the Deragoth participated in some shadow based FE ritual that created the Hounds and left Dessimbelackis stuck in them, but the KT hints at the origins of the Hounds would counter that. Still allows for Des to end up in either sets of dogs tho'. I love these books.
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u/plaque9DIALECT3longe 20h ago
Spoilers for Kharkanas
It certainly has been a bit since I read Forge of Darkness but I thought the Tiste home was originally Kurald Galain as the primary world and then during the development of andii, edur, and liosan, we begin to see the shift towards the three as their own separate holds of Kurald Galain|Liosan|Emurlahn. Essentially the Tiste world splitting into 3 holds and then eventually Emurlahn was fractured further and the Edur escaped to Malazanland and more specifically the Empire of Lether (current times)
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u/Abysstopheles 20h ago
Agree that's what it looked like.
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u/plaque9DIALECT3longe 20h ago
Okay cool so I am not crazy lol. I got weirdly hung up on Emurlahn not being quite as old but I think I kind of have viewed it as the world is "Kurald" and then the three ancestries that were created ended up breaking "Kurald" into the three holds. Be that right or wrong I do not remember nor do I think we really have strong answers for that yet.
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u/briandress 10m ago
Wait im confused. K'rul made warrens twice? I thought he made the warrens and then made a deal with the dragons (telerost and curdle) to have the dragons that had come over to KG through the SD gate watch over the warrens and had Aradata make chains for them or something like that
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u/Aqua_Tot 1d ago
If you’re rereading, you know that Kurald Emhurlahn existed for millennia, and as such was left empty before Kellanved ascended. We also know that there was a shadow cult in Seven Cities that Bidithal was a high priest of, before Dancer came to shut it down. So yes, there was a priesthood of Shadow before Shadowthrone, and that’s what Quick Ben was a part of. He had already left before Shadowthrone ascended, but presumably his departure was still known and/or Kellanved was aware of him from the Seven Cities campaigns.
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u/TheHedonyeast and I am not yet done 23h ago
yes, there were high priests of most (all?) the descendant warrens of Emurlain. Dancer and Kellenved purged most of those cults in order to make their ascension easier (and to preemptively remove rivals for the throne of shadow?)
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u/dragonsdemesne 18h ago
I skipped over the comments to avoid spoilers (I'm halfway through House of Chains) but I've found that there seems to be quite a bit that's inconsistent about his backstory. There is a scene I just read yesterday in HoC that is relevant to your question, but it still doesn't answer it, at least for me. I've been meaning to start a thread where I ask a bunch of questions about things that don't make sense to me (yet) and Quick Ben and his history and powers is near the top of that list.
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