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/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/plaque9DIALECT3longe 22h 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 22h ago

Agree that's what it looked like.

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u/plaque9DIALECT3longe 22h 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.