Meanas: The Path of Shadow and Illusion
Steven Erikson: The realm of Shadow. More will be revealed in due course, especially in Toll the Hounds.(Q and A with malazanempire No 1 (2003))
Steven Erikson: Rashan and Meanas. The names are strangely interchangeable depending on where you are. Seven Cities, for example, has a different take than Quon Tali. Darkness and Shadow are obviously linked, and besides, humans are bad at settling semantic distinctions (cf world religions). (Q and A with malazanempire No 2 (2003))
Corlo: 'Meanas – that’s another warren. It’s aspected to shadows and illusion, a child of Thyr, the warren of Light. Separate but related. Open the warren of Meanas, and you can travel through shadows. Unseen, and fast as thought itself, nearly. And illusions, well, that reveals the sisterhood to
Mockra, for it is a kind of manipulation of the mind, or, at least, of perception, via the cunning reshaping of light and shadow and dark.’ (MT, UK Trade, p.555)
'Meanas Rashan, which is the branch of Kurald Emurlahn accessible to mortal humans. The warren you use is the child of this place (The Nascent).'(DG, UK MMPB, p.377)
'The thick, turgid air of the Meanas warren - where shadows were textured like ground glass and to slip through them was to feel a shivering ecstasy -'(DG, UK MMPB, p.437)
Kulp:'Meanas Rashan is the warren of Shadow. Of Ammanas and Cotillion, and the Hounds.'
Hentos Ilm: 'Before Shadowthrone and Cotillion...there were Tiste Edur.'(DG, UK MMPB, p.378)
'The art of illusion is grace itself. There must be a way to...trick our way through. What's real versus what isn't is the synergy within a mortal's mind. And greater forces? Can reality itself be fooled into asserting an unreality?'(DG, UK MMPB, p.437)
Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so one sees shadow ever retreat to hidden places, only to return in the wake of the war between dark and light.
Observations of the Warrens
Insallan Enura (HoC TB, p.571)
It is not unusual to see the warrens of Meanas and Rashan as the closest of kin. Yet are not the games of illusion and shadow games of light? At some point, therefore, the notion of distinctions between these warrens ceases to have meaning. Meanas, Rashan and Thyr. Only the most fanatic of practitioners among these warrens would obejct to this. The aspect all three share is ambivalence; their games the games of ambiguity. All is deceit, all is deception. Among them, nothing - nothing at all - is as it seems.
A Preliminary Analysis of the Warrens
Konoralandas (HoC TB, p. 420)
Quick Ben on the Warren of Shadow:
'the true Warren of Shadow has been closed, inaccessible for millennia, until the 1154th year of Burn’s Sleep... The earliest writings of House Shadow seemed to indicate that its throne was occupied by a Tiste Edur—’(GotM, UK Trade, p.97)
Kulp: 'sought out his warren...stealing power to bolster his senses' (DG, UK MMPB,
p.316)
'He (Kulp) cast a wave of light down the length of the centre walkway...spun it sideways and left it there.'(DG, UK MMPB, p.333)
'Kulp could sense his own warren. It felt ready - almost eager - for release...uncharacteristic attentiveness. It wanted to join the game...the trap of thinking Meanas as an entity, a faceless god, where access was worship, success a reward of faith. Warrens were not like that. A mage was not a priest and magic was not divine intervention. Sorcery could be the ladder to Ascendancy - a means to and end, but there was no point in worshipping the means'(DG, UK MMPB, p.325)
'(Kulp)...hissed the few words of High Meanas he possessed. The warren's (The Nascent) fabric parted, a tear barely large enough to allow the passage of a horse.'(DG, UK MMPB, p.439)
Meanas was a remote warren, and every fellow practitioner Kulp had met chracterized it the same way: cool detached, amused intelligence. The game of illusions was played with light, dark, texture and shadows, crowing victory when it succeeded in deceiving an eye, but even that triumph felt emotionless, the satisfaction clinical. Accessing the warren always had the feel of interrupting a power busy with other things. As if shaping a small fraction of that power was a distraction barely worth acknowledging.(DG, UK MMPB, p.325)
'But not Meanas. No seas, no rivers, not even a Hood-damned puddle.'(DG, UK MMPB, p.436)
After being attacked by D'ivers and Soletaken, Duiker thinks that Bult has been poisoned by the scores of D'ivers wasp stings he has suffered...also, Duiker's legs have been bitten by D'ivers Fire Ants. Kulp (a mage of Meanas Rashan) replies with: 'Not poison. More like an infecting warren. I can deal with this...As with your legs.' (DG, UK MMPB, p.183)
Landmarks
Shadowkeep
'Just as the image carved upon the altar within the temples dedicated to Shadowthrone, Shadowkeep rose from the plain like an enormous lump of black glass, fractured with curving
planes, rippled in places, with some corners glistening white as if crushed. The largest surface facing them – a wall, he (Quick Ben) supposed – was mottled and dull, as if it was a cortex, the weathered surface of obsidian ...There were no windows as such, but many of the slick surfaces looked semi-translucent and seemed to glow with an inner light....there was no door, no gate, no drawbridge.' (GotM, UK Trade, p.291)
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