The Tiste Edur, Children of Shadow
Appearance
Grey-skinned with brown hair and angular eyes (of varying colours). They are of a height with the other Tiste peoples (ie taller than humans), but of a more brutal cast. Their clothing is barbaric in appearance made from hides from various animals, and decorated with fetishes, claws, bones and seashells (DhG UK mmpb p. 335, HoC UK mmpb p. 205 and 520)
All Edur warriors from the Northern Lether sub-continent wear a wide belt upon which are placed marks indicating the number of victories they have achieved in battle. (MT UK HC pg 15)
'The high cheekbones and angular eye sockets looked Tiste Andii, as did the man's evident height.'(DhG UK Paperback pg336)
"Tiste Edur. Grey-skinned, believed extinct - and thankfully so for it is a name sheathed in dread" (MOI UK TPB p.325)
“ The four bodies were adorned in bone fetishes, claws, the canines of beasts and polished seashells. There was none of the fine Tiste Andii craftwork that Kulp had had occasion to see in the past. Moreover, all four were brown haired, the hair hanging loose and uncombed, stringy with grease” (DhG UK mmpb p. 335)
“A ring of greyskinned warriors faced him. Taller than lowlanders, but still a head shorter than the Teblor. Curved sabres were scabbarded to their hips and much of their clothing was made of some kind of hide, short-haired, dark and glistening. Their long brown hair was intricately braided, hanging down to frame angular, multihued eyes.” (HoC UK mmpb p. 205)
“As tall as Darist, their skin a dusky pallor. Long brown hair, knotted and snarled with fetishes. Necklaces of claws and canines competed with the barbarity of their roughly tanned armour that was stitched with articulating strips of bronze. Their helmets, also bronze, were shaped like bear or wolf skulls.
Among them there was nothing of the natural majesty evident in Darist – or in Anomander Rake. A far more brutal cast, these Edur. Tip heavy black bladed scimitars were in their hands, sealskin covered round shields on their forearms” (HoC UK mmpb p. 520 )
“on his wide belt was a row of twenty one red stained rivets, each one marking coup, and among those seven were ringed in white paint, to signify actual kills. Only his elder brother’s belt sported more trophies” (Trull thinking on his belt and referring to Fear) (MT UK HC p. 15 )
“ (Hanradi Khalag)’s elongated eyes widened slightly” (BH, UK TPB pg 586)
Further info:
The Edur nation consists of six tribes, the Arapay, Sollanta, Merude, Den-Ratha, Beneda and Hiroth. The Hiroth tribe have recently come to power and have subjugated the other Edur tribes under the leadership of Hannan Mosag, the Warlock King in the wars of unification. The Warlock King has taken the son's of the tribal leaders of each of the tribe's, stripped them of there names and bound them to him as K'risnan. Both loyal servants and hostages, the K'risnan have powerful sorcery at their command and through them Hannan Mosag rules the Edur as a dictator. (MT UK HC p. 16, 19 and 27)
Recently Rhulad Sengar, through the machinations of the Crippled God has become Emperor of the Tiste Edur. With the Warlock King as his servant, he embarked on a successful conquest of the Letherii Empire. The Edur fleets roam the world ravaging the coastline’s of neighbouring continent’s seeking champions to fight there Emperor.
Edur Lifespan
For the Edur, grieving was less about loss than about being lost. Is that what comes when you live a hundred thousand years? (MT)
Edur Religion
The Edur Religion is the worship of four soletaken Eleint, Father Shadow and his three daughters. Father Shadow, is Scabandari Bloodeye,leader of the Tiste Edur when they came to the Malazan world, but he is gone from the Edur now. His three daughters, commonly called Daughter Dawn, the Daughter of Deceit, and Daughter Dusk, are Menadore, Sukul Ankhadu (also known as Dapple) and Sheltatha Lore. Of the three Sheltatha Lore, the favoured daughter is the most honoured. Of the other two, Menandore seem’s to be regarded as evil, and one to be feared and Sukul Ankhadu is regarded ambivalently though not to be crossed. Due to the nature of the Eleint it is unclear what relationship these four gods actually have with each other, and whether the three daughters are truly the daughters of Scabandari Bloodeye.
Ancient History
Tiste Edur history is shrouded in myths and falsehoods, little that the Edur themselves know of their history is the truth, twisted as it is to represent the Edur in a good light.
What is known is that the Edur came to the Malazan world under the command of Scabandari Bloodeye, along with a group of Tiste Andii under the command of Silchas Ruin, fleeing the sundering of Kurald Emurlahn and the wars among the Tiste which plagued Kurald Galain.
Upon arriving in this world they warred with the K’chain Che’malle for dominance on the Letherii continent, annihilating the K’Chain Che’malle, but at great cost to themselves. Of 400,000 Tiste Andii only a thousand survived, and of 200,000 Edur only 18,000 remained. The losses of the Andii were in large part due to the treacherous actions of Scabandari Bloodeye, who held back his Tiste Edur to ensure that as many Edur survived, and as few Andii as possible.
After the battle, Scabandari was named Bloodeye by Silchas Ruin, who, in an act of betrayal, stabbed and imprisoned Silchas Ruin in an Azath house. The Edur then turned upon the remaining Andii and slew them.
This betrayal did not remain unanswered. The Elder Gods of the Malazan realm and the Eleint went to war against Scabandari, whose skull was crushed by Kilmandaros and his soul imprisoned in eternal agony.
The Edur were scattered, reduced to barbarism. The last bastion of the remnants was on the Northern Letherii continent in shadowed forests.
The Edur themselves remember a twisted version of this history, in which they are the betrayed, with the Andii turning on them, and then the Elder Gods coming to persecute and scatter them.
Little else is known of early Edur history, save of a conflict between them and the T’lan Imass who travelled with the Toblakai, who later became the Barghast. This conflict took place on the seas. The resolution of this conflict is unknown, with both sides legends claming victory. (MOI, UK TPB, p. 324-325, HoC, UK MMPB, p.328-9, MT, UK HC, prologue and pg 22)
And your children, dear Shadow, took upon themselves the strength of Andiian courage and Liosan piety, and made of that blend something savage, brutal beyond belief. So much for promises of glory. (TtH)
Quotes:
"T'isten'ur - a name with curious echoes.... shadow kin, the Tiste Edur.... a name steeped in dread" (MOI UK TPB p. 325)
'Fully three-fifths of the Tiste Edur employed sorcery.' (MT, UK Trade, p.77)
Before the Edur conquest of The Letherii, Hannan Mosag has 'Four hundred and twenty-odd thousand Edur' (MT, UK TPB, p. 93)under his authority as the Warlock King.
"for Callows, death came from the sea. A warren-twisted fleet. Cold-eyed, unhuman killers. Seeking, ever seeking, they now ply the world's oceans... [Seeking what?]... A worthy challenge, no less" (MOI UK TPB p.234)
"Of course, battles against the five other tribes of the Edur were strictly bound in rules and prohibitions, and even vast protracted battles had yielded only a handful of deaths.... against the Edur there were no rules to constrain the Edur warriors" (MT, UK HC pg.15)
The Throne of Shadow
"The Throne of Shadow. Not in some hidden, long-forgotten realm. It's here, on - or rather in - my world... a small tattered fragment of Kurlad Galain... and the Tiste Edur have come find it. They're searching, crossing the seas, seeking this place" (MOI UK TPB p. 729)
"The Children are corrupted, the souls of the Edur poisoned!" (MOI UK TPB p. 729)
"The Edur have sworn to destroy Mother Dark... poisoned souls led by the one who has been slain a hundred times, oh, 'ware this new Emperor of the Edur, this Tyrant of Pain, this deliverer of Midnight Tides" (MOI UK TPB p. 730)
Tiste Edur History
Trull Sengar:' Our encounters with (T'lan Imass)...were few and far between. And then, only after your...ritual. Prior to that, your people fled from us at first sight. Apart from those who travelled the oceans with the Thelomen Toblakai, that is. Those ones fought us. For centuries, before we drove them from the seas.'
Onrack: ' The Tiste Edur were in my world...just after the coming of the Tiste Andii. Once numerous, leaving signs of passage in the snow, on the beaches, in deep forests.'
Trull Sengar:' There are far fewer of us now...We came here - to this place ([he Nascent) - from Mother Dark, whose children had banished us. We did not think they would pursue, but they did. And upon the shattering of this warren, we fled yet again - to your world, Onrack. Where we thrived...'
Onrack: 'Until your enemies found you once more.'
Trull Sengar: 'Yes. The first of those were...fanatical in their hatred. There were great wars - unwitnessed by anyone, fought as they were in darkness, in hidden places of shadow. In the end, we slew the last of those first Andii, but were broken ourselves in the effort. And so we retreated into remote places, into fastnesses. Then, more Andii came, only those seemed less...interested. And we in turn had grown inward, no longer consumed with the hunger of expansion...We had forgotten it all...All that I have just told you. Until a short while ago, my people - the last bastion, it seems, of the Tiste Edur - knew almost nothing of our past. Our long, tortured history. And what we knew was in fact false. If only...we had remained ignorant.'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.328-9)
"the Barghast... struggling with a singular enemy, a tall lithe species with angular faces and large almond shaped eyes in high walled ships.... T'isten'ur...the enmies of our Founding spirits. T'isten'ur, the Grey-Skinned. Demons in the oldest tales who collected heads, yet kept the victims living... heads that remained watchful, bodies that worked ceaselessly. T'isten'ur: demons who dwelt in shadows. The Founding Spirits fought them on the Blue Wastes... the Founding spirits drove the T'isten'ur from the Blue Wastes, drove the demons back into their underworld, the Forest of Shadows - a realm said to lie far to the south east... " (MOI UK TPB p. 324-325)
"The Dark Times had come with the rivening of the Tiste Edur, the assault of sorceries and strange armies and the disappearence of Father Shadow himself. And although the magic of Kurald Emurlahn was not denied to the tribes, the warren was lost to them: shattered, the fragments ruled by false kings and gods." (MT, UK HC, pg 22)
"We are Edur. We were masters of the hounds, once. We held the throne of Kurald Emurlahn. And would hold it still if not for betrayal, first by the kin of Scabandari Bloodeye, then by the Tiste Andii who came to this world with us. We are a beset people..." (MT, UK HC, pg 23)
Tiste Edur Religion
"He had not even paused to make propitation to Sheltatha Lore, Daughter Dusk, the most cherished of the three daughters of Father Shadow - although he would make recompense at tommorow's sunset - and, earlier he had moved unmindful of the patches of lingering light that blotted the trail, risking the attention of Sukul Ankhadu, the Daughter of Deceit, also known as Dapple" (MT, UK HC pg.14)
"Shrines to the Father and his favoured daughter dominated the residential area, raised platforms ringed by trees of the sacred Blackwood, the surface of the stone discs crowded with images and glyphs. Kurald Emurlahn played ceaselessly within the tree-ringed cirlce, rippling half shapes dancing along the pictographs, the sorcerous emananations awakened by the propitations that had accompanied the arrival of dusk." (MT, UK HC pg.17)
"White was evil of course. Common enough knowledge. The blush of bone, Menandore's hateful light at dawn."
Brys Beddict:'The Tiste Edur call the dark waters the realm of Galain, which is said to belong to kin, for whom Darkness is home.' (MT, UK Trade, p.160)
Tiste Edur life and architecture
"The towering cedar logs of the village wall rose from the clearing ahead, over which woodsmoke hung in stretched streams. Fields of rich black soil spread out to either side of the narrow, raised track leading to the distant gate. Winter had only just begun to release its grip on the earth , and the first planting of the season was still weeks away. By midsummer, close to thirty different types of plants would fill these fields, providing food, medicine, fibres and feed for the livestock, many among the thirty of a flowering variety, drawing bees fromw which honey and wax were procured. The tribe's women oversaw the slaves in such harvesting. The men would leave in small groups to journey into the forest, to cut timber or hunt, whilst others set out in Knarri ships to harvest from the seas and shoals
Or so it should be, when peace ruled the tribes. The past dozen years had seen more war parties seting out than any other kind, and so the people had upon occasion suffered. Until the war hunger had never threatened the Edur." (MT, UK HC pg.16)
"Hannan Mosag, Warlock King of the Hiroth, was now overlord to all the Edur tribes. From a host of warring peoples a confederacy had been wrought, although Trull well knew that it was a confederacy in name only. Hannan Mosag held as hostage the first born sons of the subjugated chiefs - his K'risnan Cadre - and ruled as dictator. Peace, then, at the point of the sword, but peace none the less" (MT, UK HC pg.16)
"Four smithies dominated this inland end of the vast walled interior, each surrounded by a deep sloping trench that drained into a buried channel that led away from the village and the surrounding fields. For what seemed years the surrounding forges had rung almost ceaselessly with the fashioning of weapons, and the stench of heavy, acrid fumes had filled the air, rising up to coat neary trees in white-crusted soot. Now... only two were occupied and the dozen or so visible slaves were unhurried in their work"
"Beyond the smithies ran the elongated , crick-lined storage chambers, a row of segmented beehive-shaped buildings that held surplus grains, smoked fish, and seal meat, whale oil and harvested fibre plants. Smillar structures existed in the deep forest surrounding each village-most of which were empty at the moment, a consequence of the wars.
The stone houses of the weavers, potters, carvers, lesser scribes, armourers and other assorted skilled citizens of the village rose around trull once he was past the storage chambers.... the Edur warrior now hurried through the residential streets. Letherii slaves called villages such as this one cities, but no citizen saw the need for changing their word usage - a village it ahd been at birth, thus a village it would always be, no matter that almost twenty thousand Edur and thrice that number of letherri now resided within it...
Trull emerged onto the Avenue of the warlock, the sacred approach to the massive citadel taht was both temple and palace, and the seat of the Warlock King, Hannan Mosag. Black-barked cedars lined the approach. The trees were a thousand years old, towering over the entire village. They were devoid of branches except for the uppermost reaches. Invested sorcery suffused every ring of their midnight wood, bleeding out to fill the entire avenue with a shroud of gloom.
At the far end, a lesser palisade enclosed the citadel and its grounds, constrcted of the same black wood, these boles crowded with carved wards. The main gate was a tunnel formed of living trees, a passage of unrelieved shadow leading to a footbridge spanning a canal in which sat a dozen K'orthan raider longboats. The footbridge opened out onto a broad flagstoned compound flanked by barracks and storehouses. Beyond stood the stone and timber houses of the noble families - those with blood ties to Hannan Mosag's own line - with therir wood-shingled roofs and Blackwood ridgepoles the array of residences neatly bisected by a resmption of the Avenue, across yet another footbridge to the ciadel proper" (MT, UK HC pg.17-18)
(the sengar family longhouse) "Trophy shields cluttered the outside walls, many of them sun-faded by the centuries. Whale bones clung to the underside of the roof's overhang. Totems stolen from rival tribes formed a chaotic arch over the doorway, the strips of fur, beaded hide, shells, talons and teeth looking like an elongated bird's nest.... (upon entering) ... the air was cool, slightly acrid with woodsmoke. Oil lamps sat in niches along the walls, between tapestries and stretched furs. The traditional hearth stone in the centre of the chamber, where each family had once prepared its meals, remained stoked with timber, althogh the slaves now worked in the kitchens behind the longhouse proper, to reduce the risk of fires. Blackwood furniture marked out the various rooms, although no dividing walls were present. Hung from hooks on the crossbeam were scores of weapons, some from the earliest days when the art of forging had been lost in the dark days immediately following Father Shadow's disappearence, the rough bronze of these weapons pitted and warped.
Just beyond the hearthstone rose the bole of a living Blackwood, from which the gleaming upperthird of a longsword thrust upward and outward at just above head height; a true Emurlahn blade, the iron treated in a manner the smiths had yet to rediscover. The sword of the Sengar family, signifier of their noble bloodline; normally, these original weapons of the noble families, bound against the the tree when it was just a sapling were after centuries gone from sight, lying as they were against the heartwood. But some twist in this particular tree had pried the weapon away, thus revealing that black and silver blade." (MT, UK HC, pg 19)
"a game board, fashioned from a huge palmate antler, the playing pieces carved from jade and ivory" (Mt, UK HC, pg 19)
Onrack: 'It is your people’s custom to withhold such activities (sex) until marriage?’
Trull Sengar: ‘It is...’ (HoC, UK Trade, p.577)
Physical differences to humans
The Edur...'took to their sumptuous beds Letherii slave women, and those that they used up, left broken and raving with the poison of Edur seed, were simply flung over the rail..' (BH UKTpb, p.607)
Tiste Edur Prayer
Face to the Light
betrayed by the Dark
Father Shadow
lies bleeding
Unseen and unseeing
lost
until his Children
take the final path
and in the solitude
of strangers
Awaken once more
(MT, UK Trade, p.71)
Tiste Edur Sayings
There are tides beneath every tide
And the surface of water
Holds no weight
(MT, UK Trade, p.95)
Male Given Names
Trull
Rhulad
Fear
Binadas
Tomad
Theradas
Midik
Hanradi
Alrahda
Hannan
Badar
Rethal
Canarth
Kholb
Matra
Brohl
Bruthen
Choram
Female Given Names
Uruth
Mayen
Surnames
Sengar
Buhn
Ahn
Khalag
Mosag
Irard
Harat
Brith
Khalag
Handar
Trana
Tribes
Arapay, subjugated , easternmost tribe of the Edur on Lether
Sollanta, subjugated tribe of the Edur on Lether
Den-Ratha, subjugated , northernmost tribe of the Edur on Lether.
Merude, subjugated tribe of the Edur on Lether
Beneda, subjugated tribe of the Edur on Lether
Hiroth, dominant tribe of the Edur on Lether
A list of Edur from the earliest times
Scabandari. Ilgast Rend, Halyd Bahann. Esthala who dreamed of peace. Kagamandra Tulas Shorn, who did not.
Sentient Species
