"The realm of Shadow. More will be revealed in due course, especially in Toll of the Hounds."

- Steven Erikson - Q and A with malazanempire No 1 (2003)

"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)."

- Steven Erikson - Q and A with malazanempire No 2 (2003)

"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)

‘Bonecaster,’ Kulp said. ‘What warren is this?’

Hentos Ilm paused, attention still on Heboric. ‘Elder. Kurald Emurlahn.’

‘I’ve heard of Kurald Galain – the Tiste Andii warren.’

‘This is Tiste Edur. You surprise me, Mage. You are Meanas Rashan, which is the branch of Kurald Emurlahn accessible to mortal humans. The warren you use is the child of this place.’

Kulp was scowling at the Bonecaster’s back. ‘This makes no sense. Meanas Rashan is the warren of Shadow. Of Ammanas and Cotillion, and the Hounds.’

‘Before Shadowthrone and Cotillion,’ Hentos Ilm said, ‘there were Tiste Edur.’ - (DG UK MMpb P.266)

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)

Ben Adaphon Delat: 'Meanas – where Shadowthrone and Cotillion and the Hounds dwell—’

Moranth officer: 'Is naught but a gateway’ ...

Ganoes Paran: 'If a shadow could cast a shadow, that shadow would be Meanas – is that what you two are saying? Shadowthrone rules the guardhouse?’...The Hounds of Shadow – they are the guardians of the gate. Damn, that makes too much sense to be in error. But the warren is also shattered. Meaning, that gate might not lead anywhere. Or maybe it belongs to the largest fragment. Does Shadowthrone know the truth? That his mighty Throne of Shadows is . . . is what? A castellan’s chair? A gatekeeper’s perch? - (MoI, UK Trade, p.728)

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)

"...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—’

- Quick Ben on the Warren of Shadow - (GotM, UK Trade, p.97)

 

"sought out his warren...stealing power to bolster his senses..." - Kulp - (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)

 

Kulp cursed his own limitations. Had he been a practitioner of Serc, or Denul or D’riss or indeed virtually any of the other warrens accessible to humans, he would find what they needed. But not Meanas.

No seas, no rivers, not even a Hood-damned puddle. From within his warren, Kulp was seeking to effect a passage through to the mortal world . . . and it was proving problematic.

They were bound by peculiar laws, by rules of nature that seemed to play games with the principles of cause and effect. Had they been riding a wagon, the passage through the warrens would unerringly have taken them on a dry path. The primordial elements asserted an intractable consistency across all warrens. Land to land, air to air, water to water.

Kulp had heard of High Mages who – it was rumoured – had found ways to cheat those illimitable laws, and perhaps the gods and other Ascendants possessed such knowledge as well. But they were as beyond a lowly cadre mage as the tools of an ogre’s smithy to a cowering rat.   - ( DG, UK MMPB, p.436)

 

Kulp :   The art of illusion is grace itself. There must be a way to . . . 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?

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)