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title: The Shake in Chapter 18 of Dust of Dreams

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# The Shake in Chapter 18 of Dust of Dreams

**Alright.**

So this question, rather obviously, comes up more often than not, because a) it's a lot to take in, b) it's confusing as hell, and c) we're not privy to the memories the two royals have beyond what little Twilight gives us (and pieces together from what Yedan says).

Once upon a time, I'd written what I thought was a fairly comprehensive answer to this question. Since that time, I lost the link. Which happens a lot more than I'd like to admit when you don't archive.

This question also toes the line between what is Spoilers DoD/MBotF & what falls under the purview of Kharkanas. Having read DoD twice & currently through my second read-through of Fall of Light (which is - admittedly - less than Zhil's probably five or more) I'm gonna try to occupy that liminal space wherein lie the Shake of MBotF, and **try** to give you an answer that ought to help.

So. DoD Chapter 18, the Shake, the First Shore. **What the fuck.**

Originally, our - and the Shake's - assumption was that they were a people comprised of Andiian refugees that mingled with the human populace (what human populace? *Nevermind that*) at the aftermath of Scabandari's invasion, a stone's throw away from where the Edur made *their* lands, and took to worshipping the Shore. 

There's... more than a few problems with this. Number one: We already have those people. They're called Bluerose, and they fled to a **much more sensible** region, separated from the people that turned on & killed them by a massive mountain range. 

Number two: by our current understanding of evolution in Malazan, there weren't any "human" - as we know them - peoples in Lether; there may have lived peoples like the Eres (progenitors of the Nerek) or a proto-Imass peoples that forced the Eres to migrate to Lether (per Bottle's visions of the Eres'al) but not **humans.** That means, the Shake "Andii" would have to parallely evolve and somehow yield what is basically indistinguishable from other humans, just with a peculiar religion, with no discernible Andiian characteristics (contrast to the Bluerose that still look very much like Andii).

There's more. But this much will do. 

So what the fuck are Yedan & Yan talking about? What is this "First Shore"? One thing at a time.

>*Yet, weren’t we here at the grisly end? Not wielding weapons. Not making heroic stands. Just . . . what? Watching?* ***Prompting the question: who in the name of the Shore were we? Their damned servants? Their slaves?***  
>  
>*Secret legends, tell us your secret truths.*  
>  
>\[...\]  
>  
>‘Destiny? Errant’s balls, why does speaking that word sound like the unsheathing of a sword? Yedan, perhaps we knew this city once. Perhaps our family line reaches back and every story we learned was true. The glory of Kharkanas. **But not one of those stories tells us we** ***ruled*** **here. In this city. We were not this realm’s master.’**  
>  
>He studied her for a time. ‘We move on, then.’  
>  
>‘Yes.’  
>  
>‘To where?’  
>  
>‘The forest beyond the river. Through it and out to the other side. Yedan, we have come this far. Let us make the journey to the place where it started. Our true home. The First Shore.’  
>  
>‘We don’t even know what that means.’  
>  
>‘So we find out.’

Twilight raises the **excellent** question - if they didn't *rule* here, but were here when everything went down, what does that make them? Their legends speak of the splendour of Kharkanas & its downfall, but nothing of the robbing and looting that ensued.

Yedan, however, remembers otherwise:

>Yedan said, ‘The Watch commanded the legions, and we held until we were told to withdraw. It’s said there were but a handful of us left by then, elite officers one and all. *They* were the Watch. The Road was open then—we but marched.’ 

Which makes sense, as just before this, we get the following exchange:

>‘Yedan, the story is known to me—’  
>  
>‘Differently.’  
>  
>She came near to gasping in relief as she turned from the vast falling wall to face her brother. ‘What do you mean?’  
>  
>‘The Watch serves the Shore in its own way.’  
>  
>‘Then, in turn, I must possess knowledge that you don’t—is that what you’re saying, brother?’

And, ultimately, Yedan drops the bomb:

>“In Twilight was born Shadow.”  
>  
>‘I was told none of this! I don’t believe you! What you’re saying makes no sense, Yedan. Shadow was the bastard get of Dark and Light—commanded by neither—’  
>  
>‘Twilight, Shadow is everything we have ever known. Indeed, it is everywhere.’  
>  
>‘But it was destroyed!’

**Right. What the fuck does that mean?**

The Shake were a peoples of Kharkanas, distinct - albeit drawing from - all three Tiste denominations. They lived in the realm of Kurald Galain, but not *in* Kharkanas (Twilight makes mention of "charred homes and burned forests") and their ancestral homes later became the "true border of Thyrlann," meaning that Thyrlann was superimposed *onto* the borders of the Shake's homelands.

Yedan gives us a plausible explanation for *why* there's no Liosan in the world, bar so few:   

>‘You are wrong. Tell me, why are there so few Liosan? Why is the power that is Light so weak in all the other worlds?’  
>  
>‘If it wasn’t we would all die—there’d be no life anywhere at all!’  
>  
>He shrugged. ‘I have no answer to that, sister. But I think that Mother Dark and Father Light, in binding themselves to each other, in turn bound their fates. And when she turned away, so did he. He had no choice—they had become forces intertwined, perfect reflections. Father Light abandoned his children and they became a people lost—and lost they remain.’

And though it's a bit cryptic, what he gets at is that Kurald Thyrlann - the entire realm - was forcibly sealed, and that seal was punctuated by the Watch, the officers of the Shake that fought against the Liosan in order to **keep them in.**

Yedan's allegory supposes that - since Mother Dark & Father Light are intertwined - the same would be true of Kurald Galain, i.e. the realm would be closed off with the Andii within. But they've been in Kurald Galain - for that matter, they're there *right now* \- and there's no Andii here. How did they get out?

>‘They found a way out, yes.’  
>  
>‘How?’  
>  
>He cocked his head. ‘Us, of course.’

Yedan has this **very** annoying penchant for being *incredibly* vague & cryptic about what he says, but he (and Yan) amend this down the line:

>‘It was open because of Blind Gallan.’  
>  
>‘Yes.’  
>  
>‘Because,’ she looked up at him, ‘he was told to save us.’  
>  
>‘Gallan was a poet—’  
>  
>‘And Seneschal of the Court of Mages in Kharkanas.’  
>  
>He chewed on this for a while, glanced away, studying the swirling wall of light and the ceaseless sweep of figures in the depths, faces stretched in muted screams—an entire civilization trapped in eternal torment—but she saw not a flicker of emotion touch his face. ‘A great power, then.’  
>  
>‘Yes.’  
>  
>‘There was civil war. Who could have commanded him to do anything?’  
>  
>‘One possessing the Blood of T’iam, and a prince of Kharkanas.’

The "way out" the Andii found was the same portalway the Shake used to get back *in*; the Road of Gallan, or - in less metaphorical terms - a **warren.** Scabandari & Silchas escaped Kurald Galain by warren. Which doesn't sound like a big deal, but Kurald Galain has been described by warren users as "the Hold of Darkness"; a Warren at the time it was - supposedly - not. Hence why Gallan was such hot shit: he was one of the **very few** individuals capable of opening such a gate.

Lastly, Yedan gives us this:

>‘Scar Bandaris, the last prince of the Edur. King, I suppose, by then. He saw in us the sins not of the father, but of the mother. He left us and took all the Edur with him. He told us to hold, to ensure his escape. He said it was all we deserved, for we were our mother’s children, and was she not the seducer and the father the seduced?’ He was silent for a moment, and then he grunted and said, ‘I wonder if the last of us left set out on his trail with vengeance in mind, or was it because we had nowhere else to go? **By then, after all, Shadow had become the battlefield of every Elder force, not just the Tiste—it was being torn apart, with blood-soaked forces dividing every spoil, every territory—what were they called again? Yes, warrens. Every world was made an island, isolated in an ocean of chaos.’**

Yedan posits that Shadow - the ancestral homeland of the Shake, since it was "all they have ever known" - was torn apart, and in its stead now lies the border of Kurald Thyrlann & Kurald Galain, which is absolutely fucking WILD and out of left field.

His words also make it seem as though the Shake - though they were separate from both Andii & Liosan - were *not* the same as Scabandari's Edur; though the Shake were born of the union of Light & Dark, they were a separate - albeit, one imagines, awfully similar - peoples to that of the Edur that Scabandari led. 

*Interestingly*, we know a few more things about Scabandari:

>'... Scabandari was originally Edur, and so he became their champion—'  
>  
>'After murdering the royal line of the Edur!' Eloth said in a hiss. 'After spilling draconean blood in the heart of Kurald Emurlahn! After opening the first, fatal wound upon that warren! What did he think gates were?'  
>  
>'The Tiste Andii for Anomandaris,' Cotillion continued. 'Tiste Liosan for Osserc. The T'lan Imass for Olar Ethil. These connections and the loyalties born of them are obvious. Draconus is more of a mystery, of course, since he has been gone a long time—'

Which is ALSO fucking buckwild, but a story for another time.

So, in conclusion:

The Shake were, once upon a time, ancestral inhabitants of the forests in and around the lands of Kurald Galain. They did not live in Kharkanas nor rule it, and they had taken after all three of the Tiste delineations - Andii, Liosan and Edur - though they were none of those things (whether or not the Shake are even *Tiste* is an open question in the MBotF, but I've been avoiding that question like the plague). They were children of both Mother Dark and Father Light yet occupied a liminal space between them, separate from the Tiste Edur. They seemed to be subservient in many ways to the other members of Tiste royalty, even though they titled themselves as "royals" - though an open question is, "rulers of what."

Their ancestral homeland seems to be the land that is now the First Shore, i.e. a resplendent wall of light that could not possibly have housed anybody. Yedan posits that the reason for this discrepancy is that their homeland - "Shadow," Kurald Emurlahn - was torn apart into separate Warrens, following the Tiste civil war & the exodus of Scabandari.

The Shake held against the Tiste Liosan and perished en masse upon the river, but they succeeded in "boxing in" the Liosan into Thyrlann and denying them a way out, on orders of Scabandari. Their escape was facilitated by Blind Gallan, a poet & mage, who was under orders of Silchas Ruin, which gave them the "Road of Gallan," through which they marched. The Tiste Andii of Silchas Ruin (and the Tiste Edur of Scabandari) either preceded or followed them through, ultimately providing an escape away from the potentially sealed off realm of Kurald Galain.



**And breathe.**

Got all that? Probably not. It's... a lot. It's possibly even wrong (I've not read tCG again in close to two years, and that book expands a lot on this). But it's the best I can do with the few quotes from DoD I possess.