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aci: The Warrens
universe: MZ · Malazan
domain: the frame
class: the paths of magic, a god's open veins
emergence: electrical
what: The realms-as-currents of Malazan magic — each warren a path, a place, and a power at once.
how: Mages open and draw on a warren as a living current; the younger warrens flow from the body and blood of the Elder God K'rul, who made himself the world's grid.
why: Travel, sorcery, and cosmology in one system — the canon's power-current, and every channeling a draw on a living god's sacrifice.
who: Bound to K'rul whose veins they are, and to every mage who opens a path — Kurald Galain, Tellann, Omtose Phellack, Meanas, Hood's realm, and the rest.
seal: "Every spell is a vein opened; the grid is a god who chose to bleed."
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# The Warrens · the paths of magic, a god's open veins

The warrens are Malazan magic itself: realms-as-currents that mages open and draw on. Kurald Galain, the Elder Darkness; Tellann's fire; Omtose Phellack's ice; Meanas of shadow and illusion; Hood's death — each warren is a path, a place, and a power at once. To work sorcery is to open one of these realms and let its current flow through you.

Beneath the system lies a sacrifice. The younger warrens flow from the body and blood of the Elder God K'rul, who made himself the world's grid. Every mage who channels a warren is drawing on a living god's open veins — power that is never abstract, never free, always the gift of a being who chose to become infrastructure.

The warrens are the frame of the canon: travel, sorcery, and cosmology bound into one system. Each is a road to walk, a realm to stand in, and a power to wield, and the shape of the world is written in which currents are Elder and which are young. They are the power-current on which the whole canon runs.

Its nature of emergence is electrical because the warrens are literally the current of magic — K'rul's living grid, a circuit of realms carrying power from a god's blood to every hand that dares to draw on it.