The T'lan Imass are an ancient people who three hundred thousand years ago underwent the Ritual of Tellann - a mass transformation that surrendered their mortality in order to prosecute an unending war against the Jaghut. They are undead, their flesh desiccated and their bones held together by the power of the ritual, carrying weapons of stone that predate metal and memories that predate most of what currently exists. The T'lan Imass are bound to the Malazan Empire's service, a relationship whose origins and terms are not fully disclosed in the early sequence. They operate with the directness of beings who have shed most of what the living use to avoid difficult truths, and with the melancholy of people who remember what they chose to give up.