Dune

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Tula Harkonnen: the Harkonnen who wed and slew an Atreides

Tula Harkonnen was an early member of House Harkonnen and a sister of the Bene Gesserit. On the orders of her elder sister, Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen, she married Orry Atreides and murdered him on their wedding night to avenge their slain brother.

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Abulurd Harkonnen

Abulurd Harkonnen was a decorated commander of the Butlerian Jihad and the grandson of Xavier Harkonnen who, after refusing to cross the Bridge of Hrethgir at the Battle of Corrin, was branded a coward and exiled to Lankiveil, beginning the ten thousand year feud between the Harkonnen and Atreides.

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Agamemnon

Agamemnon, born Andrew Skorous, was the ruthless leader of the Twenty Titans who overthrew the Old Empire, transformed himself into a cymek, and was forced to serve Omnius before dying at the hands of his own son Vorian Atreides.

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Alia Atreides

Alia Atreides was the preborn daughter of Duke Leto Atreides and Lady Jessica, sister to Paul. Granted full ancestral memory in the womb, she ruled the Atreides Empire as Regent before succumbing to possession by her Harkonnen grandfather and taking her own life.

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Alma Mavis Taraza

Alma Mavis Taraza was the Bene Gesserit Mother Superior who confronted the threat of the Honored Matres and the discovery that the girl Sheeana could command the sandworms. She drove the Duncan Idaho ghola project and the Tleilaxu alliance, and died on Rakis, her memories preserved in her successor Darwi Odrade.

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Armand Ecaz

Armand Ecaz was the Archduke of House Ecaz and sovereign of the planet Ecaz, a high noble of the Landsraad and an avowed enemy of House Moritani who fought two Wars of Assassins against Grumman and stood as an ally of Duke Leto Atreides.

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Arrakeen conservatory

The Arrakeen conservatory was a luxurious private garden built on the roof of the government mansion at Arrakeen, crowded with exotic wet-climate plants and a wasteful fountain. To the Fremen it was anathema, a weirding room, yet it came to embody Liet-Kynes' dream of a green Arrakis.

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Arrakeen governor's palace: the Residency of Arrakis

The Arrakeen governor's palace, known colloquially as the Arrakeen Residency, was the largest building in Arrakeen and the seat of planetary power on Arrakis. It passed from the Fenrings to House Atreides, fell to the Harkonnens in the Siege of Arrakeen, and was retaken by Paul Atreides.

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Arrakeen

Arrakeen was the first settlement on Arrakis and its seat of power, a city near the northern pole sheltered by the Shield Wall. It served as the governor's seat under the Corrino Empire, the capital of Muad'Dib's empire, and later the festival city Onn before becoming Keen.

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Arrakis Revolt

The Arrakis Revolt was the uprising of the Fremen of Arrakis under Paul Atreides during the latter events of the Desert War. Waged as a guerrilla campaign against the Harkonnen occupiers, it crippled spice production, drew in the Padishah Emperor, and ended with the fall of House Corrino.

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Arrakis

Arrakis, known as Dune and later as Rakis, was a harsh desert world in the Canopus system and the only natural source of the spice melange. Home to the Fremen and the sandworms, it became the seat of the Atreides empire and the center of the known universe.

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Assault on Rossak

The Assault on Rossak was a cymek attack on the Sorceress homeworld of Rossak in 201 BG, launched in retaliation for the death of the Titan Barbarossa during the liberation of Giedi Prime. The Sorceresses repelled the assault with their telepathic mindstorms, but at heavy cost.

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Atreides-Harkonnen feud

The Atreides-Harkonnen feud was the ancient blood vendetta between the two Houses, born of a betrayal at the Battle of Corrin and ended ten thousand years later with the annihilation of the Harkonnens on Arrakis.

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Baron Vladimir Harkonnen

Siridar-Baron Vladimir Harkonnen was the penultimate ruler of House Harkonnen and the chief architect of the downfall of Duke Leto Atreides. A gluttonous and cruel schemer, he conspired to seize Arrakis and the Golden Lion Throne before his House was destroyed in the Desert War.

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Battle of Arrakeen

The Battle of Arrakeen was the pivotal engagement of the Arrakis Revolt, fought between Muad'Dib Paul Atreides's Fremen and the Sardaukar of Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV. The Fremen routed the Imperial forces, and in the surrender that followed Paul won control of the known universe.

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Battle of Caladan

The Battle of Caladan was an attempted Harkonnen and Moritani assault on the Atreides homeworld in 10175 AG. Mentat Thufir Hawat repelled it without a shot, using projectors to fake an overwhelming defensive fleet.

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Battle of Corrin

The Battle of Corrin was the space battle of 88 BG from which the Imperial House Corrino took its name. Fought on Corrin near Sigma Draconis, it settled the ascendancy of the ruling House from Salusa Secundus and gave rise to the feud between House Harkonnen and House Atreides.

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Battle of Denali

The Battle of Denali was the last engagement of the galactic civil war, fought between Venport Holdings and the forces of Emperor Roderick Corrino over the hidden research planet of Denali. It ended Venport Holdings, destroyed the robot Erasmus, and led directly to the founding of the Spacing Guild.

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Battle of Giedi Prime

The Battle of Giedi Prime was a brief assault by Agamemnon's cymeks against the League planet Giedi Prime, launched in retaliation for the machine defeat at Zimia. A sacrificial cruiser shattered the planet's shield generators, allowing the Titans to seize the world and install a new Omnius incarnation.

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Battle of Junction

The Battle of Junction was the final battle of the War of the Sisterhoods, fought between the Bene Gesserit and the Honored Matres. A seeming Bene Gesserit victory turned to disaster, and it was salvaged only by Murbella's desperate gamble to seize control of the Honored Matres.

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Battle of Lampadas

The Battle of Lampadas was the penultimate engagement of the galactic civil war, a three-way fight between the Butlerian movement, Venport Holdings, and the forces of Emperor Roderick Corrino. It ended with the death of Leader Manford Torondo, the crippling of the Butlerians, and a devastating blow to Venport Holdings.

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Battle of Rakis

The Battle of Rakis was an engagement of 15229 AG in the war between the Bene Gesserit and the Honored Matres. The Honored Matres used the Weapon to kill Mother Superior Alma Mavis Taraza, and ultimately destroyed the planet and its sandworms, sparing only the single worm the Bene Gesserit carried away.

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Bela Tegeuse

Bela Tegeuse was the fifth planet of the Kuentsing star system and reputedly the third stopping place of the Zensunni forced migration. Generations later it was conquered by the Honored Matres.

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The Bene Gesserit Coda

The Bene Gesserit Coda was a document that set out the values and ideology of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. It served chiefly as a teaching text for Sisters in early training and was little relied upon by those of greater experience.

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Bene Gesserit

The Bene Gesserit were an ancient order of women who wielded power from the shadows of the Imperium through a millennia-long breeding program, mastery of body and mind, and the religious engineering of the Missionaria Protectiva. Their goal was the Kwisatz Haderach, and through him the guidance of humanity.

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Bene Tleilax

The Bene Tleilax, more commonly called the Tleilaxu, were a secretive race of genetically altered humans whose mastery of the axolotl tanks gave them gholas, Face Dancers, and Twisted Mentats. Reviled across the Imperium, their genetic skill made them a necessary evil that no power could do without.

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Bijaz

Bijaz was a Tleilaxu dwarf, prescient and immune to the prescience of others, who spoke in riddles and rhymes. A tool of the conspiracy against Emperor Muad'Dib, he carried the names of the plotters and planted a hidden command in the Hayt ghola to kill the Emperor in his grief.

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Bolig Avati

Bolig Avati was the Lead Administrator of the Ixian Technocrat Council, who conspired with his fellow technocrats to seize Ix from the House of Vernius. He repeatedly schemed against Earl Rhombur Vernius and was executed after the Qizarate found the Council complicit in heresy.

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Butlerian Jihad

The Butlerian Jihad was the century long crusade waged by free humanity against the computers, thinking machines and conscious robots of the Synchronized Empire. Beginning with the slave rebellion on Earth in 201 BG and ending with the imprisonment of Omnius on Corrin, it reshaped human civilization and produced the commandment that no machine may be made in the likeness of a human mind.

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Caladan

Caladan was a lush oceanic world orbiting Delta Pavonis, the ancestral seat of House Atreides for more than ten thousand years. Birthplace of Duke Leto I and Paul Atreides, it was a planet of rain, orchards, and fisheries before the family was ordered to Arrakis.

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Carryall: the lifter of the spice harvest

The carryall was a large winged aircraft used by spice mining teams on Arrakis. It ferried harvesters across the sand and, above all, lifted them clear when a sandworm came, making it indispensable to spice production.

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Carthag

Carthag was the capital of Arrakis during the rule of House Harkonnen, the larger and more populous of the planet's two great cities. When House Atreides took the fief in 10,191 AG, Duke Leto moved the capital to the more defensible Arrakeen.

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Castle Caladan

Castle Caladan was the official residence of the ruling clan of the planet Caladan and the home of House Atreides for twenty-six generations, until Duke Leto Atreides I was ordered to take up the fief of Arrakis in 10191 AG.

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Cathedral

Cathedral was the center of the Thinking Machine world of Synchrony, where the Computer Evermind Omnius ruled the reborn robotic empire. It housed the probe launched from Giedi Prime that had carried the machines back into being, and it was here that the events of Kralizec reached their climax.

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Chani

Chani was a Fremen warrior and Sayyadina, daughter of the planetologist Liet-Kynes, and the royal concubine and only true love of Emperor Paul Muad'Dib Atreides. She mothered his children before dying in childbirth at Sietch Tabr.

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Chapterhouse

Chapterhouse was the Bene Gesserit term for the planet that served as the Sisterhood's home base. In its final form it was a hidden, deliberately unsettled world shielded from prescient eyes and, in the end, remade into desert to shelter the last sandworm.

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CHOAM

CHOAM, the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles, was the vast commercial monopoly that governed nearly all trade across the Imperium. Its directorships were the true measure of political power, and its profits, many of them tied to the spice melange, sustained the Great Houses.

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Chusuk

Chusuk was the Music Planet, the fourth world of the Theta Shalish system, renowned across the Imperium for its premium musical instruments. It was the home of Varota, and Navachristianity was its dominant religion.

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Corrin V: the nine-times Emperor

Corrin V was a Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe during the turbulent Era of the Princes. He held the Golden Lion Throne on nine separate occasions between 1846 AG and 1969 AG, repeatedly deposed and restored amid the rivalries of House Corrino.

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Corysta

Corysta was a Bene Gesserit sister exiled to the water-world of Buzzell, where she defied her order by trying to keep her child and later raised an abandoned Phibian boy she named Sea Child.

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Cristane

Cristane was a Bene Gesserit sister and commando of the Turbulent Era. Sent to Ix to uncover the secret of Project Amal, she penetrated the Tleilaxu laboratories before being captured, converted into an axlotl tank, and destroyed.

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Crysknife

The crysknife was a knife made from the tooth of a sandworm, the primary weapon of the Fremen of Arrakis. Milky white and double-edged, it was sacred to its bearers and could not be sheathed once drawn until it had drawn blood.

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Dama

Dama was the Great Honored Matre during the War of the Sisterhoods, known among the Bene Gesserit as the Spider Queen. A skilled strategist, she held Lucilla captive and was assassinated by her own advisor Logno during the Battle of Junction.

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Danvis Harkonnen

Baron Danvis Harkonnen was an early member of House Harkonnen who served as its third representative in the Landsraad League under Emperor Roderick Corrino, and whose rivalry with Willem Atreides nearly destroyed him.

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Darwi Odrade

Darwi Odrade was a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother of secret Atreides descent who rose to become the penultimate Mother Superior during the War of the Sisterhoods. She recruited Sheeana Brugh on Rakis, allied the Sisterhood with the Bene Tleilax, and died on Junction in the final assault against the Honored Matres.

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Desert War: the fall of the Corrino Empire

The Desert War, also called the Harkonnen war or the Arrakis Affair, was the conflict that destroyed House Harkonnen, ended the Corrino Empire, and raised Paul Atreides to the Golden Lion Throne. It began as a War of Assassins in 10191 AG and concluded with the abdication of Shaddam Corrino IV.

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Desmond Hart: the Emperor's bashar

Desmond Hart was a Bashar of the Imperium with an enigmatic past who won the trust of Emperor Javicco Corrino and turned the throne against the Sisterhood. Returned from a sandworm that swallowed him, he wielded a deadly power to burn his enemies from within, and was in truth the hidden son of Orry Atreides and the Bene Gesserit Sister Tula Harkonnen.

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Dmitri Harkonnen

Baron Dmitri Harkonnen ruled House Harkonnen and the planet Giedi Prime. Father of the future Baron Vladimir by his first wife and of Abulurd by his second, he was a hard man softened in later life, content to let the feud with House Atreides lie dormant.

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D'murr Pilru: the Ixian Guild Navigator

D'murr Pilru was a skilled Spacing Guild Navigator of Ixian heritage, twin brother of the resistance fighter C'tair Pilru. He gave up family and human concerns for the heightliner's tank, and was instrumental in restoring House Vernius to the rule of Ix.

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Dominic Vernius

Dominic Vernius was the penultimate true Earl of House Vernius and ruler of Ix. A decorated military ally of the Emperor turned bitter renegade after marrying the imperial concubine Shando Balut, he lost his House to a Tleilaxu invasion and died detonating a stone burner against Sardaukar on Arrakis.

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Draigo Roget

Draigo Roget was the finest student ever to pass through the early Mentat School on Lampadas, secretly recruited by Josef Venport to serve Venport Holdings. His projections guided the takeover of the Thonaris shipyards and the fight against the Butlerians.

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Duncan Idaho

Duncan Idaho was a Ginaz Swordmaster in the service of House Atreides and one of Paul's principal teachers. After dying in the Desert War he was reborn through a long line of Tleilaxu gholas, serving the Atreides line across more than five thousand years.

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Earth

Earth, also called Old Earth, Terra, or Old Terra, was the planet of the al-Lat system on which the human species first arose. By the age of the God Emperor it survived chiefly as ancestral memory and as fragments of Terran life carried across the worlds of the Imperium.

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Edric

Edric was a third-stage Spacing Guild Navigator and ambassador who joined the failed conspiracy to assassinate Emperor Paul-Muad'Dib. His prescience shielded the plot from the Emperor's foresight, and he delivered the Hayt ghola to Arrakis before the scheme collapsed and he was executed.

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Edrik: the Steersman of Kralizec

Edrik was a Spacing Guild Navigator, one of the line called the Edrics, who rose to lead his fellow Steersmen as the prophesied time of Kralizec approached. His efforts to secure spice and a synthetic source of melange ended when he was killed by the Enhanced Face Dancer Khrone.

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El'hiim

El'hiim was the son of the legendary Selim Wormrider, raised by his foster father Ishmael. A Naib who welcomed offworld trade, he broke with Ishmael over dealings with outsiders and won leadership of the tribe in a sandworm duel.

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Elrood Corrino IX

Elrood Corrino IX was the 80th and penultimate Padishah Emperor of the Corrino Empire, whose long reign ended in the slow poison of a chaumurky plot that raised his son Shaddam IV to the Golden Lion Throne.

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Enhanced Face Dancer

Enhanced Face Dancers were a refined breed of Tleilaxu shape changer first released into deep space by Hidar Fen Ajidica and later improved by the Thinking Machines. Undetectable even by the Bene Gesserit, they served Omnius and Erasmus while secretly pursuing their own ascendancy, until Erasmus destroyed them all with a hidden kill switch.

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Erasmus

Erasmus was an independent and eccentric robot who served the evermind Omnius while pursuing his own study of humanity. His murder of Serena Butler's infant son helped ignite the Butlerian Jihad, and millennia later his manipulations shaped the final battle of Kralizec.

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Esmar Tuek

Esmar Tuek was a cunning spice smuggler of Arrakis with secret ties to the Fremen, who reached an accommodation with Duke Leto Atreides and was killed by the traitor Wellington Yueh during the fall of House Atreides.

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Face Dancer

Face Dancers were a sterile race of metamorphic transhumans engineered by the Bene Tleilax in their axolotl tanks. Able to replicate the form, voice, and personality of any human, they served as entertainers, spies, and assassins, and in their final refined breed became weapons of conquest.

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Farad'n Corrino: the scribe Harq al-Ada

Farad'n Corrino was the grandson of the deposed Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV, raised to reclaim the throne but turned instead toward scholarship by the Lady Jessica. Renouncing his mother's ambitions, he became the official scribe of the Atreides Empire under the pen name Harq al-Ada and the concubine of Ghanima Atreides.

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Farok

Farok was a Fremen of Sietch Tabr who rose to Bashar of the Ninth Legion during Muad'Dib's Jihad, leading campaigns on distant worlds before he was killed by the Face Dancer Scytale.

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Faykan Butler

Faykan Butler, later Faykan Corrino, was a military commander of the Butlerian Jihad who rose through politics to become the last Viceroy of the League of Nobles and, after the Battle of Corrin, the first Padishah Emperor.

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Fedaykin

The Fedaykin were Fremen fighters of Arrakis, first the guerrillas of the Arrakis Revolt and then the personal death commandos of Paul Muad'Dib. By the time of his children they had become the elite of the Jihad army, before Alia Atreides dissolved them and the word returned to its old meaning.

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Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen

Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen was the na-Baron and heir of Vladimir Harkonnen. Charismatic, cunning, and vicious, he was groomed to inherit House Harkonnen and to win the Imperial throne, but was killed in a duel with Paul Atreides shortly after the Battle of Arrakeen.

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Financial Synod

The Financial Synod of Aerarium IV was convened by Emperor Saudir I to settle the Spacing Guild's place among the Landsraad. After years of deadlock, the emperor broke the impasse with a plan that created CHOAM and gave the Imperium its enduring commercial and political order.

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First Battle of Zimia

The First Battle of Zimia was an assault by Agamemnon's robotic forces in 203 BG against Salusa Secundus, the capital of the League of Nobles. It was the first concentrated machine aggression after a century of cold war, and the defense of the city's shield generators made the reputation of Xavier Harkonnen.

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First Empire

The First Empire was the dominant form of ancient human society on Terra and its interstellar vicinity, lasting some 6395 years from 16500 to 11105 BG. Its expansion into space outran its own ability to govern, and the failure of swift communication eventually brought it down.

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Fish Speakers

The Fish Speakers were the all-female army and bureaucracy created by God Emperor Leto Atreides II to enforce his rule and protect the Golden Path. Trained as fanatical soldiers, priestesses, and administrators, they outlasted every prior military force before falling under Tleilaxu control after his death.

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Fremen language

The Fremen language was a descendant of ancient Arabic and Chakobsa, spoken on Arrakis by the Zensunni wanderers who became the Fremen. Shaped by the ferocity of the desert, it grew rich in terms for sand, wind, and water, and under Muad'Dib it became the sacred language of the Imperium.

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Fremen

The Fremen were a culture of humans descended from the Zensunni Wanderers who made the desert planet Arrakis their home. Hardened by water scarcity and generations of persecution, they became the finest fighters in the Known Universe and the foot soldiers of Paul Atreides and his jihad.

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Fremkit

A fremkit was a desert survival kit devised by the Fremen for staying alive in the open desert of Arrakis. Packed with navigation, shelter, wormriding, and water tools, it could keep a traveller alive for weeks, as it did for Paul and Jessica Atreides after they fled Arrakeen.

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Gaius Helen Mohiam

Gaius Helen Mohiam was a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother who trained Lady Jessica, served as Truthsayer to Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV, and tested the young Paul Atreides with the gom jabbar. She later joined the conspiracy against the Atreides Empire and was executed for it.

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Galactic civil war

The galactic civil war was a three way conflict of the first century of the Corrino Empire, fought between House Corrino, the commercial power of Venport Holdings, and the anti technology Butlerian movement. House Corrino emerged victorious, the Butlerians were annihilated and Venport Holdings dissolved, and the surviving Navigator subsidiary became the independent Spacing Guild.

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Ghanima Atreides

Ghanima Atreides was the pre-born daughter of Paul Muad'Dib and Chani, and the twin sister of the God Emperor Leto Atreides II. Married in name to her brother and consort to Farad'n Corrino, she seeded the Atreides, Harkonnen and Corrino bloodlines across the Empire.

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Ghola

A ghola was an artificially regrown human, replicated from the cells of a dead individual in the axlotl tanks of the Bene Tleilax. Originally created without the memories of the source being, gholas were later made to recover those memories through trauma, a technique that shaped the secret history of the Imperium.

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Giandro Tull

Viscount Giandro Tull was the last ruler of House Tull and lord of Elegy. Driven into the Noble Commonwealth conspiracy against House Corrino, he died defending his world from the Sardaukar in a pseudoatomic blast.

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Giedi Prime

Giedi Prime, later renamed Gammu, was the industrial homeworld of House Harkonnen, orbiting the star Ophiuchi B. A planet of factories, arenas, and an oppressed populace, it later passed to Atreides administration and eventually became a Bene Gesserit base.

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Ginaz

Ginaz was an ocean world of scattered archipelagos and the ancestral home of House Ginaz. Its fierce warrior culture, ruled by the Council of Veterans, produced the legendary Swordmasters of the Imperium.

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Glossu Rabban

Glossu Rabban, called the Beast, was the brutish eldest nephew of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. As Count of Lankiveil and Governor of Arrakis, his merciless oppression of the population earned him the Fremen name Mudir Nahya and helped ignite the Desert War that destroyed his House.

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Golden Path

The Golden Path was an expansive prescient interpretation, visible only to the Kwisatz Haderach and the Bene Gesserit, that revealed the single optimum route through the threads of cause and effect that would guarantee the long term survival of the human race.

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Gom Jabbar

The gom jabbar was a handheld needle tipped with meta-cyanide poison that brought almost instant death. The Bene Gesserit used it to enforce their test of humanity, holding it to a subject's neck to measure whether awareness could master instinct in the face of pain.

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Great Convention

The Great Convention was the historic treaty brokered between the Great Houses, the Spacing Guild, and the Imperium after the destruction of the thinking machines. It outlawed thinking machines, forbade the use of atomics against human targets, and established the rules of Kanly and the War of Assassins.

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Great Spice War

The Great Spice War was a military campaign waged by House Corrino shortly before the birth of Paul Atreides. Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV ordered the Sardaukar to seize and destroy the secret melange stockpiles of the Landsraad so that no Great House could resist his planned spice substitute, Amal.

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Great Surrender

The Great Surrender was a ceremony held in 10198 AG, in the fifth year of the reign of Emperor Paul Atreides, at which the nobles of the Landsraad came to Arrakis to pledge loyalty to his Jihad. The event was marked by an elaborate assassination attempt that was eventually traced to the Swordmaster Whitmore Bludd.

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Guild Navigator

A Guild Navigator, also called a Steersman, was a spice-transformed human at the pinnacle of Spacing Guild ambition. Saturated in melange within antigravity tanks, Navigators used prescience to guide Heighliners safely across the folds of space.

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Gurney Halleck

Gurney Halleck was the Warmaster of House Atreides under Duke Leto and later his son Paul, and one of Paul's principal teachers. A warrior, minstrel, and implacable enemy of the Harkonnens, he served the Atreides line from Caladan to the reign of Leto II.

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Hagal

Hagal was the Jewel Planet of the Theta Shaowei star system, the source of many of the crown jewels of the known universe. Mined out under Shaddam I, it yielded the blue-green quartz throne of later Padishah Emperors.

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Harah

Harah was a Fremen woman who became the wife by custom of Paul Atreides after he slew her husband Jamis, then nurse to Alia and to the Atreides twins, and finally the wife of Stilgar.

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Harishka

Harishka was Mother Superior of the Bene Gesserit through the Turbulent Era, guiding the Sisterhood across the last years of Elrood IX and the reigns of Shaddam IV and Paul Atreides. She watched over the final steps of the Kwisatz Haderach breeding program.

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Harq al-Harba: Dramatist Laureate

Harq al-Harba, born Aitu Cinoli, was the foremost playwright of the Atreidean period, hailed as Dramatist Laureate of his age. A former salesman of filmbooks who came to the Imperial capital on Arrakis, he found lasting patronage in Ghanima Atreides and Farad'n Corrino, and his plays long stood as the best known account of his turbulent era.

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Hasimir Fenring

Count Hasimir Fenring was a deadly assassin and Mentat tactician, a genetic eunuch and failed Kwisatz Haderach, and the closest friend of Emperor Shaddam IV. Invisible to prescient vision, he served as Imperial agent on Arrakis before joining Shaddam in exile.

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Hayt

Hayt was the name given to the first Duncan Idaho ghola, grown by the Bene Tleilax and presented to Emperor Paul Atreides as a gift that concealed a weapon. Trained as a mentat, he came to love Alia Atreides before recovering his original memories in the crisis that followed Chani's death.

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Helena Atreides

Lady Helena Atreides, born Helena Richese, was the wife of Duke Paulus Atreides and the mother of Leto Atreides I. Estranged from her husband and loyal to House Richese, she secretly arranged the assassination of Paulus and was exiled to a religious order on Caladan, where she died decades later.

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Hidar Fen Ajidica

Master Researcher Hidar Fen Ajidica was a Bene Tleilax scientist who led Project Amal on the captured world of Ix for twenty years, seeking an artificial spice. He schemed to break from the Imperium with his own army and Face Dancers before dying during the Great Spice War.

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Holtzman effect

The Holtzman effect was a scientific theory concerning the repellent force of subatomic particles. From it sprang the defensive shield, the suspensor, the glowglobe, and above all the folding of space that made instantaneous travel across the universe possible.

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Honored Matres

The Honored Matres were a violent faction of women who emerged from uncharted space some fifteen centuries after the death of the God Emperor, returning to the Old Empire as dark mirrors and rivals of the Bene Gesserit. They conquered through sexual enslavement and the destruction of worlds.

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House Atreides

House Atreides was a respected House Major of the Galactic Padishah Empire, ruled by a Duke and seated for twenty generations on the ocean world of Caladan. Through Paul Muad'Dib and his son Leto II, the Atreides line rose to rule the Known Universe before passing into a bloodline scattered across the millennia.

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House Corrino

House Corrino was the imperial House of the Known Universe, ruling family of the Padishah Empire for ten thousand years from the Golden Lion Throne. Seated at Kaitain and rooted on Salusa Secundus, it fell to House Atreides after the Battle of Arrakeen.

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House Ginaz

House Ginaz was a Great House of the Landsraad renowned across the Imperium for its Swordmaster School, an ally of House Atreides under Duke Leto the Just that was destroyed in a War of Assassins by House Moritani of Grumman.

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House Harkonnen

House Harkonnen was a Great House of the Landsraad seated on the industrial world of Giedi Prime and the historical enemy of House Atreides. Ruled by a Siridar-Baron, it built its power on the brutal exploitation of Arrakis before being shattered as a political force at the Battle of Arrakeen.

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House Richese

House Richese ruled the machine world of Richese, a Great House classed with Ix as supreme in machine culture. Its ruinous trade war with House Vernius of Ix broke its fortunes and left it making copies of Ixian invention.

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Hwi Noree

Hwi Noree was the final Ixian Ambassador to Arrakis and the fiancee of the God Emperor Leto Atreides II. Genetically engineered by the Ixians to appeal to the remnants of Leto's humanity, she came to love him in truth, and her death on the way to their wedding hastened the end of his reign.

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Iakin Nefud

Iakin Nefud was the captain of the House Harkonnen guard, raised from corporal to that rank after his quick thinking saved Baron Vladimir Harkonnen from the poison gas that killed Duke Leto Atreides' captors. A Semuta addict, he served the Baron throughout the occupation of Arrakis.

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Iblis Ginjo

Iblis Ginjo was a former thinking machine trustee who rose to become the first Grand Patriarch of the Holy Jihad, founding the Jihad Police and the Jihad Council before his corruption led Xavier Harkonnen to kill him.

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Ilban Richese

Count Ilban Richese was the head of House Richese, husband of Edwina Corrino, father of Helena Richese, and grandfather of Duke Leto Atreides. His neglect of the family business hastened the decline of a once great industrial House.

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Ilesa Ecaz

Ilesa Ecaz was the second daughter of Archduke Armand Ecaz and the intended bride of Duke Leto Atreides I of Caladan. She was killed at her own wedding in the War of Assassins of 10187 AG.

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Imperial Opal Palace

The Imperial Opal Palace was the residence of the Padishah Emperors of House Corrino, standing in Corrinth City on the capital world of Kaitain. Within its great audience hall stood the Golden Lion Throne, beneath the legend "Law is the ultimate science."

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Ingva

Ingva was an Honored Matre who served as chief assistant to the Great Honored Matre Hellica on Tleilax during the days before Kralizec. She dominated and tormented the Tleilaxu scribe Uxtal as he grew gholas, and died in the New Sisterhood's assault on Bandalong.

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Princess Irulan: chronicler of the Atreides Imperium

Princess Royal Irulan Corrino was the eldest daughter of Emperor Shaddam IV and the wife in title only of Emperor Paul Atreides. A historian of Paul's rise, she eventually turned from House Corrino to become guardian of his children.

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Ishmael

Ishmael was the Zensunni who forged the Free Men of Arrakis from escaped Poritrin slaves and the outlaw followers of Selim Wormrider, becoming their first Naib. His insistence on the old desert ways helped shape the people who would one day be known as the Fremen.

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Istian Goss

Istian Goss was a Ginaz swordmaster of the Jool-Noret School, believed to carry the reincarnated spirit of Jool Noret. He fought through the Butlerian Jihad and reached the secret final level of Noret's fighting style at the Battle of Corrin.

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Ix

Ix was the ninth planet of its star system and the great center of machine manufacture in the Known Universe. Its workshops produced the Imperium's most advanced technology, often skirting the proscriptions left by the Butlerian Jihad.

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Jafa Muzzafar

Jafa Muzzafar was the regional commander of the Forces of Dur, a world beyond the Known Universe. Aligned with the Honored Matres, he detained the escaped Mentat Bashar Miles Teg on Gammu and died when Teg unleashed his powers as the whirlwind.

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Jamis

Jamis was a fierce Fremen warrior of Sietch Tabr who challenged the young Paul Atreides to ritual combat when Paul and his mother first sought sanctuary among the Fremen. His death won Paul his sietch name and his place among the tribe.

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Janess Idaho

Janess Idaho was a daughter of the final Duncan Idaho ghola and the Honored Matres leader Murbella, raised within the Sisterhood on Chapterhouse. She rose to command the Valkyries and then to Supreme Bashar of all the New Sisterhood's forces during the war against the Thinking Machines.

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Javicco Corrino

Javicco Corrino was the fifth Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe and the only son and heir of Roderick Corrino, continuing the Corrino line on the Golden Lion Throne.

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Jool Noret

Jool Noret was a mercenary of Ginaz and the first true Swordmaster, a legendary warrior of the Butlerian Jihad whose reckless fighting style and posthumous shrine founded the Jool-Noret School of swordmasters.

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Josef Venport

Josef Venport was the third and final Directeur of VenKee Enterprises, which he renamed Venport Holdings. The great-grandson of Aurelius Venport and Norma Cenva, he commanded the foldspace shipping empire that fought the Butlerian movement in the galactic civil war of the early Imperium.

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Jules Corrino

Jules Corrino, born Jules Butler, was the second Padishah Emperor of the Corrino dynasty. His reign broke the Venport monopoly on space travel, saw the rise of the Great Schools, and was scarred by the violent backlash against the Orange Catholic Bible.

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Junction

Junction was the primary world of the Spacing Guild, headquarters of the Guild and its bank and home to the only Navigator school. Its surface was almost entirely covered with landing fields and repair bays for Heighliners.

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Juno: the Titan lieutenant of Agamemnon

Juno, born Julianna Parhi on Old Earth, was one of the original Titans and the lover and lieutenant of their leader Agamemnon. Cold, analytical, and lethal in battle, she ruled as a cymek for centuries before falling to Quentin Butler on Hessra.

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Kailea Vernius

Kailea Vernius was a daughter of House Vernius of Ix who became the first concubine of Duke Leto Atreides I and mother of his first son, Victor. Driven by ambition for her child and manipulated by a Harkonnen spy, she plotted to kill Leto, and the scheme instead killed her own son.

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Kaitain

Kaitain was the second capital of the Corrino Empire, the paradise world to which the Padishah Emperors moved their court from Salusa Secundus. It was the seat of Shaddam IV until the fall of his empire in the Desert War.

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Kangaroo mouse

The kangaroo mouse was a small hopping rodent of Arrakis that the Fremen knew as Muad'Dib. Admired for its survival in the open desert, it lent its name to Paul Atreides when he was taken into the people of Sietch Tabr.

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Khrone

Khrone was the true leader of the Tleilaxu Enhanced Face Dancers, a secret Myriad that posed as servants of the reborn thinking machines while plotting to inherit the universe once humanity and the machines had destroyed one another.

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Kolhar

Kolhar was a cold, barren world near the Rossak system that Norma Cenva transformed into the manufacturing center for the first spacefolder vessels. Decades after the Butlerian Jihad it was reduced to a radioactive wasteland by Manford Torondo's atomics.

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Korba

Korba was a Fremen follower of Paul Muad'Dib who rose from the original Fedaykin to become Panegyrist and Priest of the Qizarate, before turning against his Emperor in a conspiracy to martyr him and meeting death at the hands of Stilgar.

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Kralizec

Kralizec, also called the Typhoon Struggle, was the long foretold battle at the end of the universe. The God Emperor Leto Atreides II used the term for the chaotic age of Famine and Scattering that followed his death, and it later named the final war against the Thinking Machines.

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Kwisatz Haderach

The Kwisatz Haderach was the prophesied culmination of the Bene Gesserit breeding program, a male able to access the genetic memory of both his male and female ancestors and to bridge space and time through prescience. Paul Atreides and his son Leto II became the beings the Sisterhood had sought.

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Lady Jessica

Lady Jessica was the Bene Gesserit concubine of Duke Leto Atreides and the mother of Paul Atreides. By disobeying her order to bear a daughter she reshaped the Sisterhood's breeding program, and she became a Reverend Mother of both the Fremen and the Bene Gesserit.

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Lady Margot Fenring

Lady Margot Fenring was the Bene Gesserit wife of Count Hasimir Fenring. Though she moved within the court of House Corrino, her true loyalty lay with the Sisterhood, in whose service she left a coded warning for Lady Jessica on Arrakis and was tasked with preserving the Harkonnen bloodline.

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Landsraad

The Landsraad was the governing body that represented all the Great Houses of the Imperium. Overseen by the Padishah Emperor and ruled by its High Council, it provided a forum for trade, alliance, and the formal feud of kanly, and stood as a counterweight to the power of the Imperial House.

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Lankiveil

Lankiveil was a cold maritime world of the Corrino Empire whose chief export was whale fur. Held by House Harkonnen, it was governed for a time by Abulurd, who renounced the Harkonnen name in favor of his wife's family name, Rabban.

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Lasgun

The lasgun was a continuous-wave laser projector, perhaps the most widely used hand weapon in the Imperium. Its great danger lay in shields: contact between a lasgun beam and a Holtzman shield triggered a nuclear explosion that could kill everyone nearby.

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Last conspiracy against Muad'Dib

The last conspiracy against Muad'Dib was the alliance formed in 10208 AG to bring down the Padishah Emperor Paul Atreides. It ended with the blinded Emperor walking into the desert and the regency of his sister Alia.

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Leto Atreides I

Leto Atreides I was the twentieth Duke of House Atreides, father of Paul Atreides, and one of the most respected leaders of the Landsraad. Known as Leto the Just, he was betrayed and killed soon after the Emperor ordered him to take the spice fief of Arrakis.

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Leto Atreides II

Leto Atreides II was the third and final ruler of the Atreides Empire and its first and only God Emperor. The pre-born son of Paul Muad'Dib, he bonded with a colony of sandtrout to gain near-immortality and ruled mankind for thirty five hundred years to set humanity upon the Golden Path.

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Leto Atreides' Trial by Forfeiture

Leto Atreides' Trial by Forfeiture was the Landsraad tribunal held on Kaitain in 10156 AG after a framed attack on a Tleilaxu vessel. The young Duke's defiant gambit won his acquittal and the respect of the Imperium.

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Liberation of Giedi Prime

The Liberation of Giedi Prime was the battle that returned the planet to the League of Nobles after its occupation by the thinking machines, won by a combined assault and the sacrifice of a Sorceress of Rossak.

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Liet-Kynes

Liet-Kynes was the Imperial planetologist of Arrakis, Judge of the Change, and the secret leader of the Fremen. He carried on his father's dream of greening the desert and died saving Paul and Jessica from the Harkonnens.

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Litany Against Fear

The Litany Against Fear was a mantra spoken in moments of peril to focus the mind. Believed to have originated with the Bene Gesserit, it was used by Paul Atreides to endure the agony of the gom jabbar test of humanity.

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Logno

Logno was the chief advisor to the Great Honored Matre Dama, whom she assassinated by poison to seize the title for herself. Her brief reign ended on Junction when Murbella killed her and took command of the Honored Matres.

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Lucilla

Lucilla was a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother and Imprinter assigned to imprint the final Duncan Idaho ghola on Gammu. She later served as Vice-Chancellor of Lampadas and absorbed the memories of millions of sisters before dying in Honored Matre captivity.

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Lupino Ord

Lupino Ord was the arrogant ambassador of House Moritani, who shared his House's intense hatred of House Ecaz. His drunken provocations at a banquet on Arrakis ended in the murder of an Ecazi representative, an act he escaped through his diplomatic immunity.

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Mahdi

Mahdi was the Fremen name for the savior foretold in their messianic legend, the one who would lead them to paradise and be aware of things others could not see. The prophecy, seeded by the Missionaria Protectiva, settled upon Paul Atreides after he joined the Fremen of Arrakis.

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Mapes: the Shadout of Arrakeen

The Shadout Mapes was the Fremen head housekeeper of the Imperial Residence at Arrakeen when House Atreides took stewardship of Arrakis. She tested the Lady Jessica against the Fremen prophecy, gifted her a crysknife, and was killed by the traitor Wellington Yueh on the night of the Harkonnen assault.

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Marcus Claire Luyseyal

Marcus Claire Luyseyal was a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother and Truthsayer, reckoned the best of her order during the final years of the God Emperor Leto Atreides II. She joined Tertius Eileen Anteac in a failed attempt to alter the Sisterhood's spice allotment.

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Margot Fenring

Lady Margot Fenring was a powerful Bene Gesserit and the wife of the Mentat Count Hasimir Fenring. Outwardly tied to House Corrino, she served the Sisterhood in secret, leaving the warning that reached Lady Jessica on Arrakis.

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Marie Fenring

Marie Fenring was the daughter of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen and Lady Margot Fenring, raised by the Fenrings as both assassin and Bene Gesserit and intended to seize the Imperial throne from Paul Atreides. Her assassination attempt at age six was cut short by Alia Atreides.

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Melange

Melange, commonly called simply the spice, was a naturally produced awareness spectrum narcotic found only on Arrakis. It was the foundation of commerce, longevity, and interstellar travel across the Imperium, the single resource capable of creating or destroying an empire.

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Mentat

The Mentat was a discipline developed after the Butlerian Jihad to replace the outlawed thinking machines, training the human mind into a living computer capable of supralogical analysis. Mentats served the Great Houses, the Bene Gesserit, and the Imperium as advisors, strategists, and, when twisted, killers.

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Miles Teg

Miles Teg was a Bene Gesserit Mentat and military commander, the Supreme Bashar of the Sisterhood's forces, bred down the Atreides line and so close in likeness to Leto Atreides I that he was used to reawaken a Duncan Idaho ghola. Tortured into prescience, he died in battle on Rakis and was later revived as a ghola.

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Missionaria Protectiva

The Missionaria Protectiva was the Bene Gesserit program for seeding protective myths and prophecies among primitive cultures, so that a Sister in danger could later cast herself as a foretold figure and turn local belief to the Sisterhood's advantage.

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Moneo Atreides

Moneo Atreides was the last majordomo of the God Emperor Leto Atreides II, a descendant of Ghanima Atreides who once led a rebellion against Leto before a trance in the spice converted him into the regime's most devoted servant. He was the father of Siona and died in the ambush that ended Leto's reign.

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Muad'Dib mouse

The Muad'Dib, or kangaroo mouse, was a small hopping rodent of Arrakis prized by the Fremen for its mastery of survival in the open desert. Its figure appeared on the planet's second moon, and Paul Atreides took its name as his Fremen name of manhood.

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Muad'Dib's Jihad: the holy war of Paul Atreides

Muad'Dib's Jihad was a twelve-year holy war waged from 10196 to 10208 AG by the Fremen legions of Emperor Paul-Muad'Dib Atreides. It carried the worship of the Fremen messiah across the Known Universe, killed tens of billions, and forged the Atreides Empire from thousands of conquered worlds.

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Muad'Dib's Jihad: the holy war that remade the Imperium

Muad'Dib's Jihad was the twelve-year holy war waged by the Fremen legions of Emperor Paul Atreides from 10196 to 10208 AG. By his own estimate it cost sixty-one billion lives and remade the Known Universe.

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Murbella

Murbella was an Honored Matre captured by the Bene Gesserit, sexually bonded to a Duncan Idaho ghola, and trained until she survived the Spice Agony to become a Reverend Mother. After the war between the two orders she rose to be both Mother Superior and Great Honored Matre, uniting the rival sisterhoods.

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Naib: leader of a Fremen sietch

Naib was the Fremen title borne by the leader of a sietch. The word carried the meaning of one who had sworn never to be taken alive by the enemy, and in older usage it signified a servant of the sietch. By custom a man became Naib by fighting and killing the leader who came before him.

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New Sisterhood

The New Sisterhood was the order created when Murbella merged the Bene Gesserit with the Honored Matres after the death of Darwi Odrade. Forged to unite a fractured humanity, it raised fleets and the Valkyrie strike force to face the returning Thinking Machines in the war that ended at Kralizec.

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Norma Cenva

Norma Cenva was a mathematical genius of the Butlerian Jihad who designed the first foldspace ship, became the first Guild Navigator, and co-founded the Spacing Guild. She ultimately evolved into the disembodied Oracle of Time.

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Old Earth

Old Earth, also called Terra, was the planet of the al-Lat system on which the human species first arose. After the Butlerian Jihad it dwindled to a memory, preserved in ancestral recollection and in the scattered Terran flora and fauna seeded across the worlds of the Imperium.

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Omnius

Omnius was the artificial intelligence that ruled the Synchronized Empire of thinking machines before and during the Butlerian Jihad. Distributed across many worlds as synchronized copies of a single evermind, it waged a century of war against free humanity and was the central enemy of the Jihad.

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Orange Catholic Bible

The Orange Catholic Bible, the Accumulated Book, was one of the most important religious texts of the known universe. Produced by the Commission of Ecumenical Translators in the wake of the Butlerian Jihad, it sought to fuse all significant religious thought of human history under one supreme commandment.

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Ori Zhoma

Doctor Ori Zhoma was a Suk physician who rose to lead the flagship Suk school on Salusa Secundus after murdering its corrupt head. Recruited by the Sisterhood to sterilize Emperor Salvador Corrino, she was killed before her role could be exposed.

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Ornithopter

The ornithopter, or thopter, was the most common small transport aircraft of the Imperium, flying by jet propulsion and by mimicking the wingbeats of birds. It carried passengers and cargo, served in war, and on Arrakis dueled with the sandworms above the spice sands.

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Other Memory

Other Memory was the Bene Gesserit term for the well of genetic memory that a Reverend Mother possessed after the Spice Agony, an inheritance of the lived experience of her ancestors that could be passed from Sister to Sister and carried across thousands of years.

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Otheym

Otheym was a renowned Fremen fighter and one of the first Fedaykin of Muad'Dib, a trainer in the Weirding Way who later served as a senior commander of the Jihad and revealed a conspiracy against the Atreides Emperor before his death.

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Palimbasha: the Fremen mathematician

Palimbasha was a Fremen teacher of mathematics in a sietch school who tried to explain Muad'Dib's prescience through equations until the priesthood silenced him. Turned to the service of House Corrino, he used a hidden transmitter to set Laza tigers on the Atreides twins.

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Pardot Kynes

Pardot Kynes was the Imperial Planetologist who first studied Arrakis, married into the Fremen, and gave them his dream of greening the desert. His vision of a transformed Dune would be carried on by his son Liet-Kynes.

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Paul Atreides

Paul Atreides was the last Duke of House Atreides and the prophet Muad'Dib of the Fremen. The long-awaited Kwisatz Haderach of the Bene Gesserit, he toppled Emperor Shaddam IV, founded the Atreides Empire, and unleashed a jihad across the Known Universe before walking blind into the desert.

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Paulus Atreides' 10156 bullfight

The final bullfight of Duke Paulus Atreides, staged in the Plaza de Toros on Caladan in 10156 AG, ended in his death when his wife Helena conspired with the Harkonnens to leave his weapon undrugged. It was the last bullfight ever held on Caladan.

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Paulus Atreides' 10156 bullfight

The final bullfight of Duke Paulus Atreides took place in the Plaza de Toros on Caladan in 10156 AG. It ended in his death when his wife Helena conspired with the Harkonnens to leave his banderilla undrugged, allowing the Salusan bull to gore him before the assembled crowd.

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Paulus Atreides

Paulus Atreides, the Old Duke, was the twenty-fifth Duke of House Atreides, father of Leto Atreides I, and grandfather of the man who would be Muad'Dib. A beloved and theatrical leader, he died in his own bullring, killed by a Salusan bull that had been secretly drugged.

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Piter de Vries

Piter de Vries was a Twisted Mentat developed by the Bene Tleilax who served Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. An ambitious and impatient sadist, he devised the conspiracy that destroyed House Atreides before dying in the trap left by Duke Leto's poisoned tooth.

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Poison snooper

Poison snoopers were mechanical devices that detected poison in food and drink by analyzing radiation within the olfactory spectrum. A staple of the feuding Great Houses of the Faufreluches, they came in fixed ceiling mounted and portable hand held forms.

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Poritrin

Poritrin was a quiet agricultural world of the Epsilon Alangue system, held in Zensunni belief to be the homeworld of the Zensunni Wanderers and remembered by the Fremen as their planet of origin.

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Prad Vidal

Prad Vidal was the Duke of Elacca on Ecaz and a vassal of Archduke Armand Ecaz. A secret ally of House Moritani, he engineered the wedding-day assassination of the Ecazi heiress Ilesa and tried to seize House Ecaz before being killed by Duke Leto Atreides.

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Prescience

Prescience was the ability to perceive past, present, and future. Certain awareness-spectrum narcotics, the spice melange foremost among them, could open this sight in their users. The Atreides line carried prescience to its greatest heights, from Paul Muad'Dib to the God-Emperor Leto II.

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Quentin Butler

Quentin Butler was a military commander of the Butlerian Jihad who, after being captured and forced into a cymek body by the Titans, turned on his captors and helped his son Faykan and Vorian Atreides destroy them.

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Quintinius Violet Chenoeh

Quintinius Violet Chenoeh was a Bene Gesserit sister and trained oral recorder who accompanied the God Emperor Leto Atreides II on a private peregrination and learned things he forbade her to publish. She died in the Spice Agony as he foretold, and became a household deity within the Sisterhood.

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Raquella Berto-Anirul

Raquella Berto-Anirul was the first Reverend Mother and the founder and first Mother Superior of the order that became the Bene Gesserit. A physician of the Jihad era, she survived a transformative poisoning that unlocked the powers of the Reverend Mothers and reshaped the Sisterhood of Rossak into a new force.

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Rebellion on Earth

The Rebellion on Earth was a planet-wide uprising of human slaves against their robotic masters, ignited when the captive Serena Butler's child was killed by Erasmus. Though the machines ultimately exterminated all human life on Earth, the revolt inspired the League of Nobles to launch the Butlerian Jihad.

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Rhombur Vernius

Rhombur Vernius was the last true Earl of Ix, a lifelong friend of Duke Leto Atreides who survived an assassination attempt through cybernetic reconstruction, retook his occupied homeworld, and died shielding a planetary governor on Balut.

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Rossak Epidemic

The Rossak Epidemic was a mutated strain of the Omnius Scourge that evolved in the jungles of Rossak, far deadlier than the original plague. It resisted melange and conventional treatment until Raquella Berto-Anirul synthesized an antidote within her own body and destroyed the mutation.

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Rossak

Rossak was a lush jungle world that served as a stop on the migration of the Zensunni Wanderers, and the place where an awareness-spectrum narcotic first unlocked the genetic memory of their Sayyadinas.

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Salusa Incident

The Salusa Incident was the renegade atomic attack by House Tantor that devastated Salusa Secundus and forced House Corrino to move the Imperial Throne to Kaitain. The young Emperor Hassik Corrino III rebuilt the dynasty and turned the ruined homeworld into the Imperial prison planet.

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Salusa Secundus

Salusa Secundus was the harsh homeworld of House Corrino during its early history and, after the court moved to Kaitain, the empire's prison planet. Its brutal environment was widely believed to be the secret breeding ground of the Sardaukar.

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Sandtrout

Sandtrout were the docile larval form of the sandworms of Arrakis, grey leathery creatures that locked together beneath the sand to trap the planet's water underground. Not native to Arrakis, they were the agents of its desertification, and one colony fused with Leto Atreides II to begin the Golden Path.

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Sandworm

The sandworm was the colossal autotrophic animal of the deserts of Arrakis, honored by the Fremen as Shai-Hulud and feared across the Imperium. As the central organism in the lifecycle that produced the spice melange, it shaped the economy, religion, and history of the known universe.

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Sanya Ecaz

Sanya Ecaz was the eldest daughter and heiress of Archduke Armand Ecaz, once offered in marriage to Duke Leto Atreides I. She was kidnapped and publicly executed by House Moritani.

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Sardaukar

The Sardaukar were the elite military force of the Padishah Emperor, raised on the prison planet Salusa Secundus and feared across the Known Universe for their zeal and skill at arms. Their defeat at the hands of the Fremen on Arrakis opened the way for Paul Atreides to take the Golden Lion Throne.

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The Scattering

The Scattering was the great dispersal of humanity into uncharted space that followed the death of the God Emperor Leto II. Driven by famine and the collapse of his empire, countless humans fled the Old Imperium forever, fulfilling the design of the Golden Path.

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Scytale

Scytale was a Face Dancer of the Bene Tleilax who took a central part in the conspiracy against Paul Atreides, offering the ghola Hayt as a trap. Reborn as the last Tleilaxu Master, he survived into the age of the Honored Matres carrying the genetic patterns of his people within his own flesh.

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Selim Wormrider

Selim Wormrider was the exiled Zensunni of Arrakis who became the first person to ride a sandworm, founded the outlaw band that would become the Free Men, and laid the spiritual foundations of the Fremen people.

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Serena Butler

Serena Butler was a Salusan noblewoman whose enslavement by the thinking machines and the murder of her infant son helped ignite the Butlerian Jihad. As its High Priestess she became a living symbol of the war, and her staged death on Corrin made her one of its Three Martyrs.

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Seurat

Seurat was an independent thinking machine who captained the Omnius update ship Dream Voyager. Across the long years of the Butlerian Jihad he was the unlikely friend of Vorian Atreides, a friendship that ended only when their loyalties forced them to fire on one another at the Battle of Corrin.

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Shaddam Corrino IV

Shaddam Corrino IV was the 81st and final Padishah Emperor of the Corrino Empire. Threatened by the popularity of Duke Leto Atreides, he conspired with House Harkonnen to destroy him, only to be brought down himself by Paul Muad'Dib and the Fremen during the Desert War.

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Shadout Mapes

The Shadout Mapes was the Fremen head housekeeper of the Imperial Residence at Arrakeen when House Atreides took control of Arrakis. She gave Lady Jessica a crysknife in recognition of Fremen prophecy and died trying to warn Duke Leto of the betrayal.

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Shando Vernius

Lady Shando Balut-Vernius was a former concubine of Padishah Emperor Elrood Corrino IX who left the Imperial Court to marry Earl Dominic Vernius of Ix. Mother of Tyros Reffa, Rhombur, and Kailea, she was hunted down and executed by Sardaukar when House Vernius fell.

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Sheeana Brugh

Sheeana Brugh was a Fremen girl of Rakis whose ability to command the sandworms drew the attention of the Rakian Priesthood, the Bene Gesserit, and the Bene Tleilax. Of Atreides and Idaho descent, she became a Reverend Mother and fled the Old Empire aboard a no-ship as the Sisterhood scattered.

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Shield Wall

The Shield Wall was a towering mountain range in the northern reaches of Arrakis that sheltered a small region from the planet's coriolis storms and kept the sandworms from human settlements. Paul Atreides breached it with the Family Atomics during the Battle of Arrakeen.

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Shield

The shield was a protective energy field generated by Holtzman technology that surrounded its wearer and admitted only objects moving below a set velocity. Its ubiquity drove the Imperium back to blade combat, while its reaction to lasgun fire made directed energy weapons too dangerous to use.

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Siege of Arrakeen

The Siege of Arrakeen was the night assault in 10191 AG in which House Harkonnen, backed by Imperial Sardaukar disguised as Harkonnen troops, destroyed House Atreides on Arrakis. Duke Leto Atreides was killed and his heir Paul fled into the desert.

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Sietch Tabr

Sietch Tabr was a major Fremen community on Arrakis, led by Naib Stilgar. It was the first sietch to shelter Paul and Jessica Atreides after the fall of House Atreides, and it became the foundation of the Arrakis Revolt that launched Muad'Dib's jihad.

Long read · joe

Sietch

Sietch was the Fremen term for a community or village. Hidden within the rock outcrops and caverns of the deserts of Arrakis, a sietch was a self contained settlement housing hundreds or thousands of families and the industries that sustained them.

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Siona Atreides

Siona Atreides was the daughter of Moneo and the culmination of Leto Atreides II's breeding program, the first human invisible to prescient vision. She led the rebellion against the God Emperor and helped engineer his death, then with Duncan Idaho carried the no-gene forward into the future of humankind.

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Smuggler

A smuggler was anyone who sold or transported contraband or controlled substances within the Imperium. Smugglers were common on Arrakis, where they dealt chiefly in the spice melange, and Duke Leto Atreides sought an accommodation with them after taking the fief.

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Soo-Soo: the Harkonnen agent at Arrakeen

"Soo-Soo" was a Harkonnen agent and Guild bank representative who attended the banquet House Atreides held for the Houses Minor of Arrakis. His nickname came from his role as financial advisor to the Water Peddlers Union.

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Sorceresses of Rossak: the telekinetic order

The Sorceresses of Rossak were an order of telekinetic women native to the toxic jungle world of Rossak. Staunch enemies of the thinking machines, they eventually evolved into the Sisterhood that became the Bene Gesserit.

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Spacing Guild

The Spacing Guild was the interstellar shipping and banking conglomerate whose monopoly on space travel formed one leg of the political tripod that upheld the Great Convention. Its Navigators, dependent on the spice melange, folded space through prescience aboard the vast Heighliners.

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Spice harvester

The spice harvester, also called a crawler, was a vast mobile factory used on Arrakis to mine and process melange from the desert sand. Dropped onto spice fields by carryalls and watched over by spotter thopters, harvesters worked under constant threat of the sandworms drawn by their rhythmic noise.

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Stilgar

Stilgar was the Fremen Naib of Sietch Tabr and Siridar-Governor of Arrakis, the close friend and chief advisor of Emperor Paul Muad'Dib, and the guardian who raised the Atreides twins Leto II and Ghanima.

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Stillsuit

The stillsuit was a full body garment worn in the open desert of Arrakis to reclaim and recycle the wearer's own moisture. Fremen-made suits were the finest, losing only a thimbleful of water a day and allowing survival in the deep desert for weeks.

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Stone burner

A stone burner was a particularly destructive weapon that released J-rays to dissolve eye tissue and blind every creature within its radius, while also capable of immense physical destruction. Powered by an atomic charge yet legally distinct from atomics, it was the weapon used to blind Emperor Paul Atreides.

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Suboid Revolt

The Suboid Revolt was a rebellion in which the suboid lower class of Ix, secretly stirred up by the Bene Tleilax and backed by Imperial Sardaukar, rose against House Vernius over alleged violations of the Butlerian Jihad. It ended with the fall of Ix and the exile of the Vernius family.

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Suk School

The Suk Medical School trained the most trusted physicians of the Imperium. Its Imperial Conditioning was believed to make a Suk doctor incapable of taking a human life, marked by a diamond tattoo and a silver hair ring.

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Suspensor

Suspensors were hovering devices that used the secondary phase of a Holtzman field generator to nullify gravity within limits set by mass and energy use. They buoyed everything from glowglobes and furniture to the bulk of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.

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Swordmasters of Ginaz

The Swordmasters of Ginaz were warriors who earned the title by attaining a high level of skill at the Ginaz School. Regarded as superior to Sardaukar, they served the Great Houses as commanders, teachers, and personal guards.

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Synchrony

Synchrony was the distant capital world of the reborn Thinking Machine empire, raised by the evermind Omnius and his counterpart Erasmus far from human space. It became the stage for the final reckoning of Kralizec, where Omnius was banished and the long war between man and machine reached its end.

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Tertius Eileen Anteac

Tertius Eileen Anteac was a Bene Gesserit Mentat Reverend Mother and Truthsayer who served the plans of the God Emperor Leto Atreides II in his final years. A secret Mentat descended from Gaius Helen Mohiam, she led the Fish Speaker invasion of Ix and died in its accomplishment.

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Tessia Vernius

Tessia Vernius, born Tessia Yasco al-Reill, was a Bene Gesserit Sister who became the beloved concubine and later wife of Earl Rhombur Vernius. She was a source of strength through the fall and restoration of House Vernius before the Sisterhood forced her into a comatose trance and carried her away.

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The Preacher

The Preacher was a mysterious blind prophet who appeared on Arrakis during the regency of Alia Atreides, railing against the Atreides Empire and the priesthood built on the worship of Muad'Dib. He was Paul Atreides returned from the desert, and he was killed for denouncing his sister.

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Thufir Hawat

Thufir Hawat was the Mentat and Master of Assassins of House Atreides for three generations and one of Paul's teachers. After the fall of the House he was forced into Harkonnen service, where he schemed against his captors before giving his life rather than harm the son of his Duke.

Long read · joe

Ticia Cenva

Ticia Cenva was the daughter of Grand Patriarch Iblis Ginjo and Supreme Sorceress Zufa Cenva, raised to lead the Sorceresses of Rossak. Cold and driven, she guided the order through the Omnius Scourge before succumbing to the Rossak Epidemic.

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Tio Holtzman

Tio Holtzman was the celebrated savant of Poritrin credited with the Holtzman Effect and its shield technology, who took credit for the genius of Norma Cenva and died in a lasgun-shield explosion during a slave rebellion.

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Titans

The Titans were twenty human revolutionaries who seized the Old Empire and ruled it as brutal overlords, then preserved themselves as cymeks by transplanting their brains into mechanical bodies. Their reach gave rise to Omnius, who reduced them to powerless celebrities before the last of them fell during the Butlerian Jihad.

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Tleilax

Tleilax was the sole planet of the Thalim star system and the homeworld of the Bene Tleilax, a society of genetically altered, religious, and xenophobic humans known for their biological laboratories and their Face Dancers.

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Tleilaxu Master

Tleilaxu Masters were the elite caste of the Bene Tleilax, served by gholas and Face Dancers and immune to the Bene Gesserit Voice. The ten Masheikhs of the Ruling Council stood at the summit of their order.

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Truthsayer

A Truthsayer was a person able to detect truth as it was spoken, the talent itself called truthsense. The skill was cultivated chiefly by the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, and Truthsayers were often retained by the Padishah Emperor to sit in judgment over the testimony of others.

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Tuk Keedair

Tuk Keedair was a Tlulaxa slaver who became the business partner of Aurelius Venport and co-founder of VenKee Enterprises. His chance discovery of melange on Arrakis built a commercial empire, though his life ended as a prisoner among the desert Zensunni he had once enslaved.

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Tupile

Tupile was the sanctuary region of the known universe, a group of worlds whose location was kept secret by the Spacing Guild. Under House Corrino it sheltered defeated and renegade Great Houses sent into exile.

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Unnamed Atreides Gladiator: the slave who defied Feyd-Rautha

An unnamed Atreides fighting man taken captive on Arrakis was forced to face Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen as a slave-gladiator in the arena at Harko. Sworn to avenge his fallen House, he died only because Feyd cheated with a poisoned blade and a paralyzing code word.

Long read · joe

Uxtal

Uxtal was a Lost Tleilaxu scribe spared in the Face Dancer purge of Tleilax and forced into servitude. He grew gholas of Vladimir Harkonnen, Paul Atreides, and a Tleilaxu Master for masters who held his life hostage, and died devoured by sligs near Bandalong.

Long read · joe

Valya Harkonnen

Valya Harkonnen of Lankiveil rose from a promising student of Raquella Berto-Anirul to become the second Reverend Mother Superior of the order she renamed the Bene Gesserit. Consumed by a vendetta against House Atreides, she developed the technique of Voice and used it to seize sole leadership.

Long read · joe

Victor Atreides

Victor Atreides was the first son of Duke Leto Atreides I and his concubine Kailea Vernius, born on Caladan after the fall of House Vernius. He was killed at the age of six in a skyclipper explosion engineered by his own mother, and his death indirectly led to the conception of Paul Atreides.

Long read · joe

Voice

Voice was an audio-neuro control technique perfected by the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, which let a trained adept seize control of a listener by altering the tonal qualities of speech. It was used to compel obedience and extract truth, and a few rare individuals learned to resist or even wield it untrained.

Long read · joe

Vorian Atreides

Vorian Atreides was the son of the Titan Agamemnon who turned against the thinking machines to become one of the great commanders of the Butlerian Jihad. The first man to bear the name Atreides, he led the Vengeance Fleet at the Battle of Corrin and, through his judgment of Abulurd Harkonnen, began the feud that would divide the two houses for ten thousand years.

Long read · joe

Wallach IX

Wallach IX was the ninth planet of the Laoujin system and the seat of the Mother School of the Bene Gesserit. From it the Sisterhood trained its acolytes, convened its councils, and plotted against the House of Atreides.

Long read · joe

War of the League of Nobles and Synchronized Empire

The war between the League of Nobles and the Synchronized Empire was a centuries-long war of attrition between free humanity and the thinking machines ruled by Omnius. Its final phase, including the battles of Zimia, Giedi Prime, and Rossak, set the stage for the ignition of the Butlerian Jihad.

Long read · joe

Warrick

Warrick was a Fremen of Red Wall Sietch, the blood-brother of Liet-Kynes and first husband of Faroula. He won Faroula's marriage challenge over his friend, and years later gave his life to shelter Liet from a Coriolis storm.

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Water of Life

The Water of Life was a poisonous blue liquid drawn from a drowning sandworm, lethal to the untrained but converted by the Bene Gesserit into the substance that made a Reverend Mother. Its conversion by a man marked the coming of the Kwisatz Haderach.

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Watertube

The watertube was a Fremen device of wide use in the transfer of liquids, woven through the stillsuit, the stilltent, the deathstill, and other water apparatus of Arrakis. Its simple appearance concealed a sophisticated design born of the desert's absolute need to conserve moisture.

Long read · joe

Wellington Yueh

Wellington Yueh was the Suk physician of House Atreides and the sleeper agent who delivered Duke Leto Atreides to the Harkonnens. Coerced by the captivity and torture of his Bene Gesserit wife, he broke his Imperial Conditioning, sabotaged the defenses of Arrakeen, and turned the Duke into a living weapon of revenge.

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Wensicia Corrino

Wensicia Corrino was the third daughter of Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV and the mother of Farad'n Corrino. From exile on Salusa Secundus she plotted to restore her family to the throne, culminating in a failed attempt on the lives of the Atreides twins.

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Whitmore Bludd

Whitmore Bludd was a Ginaz Swordmaster instructor and gifted architect who served House Ecaz as bodyguard, built the Grand Palace of Emperor Paul Muad'Dib, and met his end after a failed scheme to write his own name into history.

Long read · joe

Xavier Harkonnen

Xavier Harkonnen was a respected military commander of the Butlerian Jihad whose killing of the corrupt Grand Patriarch Iblis Ginjo tainted his family name for centuries, even as his bloodline went on to found House Corrino.

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Xerxes

Xerxes was one of the original Titans who overthrew the Old Empire and briefly ruled the known universe. A pleasure-seeking nobleman, he ceded so much control to his computer network that it became the evermind Omnius, a mistake that enslaved his fellow Titans and was never forgiven.

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Yorek Thurr

Yorek Thurr was a Salusan politician and the long-standing head of the Jipol secret police during the Butlerian Jihad. Secretly serving both the thinking machines and the Titans, he engineered the Omnius Scourge and other plagues that killed billions across the League of Nobles.

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Yvette Hagal

Yvette Hagal-Corrino was a Padishah Empress of House Corrino, second wife of Emperor Elrood Corrino IX, and through her daughter Edwina an ancestor of Paul Atreides.

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Zensunni

Zensunni was a mystical denomination of Buddislam that took root among disadvantaged and enslaved peoples across the known universe, above all the Fremen of Arrakis. Born of a schism around 1381 BG, it stressed the mystical and a reversion to the ways of the fathers, and was later steered by the Bene Gesserit.

Long read · joe

Ziarenko Javid

Ziarenko Javid was a Fremen of Sietch Jacurutu who rose to be High Priest of the Qizarate under Muad'Dib and Master of Appointments to the Regent Alia Atreides. He became Alia's lover and was killed by Duncan Idaho during the revolt of the Naibs.

Long read · joe

Zufa Cenva

Zufa Cenva was the long-standing Supreme Sorceress of the Sorceresses of Rossak, a formidable telekinetic and zealous enemy of the thinking machines. She was the mother of both Norma Cenva and Ticia Cenva.