Bene Tleilax: gholas, Face Dancers, tanks

The Bene Tleilax, more commonly called the Tleilaxu, were a group of secretive, genetically altered humans who inhabited Tleilax, the sole planet of the star Thalim. Their customs and ethics provoked widespread revulsion among the other cultures of the Known Universe, a reaction that did nothing to quench their hunger to subjugate their rivals. Yet their unmatched skill at genetic engineering made them, in effect, a necessary evil, supplying gholas, Face Dancers, and Twisted Mentats to powers that despised them. (Dune; Dune Messiah; Heretics of Dune)

Origins#

The Bene Tleilax were spawned from Zensunni ecumenism at some point before the time of Muad'Dib's Jihad, beginning as a purely religious group that emerged from a combination of Zensunni and Zensufi theologies. Over time they hid their religion and became known instead as a secretive guild of genetic manipulators. Theirs was an inherently isolationist culture, dominated by a strict hierarchy and an overriding religious zeal, focused above all on genetics and on the pursuit of spiritual elevation through physical refinement. (Heretics of Dune; Chapterhouse: Dune)

The plot against Muad'Dib#

After the Emperor Paul Atreides overthrew Shaddam Corrino IV, ascended the Golden Lion Throne, and sent a Jihad of Fremen across the universe, the Tleilaxu took a direct part in the plot to destroy the royal family. Their instrument was a gift to Paul-Muad'Dib: Hayt, a ghola of Duncan Idaho. In truth they hoped to use Hayt to learn at last how to restore a ghola's lost memories. The secret Tleilaxu Master Bijaz, grown in the same axolotl tank as the ghola, was instrumental in reawakening Hayt's identity as Duncan by driving him to attempt and fail to kill Paul. (Dune Messiah)

When Chani died giving birth to the twins Leto Atreides II and Ghanima, the Face Dancer Scytale tried to bargain with the blind Paul, offering to restore Chani as a ghola, and held a knife over the newborns. Paul, seeing through his son's eyes, killed him. Bijaz then attempted to tempt Paul in Scytale's place but was killed by the very Duncan Idaho he had helped to reawaken. (Dune Messiah)

The ghola immortality#

The conspiracy was, in its deeper purpose, no failure. The Tleilaxu had shown they could reawaken the memories of a ghola, and by the time of Heretics of Dune their Masters had turned the same art on themselves, living on through a chain of serial gholas, a kind of immortality they kept as one of their deepest secrets. (Dune Messiah; Heretics of Dune)

Under the God-Emperor#

During the three-and-a-half-thousand-year reign of Paul's son, Leto Atreides II, the Tyrant God-Emperor, the Tleilaxu chafed as all the old power brokers did against his absolute rule. Throughout that reign they supplied him with one Duncan Idaho ghola after another, each sent to serve him until it died and was replaced. (God Emperor of Dune)

In the final year of the God-Emperor's reign Tleilaxu Face Dancers took part in an attempt to kill him in the festival city of Onn, formerly Arrakeen, which he survived, before his death in the Idaho River. When Leto died and the Famine Times began, the Tleilaxu spread through the cosmos in the Scattering like the rest of humanity, and thereafter supplied Idaho gholas to the Bene Gesserit, though eleven of the Sisterhood's gholas were killed before the twelfth could be awakened. (God Emperor of Dune; Heretics of Dune)

The return and near-extinction#

As the Lost Ones began returning from the Scattering, the Bene Tleilax prepared to bring humanity under their Great Belief, a design they had nurtured for millennia. They had built a hidden weapon into the twelfth Duncan Idaho ghola given to the Sisterhood: a Tleilaxu-implanted sexual imprinting that let him overwhelm the Honored Matre Murbella on Gammu. All seemed to be unfolding as intended. (Heretics of Dune)

Then disaster struck. The elder Master Tylwyth Waff died on Rakis when the Honored Matres destroyed the planet, a loss of the sandworms the Tleilaxu revered, for they held the worms to carry an essence of the God-Emperor, their Prophet. The Matres went on to attack and decimate Tleilax and the other Bene Tleilax worlds. The only known surviving Tleilaxu Master was Scytale, the most junior, who had come to the Bene Gesserit for protection on Chapterhouse and was held in a no-ship there. Within his body lay a nullentropy capsule of cells from many individuals, including Tleilaxu Masters, making it possible for him to one day recreate his culture. He was aboard the no-ship when Reverend Mother Sheeana, the twelfth Duncan ghola and others fled into unknown space. (Heretics of Dune; Chapterhouse: Dune)

Culture and classes#

Tleilaxu society was divided into distinct classes, each with its own physical form and role. The Tleilaxu Masters resembled small humans, often with close-set eyes and small pointed teeth. The axolotl tanks bred gholas and other beings, and were revealed to be what remained of the female sex of the Tleilaxu, women turned into ghola- and Face Dancer-producing machines. The Face Dancers were mimics able to take on another's appearance, used for espionage and as agents against other groups. The Tleilaxu faith was a secret one, derived from Zensunni and Zensufi theology, and honoured Leto Atreides II as God's Messenger. The culture was strongly marked by male chauvinism, a counterpoint to the female chauvinism the Tleilaxu saw in the Bene Gesserit. (Heretics of Dune; Chapterhouse: Dune)