Bene Tleilax

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.

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.

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.

When Chani Kynes died giving birth to the twins Leto Atreides II and Ghanima, the Face Dancer Scytale, the organizer of the conspiracy, was slain by Paul himself with the aid of his newborn son, after Scytale tried to bargain with a fully reawakened ghola of Chani. Bijaz then attempted to tempt Paul in Scytale's place but was killed by the very Duncan Idaho he had helped to reawaken.

The ghola immortality#

The conspiracy was, in its deeper purpose, no failure. The Tleilaxu had now learned how to renew the flesh and reawaken the memories of a ghola, and through this innovation they achieved a kind of immortality. They condensed this new power into a single government and kept its potency confined, lest it be demanded everywhere. Scytale, as the one who had made this eternal life possible, was himself brought back, reawakened, and promoted to Tleilaxu Master.

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 continuously supplied him with further Duncan Idaho gholas, reawakened in the same fashion as Hayt but with a Face Dancer used to mimic Paul. Only once did they dare to alter the cellular nature and the psyche of the original Duncan, and they paid so dearly for it that they never attempted such a thing again.

Until the end of Leto's rule they repeatedly sought an alliance with the Bene Gesserit, proposing a joint venture toward a wholly female society without need of males, and were refused each time. In the final year of the God-Emperor's reign they took part in a direct assassination attempt against him in the festival city of Onn, formerly Arrakeen, and they engineered his eventual love, Hwi Noree, from the cells of his old friend Malky 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 they continued to kill them after only a few years.

The return and near-extinction#

As the return from the Scattering began, the Bene Tleilax set out to conquer humanity and convert it to their Great Belief, a design they had nurtured for millennia. Seventeen years later, at the start of the War of the Sisterhoods, their plan for the twelfth Duncan Idaho ghola given to the Sisterhood succeeded: he overwhelmed the Honored Matre Murbella in combat on Gammu, releasing the memories of all the hundreds of Duncan gholas before him. All seemed to be unfolding as intended.

Then disaster struck. The Honored Matres, seeking revenge against all Tleilaxu males, attacked and decimated Tleilax and every Bene Tleilax world. The only known surviving Tleilaxu Master was the most junior, Scytale, saved by the Bene Gesserit and brought to Chapterhouse, where he was imprisoned in a no-ship for ten years before escaping with Reverend Mother Sheeana, the twelfth Duncan ghola, and others. The Matres also killed the elder Master Tylwyth Waff on Rakis, whose destruction caused widespread revulsion among the surviving Tleilaxu, for they held the sandworms of Dune to contain an essence of the God-Emperor, their Prophet. Within Scytale's body lay a vial of genetic samples from many individuals, including the Tleilaxu Masters, making it possible for him to one day recreate his culture.

Culture and classes#

Tleilaxu society was divided into distinct classes, each with its own physical form and role. The Tleilaxu Masters resembled small humans, most often with close-set eyes and small pointed teeth. The axolotl tanks, little more than incubation vessels, bred all Tleilaxu as well as gholas and other beings, and were believed to be what remained of the female sex of the Tleilaxu, women bred into ghola- and Face Dancer-producing machines. The Face Dancers formed the warrior and worker class, able to adapt their physical appearance to a task and to perform espionage against other groups. The Tleilaxu faith was monotheistic, derived from Zensunni and Zensufi theology, and placed great importance on Leto Atreides II as God's Messenger, its details remaining hidden until the arrival of the Honored Matres. The culture was strongly marked by male chauvinism, a counterpoint to the female chauvinism the Tleilaxu perceived in the Bene Gesserit.