Dune category

Concepts

32 entries tagged Concepts. Every entry is sourced from Frank Herbert’s Dune novels, the later companion titles, or the official reference material.

The Bene Gesserit CodaThe 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.
CathedralCathedral 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.
CHOAMCHOAM, 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.
EarthEarth, 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.
Fremen languageThe 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.
Golden PathThe 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.
Great ConventionThe 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.
Holtzman effectThe 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.
KralizecKralizec, 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.
Kwisatz HaderachThe 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.
Litany Against FearThe 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.
MahdiMahdi 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.
MelangeMelange, 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.
MentatThe 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.
Naib: leader of a Fremen sietchNaib 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.
Old EarthOld 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.
Orange Catholic BibleThe 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.
Other MemoryOther 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.
Poison snooperPoison 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.
PresciencePrescience 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.
The ScatteringThe 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.
ShieldThe 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.
SietchSietch 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.
SmugglerA 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.
Spice harvesterThe 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.
Suk SchoolThe 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.
SuspensorSuspensors 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.
TitansThe 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.
TruthsayerA 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.
VoiceVoice 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.
Water of LifeThe 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.
ZensunniZensunni 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.