Dune category
Concepts
46 entries tagged Concepts, 46 of them long reads. The rest of the wiki points here most often at Melange and Mentat: the human mind built as a computer.
A
1C
2- 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.
E
2- 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.
- Eyes of Ibad: the blue-within-blue mark of melange addictionThe Eyes of Ibad were the blue-within-blue eyes produced by a diet high in melange, in which the whites and irises alike turned a deep blue. Universal among the Fremen of Arrakis and seen in spice addicts everywhere, the mark told any observer at a glance how deeply its bearer depended on the spice.
F
1G
3- Genetic memory: the ancestral record hidden in the fleshGenetic memory was the phenomenon by which the experiences of an individual's ancestors lay imprinted within the cells of their descendants. Unlocked by awareness spectrum narcotics, it gave the Imperium its Reverend Mothers, its Kwisatz Haderach, its pre-born, and its restored gholas.
- 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 universal truce of the Imperium, held in place by the balance of power between the Spacing Guild, the Great Houses and the Imperium. Its chief law forbade the use of atomics against human targets, and its rules governed Kanly and the War of Assassins.
H
1I
1K
2- 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.
L
2- Lisan al-Gaib: Meaning of the Fremen Prophecy in DuneLisan al-Gaib means "the Voice from the Outer World", the off-world prophet of Fremen legend. The Bene Gesserit planted the prophecy on Arrakis centuries before Paul Atreides arrived, and Paul and Jessica used it to survive among the Fremen.
- 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.
M
3- 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.
- Mentat: the human mind built as a computerThe Jihad outlawed machines in the likeness of a mind, so the Houses trained people instead. Mentats served as advisors, strategists and killers.
N
1O
3- 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.
P
4- Paul Atreides' Powers Explained: Prescience, the Voice and the Kwisatz HaderachPaul Atreides is trained as a Bene Gesserit, a Mentat and a fighter before he ever reaches Arrakis, and the spice turns his dreams into true prescience. Here is every power he has in Frank Herbert's novels, where each one comes from, and what it costs him.
- Planet: worlds of the Known UniverseIn the cosmography of the Imperium, a planet was a celestial body in orbit around a star, neither a star itself nor a moon, that had swept its orbital region clear as it formed. From Old Earth outward, humanity settled thousands of such worlds, from the deserts of Arrakis to the oceans of Caladan.
- 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.
R
2- Report on Alia Atreides: the Sisterhood's verdict of AbominationThe Report on Alia Atreides was a Bene Gesserit document assembled from the accounts of spies set to watch Alia Atreides for signs of Abomination. It culminated in the Judiciary Council condemning her as an Abomination to be Abhorred in 10211 AG, over the vigorous objections of her mother, the Lady Jessica.
- Reverend Mother in Dune: the Spice Agony and Other MemoryA Reverend Mother is a woman who has survived the spice agony, changing a poison inside her own body and waking to the memories of her female ancestors. The Bene Gesserit use the title for their senior Sisters, and the Fremen use it for the wise women of their sietches.
S
8- Shai-Hulud: what the Fremen name for the sandworm actually meansShai-Hulud was the Fremen word for the sandworm of Arrakis, and a sacred one. Said in a certain tone, it named the earth deity of Fremen hearth superstition, and it translates as Old Man of the Desert, Old Father Eternity and Grandfather of the Desert.
- 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 blow: the explosion that turns sand into melangeA spice blow was the violent final stage of the melange cycle on Arrakis, in which a carbon dioxide bubble built up inside a pre-spice mass and heaved the whole deposit to the surface in an eruption of dust and raw spice. Every Fremen knew the sound of one, every sandworm was drawn to it, and Liet-Kynes died inside one.
- 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.
T
5- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Twisted Mentat: the human computer built without a conscienceTwisted Mentats were human computers produced on Tleilax rather than trained by the legitimate schools, their body structure, emotional nature and psychological make-up altered to a buyer's order. Stripped of the ethical framework that bound ordinary Mentats, they could hypothesise and strategise without restraint, and the most infamous of them, Piter de Vries, served Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.
V
1W
3- 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.
- Weirding way: the Bene Gesserit fighting art of DuneThe weirding way is what the Fremen call the Bene Gesserit way of fighting, built on total control of nerve and muscle. Jessica and Paul teach it to the Fremen in Dune. The 1984 film swapped it for sonic guns called weirding modules, which never appear in the books.
- Worm Riding and Maker Hooks: the Fremen Art of the SandriderWorm riding was the Fremen art of summoning, capturing, and riding the giant sandworms of Arrakis. Practiced with thumper and maker hooks, it turned the most feared creature of the desert into transport, weapon, and sacrament, and even Paul Atreides could not be truly accepted among the Fremen until he had ridden.