Dama

Dama was the Great Honored Matre during the War of the Sisterhoods and the leader of the Honored Matres in their conflict with the Bene Gesserit. Known among the sisters as the Spider Queen, she was a skilled strategist who held Lucilla captive and interrogated her at length. She died at Junction in 15240 AG, assassinated by her own advisor Logno.

The Spider Queen#

Dama held the office of Great Honored Matre during the War of the Sisterhoods, the long struggle between the Honored Matres returning from the Scattering and the Bene Gesserit. The sisters of the Bene Gesserit called her the Spider Queen, a name she found amusing rather than offensive. She was reckoned a skilled strategist.

In later life Dama wore a heavy, unpleasant perfume that reminded her of the flamebush of her homeland. Before the return of the Honored Matres she had lived on Dur, a jungle world outside the Known Universe that had no futars, and she would reminisce about that simpler time. When she compared the interior of the control center on Junction to the place she had known on Dur, the memory carried a wistfulness at odds with her ruthless command.

Conquests and the hunt for the Weapon#

Under Dama the Honored Matres pressed their campaign across the worlds of the old Imperium, seizing planets such as Ecaz and Bela Tegeuse during her tenure. She and her advisors weighed an attack on Buzzell, a world rich in soostones; when smuggler spies reported no defenses there, Dama suspected a trap rather than an opportunity, a mark of her caution.

Much of her attention turned to "The Weapon" the Honored Matres had carried back from the Scattering. She charged Logno with learning whether the Ixians could duplicate it and warned that she would be displeased if they could not. In their discussions she dwelt on the eternal enemies of the Matres, the Ones of Many Faces, who had bred the futars as Honored Matre killers and against whom much of the rest of the Weapon had been lost. Dama herself kept futars in her company, an appetite her predecessors had rejected.

The captivity of Lucilla#

Dama's most consequential prisoner was the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Lucilla, captured by the Honored Matres on Lampadas and brought to Junction. Lucilla was wheeled into Dama's presence bound in a cage of shigawire, and Dama informed her that the Honored Matres were immune to the Voice.

Over many days Dama returned to question and debate her captive on prescience, on government, and on the secretive workings of the Sisterhood. She wanted to know why the Honored Matres had found no mention of the God Emperor Leto Atreides II in the libraries on Lampadas, and she pressed Lucilla on whether Leto and his father had truly been able to see the future. Lucilla used these exchanges to probe and unsettle her captor, running intellectual circles around her and arguing that the rigid laws and bureaucracy of the Honored Matres would in time suppress adaptation and breed rebellion. Dama refused to accept that the Bene Gesserit governed themselves as any kind of democracy.

The duel of wits had a smaller casualty. Lucilla befriended one of Dama's futars and confirmed that the creature hated Dama and wished to kill her, lacking only the order of a Handler to do so. When the futar told Dama plainly that she was not a nice lady, she was infuriated that Lucilla had ruined it and threatened to send it back to the herd. Dama ultimately killed Lucilla when the Reverend Mother angered her. Other captives met the same fate: when the interrogation of the captured sister Sabanda yielded nothing, Dama had her injected with a fluid meant to loosen her tongue, which instead killed her, and ordered the body thrown to the futars.

Death at the Battle of Junction#

Dama's reign ended during the Battle of Junction. As the Bene Gesserit moved against the Honored Matres, the Supreme Bashar Miles Teg struck first at Gammu, using his secret ability to see no-ships to seize control of the system, then turned toward Junction itself with overwhelming force. Victory for the Sisterhood seemed inevitable.

The Bene Gesserit Mother Superior Darwi Odrade came to Junction to offer the Sisterhood's surrender. Dama ordered her own guards and advisors to withdraw so that she and Odrade could discuss terms alone. Her chief advisor Logno used that moment to carry out a plan already laid, assassinating Dama with poison by Chaumurky in Odrade's presence. Logno took the title of Great Honored Matre, accepted the surrender, and then sprang the trap that turned the apparent Bene Gesserit triumph into disaster. Dama died at Junction in 15240 AG.