Desmond Hart: the Emperor's bashar

Desmond Hart was a Bashar of the Imperium and a charismatic soldier with an enigmatic past, who rose to the side of Emperor Javicco Corrino and turned the power of the throne against the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. Returned from the belly of a sandworm that had swallowed him on Arrakis, he claimed Shai-Hulud had granted him a terrible gift, and he wielded the power to burn his enemies to death from within. He was, in secret, the hidden son of Orry Atreides and the Sister Tula Harkonnen.

Origins#

Desmond was born on Wallach IX to Tula Harkonnen, a Sister of the Bene Gesserit, who had been impregnated by Orry Atreides the night before she killed him. Recognizing that her child held tremendous potential and unwilling to see him exploited for it by Valya Harkonnen, Tula pretended that he had died, swapping the infant with a stillborn child with the help of the Sister Francesca. Sent away, he was left to live among scavengers, fighting for scraps to survive, a childhood that bred in him a deep and abiding hatred of the Sisterhood that had cast him out.

Little was recorded of his life thereafter. Before he came to prominence he completed twelve tours of duty on Arrakis, a feat all the more remarkable because most soldiers barely survived their first, and for his service he received multiple commendations. Under interrogation he told Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen that he was from Balut. He was, ostensibly, the sole survivor of a rebel attack on Arrakis that the Sisterhood had manipulated, and after it he became faithful to gods he did not name.

The gift of Shai-Hulud#

On Arrakis a sandworm swallowed Desmond, and he survived. He spoke of feeling reborn, and of "beautiful, terrible things" that he could afterward do. Under interrogation by Valya on Salusa Secundus, he declared that Shai-Hulud had taken his eye and granted him the gift to see what even she could not, and told her he could perceive the blood that trailed her every step.

The gift was lethal. Desmond could kill from a distance, causing his victims' skin to burn and smoke while blue veins rose prominently across their faces. He killed the boy Pruwet Richese in the palace in this manner, and in the same moment, far away on Wallach IX, the Truthsayer Kasha Jinjo suffered an identical affliction and died, her burns later judged to have been caused by an acute imbalance in her meridian network. He later demonstrated the power upon Pruwet's father, Duke Ferdinand Richese, stopping only when the Duke pleaded for mercy. Using the power cost Desmond dearly, for it caused him extreme pain and left his back covered in scars; on at least one occasion he stumbled from a council chamber bleeding, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

Servant of the throne#

Desmond sought and won the trust of Emperor Javicco Corrino, telling the Emperor that faith had brought him to the Imperial Palace. He remained at Javicco's side as the Emperor's instrument against the Bene Gesserit. When he was found destroying Kasha Jinjo's Sisterhood book, he counselled Javicco that the Sisterhood used whisper campaigns to achieve their own ends and urged that the Great Houses be made to remove their Truthsayers, though the Emperor declined for fear of losing the support of the Great Houses.

He found a willing ally in Empress Natalya, who shared his conviction that the throne had been too lenient. Working together, they turned his power and his zeal against the Sisterhood, and he was given command of a new unit dedicated to hunting insurgents and rooting out the illegal trade in thinking machines. Before the High Council he confessed to killing Pruwet Richese, but called it an execution for the boy's crime of harbouring a thinking machine, for the keeping of such machines was the highest law broken. He exposed a plot in which criminals had planned to kill the Emperor with a drone, destroyed the device before the assembled nobles, and publicly executed the conspirators along with Lord Hagal.

Exposure and the virus#

The pursuit of the Sisterhood drove Desmond to a marketplace held by the Sister Mikaela, where he uncovered a great store of spice and unmasked her as a member of the order. The market was destroyed in an explosion set off by Keiran, and Desmond survived only by raising his shield at the last instant. Afterward he told Natalya that he should have died, and recounted how the woman who bore him had been a Sister who abandoned him to survive on scraps.

When Valya Harkonnen confronted him and asked to be shown her own end, the vision turned against his makers. Upon waking she said she had seen what had been done to Desmond: that those who had remade him, whom she could not name, had placed a thinking machine within him, and that he was spreading a virus. She wished to kill him, but Tula Harkonnen stopped her, revealing that Desmond was her son. Valya gave Tula a knife and left the choice to her. Tula moved to embrace him, and after a moment he allowed it, but as she pulled away he slapped her hands aside and ordered the guards to arrest her.