Draigo Roget

Draigo Roget was a Mentat trained at the original Mentat School, established by Gilbertus Albans after the Battle of Corrin. Considered by his headmaster to be the finest student the school had ever known, Draigo was in truth a plant: he had been recruited by Josef Venport to master Mentat discipline for the advancement of Venport Holdings. He went on to serve as one of Venport's most trusted strategists during the turbulent years that followed the Butlerian Jihad.

The finest student of the Mentat School#

Draigo Roget studied at the original Mentat School and also served as a teaching assistant. He paid his considerable tuition with a gift from an unnamed benefactor, who was in fact Josef Venport, the patron who had seeded him among the first of his candidates into the school. Draigo nearly exhausted everything the Mentat School could teach in just five years and was among the best students it had ever produced. Gilbertus Albans had never met anyone quite so brilliant, and Draigo came to win nearly forty percent of his war-game engagements against the headmaster himself.

As graduation approached with the highest honors in the school's history, Gilbertus asked Draigo to remain on Lampadas as an instructor, but the young Mentat was noncommittal. Gilbertus considered several times whether to confide in Draigo about the hidden thinking machine Erasmus but decided he could not yet take that risk. As a final cooperative effort the two of them traced a prominent machine industrial facility to a star system labeled Thonaris. When the commencement ceremony ended, Draigo came to thank his teacher; pressed once more to stay, he answered that his destiny lay in the wider Imperium.

Service to Venport and the Battle of Thonaris#

Freshly graduated, Draigo went to Kolhar to work for his benefactor. After studying the mutating forms of the Navigator-candidates there, he presented Josef with his projection locating the hidden machine shipyard at Thonaris. Scouts working for Venport's rival Arjen Gates had also stumbled upon the site, so Josef chose to seize it by an outright attack. The takeover proved straightforward and efficient under Draigo's command, much to Josef's satisfaction. Draigo warned that it would go badly for them if the Butlerians ever discovered such operations, but Josef dismissed the concern.

His warning proved sound. Guided by Gilbertus, the Butlerian leader Manford Torondo brought his warships to Thonaris to destroy the robotic industrial facilities and anyone who would not surrender. Though the Butlerian force was far superior, Josef ordered Draigo to find a way to hurt them. In a very short time Draigo devised an imaginative plan that exploited every scrap of material the shipyards could offer, and although Gilbertus saw through the strategy, it inflicted real damage on Manford's ships. Draigo then realized that his former teacher was among the enemy. As Gilbertus took command and closed in, Draigo and his companions fled to a small survival ship and drifted clear moments before projectiles tore open the empty admin-hub. Believing they would not escape, Draigo contacted Gilbertus to bid him farewell; the headmaster said he recognized his student's tactics and was proud of him. A large VenHold ship then appeared, and Norma Cenva folded space to retrieve them. Josef and Draigo were saved, though every facility was destroyed. From the battle Draigo learned a lasting lesson: that even the most detailed Mentat projections are fallible, because prescience is a variable that can never be factored into a Mentat's calculations.