Harishka

Harishka was the Mother Superior of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood throughout the Turbulent Era, spanning the final years of Emperor Elrood IX and the full reigns of Shaddam Corrino IV and Paul Atreides. A close friend of the Kwisatz Mother Anirul, she watched over the last steps of the Kwisatz Haderach breeding program as it moved toward its culmination.

The breeding program and the birth of Jessica#

In the last years of Elrood IX, the Sisterhood was nearing the culmination of the Kwisatz Haderach project. To that end Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam was sent to Giedi Prime to conceive a daughter by Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, a genetic pawn of the breeding program. After Mohiam bore a crippled child whom she destroyed, she was ordered back to Giedi Prime, where the Baron raped her, and she conceived the child who would become the Lady Jessica. Harishka was present at the healthy infant's birth, and Mohiam chose the name with Anirul's permission.

When Elrood IX died, Harishka sent an embassy to Crown Prince Shaddam, headed by the sister Margot Rashino-Zea, offering the support of the Bene Gesserit throughout his reign if he would marry the Reverend Mother Anirul Sadow-Tonkin. Shaddam accepted, and after his coronation Harishka appeared with the Sisterhood's delegation to kneel before the new Empress.

Conflict with House Harkonnen#

When the Baron discovered that his degenerative disease had been inflicted by Mohiam, he brought his armada to the Mother School world to take revenge on her and the Sisterhood. Harishka and her sisters used their disciplines to confuse the Baron's mind, and he fled in terror of such talents. In retaliation his nephew Glossu Rabban sent a no-ship against the homeworld, expecting the sisters to be cowed; instead the ship was partly destroyed in the atmosphere, and the wreck was studied by the Sisterhood.

Judging Rabban too brutal and clumsy to be useful, Anirul had Mohiam sent to Lankiveil, where the Baron's brother Abulurd Harkonnen lived with his wife Emmi Rabban. Disguised as a Budislamic monk, Mohiam gave Emmi an enhancer so that the aging couple might conceive again. That child would become Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, Na-Baron of House Harkonnen.

The Atreides, the no-ship, and Project Amal#

When the Bene Gesserit presented the acolyte Jessica to Duke Leto Atreides, he refused her at first out of devotion to his concubine Kailea Vernius, with whom he had a son, Victor. To win his acceptance, the Sisterhood gave him intelligence on the Harkonnen no-ship and the plots against his family, and the Duke then received Jessica into Castle Caladan.

By the time of Shaddam IV's Great Spice War, Harishka and her council faced two matters concerning House Atreides: Leto's request to be given the no-ship for his attack on Ix, and the pregnancy of Lady Jessica, who would bear the mother of the awaited Kwisatz Haderach. In a special session the council, which included the Reverend Mothers Lanali, Thora, and Cienna and the commando Cristane, decided the no-ship should be destroyed to avoid conflict among the great Houses, though all recognized the Duke's honor and courage. Anirul, the Kwisatz Mother, decreed that Jessica would give birth in the Imperial Palace on Kaitain. To learn more of the no-ship's invention, Harishka had the Richesian inventors Haloa Rund, Talis Balt, and Flinto Kinnis questioned at the Mother School, then burned the damaged vessel.

When Anirul began to suffer disorders of her Other Memory, word of Project Amal reached the Sisterhood through her. The Bene Gesserit had already lost their agent Miral Alechem to Tleilaxu abductions on Ix. Harishka sent her most talented commando, Cristane, to investigate, but Cristane too was captured and ultimately destroyed when Count Hasimir Fenring set fire to the Tleilaxu axlotl-tank laboratories.

The escape of the Kwisatz Haderach#

By the ascension of Paul Atreides to the Golden Lion Throne, Harishka and her sisters, among them the powerful Mohiam, realized the Kwisatz Haderach had escaped the Sisterhood's control. The Count and Lady Margot Fenring had likewise raised their daughter Marie outside the Sisterhood's authority on Tleilax.

Seeing that the Jihad of Muad'Dib had brought sweeping political upheaval and bloody conquest, Harishka and Mohiam tried to persuade the Lady Jessica to assassinate her own son, offering her the rank of Mother Superior as reward. When Jessica refused, the two attempted to punish her by turning the powers of the Guilt-caster Stokia upon her. Forewarned by Tessia Vernius, a former victim of Stokia, Jessica was able to throw off the assault, even as she came to recognize that her son had become the most brutal ruler in the history of mankind.