Hiih Resser: the Moritani Swordmaster who refused

Hiih Resser was a red haired swordsman of Grumman, trained at the Ginaz school and sworn to House Moritani, who became the personal Swordmaster of Viscount Hundro Moritani. He was the close friend of Duncan Idaho during their training, the only Moritani student to survive the school's purge of his House, and the man whose disobedience on the salt basin outside Ritka saved Shaddam Corrino IV, Duke Leto Atreides I, Archduke Armand Ecaz and tens of thousands of soldiers from being vaporised at the close of the War of Assassins of 10,187 AG.

The purge of the Moritani students#

Resser was a trainee at the Ginaz school during the years in which House Moritani renewed its aggressions against House Ecaz. The Viscount's conduct in that feud was condemned by the Swordmasters of Ginaz themselves. The headmasters Mord Cour and Rivvy Dinari, together with much of the Swordmasters' Council, ruled that the Moritani students must discard their ties to their House or leave the school. Dinari's argument was that Hundro Moritani had violated the laws of kanly, and that the forms must be obeyed.

Every Grumman candidate walked out except one. Only Hiih Resser stayed with the Swordmasters. He did not renounce his world so much as decline to accept that the school and his House were the same question, and the choice marked him for the rest of his career.

The Viscount's answer was an armed raid on Ginaz itself. Sanctuaries and temples were discredited in that attack, and the honour of the Swordmasters was damaged permanently. When the school was eventually restored, a number of the old council members chose to become rhonin, House Ginaz masters without a school to serve, among them Rivvy Dinari and Whitmore Bludd, both of whom entered the household guard of Archduke Armand Ecaz.

Trin Kronos#

Among the Grumman candidates removed from Ginaz for their political ties to House Moritani was Trin Kronos, and Kronos did not accept the verdict quietly. He returned at the head of a gang of Moritani soldiers during a strike against the school and took several Ginaz trainees and graduates prisoner. Resser and his friend Duncan Idaho were among the captured. Of the half dozen Swordmasters seized, some were killed. Only Resser and Idaho escaped.

The two eventually reached land and were pronounced Swordmasters, arriving at that rank just in time for another Moritani raid to fall on the school. In the fighting Resser faced Kronos directly and came close to being killed by him. Idaho settled it by stabbing Kronos from behind, and the Moritani attack on Ginaz was repelled. Kronos died in 10,174 AG, the only Grumman candidate the school records list as a failure where Resser is listed as a graduate.

Return to Grumman#

Resser went back to Grumman expecting to be put to death for disloyalty. He had, by every Moritani measure, chosen the school over the Viscount, and he had helped kill the House's own man in the process. Instead he was kept on as a Swordmaster.

The reasoning was never recorded, though the practical logic is plain enough. Hundro Moritani had ruined his standing with Ginaz and could expect no further graduates. Resser was the last properly trained Swordmaster his House would ever produce, and a ruler running a private war against the Archduke of Ecaz had obvious use for one.

The unmarked fleet over Caladan#

In 10,175 AG the Viscount joined Glossu Rabban in a covert assault on Caladan. Rabban, then commanding Harkonnen Keep on Giedi Prime and anxious to prove his worth to Baron Vladimir Harkonnen before Feyd-Rautha displaced him, wanted a strike that could not be traced to his House. Moritani supplied the strategy, the troops and the insistence on secrecy. The ships were to fly unmarked and pass as a trade delegation, the attack timed for a moment when the Atreides military was off world at Ix and Beakkal, with all message traffic off Caladan cut so that Duke Leto could summon no help on his return.

Resser did the reconnaissance. His scoutship found the gaps in the Atreides defences and confirmed the joint fleet was ready to move, and when the attack went in he flew a heavily armed vessel beside Rabban's vanguard while the Viscount handled the troop carriers. The plan collapsed against a Mentat. Thufir Hawat, back on Caladan sooner than expected, mounted holoprojectors on the local fishing boats and conjured a defending fleet out of nothing. The attackers judged the odds impossible and withdrew without firing a shot, and Caladan celebrated for a week without ever having been in a battle.

The detonators at Ritka#

Resser rose to become the Viscount's personal Swordmaster and bodyguard, and held that post through the collapse of his House. In 10,187 AG, with the combined Atreides and Ecazi armies encamped on the salt basin outside Ritka and Shaddam Corrino IV inbound to impose a ceasefire, Hundro Moritani ordered his Swordmaster to mine the ground. The whole plain was to be seeded with House Moritani's atomics, and the Viscount intended to fire them with the Emperor, Duke Leto, Archduke Armand and tens of thousands of soldiers standing on top of them.

Resser carried the weapons into the caverns and furrows beneath Ritka as instructed. He did not fit the detonators. When the order to detonate came and nothing answered it, he told his master plainly what he had done and why, that a blast of that size would poison Grumman forever and that he could not permit it, and that wholesale destruction of a large part of the Landsraad leadership would do the Imperium no good.

Ritka survived. So did every noble on the field. Shaddam ordered Hundro Moritani arrested and sent to the Imperial Prison at Corrinth City, and the Viscount died on the way in a convenient depressurization accident in space. What became of the Swordmaster who had spared them all was not recorded. Resser had twice refused an order from his own House and both times the refusal saved something, first the Ginaz school and then the whole assembled leadership of the Imperium, and neither the school nor the Imperium appears to have thanked him for it.