House Ordos: the Dune Game House That Never Appeared in the Books

House Ordos is a Great House that comes from the Dune video games, not the novels. Westwood Studios made it the third playable side, next to the Atreides and the Harkonnens, in Dune II (1992), and brought it back in Dune 2000 (1998) and Emperor: Battle for Dune (2001). In those games the Ordos are a cartel of wealthy merchant families from a frozen world, and they win wars with money, smuggling, sabotage and technology the rest of the Imperium has banned. (Dune II; Dune 2000; Emperor: Battle for Dune)

Is House Ordos in the Dune books?#

House Ordos isn't in any of the novels. Frank Herbert's Dune names its noble Houses as it needs them: the Imperial House Corrino, the Atreides, the Harkonnens, the Moritani of Grumman, House Ginaz and a few others in the glossary. Ordos is not one of them, and it never turns up in the five sequels. (Dune)

The one book that mentions it is The Dune Encyclopedia, a big in-universe reference work edited by Willis E. McNelly and published in 1984 with a foreword by Frank Herbert. It lists House Ordos as a Great House, but that's about all. There is no homeworld, no ruler and no story attached, and the encyclopedia itself was later set aside as non-canon when Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson started their own prequels. Their books don't use the Ordos at all. (The Dune Encyclopedia)

So the Ordos have two sources. The name is from the encyclopedia. The House as a faction, with a look, a home and a way of fighting, is Westwood's. (The Dune Encyclopedia; Dune II)

House Ordos in Dune II (1992)#

Dune II gave the Ordos their first real outing. Its setup is simple: Emperor Frederick IV wants more spice, so he offers Arrakis to whichever of three Houses produces the most. The Atreides, the Harkonnens and the Ordos land on the planet and fight for it, harvester against harvester, until one House is left. (Dune II)

The Ordos are the outsiders of that trio. Where the Atreides stand for honour and the Harkonnens for brute force, the Ordos are rich, secretive and happy to cheat. Their colour is green. Their units are quick and lightly armoured, built around the Raider, a faster trike, and the Deviator, a missile tank whose gas turns enemy vehicles to the Ordos side for a short time. From its Palace the House can send out a Saboteur to walk into an enemy base and blow up a building. Their Mentat adviser, Ammon, briefs each mission. (Dune II)

Dune II took its names from the novels, but the war on Arrakis is its own story, and the Ordos were added because a strategy game needed a third side. (Dune II)

House Ordos in Dune 2000 (1998)#

Dune 2000 remade Dune II with new graphics, filmed briefings and a reworked campaign, and it kept the same three Houses fighting for the same planet. The Ordos briefings are given by their Mentat, Edric O, a half-machine figure who fits the House's taste for technology the Imperium frowns on. The Deviator and the Saboteur came back, and the House still relies on speed and tricks rather than heavy armour. (Dune 2000)

House Ordos in Emperor: Battle for Dune (2001)#

Emperor: Battle for Dune is where the Ordos got a fuller identity. The game moves the war on from the spice contest to a fight for the Golden Lion Throne after the Emperor is murdered, and each House gets its own homeworld to defend. For the Ordos that is Draconis IV, a frozen planet in the Sigma Draconis system. (Emperor: Battle for Dune)

The game also explains who runs the House. The Ordos have no Duke or Baron. They are ruled by the Executrix, a council of four whose members speak to outsiders through a single voice called the Speaker. That fits the idea, there since Dune II, that the Ordos are a business cartel of merchant families rather than one noble bloodline. (Emperor: Battle for Dune)

The House's fate depends on the side the player takes. In the Atreides and Harkonnen campaigns the Ordos are an enemy to be beaten, and in their own campaign they come out on top. None of it carries over into the books. (Emperor: Battle for Dune)

Why people still search for House Ordos#

For a lot of players, Dune II and Dune 2000 were their first Dune, so the Ordos sit in memory right next to the Atreides and the Harkonnens. Readers who then pick up the novels expect a third House and don't find one. The honest answer is that the Ordos belong to the games: a name taken from a reference book, turned into a faction by Westwood, and never adopted by the novels or the Landsraad of the books. (Dune; The Dune Encyclopedia; Dune II)