Josef Venport

Directeur Josef Venport was the third and final Directeur of VenKee Enterprises, which he renamed Venport Holdings, commonly called VenHold. The grandson of Adrien Venport and great-grandson of Aurelius Venport and Norma Cenva, he became one of the most powerful figures of the early Imperium, commanding the foldspace shipping empire that held the monopoly on creating Navigators. Ambitious and ruthless, he used that power to wage a long war against the Butlerian anti-technology movement, a conflict that ultimately cost him his shipping empire and his human form.

The Directeur of VenHold#

Having inherited Venport Holdings from his father, Josef oversaw the most ambitious expansion of the company's assets in its history. Emperor Jules Corrino had revoked VenHold's monopoly on Holtzman engines, allowing rival shipping companies to offer instantaneous travel, but VenHold still held the sole ability to create Guild Navigators. Josef despised his competitors, branding firms such as Celestial Transport cheap imitators that charged lower rates at the risk of ships being destroyed while folding space.

A pragmatist by nature, Josef paid little attention to the Butlerian anti-technology movement until its actions began to cut into his profits. He especially resented the Butlerians destroying inert thinking machine vessels found drifting in deep space and in unexplored systems, holding that such ships should instead be refitted and added to the VenHold fleet.

After his grandfather Adrien Venport died attempting to become a Navigator like Norma Cenva, the great matriarch withdrew from the affairs of the wider universe. Josef managed to draw her out of her seclusion and rekindle her interest in the future of humanity, a bond that would later prove his salvation.

Marriage and the Sisterhood#

To strengthen his position, Josef married Cioba, a trainee of the Sisterhood of Rossak whom he found to be as shrewd in business as himself. He often left her in charge of VenHold's daily operations while he concentrated on the larger strategy. It was at Cioba's insistence that Josef granted Reverend Mother Raquella Berto-Anirul and several of her Sisters sanctuary after Emperor Salvador Corrino outlawed the Sisterhood of Rossak, resettling them on Wallach IX.

Josef also invested heavily in secretly training Mentats on Lampadas. One of them, Draigo Roget, became a prominent student of Gilbertus Albans and a trusted agent of VenHold. Working with his teacher, Draigo calculated the location of an abandoned thinking machine shipyard, which VenHold seized from Arjen Gates of Celestial Transport. Josef's dream of a fleet built by the automated yard was destroyed when Manford Torondo's Butlerians attacked it, killing thousands of VenHold employees. Josef and Draigo escaped only because Norma Cenva sensed their peril and arrived aboard a spacefolder to rescue them. Enraged, Josef ordered his entire fleet refitted with the latest weapons and Holtzman shields, vowing to destroy the Butlerians.

War with the Butlerians#

To rebuild his family's monopoly on foldspace travel, Josef worked to crush his rivals, using sabotage to make competitors such as EsconTran appear to have catastrophic safety records. To this end Draigo recruited a band of young Freemen of Arrakis, suspected saboteurs of spice mining operations, enticing them with tales of water-rich worlds such as the oceans of Caladan. Among them was the young Taref, who agreed to serve VenHold as a saboteur.

As the conflict with the Butlerians escalated, both leaders placed a price on the other's head. Josef sent Taref to Arrakis to recruit more Freemen, and on returning to Arrakis City Taref spotted Manford Torondo arriving to incite the populace and shot him with a maula pistol, but the man he killed proved to be only a body double. The surviving Torondo travelled to Salusa Secundus and demanded that Emperor Salvador imperialize all spice mining as a strategic resource, stripping Josef of his power. Salvador agreed and travelled to Arrakis to oversee the handover. Resolving to remove the Emperor in favour of his more reasonable brother Roderick, Josef lured Salvador aboard a spice harvester and bribed the spotters to delay their warning of wormsign until a sandworm devoured the machine.

Downfall and transformation#

Josef's treachery was eventually exposed when the Imperial barge, which he had also tried to strand, returned to Salusa Secundus and reported his betrayal. Roderick, now Emperor, ordered Josef arrested, but Norma Cenva folded space to spirit him back to Kolhar. Manford Torondo then obtained forbidden atomics from a Landsraad nobleman and unleashed them on Kolhar, devastating the world; Josef survived only through Norma Cenva's warning.

Josef offered peace to Roderick on the condition that he attack the Butlerian world of Lampadas, but the Emperor secretly sent a fleet to strike both forces once they were weakened. At the three-way Battle of Lampadas, VenHold suffered heavy losses, and Josef was forced to flee to Denali, buying time by threatening the life of the Emperor's sister Anna Corrino. At Denali, Roderick's armada attacked the remnants of the VenHold fleet. Anna's suicide removed Josef's last leverage, and Norma Cenva ended the space battle by negotiating directly with Roderick to spare all present and future Navigators in exchange for withdrawing VenHold's ships, leaving the planet open to assault. Feeling betrayed by his great-grandmother, Josef shut himself in his office as the surface battle was lost. As he contemplated suicide rather than public execution, Norma Cenva appeared and offered him one final chance: to survive by entering her spice tank and beginning the transformation into a Navigator, a fate Roderick was bound by their agreement to accept.