Murbella

Murbella was a promising young Honored Matre who was captured by the Bene Gesserit, trained in the ways of the Sisterhood, and survived the Spice Agony to become a Reverend Mother. After a prolonged war that decimated the leadership of both orders, she became both Mother Superior of the Bene Gesserit and Great Honored Matre, uniting two bitter enemies under one banner in what she conceived as a New Sisterhood. Her rise was bound throughout to the Duncan Idaho ghola to whom she was sexually addicted.

Origins among the Honored Matres#

Murbella was raised as an Honored Matre from an early age and deemed a trainee of particular promise when it emerged that her physical and mental abilities ran far above average. Among these were almost unimaginable reflexes that operated independent of her central nervous system. As was common of women of Honored Matre heritage, she also possessed the ability to amplify sexual ecstasy to extraordinary levels, the power by which the order bound men to its service.

Capture and bonding#

During a stay in the city of Ysai, Murbella captured a Duncan Idaho ghola and attempted to imprint him as a Bene Gesserit loyalist. Thanks to powerful abilities the Tleilaxu had secretly built into him, he was able to partially resist her and instead imprinted himself onto her psyche, so that the pair became sexually addicted to one another. When both later fell into the custody of the Bene Gesserit, the Sisterhood made use of Idaho's new hold over Murbella, and of her addiction to him, to extract information from the vulnerable young Honored Matre and then to begin her training as one of their own.

Training under Odrade#

By 15240 AG, as the Honored Matre attacks intensified, Murbella and Duncan Idaho were living together in continued confinement on Chapterhouse, where the intense bond created by their mutual imprinting made them reluctant lovers. Darwi Odrade, the new leader of the Sisterhood, decided to accelerate Murbella's training despite fears among the Sisters that she meant to steal their secrets and escape back to the Honored Matres. Her training was protracted and often confrontational, but the Sisterhood's methods, including word weapons aimed at undermining her old Matre identity and the leverage of her bond with Idaho, slowly turned her to their collective will. During this period she bore the Sisterhood four daughters, joining the genetics of Idaho and the Honored Matres into a powerful combination, and she came to admire the Bene Gesserit and to see her former order as ignorant.

When it was decided that Murbella was ready to become a Reverend Mother, Odrade relaxed the strictures and, for the first time, allowed a man, Duncan, to watch a spice ceremony. Murbella took and survived the hard path of the Spice Agony. She then passed through a manic phase in which her feelings for Duncan changed, a development that worried both Odrade and Idaho.

Union of the two orders#

Odrade called a Convocation of all the Bene Gesserit and announced her plan to attack the Honored Matres at Junction, to be led by Supreme Bashar Miles Teg. She named Sheeana and Murbella as candidates to succeed her as Mother Superior. The attack seemed headed for failure, and Murbella ordered a withdrawal to save as much of the force as she could. Odrade had already prepared a contingency, leaving Murbella instructions for a desperate gamble in a last-stand situation.

Murbella piloted a small craft to the surface, announcing herself as an Honored Matre who had escaped the Bene Gesserit and wished to share all their secrets. On arrival she killed an overeager Honored Matre with blinding speed enhanced by Bene Gesserit training, proving herself faster than any Honored Matre before her by fusing the best abilities of both orders. Taken to the newest Great Honored Matre, Logno, Murbella declared herself hostile, killed Logno and many of her allies, and took command of the Honored Matres, who were awed by her physical prowess and her ability to see into Other Memory. Odrade was killed in the melee, but before she died Murbella shared with her.

A contested ascension#

Murbella's ascension to leadership of the Honored Matres and, by necessity, the Bene Gesserit as well, was not accepted as victory by all of the Sisterhood. Some feared she would suborn the spirit of the Bene Gesserit, and many doubted her plan to merge the two orders into a New Sisterhood. A number resolved to escape, notably Sheeana, who had a vision of her own. They invited Duncan Idaho and Miles Teg to join them, and all fled Chapterhouse in a giant no-ship, carrying its previous passengers, the Tleilaxu Master Scytale and the Jews of Gammu, still aboard. Murbella recognised their plan too late to stop it, and may have permitted it in any case, since Duncan's departure resolved many of the problems his presence posed for her new role.