Rebellion on Earth

The Rebellion on Earth was a planet-wide uprising of human slaves against their robotic oppressors, regarded as the spark that exploded into the Butlerian Jihad. It was instigated by the trustee Iblis Ginjo and ignited by the grief of Serena Butler after the robot Erasmus killed her child. The revolt also marked the turning of Vorian Atreides against the thinking machines and his father, the Titan Agamemnon.

The seeds of revolt#

On Earth, the independent robot Erasmus had proposed a wager to Omnius concerning the predictability of humans. Erasmus would select loyal trustees and demonstrate that he could turn them against the thinking machines, testing whether any humans could truly be trusted. With Omnius watching, Erasmus began spreading rumors of insurrection among the trustees.

Iblis Ginjo, a charismatic trustee, received these messages and consulted the Cogitor Eklo about their origin. Eklo advised that anyone seeking to lead such a movement would do best to unite the people under the concept of a holy war. Ignorant of who had truly planted the idea, Ginjo embraced it and began seeding restlessness across the planet, preparing core rebel groups at major sites with their own leaders. As overseer of the Victory of the Titans frieze construction, he secretly built explosive devices into the monument itself.

The uprising#

Serena Butler had become a slave much loved among her fellow captives. When Erasmus killed her child one night, the act seemed inconceivable to the slaves, and Serena hurled herself against a sentinel robot, shoving it off a balcony, and beat at Erasmus with her fists. The simmering resentment of the slaves boiled over. Primed by Ginjo's months of subtle manipulation, they exploded into revolt, calling out the name of the woman who had destroyed a robot with her own hands.

In the precinct of Erasmus's villa the uprising gained violent strength. Slaves ripped the weapon arms from sentinel robots and used them to open fire. Ginjo issued the command to his core groups and detonated the explosives in the Titans' frieze, revealing a hidden arsenal whose embedded tubes were turned against neo-cymeks. Mobs ran through the streets and an armory near the spaceport blew apart. The revolt spread like an avalanche.

The death of Ajax#

The Titan Ajax descended from a cymek body-fabrication pavilion in his gladiator-form to face the mob alongside neo-cymeks and sentinel robots. The humans charged in waves toward certain death, and Ajax climbed a flying platform and cruised toward the Forum Plaza, where the frieze was being used as a weapon. A rocket shattered his platform, and the rebels swarmed the wounded Titan. Ginjo manually launched a rocket from the damaged frieze, crippling one of Ajax's legs. The Titan plowed through the mob unharmed by their primitive weapons, but a slave detonated an explosive on the wall, and the rebels severed his neurelectric conduits and the control fibers from his brain canister, paralyzing him. He crashed to the ground, and Ginjo directed the crowd to peel away his armor and smash his brain canister to pulp. Word of a Titan's death swept through the streets.

Vorian's change of allegiance#

The Dream Voyager arrived bearing an Omnius gelsphere, and with the main spaceport overrun, Vorian Atreides and the robot Seurat landed at an older port still held by the machines. Vor, having learned the true history of mankind and the Titans from Serena, felt his allegiances shifting. He shed his trustee suit, donned that of a dead slave, and joined the rebels.

Vor made his way to Erasmus's barricaded villa to search for Serena, finding her at the back of the compound near surgical equipment. He persuaded Ginjo that the rebellion on Earth was doomed and should be commanded from another world from which aid could be sent outward, planet to planet. Ginjo placed Aquim in charge of the Earth rebellion and took the body of Serena's child, sealed in a bag. Using his old access codes, Vor reached the Dream Voyager, disabled and ejected Seurat, and fled with Ginjo and Serena. Agamemnon, discovering the ship gone and reactivating Seurat, understood that his son had betrayed him and gave chase in an interceptor. Unable to outmaneuver his father, Vor slingshotted around Jupiter, a maneuver Agamemnon's smaller craft could not survive, forcing the Titan to break off, and the Voyager raced on toward the League Worlds.

The extermination of Earth#

Juno, Dante, and Xerxes flew into the heart of the rebellion and were soon joined by Agamemnon. The rebels' primitive weapons and sheer numbers could do the Titans no harm. Aquim tried to keep the resistance organized as saboteurs brought down the machines' manufacturing capacity, but Omnius decreed the complete annihilation of all human life on Earth. Cymeks razed habitation camps with poison gas, acid, and fire, and ten thousand slaves were made to pay for every machine damaged. Juno took her revenge on the Cogitor Eklo and destroyed his monastery. Agreeing at last with Agamemnon, who had urged such a final solution for centuries, Omnius set the Titans and cymeks to hunting the planetary population for months until no single person on Earth survived.

Legacy#

When the Dream Voyager reached Salusa Secundus, a League scout returned with the report that only thinking machines remained on Earth and every rebel, slave, and trustee was dead. Ginjo, then in an interrogation room, argued that since the rebels had achieved so much in the name and pain of Serena Butler, a coordinated military assault would accomplish far more. Serena pleaded before the League Parliament that victory over the thinking machines was the only path to humanity's survival, and Xavier Harkonnen proposed using atomics, a doomsday weapon never before deployed. The proposal passed without dissent, leading to the Battle of Earth that eradicated every thinking machine on the planet along with the Earth-Omnius and left Earth an uninhabitable lump in space.

During that battle Vor again met Seurat, boarded his update ship, and stole the Omnius gelsphere bound for other Synchronized Worlds, preventing the evermind from learning Omnius Prime's final orders, the League's new shield tactics, and the command to eradicate all hrethgir. Though the revolt never spread beyond Earth, it inspired the League of Nobles to begin the Butlerian Jihad.