Rivvy Dinari: Swordmaster of Ginaz

Rivvy Dinari was a Swordmaster instructor of the famed school on Ginaz, one of the teachers under whom trainees studied during the second half of their long path to the rank of Swordmaster. His curriculum was built on a single foundation, honor, and he lived and died by it. When House Moritani violated the laws of kanly in its vendetta against House Ecaz, Dinari was among the loudest voices on Ginaz demanding that the forms be obeyed, and when the School itself was broken he entered the personal service of Archduke Armand Ecaz. He fell on Caladan at the wedding of Duke Leto Atreides I and Ilesa Ecaz, throwing his great bulk into the path of the flying blades meant for his Archduke. The attack he died resisting sparked the War of Assassins of 10,187 AG.

Instructor on Ginaz#

Dinari held a place among the senior instructors of the Swordmasters of Ginaz, the school whose graduates were counted among the finest fighters in the Imperium. Trainees came under his instruction during the second half of their years on Ginaz, after the early islands had already burned away the unfit. For six months he taught them the philosophy and warrior code of the ancient samurai, an inheritance of discipline reaching back to old Earth. He also trained his students in a form of meditation that progressed through three stages, known as funestus, partus, and novellus.

Whatever technique his students carried away from Ginaz, the primary focus of Dinari's curriculum was honor. To him the Swordmaster's blade meant nothing without the code that governed its use, and he pressed that conviction on every class that passed through his hands. Like his fellow Swordmasters he wore the red bandanna that signified his rank, and he wore it in his hair as a working teacher rather than an ornament.

Kanly and the fall of the School#

Dinari's devotion to the forms was tested when Viscount Hundro Moritani of Grumman launched his brutal campaign against House Ecaz. The attack drew condemnation from across the School. Dinari and headmaster Mord Cour, together with many members of the Swordmasters' Council, ruled that the trainees from Grumman must discard their ties to House Moritani or leave Ginaz altogether. Dinari's own judgment was blunt: the Viscount had violated the laws of kanly, and the forms must be obeyed. In a feud between Great Houses, the ancient conventions of vendetta were the only wall between honorable conflict and open slaughter, and Dinari would not train men sworn to a House that had torn that wall down.

The Viscount answered the Swordmasters' measures with violence. He ordered an attack and raid against Ginaz itself, and the assault left a permanent wound on the School. Its honor damaged and its old order broken, the School was dispersed, and after its restoration many veterans of the Swordmasters' Council chose to become rhonin, masterless swordsmen who left Ginaz to sell their loyalty where they judged it deserved. Dinari was among them, as was his fellow instructor Whitmore Bludd. Both men entered the household of Archduke Armand Ecaz, the very House whose persecution Dinari had condemned, and Dinari became the Archduke's personal bodyguard.

Death on Caladan#

In 10,187 AG the Archduke traveled to Caladan to witness the marriage of his daughter Ilesa to Duke Leto Atreides I, a union meant to bind House Ecaz and House Atreides together against the Moritani threat. House Moritani struck the celebration without setting foot on Caladan, working through the treachery of Duke Prad Vidal of Elacca, the Ecazi vassal who arranged the deaths at the ceremony. Sharp hexagonal blades with dagger edges had been fixed to the flower pots decorating the wedding. As the ceremony began they loosened themselves and whipped through the air toward the Atreides and Ecaz parties.

Dinari did not hesitate. He flung himself in front of Archduke Armand and took the storm of blades on his own body. One blade passed him and severed the Archduke's left arm just above the elbow, but the second through the sixth struck Dinari squarely, piercing his heart and killing him instantly. His sacrifice saved his master's life. Ilesa Ecaz was not so fortunate. Her protector Whitmore Bludd failed to stop the blade meant for her, and the bride died at her own wedding. The massacre on Caladan ignited the War of Assassins of 10,187 AG between the outraged Houses.

Remembrance#

Dinari cut an unmistakable figure among the Swordmasters. He was an obese man, yet his training let him move with a grace that seemed impossible for his size, a walking demonstration that the School's discipline mastered any body given to it. He had mahogany red hair and small dark brown eyes so deep in color they appeared almost black, and he spoke in a high, thin voice that others often described as squeaky. None of it ever diminished him; the blade and the code did his speaking.

His red Swordmaster's bandanna outlived him in the keeping of another. When Duncan Idaho of House Atreides earned the rank of Swordmaster on Ginaz, Dinari gave the young warrior his own bandanna, passing the emblem of the School's honor to a fighter who would carry it through decades of Atreides service. After the massacre on Caladan, the combined Ecaz and Atreides entourage celebrated Dinari as a hero, and he was given a hero's funeral on Caladan, buried far from Ginaz but exactly as he had lived, in the service of the forms.