Sorceresses of Rossak: the telekinetic order

The Sorceresses of Rossak were an order of powerful telekinetic women native to the planet Rossak. An independent and zealously chauvinist society, they aligned themselves with the League of Nobles against Omnius and the thinking machines, and their members included the Supreme Sorceress Zufa Cenva and her daughter Ticia Cenva. Under the leadership of the off-worlder Raquella Berto-Anirul, the order would eventually evolve into the Sisterhood that became the Bene Gesserit.

Origins#

The Sorceresses emerged as a culture sometime before the Butlerian Jihad, their existence rooted in the exotic and largely toxic environment of Rossak. The unique biology of the planet wrought havoc on the genome of early colonists and often rendered newborn infants with severe physical and mental disabilities. Some children, however, were born without such defects, and for reasons that were never understood the females among this subset were usually endowed with formidable telekinetic powers. The exact origin and purpose of the order remained unknown; by the start of the Jihad the Sorceresses could demonstrate aggressive and lethal psychic abilities effective against the cymeks, but the role such practice had played earlier was not recorded.

Culture and aims#

The Sorceresses were a zealously chauvinist society led by the Supreme Sorceress. They generally regarded males, whether from Rossak or elsewhere, as inferior, and they looked down on both non-native women and Rossak women who lacked their telekinetic gifts. Their central aim was to expand and strengthen their own kind, a goal pursued through detailed genetic records used to choose suitable male partners and to track wider trends in the genome. They typically avoided genetic wildcards unless an individual's abilities were exceptional, a risk most famously taken when Zufa Cenva bred with the League politician Iblis Ginjo. Though they publicly opposed the thinking machines, the order secretly maintained an installation of computers to hold a large database of genetic heritage.

War against the thinking machines#

Politically the Sorceresses were stridently opposed to the thinking machines and were therefore staunchly aligned with the League of Nobles. Their aggressive endorsement of military action helped trigger an escalation in the long human conflict with Omnius. In battle they wielded their distinctive psychic weapons against the cymeks, and under Zufa Cenva young Sorceresses were trained to hurl themselves into combat as living weapons, destroying their disembodied machine enemies along with themselves.

Evolution into the Sisterhood#

The arrival of the Omnius Scourge on Rossak, and its subsequent mutation in the planet's biologically potent jungles, brought widespread death to Rossak society, including the dominant Sorceresses. A League medical task force was reluctantly accepted by the new leader, Ticia Cenva, but their efforts yielded no immediate cure. When the doctor Raquella Berto-Anirul was cured by Jimmak, Ticia's Misborn son, she became a threat to Ticia's supremacy. Ticia attempted to poison Raquella, but the combined effects of the cure and her own genetic makeup instead awakened latent psychic powers in the doctor. After confronting Ticia, Raquella became the tacit leader of the Sorceresses and began their transformation into the Sisterhood of Rossak, which would in time become the Bene Gesserit.