Spacing Guild: the monopoly on space travel

Are the Bene Gesserit Evil?

The Bene Gesserit test children with poison, breed people like livestock and plant false prophecies on whole planets. They also spend ten thousand years trying to keep humanity alive. Here is what Frank Herbert's novels show on both sides, and how to read it.

Arrakis Revolt

The Arrakis Revolt was the uprising of the Fremen of Arrakis under Paul Atreides in the closing stage of the Desert War. Waged as a guerrilla campaign against the Harkonnen occupiers, it crippled spice production, drew in the Padishah Emperor, and ended with the fall of House Corrino.

Atomics: the forbidden arsenals of the Great Houses

Atomics was the Imperial term for nuclear weapons of mass destruction, the fission devices every Great House hoarded but almost never dared to use. The Great Convention made their offensive use against human targets grounds for planetary annihilation, yet the Houses kept their family arsenals in reserve, and history recorded the terrible occasions on which the ban failed.

Battle of Arrakeen

The Battle of Arrakeen was the pivotal engagement of the Arrakis Revolt, fought between Muad'Dib Paul Atreides's Fremen and the Sardaukar of Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV. The Fremen routed the Imperial forces, and in the surrender that followed Paul won control of the known universe.

Battle of Denali

The Battle of Denali was the last engagement of the galactic civil war, fought between Venport Holdings and the forces of Emperor Roderick Corrino over the hidden research planet of Denali. It ended Venport Holdings, destroyed the robot Erasmus, and led directly to the founding of the Spacing Guild.

Bolig Avati

Bolig Avati was the Lead Administrator of the Ixian Technocrat Council, who conspired with his fellow technocrats to seize Ix from the House of Vernius. He repeatedly schemed against Earl Rhombur Vernius and was executed after the Qizarate found the Council complicit in heresy.

Butlerian Jihad: the war on thinking machines

It began with a slave rebellion on Earth in 201 BG and ended at Corrin in 88 BG. Out of it came the ban on machines in the likeness of a mind.

C'tair Pilru: rebel of occupied Ix

C'tair Pilru was an Ixian resistance fighter who was instrumental in restoring House Vernius as the rulers of Ix. Twin brother of the Guild Navigator D'murr Pilru, he failed the Guild's final test, survived the Tleilaxu conquest of his homeworld in hiding, and waged an underground war of sabotage until the planet was retaken.

Cammar Pilru: Ix's ambassador in exile

Cammar Pilru was the Ixian ambassador to the Imperial Court on Kaitain during the Suboid Revolt and the Tleilaxu conquest of Ix. He lost his wife to the invasion and his planet to a conspiracy he could not see, yet he kept an embassy in exile alive for more than two decades and helped secure the heir who continued House Vernius.

CHOAM

CHOAM, the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles, was the vast commercial monopoly that governed nearly all trade across the Imperium. Its directorships were the true measure of political power, and its profits, many of them tied to the spice melange, sustained the Great Houses.

Corysta

Corysta was a Bene Gesserit sister exiled to the water-world of Buzzell, where she defied her order by trying to keep her child and later raised an abandoned Phibian boy she named Sea Child.

Cristane

Cristane was a Bene Gesserit sister and commando in the Prelude to Dune novels. Sent to Ix to uncover the secret of Project Amal, she penetrated the Tleilaxu laboratories before being captured, converted into an axlotl tank, and destroyed.