Tleilax
homeworld of the Bene Tleilax
Tleilax is the lone planet of the Thalim star and the homeworld of the Bene Tleilax, a religious and xenophobic people known for their Face Dancers, their gholas and the twisted Mentats trained there.
Tleilax is the lone planet of the Thalim star and the homeworld of the Bene Tleilax, a secretive, deeply religious and xenophobic people of genetic engineers. The glossary of Dune knows it first as a renegade training centre for Mentats. The later novels make it the source of the engineered beings the Tleilaxu are feared for across the Imperium, including Face Dancers and gholas. (Dune (appendix); Dune Messiah; Heretics of Dune)
Environment and settlements#
Frank Herbert says little about the planet's surface. Heretics of Dune takes the reader into its holy city, Bandalong, the heart of Tleilaxu power, where no outsider, no powindah in the Tleilaxu word, is allowed to set foot. The Masters guard the city and their faith from the rest of humanity, and it is there that Tylwyth Waff and the other Masters plot their return to power. (Heretics of Dune)
Tleilaxu industry#
The Bene Tleilax are a race of genetic engineers, and their homeworld is the seat of that work. In Dune Messiah they sell Paul the ghola Hayt, grown from the dead Duncan Idaho, and their shape-changing Face Dancers can take on any face. The rest of the Imperium relies on their products while holding the Tleilaxu themselves at arm's length. (Dune Messiah; Heretics of Dune)
Later renown#
The earliest mention of Tleilax is also its most notorious. The Terminology of the Imperium printed with Dune describes it as a renegade training centre for Mentats and the source of twisted Mentats, human computers conditioned outside the orthodox schools. The Baron Harkonnen's Mentat Piter de Vries is one of them. (Dune (appendix); Dune)
Frequently asked questions
- What is Tleilax?
- Tleilax is the lone planet of the Thalim star and the homeworld of the Bene Tleilax, a deeply religious and xenophobic people of genetic engineers feared across the Imperium for their Face Dancers and gholas.
- What is Tleilax like?
- Frank Herbert says little about the surface. Heretics of Dune shows its holy city of Bandalong, which no outsider is allowed to enter.
- What was Bandalong?
- Bandalong is the Tleilaxu holy city on Tleilax, seen in Heretics of Dune. It is closed to outsiders.
- What was Tleilax known for producing?
- The biological products grown on Tleilax included the shape-changing Face Dancers and gholas regrown from the cells of the dead. These products made the Bene Tleilax a power the rest of the Imperium relied upon yet held at arm's length.
- What are the twisted Mentats of Tleilax?
- The glossary of Dune describes Tleilax as a renegade training centre for Mentats and the source of twisted Mentats, human computers conditioned outside the orthodox schools. Piter de Vries, the Baron Harkonnen's Mentat, is one.
Gallery
Images via Dune Wiki
Sources
- BookDune (appendix), Frank Herbert, 1965; Terminology of the Imperium printed with Dune
- BookDune, Frank Herbert, Chilton Books, 1965
- BookDune Messiah, Frank Herbert, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1969
- BookHeretics of Dune, Frank Herbert, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1984
Spotted a factual error or a primary source we missed? Email a correction. Every flagged claim gets reviewed.
Followed from this entry
Bene Tleilax: gholas, Face Dancers, tanks
Reviled across the Imperium and needed by every part of it. The Tleilaxu axolotl tanks produced gholas, Face Dancers and Twisted Mentats to order.
Face Dancer
Face Dancers were a sterile race of metamorphic transhumans engineered by the Bene Tleilax in their axolotl tanks. Able to replicate the form, voice, and personality of any human, they served as entertainers, spies, and assassins, and in their final refined breed became weapons of conquest.
Ghola
A ghola was an artificially regrown human, replicated from the cells of a dead individual in the axlotl tanks of the Bene Tleilax. Originally created without the memories of the source being, gholas were later made to recover those memories through trauma, a technique that shaped the secret history of the Imperium.
Hayt
Hayt was the name given to the first Duncan Idaho ghola, grown by the Bene Tleilax and presented to Emperor Paul Atreides as a gift that concealed a weapon. Trained as a Mentat, he came to love Alia Atreides before recovering his original memories in the crisis that followed Chani's death.
Piter de Vries
Piter de Vries was a Twisted Mentat developed by the Bene Tleilax who served Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. An ambitious and impatient sadist, he devised the conspiracy that destroyed House Atreides before dying in the trap left by Duke Leto's poisoned tooth.
Mentat: the human mind built as a computer
The Jihad outlawed machines in the likeness of a mind, so the Houses trained people instead. Mentats served as advisors, strategists and killers.
Mentioned in10 entries
Bene Tleilax: gholas, Face Dancers, tanks
Reviled across the Imperium and needed by every part of it. The Tleilaxu axolotl tanks produced gholas, Face Dancers and Twisted Mentats to order.
Emperor's Blade: the Corrino dagger that shadowed Muad'Dib
The Emperor's Blade was a jewel hilted dagger handed down from Emperor to Emperor of House Corrino. Given to Duke Leto Atreides and returned, offered to Feyd Rautha for his death duel with Paul Atreides, and driven into Muad'Dib by Count Fenring, it ended its known history enshrined on Caladan, where the blood preserved on its edge yielded the clone Paolo.
Enhanced Face Dancer
Enhanced Face Dancers were a refined breed of Tleilaxu shape changer first released into deep space by Hidar Fen Ajidica and later improved by the Thinking Machines. Undetectable even by the Bene Gesserit, they served Omnius and Erasmus while secretly pursuing their own ascendancy, until Erasmus destroyed them all with a hidden kill switch.
Harishka
Harishka was Mother Superior of the Bene Gesserit through the Turbulent Era, guiding the Sisterhood across the last years of Elrood IX and the reigns of Shaddam IV and Paul Atreides. She watched over the final steps of the Kwisatz Haderach breeding program.
Ingva
Ingva was an Honored Matre who served as chief assistant to the Great Honored Matre Hellica on Tleilax during the days before Kralizec. She dominated and tormented the Tleilaxu scribe Uxtal as he grew gholas, and died in the New Sisterhood's assault on Bandalong.
Janess Idaho
Janess Idaho was a daughter of the final Duncan Idaho ghola and the Honored Matres leader Murbella, raised within the Sisterhood on Chapterhouse. She rose to command the Valkyries and then to Supreme Bashar of all the New Sisterhood's forces during the war against the Thinking Machines.
Khrone
Khrone was the true leader of the Tleilaxu Enhanced Face Dancers, a secret Myriad that posed as servants of the reborn thinking machines while plotting to inherit the universe once humanity and the machines had destroyed one another.
Planet: worlds of the Known Universe
In the cosmography of the Imperium, a planet was a celestial body in orbit around a star, neither a star itself nor a moon, that had swept its orbital region clear as it formed. From Old Earth outward, humanity settled thousands of such worlds, from the deserts of Arrakis to the oceans of Caladan.
Twisted Mentat: the human computer built without a conscience
Twisted Mentats were human computers produced on Tleilax rather than trained by the legitimate schools, their body structure, emotional nature and psychological make-up altered to a buyer's order. Stripped of the ethical framework that bound ordinary Mentats, they could hypothesise and strategise without restraint, and the most infamous of them, Piter de Vries, served Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.
Uxtal
Uxtal was a Lost Tleilaxu scribe spared in the Face Dancer purge of Tleilax and forced into servitude. He grew gholas of Vladimir Harkonnen, Paul Atreides, and a Tleilaxu Master for masters who held his life hostage, and died devoured by sligs near Bandalong.
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