Tylwyth Waff: the Tleilaxu Master who bet the Bene Tleilax on the Sisterhood
Tylwyth Waff was a Tleilaxu Master and Masheikh, tacit leader of the Ruling Council when the Honored Matres returned. He had lived thousands of years through ghola replacements, allied with the Bene Gesserit in the belief they were true Zensunni, and died on Rakis when the Honored Matres destroyed it.
Tylwyth Waff was a Tleilaxu Master, or Mahai, and a Masheikh, and during the return of the Honored Matres he was the tacit leader of the Ruling Council. That gave him effective control over the direction of the Bene Tleilax at the exact moment the Bene Tleilax ran out of road. (Heretics of Dune)
Who was Tylwyth Waff?#
Waff was a Masheikh and Tleilaxu Master who led the Ruling Council in all but formal title, which made him the man setting Tleilaxu policy when the Honored Matres arrived. (Heretics of Dune)
His longevity was standard for his rank and still worth stating plainly. Masheikhs did not live long lives, they lived serial ones, each ghola body carrying forward what the last had known. Waff had been doing that for thousands of years, and the religious project he guided was old enough that the Tleilaxu had built their reach for power around it rather than the other way round. (Heretics of Dune)
The alliance with the Bene Gesserit#
Waff read the return of the Honored Matres as an existential problem, correctly, and went to the Bene Gesserit for an answer. (Heretics of Dune)
What made him do it was a religious judgement rather than a strategic one. He took the Sisterhood for true believers of the Zensunni faith, which is a mistake with a certain elegance to it, given that the Bene Gesserit had spent centuries manufacturing exactly that kind of belief in other people. The alliance produced nothing that changed the outcome. (Heretics of Dune)
How did Tylwyth Waff die?#
He died on Rakis, when the Honored Matres destroyed the world. In Chapterhouse: Dune they go on to wipe out very nearly the whole of the Bene Tleilax. (Heretics of Dune; Chapterhouse: Dune)
Sources
- BookHeretics of Dune, Frank Herbert, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1984
- BookChapterhouse: Dune, Frank Herbert, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1985
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.
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.
Tleilaxu Master
Tleilaxu Masters were the elite caste of the Bene Tleilax, served by gholas and Face Dancers and immune to the Bene Gesserit Voice. The ten Masheikhs of the Ruling Council stood at the summit of their order.
Bene Gesserit
The Bene Gesserit were an ancient order of women who wielded power from the shadows of the Imperium through a millennia-long breeding program, mastery of body and mind, and the religious engineering of the Missionaria Protectiva. Their goal was the Kwisatz Haderach, and through him the guidance of humanity.
Honored Matres: the Sisterhood's dark mirror
They came out of uncharted space fifteen centuries after the God Emperor died, and took worlds by sexual enslavement and outright destruction.
Zensunni
Zensunni was a mystical denomination of Buddislam that took root among disadvantaged and enslaved peoples across the known universe, above all the Fremen of Arrakis. Born of a schism around 1381 BG, it stressed the mystical and a reversion to the ways of the fathers, and was later steered by the Bene Gesserit.
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