Vorian Atreides

Vorian Atreides was the first person to bear the name of Atreides and the forerunner of the house that would one day rule the Known Universe. Born in 223 BG on Earth as the thirteenth son of the Titan General Agamemnon, he served the thinking machines as a human trustee before changing his loyalties amid the rebellion on Earth and fleeing to the League of Nobles. He rose to become one of the great commanders of the Butlerian Jihad, reaching the rank of Supreme Commander of the Army of the Jihad and later Supreme Bashar of the Army of Humanity. His most famous victory came at the Battle of Corrin in 88 BG, the same event that sparked the long feud between the Atreides and the Harkonnen through his judgment of Abulurd Harkonnen.

Early life and service to the machines#

Vorian was born on Earth to a human slave who had been impregnated with the sperm of the Titan General Agamemnon, making him the thirteenth of the Titan's sons. He never knew his mother and spent little time with his father, yet grew a deep bond of admiration for him. His intelligence and charisma earned him a position as a human trustee in the empire of Omnius, where his chief duty was to accompany the independent robot Seurat aboard one of the evermind's update ships, which he jokingly named the Dream Voyager.

Loyal to his father and the Titans' cause, Vorian initially hoped to one day be made a cymek himself. After he used quick thinking to escape the League Armada above Giedi Prime in 203 BG, Agamemnon rewarded him with life extension treatment that dramatically slowed his aging.

Change of loyalties#

Vorian's certainty began to crack after he met Serena Butler, captured at Giedi Prime and held as a slave in the household of the robot Erasmus on Earth. Her defiance led him to question the Titans' version of history. When he examined the more pragmatic records of Omnius aboard the Dream Voyager, he discovered the brutality his father had committed during the Hrethgir Rebellions and Agamemnon's cold execution of his own first twelve sons. Disillusioned, Vorian abandoned the machines during the rebellion on Earth, deactivating Seurat and carrying Serena Butler and Iblis Ginjo to Salusa Secundus aboard the Dream Voyager.

The League distrusted the son of Agamemnon. He was interrogated, examined for hidden machine devices, and finally cleared after the Supreme Sorceress Zufa Cenva, who could detect spoken lies, blessed him. During the Battle of Earth he was ordered to guard the warhead-carrying bombers, but abandoned his post to intercept a fleeing Omnius update ship, capturing its gelsphere and denying the machines the dead Earth-Omnius's final orders. Branded a coward by some, he was vindicated when he presented the captured sphere.

Rise in the Army of the Jihad#

Over the following decades Vorian became a major military figure, known for bold and inventive tactics. He grew close to Xavier Harkonnen, a commander of equal talent but very different temperament, and was promoted to Primero by 185 BG. He was the first to recognize that the destruction of machine industry at Bela Tegeuse achieved nothing lasting, since the machines simply rebuilt.

In 179 BG he persuaded the Jihad Council that the Army should defend the Unallied Planets as well as the League Worlds, using tactical projections to show how Omnius was seizing fringe systems. He commanded the space defense at the Battle of IV Anbus in 177 BG, driving off a machine fleet with a programmed signal that made the Jihad force appear far larger, and devised the defensive ruse that repelled the assault on Poritrin in 176 BG. While visiting the ocean world of Caladan under the name Virk, he had an affair with a local woman, Leronica Tergiet, who bore him the twin sons Estes and Kagin Atreides.

Supreme Commander and the Great Purge#

Vorian outlasted his contemporaries to reach the supreme rank of the Army of the Jihad. He befriended Xavier Harkonnen's grandson, the lesser loved Abulurd Butler, revealing to him the truth about his grandfather and approving when Abulurd reclaimed the name Harkonnen. When the Omnius Scourge devastated the League in 108 BG, it was through his granddaughter Raquella Berto-Anirul that the spice melange was found to combat the disease, news Vorian carried to the League Parliament.

Learning that Omnius planned to follow the plague with a strike against Salusa Secundus, Vorian convinced the League to launch the Great Purge, a coordinated foldspace nuclear assault on every Synchronized World. He secretly ordered Norma Cenva to install banned computerized navigation systems to reduce spacefolding losses, and conceived the pulse-scrambler satellites that would trap Omnius on Corrin. When the surviving fleet reached Corrin, he activated the satellite net, sealing the evermind on the planet and ending the Jihad's main phase.

The Battle of Corrin and the feud#

After the Jihad, Vorian inherited the rank of Supreme Bashar but found the League grown complacent, dismissing his warnings about the surviving cymeks as the ravings of a relic. In 88 BG he infiltrated his father's last stronghold on Hessra and orchestrated the destruction of the final Titans, personally killing Agamemnon and refusing the General's plea to begin a new Time of Titans together. For this he was named Champion of Serena.

The experience left him more direct and determined, and his lieutenant Abulurd Harkonnen compared him to a hawk, the symbol Vorian then adopted for his family. Vorian pressed for and led the final attack on Corrin aboard the LS Serena Victory. When Erasmus strung two million slaves into orbit as the Bridge of Hrethgir, Vorian ordered the fleet through regardless, while a horrified Abulurd disobeyed and disabled the fleet's weapons. The trigger never fired, defused by Erasmus over his own ward, and the bloody victory was won. During the battle Vorian destroyed his old companion Seurat, who had betrayed him by firing on his flagship.

After the victory Vorian recommended that Abulurd not be executed but branded a coward and exiled to Lankiveil under the permanent, disgraced name of Harkonnen, swearing that the Atreides would forever spit upon it. This judgment began the feud between the two houses that would endure for ten thousand years.

Later wanderings#

Granted leave to keep his rank, Vorian turned his back on the new Corrino Imperium and wandered the Known Universe in a ship he christened the New Voyager. He settled for a time on the backwater world of Kepler with his wife Mariella Atreides, and when Emperor Salvador Corrino grew fearful that the old hero might incite revolution, Vorian withdrew into deeper exile on Arrakis. There the feud caught up with him: Abulurd's descendant Griffin Harkonnen pursued him, only to be killed by surviving children of Agamemnon, and Valya Harkonnen, who hated Vorian above all others, plotted vengeance against his entire line. Through the long climax of the feud Vorian survived attempts on his life, while his Caladan descendants, led by Willem Atreides, founded House Atreides itself in his honor and in opposition to the rising House Harkonnen.