War of the League of Nobles and Synchronized Empire

The war between the League of Nobles and the Synchronized Empire was a long war of attrition that pitted free humanity against the thinking machines ruled by the evermind Omnius. It stretched across many centuries before finally collapsing into the Butlerian Jihad. Its closing campaigns, fought over worlds such as Giedi Prime and the Sorceress homeworld of Rossak, drew in the Titan Agamemnon, the human captive Serena Butler, and the militia officer Xavier Harkonnen, and produced the first encounter between Xavier and the trustee turncoat Vorian Atreides.

Origins and the long stalemate#

In 1182 BG, at the end of the Time of Titans, the evermind Omnius established the Synchronized Empire after usurping the worlds the Titans had controlled. Shortly afterward Omnius launched his first attacks against the League of Nobles, beginning a war that would last for centuries.

For most of that span the conflict was a stand-off. In 603 BG Omnius launched an unsuccessful assault against the League world of Chusuk. The last of the great machine offensives of this period struck the League capital world of Salusa Secundus in 303 BG. In 203 BG Omnius resolved to push the centuries-old deadlock to a new level after the Titan Barbarossa won a wager against the evermind in a duel between cymek and robot, and Omnius agreed to heighten the war.

The Battle of Zimia#

The renewed offensive opened with an attack on Salusa Secundus. A robotic fleet led by Agamemnon, riding inside a pyramid-shaped vessel, arrived ten times the size of any force Omnius had previously sent against the League. The machine ships vaporized the outer perimeter of human defenses, and only a few distant scouts managed to warn the ground.

Because Salusa Secundus was protected by a Holtzman shield network, Agamemnon and a vanguard of cymeks pressed forward to disrupt the defense grid. Cymeks shut down the systems of their pyramidal ships so their dropcarriages would fall unguided through the atmosphere, crash-landing on the outskirts of the prime city of Zimia, where the main shield-generating towers stood.

The Salusan Militia responded. Tercero Xavier Harkonnen, dispatched from the military control center with a portable com-station, witnessed the cymeks hatching from the pyramid ships and understood why the shields had been useless. A dropcarriage then levelled the control center and killed his commanders, and Xavier claimed temporary charge of the Militia. Recognizing that the cymeks were driving toward the shield generators, he ordered the troops to fall back and defend the generators as the single most vital target, leaving the rest of Zimia exposed to fire and poison gas. Xavier rode a kindjal and directed a concentrated assault against each cymek in turn. Six cymeks were destroyed before the survivors abandoned their warrior-forms and ejected their preservation canisters into space for the orbiting fleet to recover. Xavier was afterward promoted to Segundo, but having inhaled toxic gas he had his lungs and olfactory organs replaced, keeping only a fraction of his sense of smell and taste.

The conquest of Giedi Prime#

Omnius answered by attacking Giedi Prime. Spy watcheyes had earlier mapped the system, letting Agamemnon exploit a weakness in the planetary defenses. The defenders had erected scrambler fields centered on the transmitting towers in Giedi City, guarded by orbital forces and kindjal fighters.

The machine fleet brushed aside the orbital defenses, and Agamemnon led the cymek ships in alongside sacrificial cruisers. One enormous cruiser, its holds packed with explosives, accelerated into the atmosphere faster than ground defenses could target it and slammed into the field transmitters on the outskirts of Giedi City, gouging a crater half a kilometer wide. With the shields neutralized, the robots came down in force. The planet was conquered with no loss of cymeks. Agamemnon and Barbarossa walked through the city and reached the residence of Magnus Sumi, and when the governor refused to bow, Agamemnon struck him a blow so forceful it tore the man's torso in half. Barbarossa then installed a gelsphere mainframe and uploaded the newest version of Omnius's mind.

The liberation of Giedi Prime#

Serena Butler, incensed by the League's inaction, covertly organized a task force to repair the planet's shield stations and time the work to coincide with a League assault. She chose the veteran Ort Wibsen to lead the strike force, with Brigit Paterson and the Giedi emissary Pinquer Jibb. They infiltrated Giedi Prime's atmosphere and reached the north polar island where the secondary shield-transmitting station lay, wiring the substations over the following week.

When the League armada arrived under Xavier Harkonnen, Omnius launched a counterattack, but Paterson activated the shields, neutralizing the gelcircuitry of the machine ships as they took off and crushing them on the surface while trapping the orbiting fleet outside. Wibsen sacrificed himself to let the blockade runner escape, but cymeks broke in and killed Jibb, and the Titan Barbarossa spared Serena to carry her to Erasmus. The Sorceress Heoma volunteered for a suicide mission, landing under guard and confronting Omnius and Barbarossa; her psychic blast killed Barbarossa and left the freshly installed Omnius vulnerable, and Xavier's armada finished it off and recaptured the planet.

The update ship Dream Voyager then arrived to deliver the first update to the Giedi-Omnius, unaware it had been destroyed. Xavier fired on the ship, but Vorian Atreides claimed it had been stolen by humans, asked for a cease-fire, then returned fire and outran the League forces back to Earth. It was the first meeting of Xavier and Vor. Serena was announced dead, though in truth she had been taken as a hostage to Earth to serve Erasmus.

The Assault on Rossak#

After Dante identified the Sorceress who had killed Barbarossa as coming from Rossak, the Titans resolved on retaliation, and Agamemnon won Omnius's permission to lead Juno and Xerxes against the Sorceress homeworld with a force of neo-cymeks. In 201 BG the machine fleet plunged toward Rossak, brushing aside its sentry stations, and landers began burning the foliage and incinerating pathways toward the cliff tunnel cities.

Zufa Cenva had prompted her lover Aurelius Venport to evacuate the unskilled population to his jungle caches and shelters while she gathered her Sorceress commandos. She sent Camio to strike first, and the Sorceress unleashed a mindstorm that boiled the brains of the nearest neo-cymeks. As more Sorceresses emerged, the cymeks again learned that the Sorceresses were a dangerous foe and began to retreat. The attack was driven off, but at heavy cost: many Sorceresses were killed and large parts of the jungle were burned. In time Aurelius Venport brought the scattered refugees back, and under his supervision the people rebuilt the cliff cities.

End of the war#

The long war finally collapsed in the Rebellion on Earth, led by Serena Butler and Iblis Ginjo, followed by the Battle of Earth that destroyed every thinking machine on the planet. From that wreckage rose the Butlerian Jihad, the coordinated holy war against the thinking machines that would dominate the next century.