Dune - the second trilogy

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Dune - the second trilogy deals with the last three books from the Dune cycle by Frank Herbert . The third volume was no longer completed and after Herbert's death, split into two volumes, published by his son and estate administrator Brian Herbert .

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The Heretics of the Desert Planet Volume 5 (Heretics of Dune)

prehistory

About 1500 years after the death of Leto II, the peoples of the diaspora return to the old empire and ask the question of power. Their spearheads are the Honored Matres, an order of women similar to the Bene Gesserit, who established a brutal regime on some planets of the old empire through sexual enslavement and sheer numbers. Bene Gesserit and Bene Tleilax, the last remaining powers of order, seek to counter the new threat. The attempt of the Tleilaxu to play the two orders against each other fails. The latest generation of shapeshifters is used against the Honored Matres. Although these converters are very difficult to identify, the maneuver is exposed, which ultimately leads to the total annihilation of the Tleilaxu civilization.

Meanwhile, the Bene Gesserit on Gammu (formerly Giedi Primus) are raising a new Duncan Idaho Ghola, whose reflexes and responsiveness have been adapted to the requirements of modern times. He is supposed to control Sheeana on the desert planet , a girl from the desert of Rakis (formerly Arrakis ) who, as predicted in the ancient prophecies, can command the new worms.

The base on Gammu is under attack. Miles Teg , the Bashar of the Bene Gesserit, the Duncan Ghola and the Venerable Mother Lucilla can take refuge in a secret hiding place. Miles Teg is captured while trying to contact the Bene Gesserit again.

Duncan and Lucilla continue to flee and meet the Honored Mater Murbella . She tries to make Duncan submissive to the Honored Matres through sexual imprinting. This fails because of a secret program programmed into his cells by the Tleilaxu, which is activated at the moment when a mint (actually it should be a Bene Gesserit) tries her luck. Then the person to be embossed shapes the embosser. Murbella and Duncan become indissolubly interdependent.

During an interrogation with a consciousness probe, Miles Teg awakens to superhuman abilities. He uses these skills to hijack an Honored Matres non-ship. On the desert planet, he brings Odrade , Sheeana, and a sandworm on board and dies when Arrakis is burned to cinder by the Honored Matres. But the precious cargo of the non-ship escapes on the Ordensburg planet.

Action characters and groups

  • Taraza , mother superior of the Bene Gesserit, dies in an attack on Sheeana.
  • Darwi Odrade , Venerable Mother of the Bene Gesserit, is the leader of the Sheeana Project and successor to Taraza as Mother Superior.
  • Miles Teg , retired Bashar der Bene Gesserit, instructor of the Duncan Idaho Ghola, reconstructs its original memories.
  • Patrin , friend and adjutant of Miles Teg, sacrifices himself for the escape from the Gammu fortress.
  • Schwangyu , Venerable Mother of the Bene Gesserit, Commander of the Gammu Fortress, opposes the Ghola project.
  • Lucilla , Venerable Mother of the Bene Gesserit, is supposed to sexually shape the Duncan Idaho Ghola.
  • Burzmali , Bashar the Bene Gesserit, is Miles Teg's favorite student.
  • Duncan Idaho Ghola , updated model, supposed to control Rakis Sheeana.
  • Sheeana Brugh , desert child on the planet Rakis, can control the sandworms.
  • Murbella , Dear Mater, is sexually counter-imprinted by the Duncan Idaho Ghola and is captured by the Bene Gesserit.
  • Waff , Abdl (Master of Masters) of Tleilaxu, negotiates a comprehensive collaboration between Bene Gesserit and Bene Tleilax.
  • Hedley Tuek , high priest of the Dissected God Leto II , is replaced by a perfect shapeshifter.
  • Bene Gesserit , defend yourself and the Empire against the Honored Matres.
  • Dear matres , try to occupy the old empire.
  • Tleilaxu , play a daring game and lose.
  • Fremen , the priesthood of the Dissected God, discover Sheeana and try to harness her for their goals.

Rearing the Duncan Idaho Ghola

Because of the modifications of the original cells required by the sisterhood, this Idaho ghola has to grow up on the original home planet Duncan, on Giedi Primus, now renamed Gammu. Venerable Mother Schwangyu, Commander of Gammu Fortress, is the first instructor of the Ghola. She is fundamentally against the project and does everything possible to sabotage it. Because of obvious injustices and because Schwangyu treats him like a thing, Duncan hates the Bene Gesserit.

Taraza finally sends her "personal" Bashar Miles Teg to guarantee the safety and adequate training of the ghola. The venerable mother Lucilla follows later, who is supposed to make his sexual imprint. The ghola learns very quickly. He recognizes his ghola nature and begins to ask questions that nobody wants to answer him.

Before Lucilla can shape him, there is a major attack on the Gammu fortress. Duncan escapes with Miles Teg and Lucilla. Because Patrin, Miles's personal aide and friend, sacrifices himself, they reach an ancient Harkonnen non-sphere that Patrin discovered in his youth. There Miles completes Duncan Idaho's training and recalls his original memories.

Sheeana on Arrakis

After Sheeana has spent several years under the care of the priests of the Divided God, she knows quite well how to assess her position there. She has power and ousts the high priest Tuek from his rooms, which will be hers from now on. An attack by the Tleilaxu and parts of the opposing priesthood on Sheeana's life gives the Bene Gesserit the opportunity to at least partially wrest her from the hands of the theocrats. Darwi Odrade brings her to the benefit of a full Bene Gesserit training and accepts her into the sisterhood. With a full-grown sandworm in the hold, she leaves the desert planet shortly before it is destroyed by the Honored Matres and travels to the Order Castle.

Positions of the Bene Tleilax

Waff, the master of the masters of the Bene Tleilax, negotiates with the Honored Matres and the Bene Gesserit. He would like to play the two women's orders off against each other. The Honored Matres request information about the ghola that the Bene Gesserit raise on Gammu. They demand total submission to the Tleilaxu and offer their benevolence in return. Waff does not realize how serious the Honored Matres are with such threats. He replaces the negotiating Honored Mater and her entourage with shapeshifters of the new type and sends them back to their troops.

Negotiations are more difficult with the Bene Gesserit. But after Mother Superior Taraza discovered that the Tleilaxu were secret Zensunni Sufis, things got easier. Her further memories know all the secrets of this secret religion, so that Waff finally gains confidence. He travels to Rakis to sign contracts with the Bene Gesserit in the face of Shai-Hulud. During an excursion into the desert, riding a sandworm driven by Sheeana, it turns out that Shai-Hulud also has plans of his own. The worm brings its riders to old Sietch Tabr. There Odrade discovers a message from the tyrant in a secret chamber that has been waiting for the sisterhood there for millennia. This message shakes her self-assurance as Bene Gesserit badly. She agrees with Waff that the sisterhood will proselytize for the Bene Tleilax and the Great Faith in the future. In addition, the Tleilaxu should have access to all breeding records of the order and to "single-variety" breeding material. In return, Waff promises unlimited melan deliveries and a demonstration of the Honored Matres' sexual subjugation techniques.

Events on Gammu

Miles Teg, Duncan Idaho and Lucilla spend several weeks in the Harkonnen's ancient non-sphere. Burzmali , a former student of Miles and Bashar the Bene Gesserit, finally discovers the hiding place and organizes the next stage of the escape from this planet.

In keeping with Miles Teg's motto: Do ​​the unexpected, he brings the Ghola and Lucilla to safety for the time being. But his old teacher falls into the hands of the enemy. In captivity, he is interrogated with a so-called T-probe, a product of the Diaspora. Miles, full of the drug Shere , suffers an agony similar to that of the Bene Gesserit during interrogation. His consciousness jumps into a higher, completely unknown state. He can see into the future for a few minutes and gains a physical speed that makes even the Honored Matres' extraordinary reflexes seem slow.

Miles flees to former comrades-in-arms who take him to a safe place. The new skills increase his energy requirements immensely. In hiding he eats a meal that has rarely been eaten before.

Burzmali tries to smuggle Lucilla and Duncan out of Gammu under cover. The escape will be a disaster. The Honored Mater Murbella awaits you at the destination. When she tries to sexually subjugate the ghola, the cell secrets that the Bene Tleilax have hidden in this ghola awaken. The imprint evokes the primary memories of all the Duncan Idahos that had been brought to life over the millennia. In addition, the Tleilaxu have also given the mechanisms by which the Honored Matres create sexual bondage to this ghola. So while Murbella tries to shape him, he actually shapes Murbella. A hopeless interdependence is the result. Lucilla captures the weakened Murbella.

final

Miles Teg uses his new skills to destroy the Honored Matres Field Marshal, Muzzafar, and the Great Honored Mater of Gammu. He then destroys their headquarters. In the tavern of an old regimental comrade, he puts together a powerful combat group with which he hijacks a non-ship. He collects Burzmali, Lucilla, the Ghola and Murbella and flies to the desert planets.

His new predictive senses tell him where in the desert he will meet Sheeana and Odrade, who are fleeing the capital on horseback. The worm, Sheeana and Odrade board the no-ship, Miles Teg disembark. He wants to drive the Honored Matres on the desert planet to despair with targeted commando actions. He succeeds so well that they finally burn the whole planet to cinder in order to eliminate the disruptive factor Miles Teg.

Odrade, Sheeana and the worm fly to the cathedral monastery. There the worm is released, digs in and disintegrates into sand trout. The first step to a new desert planet has been taken.

The order castle of the desert planet Volume 6 (Chapterhouse: Dune)

prehistory

Several years have passed. The Domstift planet is developing more and more into a desert every day. The mother house of the Bene Gesserit is located on this planet and from here they watch the attacks of the Honored Matres. The Honored Matres have since destroyed 16 planets of the Bene Gesserit. The Bene Tleilax civilization was completely wiped out. Only Scytale, the last Tleilaxu master, lives as a prisoner on a non-ship with the Bene Gesserit. He has entrusted the sisterhood with the basic secrets of the axolotl tanks. The Bene Gesserit can therefore produce melange and gholas itself.

But Scytale has kept his biggest secret to himself. In his chest, hidden in a zero-entropy capsule, he carries the entire genetic material of the Tleilaxu and many legendary people of the past (Leto I., Stilgar, Chani, and many others).

The Bene Gesserit prepare the final blow against the Honored Matres and gather their strength. They study the only Honored Mater imprisoned, Murbella, and gradually make her a Bene Gesserit. She lives with Duncan Idaho and Scytale on the captured no-ship of the Honored Matres. Duncan is not allowed to leave the ship because he does not have “Siona's blood” in him and therefore could be found by opposing clairvoyants.

Action characters and groups

  • Darwi Odrade , mother superior of the Bene Gesserit, dies in an attack on the Way of the Cross.
  • Miles Teg Ghola, Atreide's descendant, father of Odrade, most ingenious Bashar of the Bene Gesserit, leads the final attack on the Honored Matres.
  • Lucilla , Venerable Mother of Bene Gesserit, head of the Lampadas training center, survived the attack by the honored Matres and went into the care of the rabbi.
  • Burzmali , Bashar the Bene Geserit, favorite student of Miles Teg, dies defending Lampadas.
  • Duncan Idaho Ghola , Mentat, armorer of the Bene Gesserit, lover of Murbella, finally flees into unexplored space.
  • Sheeana Brugh , who oversees the new desert planet project on the order castle, can control the sandworms, intrigues with Duncan against Odrades plans, in the end escapes with Duncan and some sandworms.
  • Murbella , Honored Mater, becomes a Bene Gesserit in captivity and, ultimately, Superior of both the Bene Gesserit and the Honored Matres.
  • Dortujla , Venerable Mother from the Bene Gesserit penal planet Buzzell, bearer of the Sisterhood's offer of surrender to the Supreme Honored Mater on the Way of the Cross.
  • Scytale , the last master of the Tleilaxu, hands over essential secrets of the Tleilaxu genetic engineering to the Bene Gesserit takes his last secret on the escape into the universal outback.
  • The rabbi , head of Secret Israel, an ultra-secret Jewish community.
  • Rebecca , “wild” venerable mother of the Secret Israel, takes over the millions of Lampadas from Lucilla's mind.
  • Bellonda , mentor of Bene Gesserit, archive manager at the cathedral pen, represents the opposition within the sisterhood.
  • Dama , Supreme Honored Mater, dies in a poison attack by her adjutant.
  • Logno , adjutant of the Supreme Honored Mater and her successor, is killed by Murbella.

Upbringing Miles Teg

For the final blow against the Honored Matres, the Bene Gesserit need the ingenious general and strategist Miles Teg. He perished on the ancient desert planet, but Odrade isolated some of his original cells. With the help of the gene technology of the Bene Tleilax, the sisterhood breeds their first own ghola, the Bashar Miles Teg.

Time is of the essence and Odrade feels compelled to speed up Miles' training. Duncan Idaho, who is supposed to recreate the bashar's original memories, refuses to expose the child to the pain that comes with it. He and Sheeana propose instead that Miles Teg be left with a Bene Gesserit sexual impresor, knowing full well that the original Miles had been conditioned against imprinting by his mother. The experiment succeeds. The conditioning is still working and bringing him back to his original memory. In a child's body, riding on the shoulders of a Bene Gesserit, the Bashar plans and commands the final “Battle for Gammu”.

Lucilla and the fate of Lampadas

After the destruction of the training planet Lampadas, Lucilla, who carries the consciousnesses of all Venerable Mothers who died there (“The Millions of Lampadas”), stranded on Gammu. She seeks refuge with a Jewish rabbi and his community. The Rabbi cannot protect you from the Honored Matres in the long run. He suggests Lucilla transfer her memories and the millions of Lampadas to Rebecca, an uneducated Venerable Mother of the Jews. Lucilla agrees and then lets the Rabbi deliver her to the Honored Matres.

At the Honored Matres headquarters, Lucilla is interrogated and meets the Chief Honored Mater, Dama. When Dama thinks she has learned everything worth knowing, she kills Lucilla.

Rebecca, the rabbi and his congregation are hiding in a non-room that has long been prepared for such cases. The Honored Matres look in vain for them. After the Battle of Gammu, the Bene Gesserit troops discover the persecuted and Rebecca can finally return the memories of Lucilla and the millions of Lampadas to the sisterhood.

The spice problem

Scytale, the only survivor of his race and the last keeper of knowledge about the axolotl tanks, sells his knowledge to the Bene Gesserit in portions. Because he promised himself privileges and, above all, finally personal tanks and shapeshifters, he refused to provide information about the production of spices with the help of axolotl tanks.

However, the Bene Gesserit remain adamant. They know that Scytale's knowledge has an expiration date. The transformation of the order castle into a new desert planet is in progress. When the first worms are spotted in a few years at the latest, Scytale's information will be worthless and the sisterhood will finally have its own independent source of spices.

Battle for Gammu and victory on the way of the cross

For years, Odrade prepared the Sisterhood for this attack. The opposition in the ranks of the Bene Gesserit against the Mother Superior grows stronger every day. It is increasingly criticized that she does nothing against the Honored Matres. During these years she trains the people she considers necessary for the fight.

The battle begins with a political maneuver. Odrade flies with a few loyal followers to the Way of the Cross. Officially, she is supposed to negotiate the terms of surrender of the Bene Gesserit with the Honored Matres. Unofficially, she scouts the current defense positions of the Honored Matres there. Odrade puts Dama, Supreme Honored Mater, strongly on the defensive with her analyzes. She learns that the Honored Matres are actually on the run from overwhelming persecutors from the Diaspora. During this conversation, Dama is poisoned with a glass of wine by her adjutant, Logno. Logno automatically becomes the next Supreme Honored Mater himself and continues the conversation as if nothing had happened.

Meanwhile, Miles Teg carries out a mock attack on Gammu. His goal is to cause as much material damage as possible and to force the Honored Matres stationed there to flee. That works perfectly. In the second phase he attacks the Way of the Cross. With new technologies he surprises the troops of the Honored Matres and many spaceships are destroyed by his armed forces. Then he starts the ground attack. The Honored Matres and their new leader surrender quickly and without much resistance. The fight seemed over when the Honored Matres used their secret weapon from the Diaspora one last time. The soldiers of the Bene Gesserit die for no apparent reason and the outcome of the battle seems to turn.

Now Murbella is landing in her own small ship at the Honored Matres' headquarters. She pretends to be an Honored Matres double agent on duty to spy on the Bene Gesserit. A demonstration of the skills she learned from the Bene Gesserit brings her close enough to Logno to kill her easily. That makes her the Supreme Honored Mater. During a brief but violent argument with some doubting Senior Honored Matres, Odrade is killed. She transmits her last memories to Murbella, bequeathing her the position of Mother Superior of the Sisterhood. Murbella brings the Honored Matres to the Ordensburg. There they get to know and appreciate the qualities of the Bene Gesserit. In the long term, a single, stronger one should emerge from both orders.

Finale

For the opposition within the Bene Gesserit, Murbella's return with the Honored Matres is the signal to break away. Under the guidance of Duncan and Sheeana, they seize the opportune moment and flee into uncharted space with the no-ship in which Duncan is trapped. Murbella, the new superior, does not stop her, as she recognizes the correctness of this decision.

Background stories of volumes 5 and 6

This chapter deals with overarching topics of the second trilogy.

The shapeshifters over the millennia

The figure of the shapeshifter was introduced with the second volume. Scytale, a Tleilaxu master, transformed into a woman, brought an important message to Muad'Dib. His model was easy to recognize and Paul used the trap set in this way in his favor.

In the fourth volume under the god emperor, Bene Tleilax and her shapeshifters have degenerated into caricatures. The purpose of this community is to deliver his Duncan Idaho gholas to the God Emperor and to use their technology to support the Ixians in the creation of Hwi Noree.

In the fifth and sixth volumes, the Tleilaxu gradually assume a leading role within the ruling groups in the old empire. The Bene Tleilax have further developed the shapeshifters to almost perfection. It is now possible for them to copy parts of the memories of their victims. Except for the Bene Gesserit, no one could see these shapeshifters. But that's not all. The last generation of shapeshifters were finally able to perfectly copy the personality of a victim.

High Priest Hedley Tuek is one of the first to be replaced by the new shapeshifter model. In him the hubris that arises from the attempts of the Tleilaxu to produce ever more perfect shapeshifters is shown. The pseudo-Tuek is so well advised that he perfectly adopts the personality of the person who has been replaced and then flatly denies being a shapeshifter. For his former Tleilaxu masters, he is completely uncontrollable and useless.

Bene Gesserit and Honored Matres - an unequal pair of sisters

The 3500 year old tyranny of the God Emperor was a lesson for the Bene Gesserit from which they learned a lot in the long term. Under him they have become a real community that works selflessly for humanity.

In the first trilogy they only pursued their own goals without considering the common good, the Atreides' ways of thinking and behaving have now passed over to them. They create loyalty because they are loyal themselves.

Thoughts of sustainability and duration have become even more entrenched. Odrade's comment on the sentence: "We have spice for the next 1000 generations." She asks briefly: "And that's enough?"

The spice agony of the Bene Gesserit and the insight into their further memories opens up a much broader horizon for the Bene Gesserit than the Honored Matres. Nonetheless, they suffer from an elementary deficit that even the tyrant could not correct. Doctrinally they ban access to an essential core of life from their teaching; - of love and its mighty powers. The integration of deep emotions, Odrade had finally realized, would be something the Bene Gesserit would have to learn from the Honored Matres.

Passing on experiences in the cultures of the Dune cycle

Every culture has the problem that experiences, once made, die with whoever makes them. Without a traditional culture of passing on experience, the wheel would have to be reinvented with each new generation. In today's reader civilizations, education has to bear this burden. In some cultures that Frank Herbert develops in the Dune cycle, there are innovative approaches to address this question.

According to Herbert, normal people can use melange to extend their individual lifespan. However, this does not solve the problem, but instead postpones it into the future. After all, they have about 300 years to solve it.

The method of the Bene Gesserit, who pass on their knowledge from venerable mother to venerable mother, is more elegant. They accumulate the experiences of many millions of people in a pool. However, with serious disadvantages. This pool is only open to women and only if women survive the spice agony. Which brings up another complication: the spice addiction.

The Bene Tleilax ghola technology is another model that Herbert offers his readers. From the cells of a dead person, they breed a new body in their axolotl tanks. They give him back his original memories, and as soon as he dies, the process starts all over again. There is no real disadvantage with this method, except that it seems a bit morbid and unsavory.

The accumulated knowledge of IX are technologies that are stored in machines and plans of machines. They inherit knowledge about things they made up in things they made up. This method reaches its systemic limits as soon as no more new things are invented.

Helmsmen of the guild are kept alive almost indefinitely by the spice gas. The helmsman Edric is still present in the 6th part after 10,000 years. The prolongation of life, however, only pushes the problem of the transfer of experience, similar to that of normal mortals dependent on melange, further into the future. The extensive loss of humanity with which these helmsmen pay for their "immortality" is hardly outweighed by the advantages.

Honored Matres Status

In the course of Volume 6 of Frank Herbert's Dune Cycle, it becomes increasingly clear that the Honored Matres, regardless of their current supremacy in the old empire, are on the run. The description of their barbaric, high-handed government style makes this seem unsurprising.

What or who the women are fleeing from remains largely in the dark. What is certain is that the Futars, if they are accompanied by tamers, were trained to hunt Honored Matres, if not genetically engineered. The Futar Hunting Cry is designed to paralyze Honored Matres or to make them lapse into hysteria.

However, it remains uncertain who these tamers are or where they are. On the planet Buzzell some tamers and futars meet with the Bene Gesserit and offer an unspecified cooperation. To complicate the situation a little, the Honored Matres keep their captive futars in flocks for amusement and to feed them with the flesh of killed opponents.

The second threat that drives the Honored Matres back into the old Empire is an ominous biological weapon that appears to lead to mental degeneration. It is unclear who is using this weapon against them. The immunity of the Bene Gesserit against diseases of any kind is in any case one of the temptations that a cooperation between the two women's orders would suggest. The megalomaniac power demeanor of the Honored Matres excludes such a thing.

Technical developments

Technical developments and innovations that were made in the big leap in time from the fourth to the fifth volume are kept by Frank Herbert, obviously with caution, rather in approximate terms. It becomes clear that a large number of unknown modifications were made to the Ixian output technology in the Diaspora. There are no real innovations, if you disregard the ominous weapon of the Honored Matres, the functional mechanism of which indicates a variant of the neutron bomb .

Another modification from the Diaspora is the so-called T-probe with which Miles Teg was interrogated in the fifth volume. This awareness probe was apparently intended to bypass the effects of the drug Shere, but led Miles to agony and to the achievement of higher mental and physical performance.

In the old empire itself, i.e. from Ixian research, there are no new technologies. However, the Duncan Idaho Ghola fishes some “innovations” from the imaginary tachyon network of the two old men while, as armorer, prepares the final conflict between Bene Gesserit and Honored Matres. There he discovered such exotic devices as disruptors or the formula for reducing the size of the Holtzmann generator.

The transformations of the desert planet

Frank Herbert described the primary cycle from the desert planet to the green world in the first trilogy. Leto II itself makes this ecological transformation perfect and only allows the little sareer, his "personal" desert, to exist.

After Leto II's death, his body disintegrates into sand trout, which immediately begin to encapsulate the flowing water. They are slowly but surely turning the planet back into a desert. The eternal dream of Shai Hulud, the divided god trapped in a sandworm, can begin.

However, the devastation of the planet will never again assume such extreme forms as in the first two volumes. The people keep a not inconsiderable part of their territories so that a return to the original Fremenite way of existence is not necessary. The worm is returning, though not as powerful as it was in the old days, and with it the spice.

In the fifth volume, 1500 years after the death of the god emperor, this situation has long been normal. However, spice production will never regain the status it used to have in the old empire. The Tleilaxu produce the spice in their axolotl tanks in large quantities and at dumping prices. The role of the desert planet has changed. As an ecclesiastical center and place of pilgrimage for the religion of the dismembered God, the home and place of residence of Shai Hulud are sacred. After the planet has been burned to cinder by the Honored Matres, the desert planet therefore becomes a mythical place.

What the story could have ended with if the worm had not completed its migration under Sheeana's care. Exposed on the Ordensburg planet, it immediately follows its destiny. This worm, too, quickly disintegrates into sand trout, which begin to encapsulate the planet's water, and twelve years later the magnificent castle of the Order has become a dry planet. The desertification attacks so quickly that parts of the indigenous population occurred in opposition to the plans of the Bene Gesserit. Even if the Bene Gesserit make it clear to people that there is no alternative, the population is never united behind them. At the end of the sixth volume, a large part of the order castle is devastated. Smaller worms already exist, the first pre-spice mass is found, the desert planet is alive again.

Of force and opposing forces

The third Newtonian axiom is asserted by Frank Herbert in all volumes of the Dune cycle, as an essential principle also for social and psychological processes. As early as in the first volume, the Bene Gesserit extrapolated the resulting counterforce using the power of the voice. Too frequent use of the voice therefore increasingly leads to immunization against this type of influence.

Herbert processes the force-counterforce model much more comprehensively in the construction of the Golden Path of the God Emperor. Leto's Peace, the 3500 year cemetery calm, is intended to modify the counterforce that normally results, namely the need for chaos, and the easiest chaos to create is war. Leto II wants to redirect this immanent longing for war to a longing for the new, the unknown, the unpredictable. He has enough time to initiate this process. In fact, with targeted social changes, keyword women's army or travel restrictions, mankind chooses the path into the unexplored, into the diaspora, after death.

Frank Herbert gives a final demonstration of the principle of interaction with the forces returning from the diaspora. The barbaric power lifting of the Honored Matres has evidently unleashed so many opposing forces in the Diaspora that the seemingly insurmountable women's armies have to flee. With the Bene Gesserit, however, a new counterforce awaits in the old empire. The sisterhood's defensive approach points to the way out of the destructive counterforce dilemma. The osmotic amalgamation of the two orders of women into a new, hybrid and humane force makes a redistribution of the interstellar balance of forces probable.

The Hunters of the Desert Planet Volume 7 (Hunters of Dune)

The book by Brian Herbert , part one of the seventh volume, which has now grown to two parts, has been published by Heyne Verlag . Here is a translated short version from Amazon.com .

Duncan Idaho, Bashar Miles Teg and Sheeana flee from the Honored Matres to the limits of the universe. On their no-ship, they have cells from many characters from the past such as Paul and Chani, Leto I., Jessica, Yueh, ... all for a grand finale with an opponent so big that they destroy all including the Honored Matres can. And deep in their gigantic no-ship, they transport the last surviving sandworm of the destroyed desert planet in search of a new desert planet.

The story begins three years after the flight from the Ordensburg. Further time periods are skipped in the process.

Non-ship Ithaca

Sheeana's followers have spent the last three years in an unknown universe to hide from the "older couple". The ship was christened "Ithaca" during this period. While Teg examines old recordings of his first death for Rakis, Duncan finds an Honored Matres torture chamber in a hidden intermediate deck. It will later be found out that the Matres use torture to obtain the raw materials for their melange substitute, which is based on adrenaline and endorphin. Duncan Idaho is contacted at the beginning of the book by the "Oracle of Time", an old myth of the spaceman guild. For fear of falling into the trap of another enemy, he risks jumping through the folding space. Shortly afterwards, however, the Ithaca is tracked down by the network and has to risk another hyper jump.

Scytale is now suffering from a genetic disease. Because all Tleilaxu masters revive themselves as ghola after their death and let their memories awaken, they see no reason to repair genetic defects. In each ghola you see just one more section of a larger existence. After escaping from the Ordensburg, he had already revealed the secret of making melange with the help of axolotl tanks. Now he also talks about the cells stored in the capsule, which is implanted in his chest. Inside are cells of Paul Atreides, Chani, Leto II, Liet Kynes, Stilgar and many others. In return, he only demands a ghola from himself in order to guarantee the continued existence of the master race. However, more axolotl tanks are needed to start this large ghola project, so volunteers are being sought among the crew. Among the three volunteer sisters is the venerable mother Rebecca, who once absorbed the memories of Lucilla on Gammu.

After Paul Atreides, Chani, Leto II, Stilgar, Thufir Hawat, Liet Kynes, the traitor Dr. Yueh and Lady Jessica have been brought back to life, the ghola program will be temporarily terminated. The reason for this is a vision of Sheeana in which she is warned that she is bringing too many heroes back to life in too short a time. The education of the children is imposed on the Bene Gesserit Garimi as a punishment after she tried to assassinate the ghola of Leto II.

Sheeana is now starting to befriend a futar who goes by the name of Hrrm. After he managed to break out of his cell, she was able to convince him that the people on board are not her enemies. Hoping to get more information about the "tamers" who control the Futar, Hrrm leads her to the plaza window through which he can view the sandworms on board the Ithaca. Sheeana then goes into the chamber, dances among the worms and gives them instructions. When she returns to Hrrm, he describes her as "better than tamer" and also tells the three other Futar on board about it.

After another space jump, the Ithaca finds the planet of the Futar tamers. It turns out that all tamers are perfect shapeshifters and serve the great unknown enemy. The group can barely escape from the surface, whereby Teg reveals his abilities (see "The heretics of the desert planet"). Their escape is also supported by the four Futars who were on board the Ithaca, as they stand against their tamers and other Futars and protect Sheeana. Before they can jump into hyperspace, however, four smaller ships ram the Ithaca. However, after counting the shape-shifting corpses, there is cause for concern: it could be that three perfect shape-shifters are still on board the no-ship.

Duncan Idaho, who continues to suffer from the sexual bond between him and Murbella, is now freed from it by Sheeana. A sexual experience which only serves to break the covenant releases Duncan from his mental chains. How this night will affect the relationship between Duncan Idaho and Sheeana is still uncertain.

At the end of the story, the Paul ghola consumes a large amount of melange, which activates its clairvoyant abilities. He sees his own death, brought about by another, evil, Paul Atreides.

Murbella and the new sisterhood

The new sisterhood has been on the brink of civil war since it was founded. Mother Commander Murbella has to deal with insurgent sisters, Bene Gesserit and Honored Matres. Many insurgents have withdrawn to the northern regions of the Order Castle because Murbella was executing insurgents captured.

Murbella has chosen Venerable Mother Bellonda and the Honored Mater Doria as her advisors. However, these two dislike each other, which later ends in a fatal duel. Doria kills Bellonda in battle, but is forced by Murbella to record her memories. Doria is then tasked with monitoring the desert and the melange deposits. While Doria struggles with the voice of Bellonda in her head, her group is devoured by a sandworm and so Doria also finds her end.

In the old empire, Murbella had the monopoly on the mysterious substance melange. Using this power, she tries to blackmail the spaceman guild. She refuses to give the guild major donations of the spice in order to temporarily hang it on the hook and later offer them a deal. In the meantime, the guild commissions the Ixians to invent perfect navigation modules, which makes the navigators feel threatened and Edric searches for an alternative to extracting melange on his own. To do this, he even enters into an alliance with the Honored Matres on Tleilax.

To end the conflicts within the sisterhood, Murbella pushes through reforms. The sisters are no longer allowed to use clothing to indicate their origin (Bene Gesserit or Honored Matres). The new uniforms are a symbiosis of the two old ones: A black one-piece catsuit which combines the freedom of movement of the Matres uniforms, but the black color of the Bene Gesserit uniforms. The insurgents who have withdrawn to the north are also crushed. Murbella now also receives support from her eldest daughter Janess, who has now put the melange agony behind her. Her twin sister, Rinya, began the agony too early and died of it. Now Murbella begins subjugating Honored Matres bases at a time. In the end, Tleilax also falls and the Matre Superior of this world turns out to be a shapeshifter. Now the Mother Commander understands the reason for the conflicts in the old empire. These were only intended to weaken the Empire's military forces for the impending invasion.

Murbella eventually breaks through to her hidden memories in the Honored Matres line. She discovers that the Matres were not just created through a merger of the Bene Gesserit and the Fish Talkers in the Diaspora; the hidden origin of the Matres are the axolotl tanks of the Tleilaxu. After the secret of the tanks was discovered (these are actually the female Tleilaxu, who have no rights in their culture and only serve as comatose tanks), some of the tanks were transformed back into living people. These then exercised violent revenge on the Tleilaxu. It was also one of Murbella's ancestors who started the war with the unknown enemy. She attacked one of the outposts and thereby triggered the conflict, which, however, had been prepared by the enemy since ancient times. At the same time, Murbella discovers the identity of the enemy: It is Omnius, the machine god from the times of Butler's Jihad.

Marty and Daniel, the old couple

Marty and Daniel are the old couple from whom the Ithaca is on the run. They use a tachyon network that roams space in search of the no-ship. Once the Ithaca can just escape before the net closes, and once the ship can even break out of the (almost) closed net.

Marty and Daniel also control the shapeshifters that infiltrate the ancient empire. The shapeshifter Khrone serves the two as the commander of the transformers, but forges his own plans to escape from the clutches of the old couple. They also use the network to monitor and control it. With this you can set distances in space to zero and thereby create illusions of your own worlds. This network is obviously based on Holtzmann's theories, which are used for the folding space drive.

The couple have calculated from mathematical equations that they need the help of a Kwisatz Haderach for Kralizec , the fight at the end of the universe. That is why they are on the hunt for the Ithaca and the people on board. You have calculated that you will find the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach on board this ship. As an alternative, they commission Khrone to create two gholas from cells found on Tleilax and Caladan. The first is Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and the second Paul Atreides, who was baptized Paolo in order to separate him from the historical image. The baron is supposed to take care of the education of Paolo and win him over to her side. When the couple thinks they have captured the Ithaca, they want to break off their plans. After the Ithaca escapes, however, they continue to do so.

At the end of the book, Marty and Daniel look at their fleet of many thousands of ships. In the illusion they created, they see a force of Greek warships. Eventually they end this illusion. It turns out that all resources were projected to a location with the help of their network and were represented as ancient ships. The sea becomes space and the couple's garden becomes a machine city. Daniel and Marty turn out to be Omnius and Erasmus, who are now sending their extermination fleet towards the old empire.

Khrone and the Face Dancers

Khrone is the leader of the Diaspora shapeshifters and reports directly to Marty and Daniel. He shows the Tleilaxu from the Diaspora his independence from them by killing their last elder. However, he lets his assistant Uxtal live so that he can create gholas for him. Khrone sends Uxtal to Tleilax, the largest fortress of the Honored Matres and former homeworld of the Tleilaxu. He receives cells from the matres, which Tleilaxumeister have stored in a capsule implanted in the chest in order to create a ghola. Research finally reveals that these cells came from Baron Harkonnen.

Later, a relic from the time of Muad'dib is discovered on Caladan: a dagger with the blood of the first Kwisatz Haderach on it. With the help of these cells, Uxtal created a ghola for Paul Atreides on behalf of the shapeshifter, which was baptized in the name of Paolo. Vladimir Harkonnen, who turns out to be a violent beast even as a child without his memories, tries to kill Paolo before he is "born" by seriously injuring the axlotl tank with a dagger. However, Paolo can be saved and Vladimir is now isolated from the Paul Ghola and sent to Caladan, the new stronghold of the shapeshifters in the old empire. After the birth of Paolo, he is also brought to Caladan, but continues to be separated from Vladimir. Uxtal, meanwhile, remains on Tleilax under the supervision of the Honored Matres.

Finally, Khrone tries to bring back the Baron's memories. However, his first attempts fail because he tries only with physical pain. In order to awaken genetic memories, however, it is necessary to bring a ghola psychologically to the threshold of despair. After days of physical torture remain unsuccessful, Khrone changes his strategy. He locks Vladimir, temporarily completely paralyzed by suspensors, in a dark chamber, in which he is held captive for days without any sensory influences. Before he goes mad in this chamber, which was previously used as mentate training, his memories come back and he is finally entrusted with the training and education of Paolo. However, the awakening of his memories brought a fatal side effect. Once the spirit of the Baron had driven Imperator Alia insane. This time the baron Vladimir Harkonnen is haunted by the ghost Alias, which threatens to drive him mad.

Circumventing the monopoly

Because the new sisterhood of the guild refuses to deliver large amounts of melan, the guild is desperately looking for a way out. The guild spokespeople contact Ix and commission improved navigation devices. In contrast to their predecessors, these should enable perfect navigation and for the first time offer the same security as a navigator. Shaken by this development, the navigator Edric asks the Oracle of Time for advice. However, this tells him that the navigators themselves will find a way out of this difficult situation. All you have to do is "find what has been lost". Edric then has an idea. He contacts the Honored Matres on Tleilax. There the Tleilaxu Uxtal is working on a ghola project on behalf of the shapeshifter. In return for their support, however, the Matre Superior Hellica makes two demands. The production of the melange substitute of the Matres, which is based on adrenaline and endorphins, and the production of melange in axlotl tanks. He is under constant supervision by the Honored Mater Ingva. Uxtal finally finds a way to produce the melange substitute, but not a way to produce real melange. At this point Edric contacts the Matre Superior. He suggests the resurrection of a Tleilax master in order to obtain knowledge of the production of melange from him. It turns out that Hellica physically kept Tleilaxumeister Waff alive, connected to a strange apparatus. Hellica tells Uxtal that Waff serves them as a supplier of sperm for reproduction, even if it is brain dead. However, Uxtal suspects that there must be more to it.

Uxtal has now started large-scale production of weapon gholas . He used these cells to produce gholas always in groups of eight. He used a technique that was actually forbidden to accelerate the aging process of the gholas. These Tleilaxu children show dislike for Uxtal from an early age by attacking him with their teeth. After all, the gholas have reached the point where attempts can be made to awaken their memories. Here, under the supervision of Edric and Hellica, one after the other is killed. The only way to save their life is to remember their previous life. The last remaining Waff of the first group of eight, christened Waff Eins, finally manages to remember - but only partially, and he also lacks knowledge of the melange. He suspects that this must be a side effect of the prohibited technology that accelerates the aging process. Waff and Uxtal keep this to themselves and want to try to bring more memories to the surface together.

Eventually the new sorority attacked Tleilax. During the attack, Ingva tries to sexually bind Uxtal to her in order to strengthen her own position. Although Uxtal is a eunuch, she succeeds. When Ingva is seriously injured in the course of the fight and Uxtal asks for help, Uxtal helps her in the only way he can. He breaks her neck to relieve her pain. In this way he manages to free himself from the sexual chains and he seeks refuge among the population. However, it is eaten by carnivorous fattening animals, whose meat is considered a specialty on Tleilax, under the supervision of the animal owner, without even thinking about saving him. Meanwhile, the Waff-Ghola manages to escape from Tleilax. The navigator Edric, who controls the attacker's ship, takes Waff on board and hides him from Murbella, in the hope of having found an alternative source of melange. Even if Waff can't remember making Melange, he can remember something different, better. Waff is thinking about breeding sandworms using Axlotl tanks.

In the end, the Oracle of Time turns out to be Norma Cenva , the founder of the Spaceman Guild from the time of Butler's Jihad. She roams the universe in search of the no-ship Ithaca, hoping to find the great Kwisatz Haderach who will decide Kralizec , the battle at the end of the universe that will change the future forever.

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