The year is 10180 AG. The Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV sits on the Lion Throne as ruler of the Known Universe. Arrakis, source of the Spice melange, is a siridar fief of House Harkonnen. For the ten thousand years since the close of the Butlerian Jihad, humanity’s great revolt against thinking machines, the Spacing Guild has held a monopoly over interstellar travel. In the absence of the computer technology needed to calculate trajectories through foldspace, faster than light travel is achieved through the aid of the Navigators: specialized beings who are able to, using the prescient abilities granted them by immersion in the awareness spectrum narcotic melange, ‘See’ a path to their destination.
Along with its monopoly on interstellar travel, the Guild is the only organization capable of exploring the unexplored reaches of space, pushing the boundaries of the Known Universe outward. Following the Jihad, with the science of interstellar travel lost until the formation of the Guild, large swathes of the universe, and the civilizations therein, were cut off from the rest of humanity. Even ten thousand years later, there are still countless worlds which have yet to be rediscovered, along with untouched habitable planets and other, stranger things. Explorers scour the stars for worlds such as these, the Guild either auctioning them through the CHOAM company or setting them aside for its own mysterious purposes. That’s you: the captain of a Guild heighliner on just such a mission.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves…
(cont)
Nathaniel Williams
Dune theme quest... Colour me interested.
Also OP, get yourself a trip.
Owen Gutierrez
WHO ARE YOU?
>A: A twisted mentat, made to order by the Tleilaxu for the express purpose of captaining this ship? >B: A Reverend Mother, on the run from the Sisterhood after they began to suspect you were possessed? >C: Something else (write in)?
Top vote getter when I close the polls wins
Canonicity: Original Six books are in. Dune Encyclopedia is in, except where contradicted by the original six, or otherwise overruled. Movies, TV series, games and Brian Herbert novels are out, except for some elements of their visual design.
Let's see how far this gets
Kevin Hughes
>A. I'm only half present though, so I hope I'm not the only one here.
Brody Sullivan
A it is
The Bene Tleilax, hated and feared as they are by the rest of humanity, are the finest genetic engineers in the universe. They can grow a human being to virtually any specification, provided that the buyer is willing to pay, and to tolerate the eccentricities the Tleilaxu Masters choose to engineer into their products.
Chief among such exports are Twisted Mentats, human computers designed to operate beyond the limitations imposed by most Mentat schools on their pupils. These beings can be designed for almost any task, but are almost always 'gifted' with some defect which makes them an object of repugnance to normal human beings.
You were created for the purpose of captaining a heighliner to the unknown reaches of space, surveying uncharted worlds and contacting lost human civilizations, with the ultimate purpose of padding the Guild’s coffers and expanding their reach across the universe. You have command of every field, discipline and trade needed to do so, from engineering to astrophysics to psychology to economics. Your Mentat abilities allow you to perform feats of calculation far in advance of the thinking machines of old, analyzing data and using it to simulate and calculate possible outcomes of any choice you make.
But what price did you pay for this? What did your makers do wrong for their own amusement?
>Roll a D20 and write in with a physical or mental deformity, including personality disorders, unusual mutations, cybernetic augmentations, disfigurement or other noticeable damage
Liam Sanchez
Rolled 7 (1d20)
Hallucinations.
Asher Smith
Rolled 14 (1d20)
Cybernetics
Austin Sullivan
Rolled 15 (1d20)
Actual multiple personalities, a Bene Tleilaxu attempt to mock the Bene Gesserit phenomenon of possession.
Jeremiah Murphy
Writing
Cooper Robinson
The brothers of the Bene Tleilax delight in mocking the Sisterhood. What the Witches scheme and plot for centuries to breed, the Tleilaxu ghola up in an afternoon as a joke. To them, the Bene Gesserit’s horror of possession, the threat of a Reverend Mother’s body being taken over by a past consciousness from the ‘other memory’ is merely another niche to be exploited in the design of living machines. Through surgery and mental conditioning, your brain has been modified to host multiple consciousnesses. You share your head with ‘Agilus’, an alternate self who exists mainly to help with parallel processing of data, but who delights in bantering lewdly with you during quiet moments, as well as taking control of your body while you’re distracted for his own amusement.
When he is agitated, Agilus will often fuss with your pedipalps: a pair of insect-like plasteel appendages which emit from your abdomen below the floating ribs. They are the object of considerable revulsion to anyone who sees them, and you keep them covered with clothing whenever possible.
As a result of your brain’s occasional difficulty trying to reconcile sensory inputs between your disparate consciousnesses, you sometimes suffer hallucinations. Your computational trances will be interrupted by the airy drone of Semuta music and the acrid, sweet smell of burning elacca wood. You go whole days with the taste of rancid blood heavy in your mouth, days where the sapho juice makes you retch uncontrollably and you have to shut down your tastebuds and force it down your throat. You had ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ in the creche who saw things, though they learned quickly never to tell the handlers when the fish and corpses and stars began to creep in at the corners of their vision, flitting into the shadows or behind objects when they tried to focus on them. You’re lucky nothing like that has ever happened to you yet.
(cont)
Kevin Lewis
Now for the finishing touches
Roll a D20 and tell me >Name >Gender >Are you addicted to the Spice melange (a single dose always results in addiction, withdrawal means death)?
Jace Diaz
Rolled 12 (1d20)
Ophelia Female Not Addicted
Dominic Powell
Roger Haut Male Not Addicted
Nolan Adams
Rolled 9 (1d20)
>Yama >Male >Not addicted
Aaron Wilson
Fucking pussies.
Making a Dune character that isn't addicted to Spice is like making a 40K character that doesn't revere the Machine God.
Juan Robinson
Then maybe you should roll the dice and try to do better, fella
Connor Jones
Rolled 4 (1d20)
Rolling for
Gavin Nelson
Writing
Julian Ross
>like making a 40K character that doesn't revere the Machine God
>Statistical majority of humanity reveres the God-Emperor, not the Omnissiah >Pussy
Lincoln Powell
Spice, not even once
You are Ophelia, member of the Spacing Guild with the rank of Captain. The Guild is cold, but not quite so cruel as the Tleilaxu. In your quarters there are no probes or bugs, no Masters waiting to inflict pain for a wrong answer. And it feels good to do what you were designed for. Some of your ‘siblings’ were destined for other, duller things, accountants and bureaucrats and whores (‘Not so dull, that last one!’ Agilus cries). If you are to be a machine that merely performs its assigned function, it is good that your function is to command a ship and to explore the stars.
Your ship, the Exuberance, is unusual for a Heighliner. Guild transports are typically featureless globes, mere shells of neutrino circuitry and shielding with skeleton crews and vast, empty hulls. Most of them lack instruments, some even engines for local maneuvering. The vessel you command is built to explore unknown solar systems, equipped with all the sensors, boosters, equipment and countermeasures interstellar vessels carried before the advent of foldspace travel. A typical Heighliner boasts a crew of about a hundred, yours numbers nearly a thousand. While other ships carry passengers and cargo in their enormous holds, you haul shuttles, gear and weaponry of your own.
Miscellaneous about your vessel >28 percent of your ship’s mass is water, reaction mass for the fusion engines >you have a compliment of 6 navigators, in various stages of transformation >your crew includes a detachment of 194 Guild marines, along with vehicles, shields, lasguns, crisis armor and mundane projectile weapons >your armory includes the ship’s naval lasguns, as well as 9 atomic bombs and 21 stone burners, which you are free to use as you see fit once you are outside the known universe >(‘The ship’s brothel!’ Agilus howls, ‘You must not forget the ship’s brothel, for it employs face dancers, a pair of them!’)
(cont)
Ayden Walker
Today is a bad day. You’ve been trying to meditate for the last hour, and every time you reach the third level, a sharp pain in the back of your right leg jerks you back out of it. Thanks to your eidetic memory, you know exactly what it is: a shock prod, set to imitate the sting of an inkvine whip and administered as punishment for a wrong answer. Of course, it’s been over a decade since you last felt the sting, but unfortunately your scrambled neurons haven’t gotten the message. Mercifully, your latest failed attempt is interrupted by a knock at the door, and a message cylinder passed through the pentashielding: it’s time.
Pedipalps carefully concealed beneath your uniform, you ascend the suspensor-lift to the bridge, where the expedition’s CHOAM officer, one Roger Haut, awaits your presence. A short, hairy, muscular man from some House Minor on some far flung, high gravity world, Haut is technically your superior. As an employee of the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles, he ultimately has the authority to decide the fate of any worlds that fall into your hands on this expedition. However, he wouldn’t dare challenge your command of this vessel (or, at least, none of your simulations predict his doing so), and for the most part he will defer to your judgement, lending his economic expertise when necessary.
“Whenever you’re ready, Captain” he grunts, happy to see you but disguising it badly beneath his usual reproachful insolence. You nod and turn to the solido projection: a three dimensional image of the spiral arm you’ve been tasked with exploring, projected by a Richesian machine on a pintle mount descending from the ceiling. “Want I should toss a dart to decide where we’re going?” the surly bureaucrat growls.
(cont)
Liam Wood
>projected by a Richesian Aw, not Ixian?
Hunter Green
Keep it up mate your doing good
Isaiah Martin
You press a switch on the console in front of you and whisper into the microphone that you’re ready to speak with your senior navigator.
Inside half a minute, the orange whalefur curtains occupying half the wall part, tugged on their runners by invisible magnets, revealing an enormous bell jar, filled with great billowing clouds of orange gas. Inside, a monstrous, whale like humanoid floats lazily, fat and quiescent in his sea of spice. Through the shielded plexiglass, you can hear him warbling and shrieking in the tortured whalesong of a third stage navigator. The dictatel translates, rendering his speech comprehensible with robotic precision.
“Ophelia, my sweet, is it time already?” Aten, in the short time he’s known you, has not hesitated at all in becoming overly familiar with you. But how do you punish one of the most valuable creatures in the universe? Especially when the other Navigators on board listen to him, his little cartel in the hold. Without waiting for you to respond, he continues. The navigator’s prescience is irritating, but it makes conversation rather efficient. “I have identified three solar systems as potential starting points. I offer you the choice of any you wish, of course, but unless, my dear, you feel like picking through a thousand pointless rocks and gas giants, I would advise you heed my recommendations.”
The solido projector, keyed by an unseen attendant, shifts to display the star systems in question.
(cont, you get a choice next post I swear)
Lincoln Baker
Agilus informs you that your ship has enough water for 34 jumps before it will have to pick up more volatiles somewhere. You have enough spice for 281 days at the current rate of consumption. Your stores of food and oxygen will last approximately double that, for all that it matters, given that without spice your navigators won’t last long and you’ll be stranded (not to mention implicated in the death of several expensive pieces of Guild property).
Will you fold space to >2353 Phoenicis, a G1 V Yellow Main Sequence Star >1195 Tloni I, a K4 V Orange Main Sequence orbited by a distant K1 V Orange Main Sequence Star >2045 Beri, a M1 V Red Dwarf >or somewher else (write in)
If you like, you can ply Aten, your Navigator, for more information, although he isn’t always helpful in his answers. At your discretion, you can send him back into the hold and replace him with one of your five other Navigators.
Top vote getter wins.
Adam Martinez
Richese doesn't get enough love. I think Herbert might have just forgotten about them after the first book.
Thank you very much! I literally couldn't do it without you (and everyone else who replied).
Buddy this is a Dune thread. We worship one God Emperor here, and he isn't a living corpse.
Jayden Nguyen
Let's ask Aten for his recommendation.
He IS a third stage Navigator, we should take advantage of his prescience, even if it irks us because he cheats at seeing the future while we have to calculate it the old fashioned way.
What stages are the other Navigators at, anyway?
Caleb Hughes
Lets get our financial officers opinion as well as atlens.
Noah Barnes
Aten slowly rolls until the bloated dome of his skull buts against the bottom of his tank, tiny vestigial limbs paddling up above him against nothing. “What will my mistress’ pleasure be? A cold and dead world ripe with secrets? Draw the yellow. An unspoiled planet ready for the taking? The orange! Leftovers of the Great Revolt? Red, red, red, red red!”
Haut crosses his arms and scowls. “Secrets and scraps from the Jihad don’t put Solars in our pocket. I say we fold straight for Tloni.”
Your five other Navigators are as follows >Abaia, Stage 3 >Hecate, Stage 3 >Toug, Stage 2 >Welrod, Stage 2 >Hintikka, Stage 2
Jace Morales
What are the personalities of the other Stage 3's like?
While the Stage 2's are good enough for travel, the Stage 3's have more potent prescience, so I'd trust their visions more.
And Haut has a point; we're here to make money. If we get a nice profitable planet in hand, we'll be given more freedom to pursue other interests.
Connor White
Agreed, to the orange.
All hands prepare for fold!
Matthew Murphy
Yellow
Samuel Lee
Orange, straight for Tloni and profits.
Christian Morales
>Abaia is our most ‘mature’ navigator, all business all the time. He has a tendency to randomly refuse orders for reasons only he can see, refusing to explain why until after the ‘danger’ is past. >Hecate is mercurial, prone to depressive fits and manic outbursts. She’s hard to work with, but outclasses her comrades in terms of ability. >Toug is in the initial stages of his transformation to stage 3, with all the growing pains that implies. He’s reliable, though his sense of humor is somewhat obnoxious. >Welrod will probably never reach stage 3. You’re worried that he may have some trouble accepting this, which could lead to problems down the line. >Hintikka has only a few voyages to her name and is very excited to be on a ‘real’ expedition. Looking at her breeding records, she comes from very promising genes.
(cont)
Ethan Scott
3 votes for Orange, one for Yellow
“Prepare to fold space for 1195 Tloni I”
Aten hoots with glee, rolling over again as the curtains draw closed and his tank recedes on a system of unseen rails. The chief communications officer sends a message on H-wave in all directions, admonishing any nearby ships (although to your knowledge there aren’t any) to get clear pending your departure. Crew check and recheck connections and seals, while in engineering the cabal of Mentat physicists responsible for the ship’s reactor take up positions around their laser triggers, ready to catalyze the fusion reaction. Haut reclines on the control couch and pours two glasses of Caladanian Madeira. He knows you’ll refuse yet he always offers, either out of politeness, as a romantic overture, or as an excuse to drink both himself. Almost certainly the latter. The first mate speaks scurries into the room, taking his prescribed place at the instrument panel. Satisfied that everything is in place, you speak into the console.
“5… 4… 3… 2… Fold”
The instrument panels go blank as the Exuberance disappears from the universe in a burst of x-rays, guided only by Aten’s prescient vision of its destination.
(cont)
Lucas Gutierrez
The ship, and everyone inside it, moves without moving. If you didn't know better you'd think you'd never left. For reasons you've never understood, prolonged travel through foldspace can have damaging psychological consequences for the uninitiated. Something about knowing they're "nowhere" gets to them. Guild crews are conditioned against the effect ('Conditioned? What would any of these limp-dicks know about conditioning?' Agilus scoffs), but occasionally a new hand will panic at his post and cause all manner of difficulties for the rest of the crew. Nothing of the sort happens this time.
The journey takes two hours thirty three minutes and seven point eight seconds, according to the ship’s chronometer (one of the few instruments that functions in foldspace). At the forty minute mark, the sound of bells interrupts your computation of time/survivor curves from a reactor meltdown you were simulating in your head. You look down and discover that your hands have undone the bottom three buttons on your jacket, allowing your pedipalps to slip out. Apparently Agilus wasn’t as totally focused on modeling tissue damage as he claimed. You surreptitiously tuck them back in while Haut pretends not to have noticed. Anything else he'd have commented on loudly, but you know they scare him.
(cont)
Easton Lee
The Exuberance emerges from foldspace and into a parking orbit around 1195 Tloni I. Travel within the star system will have be accomplished via standard Newtonian/Einsteinian physics, either using the ship’s thrusters to maneuver locally, or by travelling in smaller shuttle craft via the same. If you want to get from one end to the other of the system quickly, you can fold space, although the precision of the jump may be less than desired.
The ship’s scanning equipment begins to spit out a series of readings which, looking over, give you a picture of the solar system’s makeup. Your computational abilities, combined with your mastery of astrophysics, render the information legible.
>A rocky planet orbiting about 0.95 AU from Tloni I, no atmosphere >An asteroid belt 1.84 AU out from the sun >A small terrestrial world 2.92 AU from the sun with a thin but breathable atmosphere and 3 miniscule moons >A rocky planet 4.75 AU from the sun, no atmosphere >A rocky planet 7.93 AU from the sun, no atmosphere >A rocky planet 14.42 AU from the sun, no atmosphere >An ice planet 31.06 AU from the sun, no atmosphere >And, 178.97 AU from the sun, its companion Tloni II
Notably, there are no broadcasts or signals of any kind coming from anywhere in the system, nor are there any other signs of intelligent life.
(cont)
Adrian Lee
Haut, itching to pour more wine, looks at the readouts. “There’s our prize.” Referring to the habitable world, of course. As though from a great distance, you hear the sound of your own voice screaming somewhere in the background. You manage to tune it out as he stabs the spot on the console with a stubby, calloused finger. “Let’s burn over and get a survey team down there.”
A pneumatic tube dispenses a message cylinder from somewhere far belowdecks, encrypted with a cipher only you and a few of your trusted officers know.
-hintikka says ice world, something buried-
Agilus crunches the numbers and finds that it’s likely she has found some kind of anomaly, but very unlikely that it’s of any value (‘On one hand, following a green navigator’s useless advice is usually a waste of time.’ Agilus admonishes, ‘On the other hand, doing anything some dickless Landsraad bureaucrat tells you is always a waste of time’).
Do you >Investigate the habitable world and send a survey team to assess it >Investigate the ice planet and whatever secrets it may hold >Send shuttles to both, trusting one of your officers to manage the other >Something else (write in)
Top vote getter wins
Dylan Cruz
>Investigate the habitable world and send a survey team to assess it
Carter Bennett
>Send shuttles to both, trusting one of your officers to manage the other
Colton Carter
>Investigate the habitable world and send a survey team to assess it
Brandon Howard
Writing, probably going to be the last post for the night
Christian Hernandez
Took my trip off for some other threads, this is me
David Myers
2 votes for habitable planet, one for both
A shuttle to the ice planet would take weeks and weeks just one way, and with no guarantee of a payout, that’s not something you can countenance spending time on. When you’re through with the survey you can fold closer and investigate from there, but for now you focus on planning your expedition to the surface of the star’s one habitable planet. The helmsman plots a course, while Arkady, first mate, draws up a list of crew to send down as a shore party. Once the Exuberance is close enough you’ll send a shuttle down to investigate. From here you’ve already learned a few interesting details about the planet.
>It’s small, with approximately 0.65 gravity >Its three moons are merely captured asteroids, none of them spherical under their own gravity >It has very little surface water and very little polar ice
Halfway through building a climate simulation you notice one of your pedipalps creeping toward the waist of your trousers. You forcefully rebuke Agilus, tasking him with developing a geologic model to occupy his attention. Haut has already left the bridge, you assume to spar with the ship’s Weapons Master as per usual. Arkady reports that a minor coolant leak in engineering meant your last jump used quite a bit more water than expected. It shouldn’t be a problem for the foreseeable future, especially considering most of the systems you’ll be visiting will have readily available volatiles.
The fusion rockets flare to life and the ship begins piling on delta v.
That's it for tonight. If the thread's still here tomorrow I'll pick up there, if not I'll make a new one. Thanks for reading and replying!
