Why did the Emperor entrust such an important planet to his rivals? I know he had a plan to undo them...

This. The whole society is a three way balance of power between the Houses, the emperor, and the Guild

There's also the machinations of the witches to consider. They wanted Paul dead, for his mother's crimes of loving Leto and birthing a son.

No better way to do that than putting him on a planet of death.

...

I'M FUCKING INVINCIBLE.

OH NO WATER

Water on Arakis! Ridiculous!

JESUS CHRI-

They wanted him dead because they knew what he would do

They were trying to save billions of lives by killing him before he could launch his galactic Jihad

I loved that part when Paul is shocked to see a puddle of water in Arrakeen and no one even giving a fuck about it because their circumstances and culture had changed so much.

Back in my day, it was scandalous when House Altredes started pouring water for beggars.

The sheer opulence! The vainglorious luxury! They should have been content with the damp rags!

Messiah/Children is my favorite part of the series. I know it's essentially the parable of Edipos, but there's so much more that fills it out and makes me feel really bad for Paul.

I'm guessing the dude on the far left is suppose to be Fayed and then you have Raban and Vladimir and Piter but who's the Tin can and Space Marine?

Emperor and a Sardaukar I suspect. That bit about the Emperor dressing very plainly is seldom remembered.

That's a hell of a swag suit.

Also, I know Valdimir is suppose to be Obese (what with Gaius having poisoned him for hate raping her) but I think the suspensors belts he wears just helps him walk around and not float like a ballon like it's depicted in the movies.

I only say this because even for a fat ass he was quick on the draw when one of his fuck boys had a poison needle in their body and he comes chasing after Fayed for it.

According to the book he weighs about 200 Kilos, of which the suspensors bear only 150

Jesus, please tell me that is just House Harkonnen and not the entirety of the Houses.

That Sardukar is the only hardcore looking motherfucker there, though the Emperor looks very comfy and protected.

Reminder that it wasn't House Harkonnen who caused the galactic genocide which claimed billions of lives

It was these walk-the-sand fucks right here

>the guy sting played
>beast rabban aka the guy bullied by Paul
>Vladimir "American" Harkonnen
>No idea what sphere is,propably a version of Navigator
>Piter "Man I wish I was as good as Thufir" Vries
>comfymperor
>will trade spice for brouzouf

The Emperor did nothing wrong.

this one is just shit
who is this guy with the cape? Hawat?

>No idea what sphere is,propably a version of Navigator

It's the globe of Arrakis from the start of the first book

>It was a relief globe of a world, partly in shadows, spinning under the impetus of a fat hand that glittered with rings. The globe sat on a freeform stand at one wall of a windowless room whose other walls presented a patchwork of multicolored scrolls, filmbooks, tapes and reels. Light glowed in the room from golden balls hanging in mobile suspensor fields.
>...
>The fat hand descended onto the globe, stopped the spinning. Now, all eyes in the room could focus on the motionless surface and see that it was the kind of globe made for wealthy collectors or planetary governors of the Empire. It had the stamp of Imperial handicraft about it. Latitude and longitude lines were laid in with hair-fine platinum wire. The polar caps were insets of finest cloud-milk diamonds.

One of the most memorable moments of the book for me looking back is Rabban asking his Harkonnen to keep the guns (or was it artillery?) on the planet after they'd finished their original attack on House Atreides because he was the only one their who realized the Fremen didn't use shields and that the sorts of ranged weaponry that would just backfire against normal targets was actually perfect valid on Arrakis.

Dude was a genius compared to his brother.

That would make sense. I had to double look because I didn't immediatly recognize the old crone as Gaius. Gurney and Leto are looking fucking boss though.

It was artillery. Nevermind that they had just used it to seal the Duke's men in caves, and the Fremen also lived in caves.

Admittedly the Baron was setting Rabban up to fail, but he really seemed to have no idea what he was up against

Mrs Sadurkar, how do you feel after the surprise attack on the Atriedes?

>My legs are okay

The Fremen have breached the shield wall with atomics! They're coming right for us on sandworms!

>Bullshit! Ultra-failed attack

I want to touch Stilgar's fluffy beard

i just like this art and want to post it nothing to add to this discussion

She's missing the water rings, granted they could be under her wrap to keep them from jiggling around.

The first interactions between Paul and Chani because he didn't know giving a woman your water rings was essentially asker her to marry you.

Granted, technically he had three wives (the wife of the guy he fought, Chani, and the Emperor's daughter) and three sons (the two adopted from the guy he knife fighted and his own son leto).

Leto II was killed in the raid on his sketch, Leto III was his surviving son. And I think one of his adopted sons died fighting the Harkonnen, but it's been years since I read the books and may be mistaken on that bit.

One of the things I love about Dune is the times that the Sarduakar get dethroned as the badasses of the galaxy by tribals with knives.

And in one instance, are sent running by a sietch full of women and children. Hell, the only reason their mission succeeded was because their target(a child) WANTED to be captured, because it was just as planned.

Something I like is that, in either Chapterhouse or Heretics, they mention that the Harkonnens were known to use armor held up by suspensors. Which makes complete sense, since it lets you wear full plate, and yet you don't have to carry anything but the clothes on your back. Toss a personal shield over that and you'd be practically invincible.

Because he knew putting all of his rivals within striking distance of each other would weaken them immensly, not to mention the fact that Dune is a fucking dangerous place to be, politics aside.

>the part where the Atreides soldiers are sealed alive in caves after falling back for a last fight against the Sardaukar and Harkonnen

that part was always really sad

It's actually Leto son of Paul and Leto II. He named his first son simply "Leto". You've clearly never read the other books or this fact could not have possibly escaped you.

Ugh. Decoration, frippery, wasted resources, wasted effort. That is fine for the water fat folk of pan and graben. Not for true children of the deep desert.

He also doesn't get the Emperor or the Sardaukar. The Emperor always seemed an austere, thoughtful man. One of the big points of the book is that the Emperor would rather have the Atredies as allies than Harkonnen, but can't because the Atredies are too popular.

Sardaukar are supposed to be like the Fremen, they come from the emperor's prison planet, Salusa Secundus, which is supposed to be almost as brutal and harrowing to survive on as Dune. A running theme in the series is watching the Fremen follow the same path to overconfidence, cynicism, and downfall as the Sardaukar had already taken during the time in which Dune is set. Making the Sardaukar these heavily armored colossi is much less satisfying to me than making them a hollow elite too used to power and victory running up against fighters who are still animated by their religion and living in and hardened by a brutal, inhospitable planet.

It all goes back to what I love about Dune and why everyone who touches it manages to fuck it up somehow. Dune is such a carefully constructed setting. For example: the reason the Fremen are a potent force in Dune is because of the way the shield, the spacing guild monopoly on spaceflight, and the lack of AI coordinated multi-planetary civilizations brought about by the Butlerian Jihad and the subsequent OC Bible interact together to shape and define how wars are fought. Everything about the world is there for a reason. You start changing the construction for whatever reason you undermine the structure and themes in the story.

Because Dune was a fucking horrible planet that didn't actually grant its owner much power, since the spice trade was largely controlled by CHOAM and the Spacing Guild.

Putting the Atreides there separated them from the main bulk of their supporters on Caladan, where they could be overcome and destroyed by an Imperial-backed Harkonnen attack.

From the left:
>Feyd-Rautha
>Rabban
>Baron
>Piter
>Walking Billboard for Roof Shingles R Us
>The brozouf must flow

>Hurr durr I'm the emperer
>I'm going to put my enemies in control of the most important planet in the universe, that whoever controls it will utterly bring all other factions to their knees
>Then I'm going to try to kill them
>And I'm going to hope that the attack succeeds
>And I'm going to hope that my involvement isn't found out
>And I'm going to hope that I don't spark a civil war where I will utterly be crushed due to my enemy's exclusive control of this macguffin resource.
>Take notes, Machiavelli, this is how you lead a macguffin-central galactic empire

It was a pretty good plan.

Had it not been for Paul secretly being the literal ubermensch, it would have been a perfect success for the Emperor.

...

It's not "I'm going to hope the attack succeeds", it's "the attack is going to fucking succeed". He had no idea about the extent of Paul's and Jessica's Bene Gesserit abilities, and if it hadn't been because of that there was literally 0% chance for failure as far as he was concerned

There was also no fucking reason to think the Fremen were secretly a hundreds of millions-strong horde of supersoldiers rather than a couple thousand disorganized savages

Also take in mind the Fremen had the spacing guild in their pocket specifically so the Emperor had no way to find out about their existence in the deep desert

>It all goes back to what I love about Dune and why everyone who touches it manages to fuck it up somehow. Dune is such a carefully constructed setting. For example: the reason the Fremen are a potent force in Dune is because of the way the shield, the spacing guild monopoly on spaceflight, and the lack of AI coordinated multi-planetary civilizations brought about by the Butlerian Jihad and the subsequent OC Bible interact together to shape and define how wars are fought. Everything about the world is there for a reason. You start changing the construction for whatever reason you undermine the structure and themes in the story.

I can tell you had a field day with all the prequel novels Herbert's son won't stop making.

New user here.

Only read a couple chapters of the first book so far but it seemed clear in the description of the Bulletin Jihad that it was vigorous religious fanatics rising up to attack a decadant, tired society that was overreliant on machines and had lost all of it's drive.

Then I heard the prequels made it about SkyNets walking around in 50ft mecha. What the fuck.

>Prequels

There's your problem.

tor.com/2015/09/25/animated-dune-matt-rhodes-concept-art/

Is there any Dune RPG?

It is really strange considering Fremen and Sardaukar were produced using same method,but the enviroment on Dune was harsher.
It's like everybody hated poor Rabban

...

Yes, but the developers lost the license and it got gassed before they could release the first book. You can easily find a PDF but it's totally unplayable because it relies on supplements that were never released

For what it's worth he was always destined to get the shaft. The whole idea being that Rabban being the asshole that he is would make everyone hate him and then Fayed would come in and be the kinder, gentler (within the context of the setting) Harkonnen and then everyone would love him.

Shit. I thought it would at least be playable in unfinished state.

I don't have the source with me, but I remember reading an interview with Herbert where he got really annoyed at people thinking that the reason the Fremen had the edge over the Sardaukar was that Arrakis was even naster than Salusa Secundus.

He thought it was obvious that the reason the Fremen had the advantage was because of the spice saturation of everything on Arrakis, not that the desert hell world is even tougher than the radioactive hell world.

I was under the impression that the Sardaukar had been much more impressive in the past, but had grown soft in the era of relative peace and decadence that had settled over the Dune-setting prior to the events of the first book.

There is a Burning Wheel supplement for running Dune games, Burning Sands

>hat with Gaius having poisoned him for hate raping her

oh no you don't understand: That's part of a work of fanfiction unreconcilable with the main material.

>That's part of a work of fanfiction unreconcilable with the main material.

This is my favorite meme on Veeky Forums

Something I think people don't take notice of when it comes to still suits is how much it fucking stinks and how you have to keep them oiled up and all of that which makes them stink even more. Being in a Stech as an outsider must be suffering.

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure that was brought up at some point in the book.

already wrong in the second fucking line.

why meme? It straight up contradicts stuff from the original books. you can't reconcile them, you have to drop the canonical status of one or the other.

Wouldn't the solution be is too rig Arrakis with a series of atomic/ laser+shield/ doomsday weapons that if anyone even makes the wrong move against you, you set off all of them at once and completely destroy the resource?

I noticed something, and it has to do with what you said about contradiction.

The people who hate Brian's books tended to be roleplayers. They'll pick an edition, stick with it, and so on, and ignore any changes because what they have works. There is nothing past their chosen edition.

In comparison, the people who liked Brian's books tended to be wargamers. Wargame fluff changes on a dime, and this is accepted immediately in a process very similar to doublethink - it now says X, thus X has always been true.

People who like Brian's books accept that the newer books clarify a vague detail of the past, very similar to 40k. Those who hate Brian's books say "Well, I've got my original editions, and nothing else exists beyond those."

Paul THREATENING to do that was enough to make the Emperor give up his throne.

You don't destroy the spice, nigga'

I'm just thinking why hasn't the emperor come up with that solution?

Because he has a ton to lose. More than most of he pulls the plug in civilization

Nah, this is a book series, not a game. Your argument doesn't really make sense when the "fluff" is all there is.

Wouldn't everyone else have that same chance if spice gets destroyed has well? I mean this is after all mutually assured destruction.

Yeah, so if you're on top, why would you want to give everyone the same chance?

That's not what I'm getting at, if spice only comes from one planet and one planet only, would it not make sense to lock down said planet immediately? I'm saying that the emperor would be in control of said planet due to planet-wide destruction systems, then none of his rivals would be able to move against him without the fear of literally killing most, if not all of civilization?

You'd never be able to do that logistically because A) Fremen and B) Spacing Guild controls space travel and you'd have to get all that shit on the planet first without them figuring it out which is impossible. Paul gets everyone's balls in a vice by mobilizing the Fremen army his own, which is something no other House that governed Arrakis ever really thought of doing.

The emperor isn't the only power in the galaxy. The Guild would never tolerate anything approaching that level of control, and the only way he's going to set that system up is if they transport it there.

Plus I thought he doesn't even know that kind of destruction is possible.

because power balance is a bitch. basically, guild and choam would never stand aside and let the imperial house monopolize spice.

The Spacing Guild would tell him to fuck off while all the other great houses are busy nuking them

>People who like Brian's books accept that the newer books clarify a vague detail of the past, very similar to 40k.

yeah, but when stuff starts to be contradicted (see: the Butlerian Jihad, Rabban etc.) then stuff not only gets clarified but replaced. Retconned as they say.

Same thing happens in 40k.

The Space Marines ALWAYS had stormravens.
The Eldar ALWAYS had wraithknights.
The Tau like giant robots now.
The 13th Black Crusade happened? Uh, nuh-uh it didn't!

40k is a collaborative, intentionally contradictory grab bag of a setting used as an excuse to sell miniatures.

dune is a book series by one man who had the misfortune of having a son that knows kevin anderson

That's not true though, you can pick and choose as you want in 40k, and are encouraged to do so - because it's not a closed narrative like a series of boos but a setting.

2/3 of those looks based on the film characters

Correct, but material officially published does take precedence over fanviews.

But I'm sorry for disrupting the thread with 40k, so I'll stop now.

So I read the first book like a few months ago, and wasn't really interested in the series. The World building was fucking neat and all but, it just seemed pretty obvious Paul was going to come up as the top nigga at the end.
How do the rest of the books compare to the first?

The second book is about what a terrible, shortsighted person Paul was

The third book is about Paul's sister getting posessed by the Baron's genetic memory and his children bringing a nebulous plan to fix Paul's fuck-up

The fourth is about the completion of said plan several thousand years later, from the perspective of his son and a Duncan Idaho ghola. "Just according to keikaku" the book

The fifth and sixth are character-driven novels about the state of the world after the events of the fourth book, with a similarly large timeskip. They're told from the perspective of the Bene Gesserit and a Duncan Idaho ghola. Namely, it's the Bene Gesserit's attempt to defuse an invasion by the much larger human civilization outside what remains of the Imperium, which do not give a shit about The Great Convention

Brian! Brian! Brian! A million deaths were not enough for Brian!

...

Sorry, that just happens sometimes.

>parable of Edipos

What is that?

Yeah. One of big themes in the later books is watching the Fremen follow the same path as the Sardaukar had. Where they had once been these hardened fanatics animated by their faith and duty, Herbert shows them degenerating with power and success.

Oedipus missing an O. Blind destined king and all that.

when you compare the two you also realize fremen had a MUCH shorter run at it, at least in official army capacity, compared to sardaukars

Iirc, it's important to remember that the Fremen are benefiting massively from Ninja Space Nun training thanks to Lady Jessica when they fight the Sardaukar.

So, the Sardaukar are the mightiest soldiers in the galaxy, but:
>They're decadent and used to winning so much they've started doing really stupid things just for glory.
>The Fremen have spice saturation.
>The Fremen have learned the Wyrding way.
>The Fremen are used to fighting without shields.
>The Fremen are fighting on their home turf.
>The Fremen are being led by the Kwisatz Haderach.

Basically, the Fremen have a job lot of advantages that negate all of the edge that the Sardaukar usually have against their enemies.

The Emperor is also obsessed with ensuring no one else creates Sardaukar. He pretty much decides it's time for the Harkonnen to die when he comes to suspect them of trying to create a warrior elite.

Makes sense really. Turn an insular people into an invasion force, let them see the universe, they're gonna decide to relax after a bit.

I still don't get why Paul had genocide be part of the jihad.

He didn't have a choice.