This is your new BBEG. Is your party fucked?

It was not that weird until worm-empreror. After that it just went totally bonkers.

>No protection from teleporting magical SWAT teams
He dead.

>Code Geass / Dune
That works surprisingly well I think.

I doubt it, we know his True Name.
We can fuck him sideways from anywhere in the universe now.

>we know his True Name
Do you? He was a smart guy.

Fair enough, even if it's not his true name, it's close enough.
Just one more Withstand to blow straight fucking through with an exceptional success on a powerful ritual spell.

I'm not one to say hurr durr space marines beat everything but come on man, space marines would wreck sardaukar. They wear no armor and fight with knives. KNIVES.

Future Trump

>IT WAS HEEEEEER TUUUUUUURN!!!

The recursive florist. He had plants within plants.

Is it Baron Lasers?

>is your party fucked

Only the underage boys

no, they weren't. the whole point was that Atreides trained their troops to such a degree that they and they alone (not counting fremen) could match the Sardaukar. and that's why Emperor finally decided to off the Atreides.

No shit I can actually do a super good Baron Harkonnen impression, so ALOT of regents and BBEGs in my game end up sounding like him.

Not really.

Assuming we are on the same planet it's only a matter of time. The party can be patient and are very good at hiding from law enforcement.

No, the Baron was utterly incompetent, his plans were stupid and should have failed disastrously.

Of course, Dune operates on the observably untrue premise that a lot of militaristic fiction falls for; that a group of people raised in hardship grow up to be super soldiers akin to the Fremen, Sardaukar or Catachans.

They also have shields that protect them from anything not moving slow enough to penetrate them. As well as laser guns that can instantly incinerate anything.

>shields and laser guns
Wait a second. Wouldn't that fuck massively with the guy wielding both?

It's never really elaborated in the first book on whether or not you can use a lasgun while using a shield. But I assume so given that you can fight with a sword and make fast movements without the shield deflecting them.

Probably the lasgun is just held so that the muzzle is outside of the shield itself, like how the sword blade is technically outside as well.

It's just that firing a lasgun at a shield is such a risk that most people just say fuck the lasgun and go for the sword.

>and had a stronger economy.

Pretty sure this part is wrong, even if the atriedes had better troops. You have lines like

>Hawat knows how we beat them, we did it with wealth

And that even Hawat's most pessimistic projections had the Harkonen using about a tenth of the troops that they did, and House Harkonen did shoulder all the costs of the operation.

It's not all their troops (yet), only guys like Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck, but they were in a position to start expanding their forces.

You NEVER want to use both. A shield interacting with a lasgun produces a thermonuclear explosion.

no mate

not counting of course badasses like Idaho or Halleck, Atrides soldiers were mediocre fighters if not even weak fighters, they excelled at naval warfare and security tho

the reason why emperor wanted off the Atrides was because Leto was getting popular with the 'people' and lesser houses and his troops were loyal to him like dogs, this made him butthurt jelly so he fucked him over, this and of course a heavy pressure from higher houses, guild, gesserit and harkonnens

>Caladan troops were better
Yeah, they had some tip-top men, better than Harkonnen forces and starting to approach Sardaukar level, though not nearly enough of them.
>and had a stronger economy.
Nah, that was clearly a Harkonnen stength. For decades, they controlled Arrakis and thus controlled spice production. The had the better economy by far.
>The Sardaukar were the thing that made the difference.
That's true though. Atreides men would have been able to hold of the Baron's forces, but there were some of the Emperor's fanatics in the mix.

That's not true either. Consider the guy who was captured and fought in the arena against Feyd-Ruatha and almost won. And when Hawat is working for Baron Harkonen, he tells him this.

>The Padishah Emperor turned against House Atreides because the Duke's
Warmasters Gurney Halleck and Duncan Idaho had trained a fighting force -- a
small fighting force -- to within a hair as good as the Sardaukar. Some of them
were even better. And the Duke was in a position to enlarge his force, to make
it every bit as strong as the Emperor's.

izt.ciens.ucv.ve/ecologia/Archivos/Filosofia-I/Dune 1 - Dune - Frank Herbert.pdf

p 244 of the PDF

>the reason why emperor wanted off the Atrides was because Leto was getting popular with the 'people' and lesser houses and his troops were loyal to him like dogs
That was a contributing reason, but couple that with his growing cadre of elite troops, Shaddam was growing concerned. Maybe if only one or the other had been in place, Leto would have been fine. That's why the Baron didn't get fucked over when he brought up turning Arrakis into a prison planet in imitation of Selusa Secondus. While that was, in the Emperor's eyes, an attempt to create Sardaukar-like dudes, the Baron was incredibly unpopular.

Reminder how Sardaukar looked like.

oops, forgot image

> Atreides men would have been able to hold of the Baron's forces, but there were some of the Emperor's fanatics in the mix.

I'm not 100% convinced of that. Same file, now on page 135

izt.ciens.ucv.ve/ecologia/Archivos/Filosofia-I/Dune 1 - Dune - Frank Herbert.pdf

>Hawat's shocked fury had mounted until it threatened the smooth functioning of his Mentat capabilities. The size of the attack struck his mind like a physical blow.
>Now, hiding beneath a bit of desert rock, he nodded to himself, pulled his torn and slashed tunic around him as though warding off the cold shadows.
>The size of the attack
>He had always expected their enemy to hire an occasional lighter from the Guild for probing raids. That was an ordinary enough gambit in this kind of House-to-House warfare. Lighters landed and took off on Arrakis regularly to transport the spice for House Atreides. Hawat had taken precautions against random raids by false spice lighters. For a full attack, they expected no more than ten brigades.
>But there were more than two thousand ships down on Arrakis at the last count-- not just lighters, but frigates, scouts, monitors, crushers, troop carriers, dump-boxes....
>More than a hundred brigades-- ten legions!
>The entire spice income of Arrakis for fifty years might just cover the cost of such a venture.

Yeah but afik the fight with Rutha was going like that because exactly the mindset of Atrides vs mindset of Harkonnen. Rutha was by magnitudes better fighter, but he was cocky, he was teasing the atride.

That was the point of that scene, to show that even a weak man can fight like a lion if his heart is in the right place. Atrides had that royal 'thing' that made thier people fight like this and made especially Emperor mad as fuck.

For that quote, i think old Hawat (good at security as i said) was referring to Freemen at this time, not Caladan born people because they were almost completely wiped out by Harkonnen, those who survived mostly joined Halleck and his band of pirates and smugglers.

Unless of course, the Emperor was planning his own strike against the Harkonen; Hawat seemed to think something like that was likely. Remember, he can't be seen openly attacking the Landsraad, he'd need to set up something to make it look good.

I forgot about that actually, yeah, the Baron came in force.

True story, and something was likely in the works(the Baron was also kind of a loose thread) but he probably reasoned he had some time, given Harkonnen's unpopularity.

>force
What a weird name for a little boy.

kek

...

I laughed more than I should at that

then I realized Baron was just the sort of man, that would've ordered a slave boy raised under such a name just so he could murderfuck him and make tasteless pun later. and probably did too.

>Rutha was by magnitudes better fighter, but he was cocky, he was teasing the atride.

Not at all. He was cocky, yes, but primarily because they had hypnotized the guy into being unable to move if he said the code word, and because he cheated; poisoning the usually unpoisoned blade in this kind of arena fighting.

Here's a line from the book. (P 219 now)

>Feyd-Ruatha felt a moment of desperation. He had not thought the barbed shafts would be an advantage for the slave. But they gave the man another shield. And the strength of this gladiator! The short blade was being forced inward inexorably, and Feyd-Ruatha focused on the fact that a man could also die on an unpoisoned blade.

If it is a mindset of Atriedes vs Harkonen, I would think it's about raw fighting skill in the former and treachery in the latter.

>For that quote, i think old Hawat (good at security as i said) was referring to Freemen at this time, not Caladan born people

Definitely not. Remember, they only transplanted the Duke to Arrakis because he would be more vulnerable there. It certainly referred to his own people on Caladan, or else why is it a threat that needs removing?

Atreides never trained fremen though. he was in process of negotiating alliance with them when Baron arrived

Remember how Baron Harkonnens plan revolved around kidnapping a the setting equivalent to an Aspect Warrior in order to blackmail her husband into lowering the shields?

And none of the other bene gesserit particularly cared about this?

I liked him better in his building form.

Could've picked a better artwork.

>Remember how Baron Harkonnens plan revolved around kidnapping a the setting equivalent to an Aspect Warrior in order to blackmail her husband into lowering the shields?

What? The plan involved subverting the doctor so he would drug the Duke and his family and lower the shields.

5>6>1>2>4>3

Fight me.

Yeah but the way they subverted his training was by taking his wife, Wanna, hostage.

Nah, he killed Wanna ages and ages ago. He's just using Yueh's not knowing of her fate to manipulate him.

that's the most horrifying part. Yueh perfectly knew, he just had to make sure just in case they WERE keeping her alive. whole point of the betrayal was for them two to outlive their usefulness.

...you gotta admit, despite being rather incompetent, Baron still is a horrifying villain.

Then atp we can only agree to disagree.

Its true i read that book ages ago but i see it like little bit diffrent. This only shows how good the first books were in the series. Complex enough to make everyone guess.

I see Rutha as someone who is excellent fighter, (he was tip-top with Paul for a second at the end of the book and Paul was trained by both Gesserit and Halleck) and i remember i took from that scene with a prisoner exactly that: He was taken by surprised that even in death, poisoned and weakened prisoner could kill him if he was unwary. Because even in death, poisoned and weakened he was an atride. Still loyal to Leto. Most other prisoners simply braked and he was used to this in his arena fight where it was mostly for show. He cheated because he was an asshole harkonnen but he wasn't stupid either.

>Definitly not.

Wasn't Hawat with Harkonens after he knew that Duke was already dead? Im sure it was after the betrayal and by Duke he means Paul.
By someone good as Sardukar he means Freemen that were contacted by both Halleck and Idaho.

But here im not sure anymore. Memory, eh?

To be fair, her death is only implied, I think one of those asides at the start of the chapters talked about her fate being undiscovered.

And I figure actually killing her would earn even more reprisal from the bene gesserit since they're basically ' when a man dies a library burns' to the extreme.

Yeah... WE know that. The reader.

Hawat was only connecting dots.

At moment of the quote he might refer to some mysterious force he didn't yet know. So he assumes Halleck and Idaho were training them.

At this point NO ONE even imaged that somewhere in these fucking dunes people could even survive yet alone be a fighting force that could surpass sarduks.

The baron is only "incompetent" next to literal superhumans like Mentats and the Kwaisatz Hederach. Piter De Vries claims, although we don't know how accurate he is about this, that the Baron himself could outperform the "thinking machines" of the pre-Butlerian Jihad era.

A guy who can out-compute a computer is pretty damn smart, even if there are people smarter.

Also, I don't remember where I read it, and it might just have been insane speculation, but I'm sure I saw somewhere someone claiming that the Bene Gesserit planned it out; that they WANTED the Harkonen to strike, wanted Duke Leto to be eliminated so that Paul (or rather, the female child that Jessica was supposed to have) could become in charge of the Atreides in a weakened position, and marry Feyd-Ruatha to seal the feud and produce the Kwisatz Hederach. Wanna would then be a sacrifice to help set the wheels in motion.

he didn't know Paul lived
Halleck didn't meet fremen until late in then book. after Atreides fell he joined smugglers.
Idaho didn't train any fremen, he acted as official ambassador for an extremely short time, that's it.

are you kidding? Hawat was a mentat and a security officer. He knew anything Caladan was involved in. if he says the Duke's swordmasters trained a small force, he knows their names, past, who their parents and parents of their parents were, how trustworthy they are - EVERYTHING.

>Wasn't Hawat with Harkonens after he knew that Duke was already dead? Im sure it was after the betrayal and by Duke he means Paul.

He doesn't know Paul is alive. He's stunned (and eventually kills himself) when he finds out that Muad'Dib is Paul. I'm 99% sure he's talking about the old Duke's force. Remember, he says that the training method was from Idaho and Halleck, and as far as he knows, they're both dead too at the time.

It's pretty strongly implied: Yueh at least thinks he knows enough of the Truthsaying technique to be certain that Baron Harkonen is telling the truth when he says that she's dead and he'll be joining her.

>At this point NO ONE even imaged that somewhere in these fucking dunes people could even survive yet alone be a fighting force that could surpass sarduks.

That is again not supported by the text. Page 244

>You say the Sardaukar accounted for another twenty thousand, possibly a few more. And I've seen the transportation manifests for their return from Arrakis. If they killed twenty thousand, they lost almost five for one. Why won't you face these figures, Baron, and understand what they mean?

Did anybody stop reading Dune books after the first one? I read from the translator, that the books after the first one went down hill, so I decided that I would want to remember the universe as it was.

Might.

I did. I tried starting the second one, went "meeeeeh", quickly skimmed through summaries, and said "fuck that bullshit".

Leto Atreides II and his plan are kinda cool, but the actual books and the millenial scale and the bullshit with dholas and stuff just kills it for me.

I might actually read it again.
Im starting to doubt my memory seriously now guise.

Emperor is good to.
Just don't think that every Herbert book is brilliant as the first one and Emperor and you will be fine. Also by all grace don't read the trash his sons wrote. Its a fucking disgrace.
But then again you might be into facfics or something.

I am glad I am not the only one. Do you think we will ever see a faithfull movie adaptation of the book ??
Also, a great shame that Jodorowsky couldnt finish his beatifull Dune.

Thanks for the tip! I will check out the Emperor.

afaik that new guy who did Arrival (wasn't bad imho) and will do new Blade Runner considers buying rights and doing Dune next. Its just a rumor but if its true everything hinges on how he handles Blade Runner.

Im not a fan of modern reboots so i don't really have high hopes tho

Hm, I didint know that info, thank you for it !. And yeah.... The whole "new Blade Runner" bit is shifty as fuck. I mean, a big part of the old movie was the uncertaninty of Ford's identity (the shiny eyes, the goate wearing fella making paper cranes), and know, after several decades, Ford just lives? But, I will go see it, just to see it with my own eyes if its any good.

>playing Golden Sky stories
>none of us have any experience with real evil
>all of us a little boys

welp.

You're missing out by not reading God Emperor bruh

Book 3 is also very good. 2 is just... mediocre. Setup for 3 really.

Shit got weird after God Emperor

They're all worth reading.
I very strongly feel that most of the dislike for them is just that they're tonally very different.

Heretics and Chapterhouse are unironically my favorites.

I think that Heretics and Chapterhouse introduced a lot of extremely cool elements, characters and world development.

But that fucking plot. They might have been on par with the Dune->God Emperor run if Herbert had lived, but instead he kicked it after Chapterhouse and his incompetent fuck son came in and shit all over everything.

Well, I was thinking less Space Marines are the *same thing* as Sardaukar, and more that Sardaukar and SM fill a similar role in their respective universes. Sardaukar are supposed to be the most terrifying troops in the Dune universe, but they can be defeated, similar to how Space Marines are super terrifying but still do lose plenty of battles.
If you transported the Baron to the 40k verse, he'd be a highly influential, decadent noble being used as a cat's paw by the High Lords of Terra, and would be particularly dangerous given that he might be able to call on the Space Marines for help in key military operations.

But that's different medium altogether...

W40k is supposed to be bloated and unrealistic, a hyper stylised Gothic fantasy.

Dune was more grounded, Sardaukars were still people, not so ordinary humans brought to the status of super soldiers by being decimated for generations by ruthless planet they reside in where only strongest survive.

Its like asking who would win if you throw a real life spartan into a cage with Micky Mouse desu

Yeah, the Baron is interesting. He's supposed to be a pretty clever, ruthless guy who's big weakness is really that he's a sadistic pervert and has a tendency to assume everyone's too scared of him to oppose him properly. He's also very myopic, as far as I can tell his plans after bankrupting himself to exterminate the Atreides were to... masturbate to the thought of it for the next hundred years, I guess?

But yeah, you're right about the Bene Gesserit. Iirc, Paul's mom is part Harkonnen too, hence her red hair. They were planning to unite the two houses and produce their own Kwisatz Hederach.
It's interesting too that there's that bit where Paul scans his possible futures, and realizes that he has a ton of options but they all lead somewhere kind of awful. He could join Baron Harkonen, or take control of the Navigator's Guild, or do all sorts of other weird shit but they all pretty much wind up with him being controlled by someone else.

>desu
for fuck sake
thanks /pol/

wasn't this the point tho?

imho after a while no one really know who is playing who, who is backstabbing who, which plan is the main plan, was emperor using baron or baron was using the emperor, bene gesserit trying to fuck with all of them or guild really worked everyone by working with everyone

>schemes inside schemes inside schemes

was the motto, this culminated in Paul figuring out everything with his spice induced precognition and playing everyone like a fiddle

>spice must flow