Beginnings of Dune

by EmrakulTheRatHat

It is the time of the Old Empire, the very foundations of the Dune universe. Learn the origins of the Zensunni, Zenshiites and Zensufi, the Sorceresses of Rossak, the Tlulaxa, the great Harkonnen line, the Bludd nobility, the Ginaz mercenaries, the Titan cymeks and the League of Nobles. This is the beginning of the Dune universe.

2. Chapter 2

The origins of the Harkonnens are crowded in mystery. Millenia before their time as a Great House of the Corrino Landsraad, they were already a rich, noble and ancient family. We must look back through history to the Old Empire - there we will find their sinister past.

- Princess Irulan, House Harkonnen

The Harkonnen Chapter Stronghold on Rahagal was a vast, ominous place designed not to be a beatiful royal palace but a practical and private headquarters for the Harkonnen opertaions, which streched across the Galaxy. It was home to the noble Lord Barron Harkonnen, and his sons Turin and Allof. One of them would have to succeed him as Lord of the Chapter after he died, and if both were still alive when that happened, one would have to kill the other, in accordance with Imperial tradition. The Stronghold also contained hundreds of efficient thinking machines which served the purposes of the Lord and his sons. The machines were some of the best in the Empire, as the Harkonnen Chatper, as a result of centuries of patience and queit manipulation, had become obscenely rich. The family used proscriptions of the Great Religion of the Old Empire as well as the ancient Chapter Decrees too their own ends, and it had paid off.

Within the deepest levels of the stronghold, Turin Harkonnen watched as the thinking machine known as Gisvin operated the communications channel, managing relations and trade with the many organizations and planets of the Empire, including the other Chapters, subject to the intervention of the Lord Barron. Currently, Gisvin was arranging a minor export of Star Jewels to Earth in exchange for illegally smuggled slaves to work in the hidden Chapter Mines on Turiv Ord. Turin found Gisvin and the thinking machines fascinating, but was always suspicious of them, a natural fault as a human. The thinking machines, in reality, were prevented from harming them by the old Laws of Asimov. Turin knew this, and at the moment felt perfectly relaxed around Gisvin, who, if the laws were to vanish (an impossibility) could have killed him at any moment.

These machines were, after all, the future.