The Great Houses or Houses Major are the most powerful and important houses with voting right in the Landsraad. Their number was not fixed; they varied in history with political and economic fortunes, and depended to some degree on the strength of the Empire’s basic institutions: there were as few as 35, and as many as 157. all other, lesser houses belonged to “circles of the empire,” each.

The Legate

The leaders of the Great Houses and Major Houses seldom attend the Landsraad High Council, preferring instead to send Legates or “ambassadors”. The heads of Houses Minor and Nascent Houses, in contrast, often appear in person as it represents an opportunity to meet more powerful patrons.

Legates are often Mentats – enabling them to keep track of the many factors and numbers they need and working the probabilities.

Nascent Houses

The first step for a House was to get recognition within the Landsraad. This was a process of gaining influence and money, of trading favours for a sponsorship. Once the Petition to the Council is made, the House has to follow up with commitments and repay favours before they are accepted. In reality, this is done in word only. Most new Houses enter the Landsraad owing huge debts to their sponsors and, of course, brand new enemies.

House Minor

The Minor Houses are vassal to Major Houses and Great Houses and therefore part of their voting bloc. Voting with their patron house will be expected and any votes going against their patron would be met with severe retribution. An effective Legate might use this as an opportunity to switch allegiances.

House Major

The Major Houses have considerable influence, with the resources of an entire planet behind them. They are the main focus of the “circles of the empire”. They’re powerful enough that they might be able to ignore the dictates of the Great House blocs. They might even be able to make a name for themselves standing out against their patrons.

The Great Houses

Those houses with the highest influence, the greatest military strength or the most wealth create their own voting blocs within the Landsraad. Their Legate is surrounded with an entourage of Envoys (referred to as Whips) who spend their days coaxing and chiding their voting blocs and trying to bring in new influence.

The Moot

Four times a year, the Moot is held. It lasts up to a month and is all about the politics of the Landsraad.

Due to the complexities of Imperial Life and the Landsraad, usually only one vote is taken per Standard Day. The rest of the time is negotiations, conversation, reading the Proposal and Counters.

The morning starts at 5 am, beginning with Prayer and Dedications. After this is completed (usually lasting an hour), the Legates disperse for refreshments and to confer with others.
At 10 am, the First Reading Begins. This is followed by the Second Reading.
At noon, the Legates again disperse, breaking for lunch, which is again an excuse for conversation, for bullying and for instruction in the circles.
At 5 pm, the Vote takes place. After the significant preamble of the day, the Vote itself is almost instant with multiple Mentats counting the results. After the vote, the Legates again break for refreshments. This is the Reward or Retribution phase when Legates and their Envoys find their vassals and remind them of their vote.
At 7 pm, the results of the Vote are presented to the Emperor who will either Accept or Refuse them. It’s uncommon for the Emperor to refuse a Vote result, but not unheard of. As most Votes end in the most frustrating stalemates, the Emperor is seldom even present for this part of the Moot and instead his Delegatus is a stand-in.
At 10 pm the Moot is dissolved for the Day. The Vote results are disseminated to the Empire.

Scenario Ideas

What are ways you can get players involved in the Landraad and the High Council.

Come to the Moot

The Players House Leader or Legate is attending the Moot because there’s an important vote, maybe their own sponsored Bill (Privata Libellum). The Players are the escorts, the administration. They’ll be involved in the intrigues at their level as well as those at the higher and lower levels. BGs will be informed the way the BG wants a vote to go and to influence their Legates. Plenty of opportunity for intrigues.

Fix This

The vote isn’t going to go well. There are some Vassals who aren’t towing the line. Some of them just disagree with it while some of them are being courted by other major houses to influence the vote. Their Legate is clear:a list of names and only couple of hours to fix it.

Truth and Consequences

There’s an attack on the entourage. The Legate had signalled their intention to vote a certain way and someone doesn’t like it. The enemy could be a rival house, or even a liege house. The severity of the attack depends on the outcomes. The Vote involved could be important or it could be entirely trivial – it’s not about the vote – it’s about the message the attack carries.

Retribution

The Vote went the wrong way and the Legate wants blood. Punishment, murder are all on the table. Vassals beware!

After watching the movie, the thirst for playing the Dune RPG (by Modiphius) is high.

The movie is filled with outstanding visuals and the background is sufficiently rich the only barrier to a dozen sourcebooks is, I guess, the license Modiphius holds.

There’s some astounding imagery. Fabulous for developing a game, visually.

The question of the lack of alien life in the Dune universe has been asked many times. The coverage of the Known Universe is still small enough, in the massive scale of the universe that the Fermi paradox does not hold. But that’s not the reason there are no aliens in Dune.

The Vicinis are a military arm of the Spacing Guild. They’re forbidden to act officially on the planets of the Landsraad. The Vicinis Agents are tasked with “clearing the way” and “keeping the borders”.

Continue reading →

Hasimir Fenring has to be one of the most interesting minor characters in the book. A “might have been”, deadly, BG-trained, and seemingly with fingers in every pie. But it begs the question about other might have beens and “the test”.

PLOT THREAD

The players are the lower level companions, functionaries and agents of a Major House. Establish them as trusted and give them opportunities to advance (1-2 scenarios). Get them involved in the intrigues of the House, for example:

1. A Bene Gesserit (BG) player may become a handmaid to the matriarch. They quickly become a confidante, a carrier of secrets.
2. A Swordmaster or Mentat may be promoted to deputy within the House. They may be included in the personal guard, part of the training team for the Marquis and his heirs.
3. The players, as a group, are sent to “mind” a legal shipment of Spice. There’s enough intrigue and theft around that the most trusted people in the family are sent to shepherd it.
4. A player begins a romance with a cousin of the ruling family. The cousin is far enough from the ascendancy of succession for it not to be an issue (unless the GM decides that the cousin wants to kill their way to the top).
5. The players are sent on a secret mission to Ix for a new set of fighter drones. Fighter drones are useful for helping warriors train, but they are literally a violation of the laws established during the Butlerian Jihad.
6. The players are asked to accompany The Marquis to a meeting of the Landsraad. Most of the involvement will be hanging around in large halls, surrounded by the entourage and companions of the other Landsraad families. The players aren’t important enough to be involved in the decision making process.

After at least 2 of these have been executed, the characters are more trusted and closer to the Family. They should have become familiarised with the Marquis and Marchioness and their two children, aged 12 and 6. The children are typically precocious for Major House children; excelling in studies and in combat skills, versed in literature and music. During this time, make sure the players develop a relationship with the elder of the house heirs. This will become important. A Swordmaster may be a sparring partner, a Suk doctor required to bind wounds, a Mentat or BG to teach. When they return from a “mission”, have the child run out to greet them with the honorific “Sobaki”. This means “hound” or “one who bites” in the old tongue of the family. They’re the trusted ones within the family.

Now to the grit…

The heir of their House, a boy of only 12, has begun to have prescient visions. Certainly the boy has the sight and the initial instruction is to start instructing the boy in higher level teachings of both BG and Mentat skills.

The messianic messages of Dune are not the same (as we don’t have the influence of the Missionaria Protectiva manipulating the Fremen in this place), but there’s certainly something happening.

The senior BG in the House has immediately sent for a Truthsayer to administer the Test. Because there’s no such thing as a secret, there are other agents infiltrating the House to end the life of the heir. The Spacing Guild don’t want a Kwisatz Haderach. The Bene Gesserit don’t want one they can’t control. So, the youth is observed. The players may be somewhat aware of this (just tell them a Reverend Mother and Truthsayer has arrived with a small green box). But they’re too involved with their duties to be fully aware.

In the end, the might-have-been fails the test and is killed by gom jabbar. The players may be tasked with tracking down this ninja-nun, slightly complicated by the interference from the senior BG in the house (and presumably any BG players being double agents).

The BG player may be charged with getting the Reverend Mother off the planet safely. They may be also tasked with calming things “The Margrave must see reason. If her persists and goes to the Landsraad, the order will be endangered will be forced to retaliate. He, and his issue, will be utterly destroyed. It is in your hands to prevent this.” (Credit: James DiBenedetto)

The parents, senior nobles, are distraught. The BG are soon expelled from the House amid threats of bringing this to the whole of the Landraad. Then, suddenly, overnight, everything is back to normal. The child is still dead but the parents return everything to normal. The BG return and take their normal places. No-one seems to be talking about it.

WHAT HAPPENED? Pick one (or more)

Money and Power – the family have been assured influence and power via the BG which has bought back their loyalty. The Marquis is soon spoiling for more influence and power. They don’t mention their deceased child beyond an empty seat at dinner and rooms which remain locked. This outcome serves to remind us that these families are greed-filled, just like the Atreides (so often painted as the good team in Dune). It is all about money and power.

Rosemary’s Baby – Maybe they’ve been promised a ghola? It will be deeply disturbing when the child comes down for breakfast, unexpected. The players should be sent away for a mission, something lasting a few months and when they return, the ghola has perfectly integrated. How did it get there? On whose authority? Who paid for it? And why has no-one mentioned it?

Deep Suggestion – a late visit from a BG elder triggered behavioural modification in the parents, causing their grief to become melancholy and clouding their memory of what happened. Deep suggestion techniques are beyond most Bene Gesserit, but it paves the way for the BG to rewrite memories as they see fit. The child is never mentioned again.

Alternatively….

Kidnapped – before the Observation can be completed, the child is removed by the Spacing Guild as an early stage Navigator. With prescience this advanced in one so young, it would be incredibly useful to study him for the development of navigation using less spice. The Sobaki are then tasked with retrieving the child…and the BG are being strangely helpful. The players may also need to stave off the Bene Tleilax as they’re interested in a psychic child, untainted by spice.

It must be noted that I have no direct plans to run a Dune game. But I am a little forced by my mind to examine the game and the concepts deeper than should be permitted as I am after all, running one game, playing another, holding down a job, studying two courses (film production and Spanish) and trying to be an okay human being in the moments between.

Holding Houses

On the FB forums, I’d suggested the roles of “Holding Houses”. Minor Houses, vassal to Great Houses, who are charged with the maintenance of things. An example would be the administration that occupied Caladan after the Atreides left for Arrakis. Or, after the destruction of House Harkonnen, it’s line broken, who shepherds Geidi Prime back to some sort of sensible nature.

The Cursed Party

There’s an enchanting idea in the concept of a cursed party: a male of Bene Gesserit training, an Imperial Doctor who failed the conditioning, a Twisted Mentat, a dishonourable Swordmaster. Perhaps there’s room for a party trying to make good on a past sin, perhaps they were destroyed through their use of atomics or lasgun/shields and were sheltered by a Great House (and the Bene Gesserit) to prevent the genetic line being totally destroyed.

The Godmothers

The This then leads another enchanting idea for a campaign; re-establishing a lost house. Or changing the direction of a house whose character had been stained. I am reminded of “The Godfather Trilogy”. Led by a fanatical Bene Gesserit, a young House-heir is revealed and works to try and restore the honour, prestige and prosperity of their family; all the while developing the need to have revenge, while old enemies circle to finish the job they started.

Character Notes

Notes on Bene Gesserit Characters: many males in the books receive the benefits of Bene Gesserit training to some degree. Paul Atreides is just something unexpected.

Notes on Fremen Characters: The rule book says that Fremen do not leave Arrakis. What’s missed is that no-one really leaves Arrakis. The Spice is so addictive that few can afford to. As soon as you leave Arrakis, the spice hunger begins. The Dune Encyclopaedia states on page 15 that Fremen do leave Arrakis “to goggle at rivers, lakes, oceans and jungles and then to seek their reduplication on Dune”. No doubt they bring their own supplies.

There are also some big questions that might lead to epic plots that are separate from the Atreides storyline.

FTL COMMS
The fastest way of sending a communique seems to be to put it on a heighliner. There’s no FTL comms. Though I’d be surprised if the Spice prescience didn’t provide the Guild (and the Bene Gesserit) with communication abilities.

HEIGHLINERS PETIT
The heighliners are huge but how small can a fold ship actually be considering it needs the life support, folding machinery, conventional propulsion and either nab computer or space for a Navigator.

ALIEN LIFE
It’s clear from what I’ve read that the only alien life in the whole universe is the Sandworm. In Dune, Herbert mentions that Terran flora and fauna have established themselves on Arrakis. No mention of native species.

ORIGIN OF THE WORMS
Certainly not native to Arrakis, then where did they come from? And their whole biology is tied up with human biology – surely they must be an engineered species? Or else they evolved alongside us.

There’s certainly more but that’s a good start.