Hello again. Another update is ready, this time we’ll speak about the universe and the plot.
— He who control Arrakis, control the spice.
And he who control the spice, control the Universe.
© Baron Vladimir Harkonnen
“Dune” (1984) Directed by David Lynch
As we have already said in our previous article “Who we are?”, the event of the game take place after Baron Vladimir’s death. By the way, it is weird that we were showing profiles of Harkonnen vehicles and still no one has ever asked “What the hell? The Harkonnen? О_о”
But this question is very logical. The Baron is dead, all his cousins are dead as well – there are no Harkonnen at all, the Emperor is overthrown, and all the Great Houses are frozen in terror before Paul Atreides and his ultimatum. Even the Spacing Guild that had always been above all the laws was helpless.
Of course, this numbness will not last forever and eventually the struggle for Dune will arise again, but this is the very moment we are interested in. We are particularly interested in it because it was not described in details in Frank Herbert’s works, so we will not harm the story itself and we will not interfere in the plot.
Let us leave Arrakis for a while and move to Giedi Prime, the native planet of the House Harkonnen. Here, under a dim light of a dying star, the news about the death of the whole Harkonnen royal family had a much greater effect than anywhere else. The whole planet was drowned into blood and chaos.
The slaves who were the majority of the population started an uprising of an unprecedented magnitude. They massacred their oppressors (see «Payback»), and for the first time the Harkonnen army failed to overcome it…
Without the leader the army plunged into anarchy. Some hid themselves on remote military bases. Others like scavengers were going round the cities and marauding the possessions of once a rich House, hoping to buy their lives for the stolen wealth. However, everyone realized that neither thick walls nor the whole Harkonnen treasury will not save them – as the situation around Dune will calm down a bit, they will be torn apart and their wealth will be taken by force. During his reign Baron Vladimir made a lot of enemies, and it was the army who helped him…
But not the whole Empire was just waiting and doing nothing. Some people decided to use the opportunity. Eight days after the fateful events on Arrakis, a mysterious stranger Khadal contacted a Harkonnen commander, Dammar Shiman, whose forces entrenched in an outpost near the Great Mine on the South Pole of Giedi Prime. He offered an unusual way out for the Harkonnen army.
It was already strange that Khadal could make it to Giedi Prime, which proved his possibilities more than enough. Neither the Guild nor Muad’Dib himself could foresee it. Khadal and his silent escort used a technology they called “The Void Technology”*, which did not allow any of their ships to be detected by any satellite while everything inside was completely obscured from precognition.
As Khadal said, he could benefit from this cooperation because he was not satisfied by Paul Atreides and his melange policies, also he was expecting to get a lion’s share of profit from trading spice, in case of success.
According to the agreement the Harkonnen army was to make a sudden assault on Arrakis and to remove the Atreides and the Fremen who were already weakened by recent events. The plan was good enough, as Muad’Dib himself and all his family were away from the planet. Dammar understood that conquering Arrakis is their only way to survive, too much was on the bet... All or none...
This clearly means that blood will spill on the sands of Dune once more...
*Void Technology – something close to the technologies of no-ship and no-chamber that were invented by a certain Chobyn even before the events of “Dune”, later the technology was forgotten but then re-invented again by the Ixians. In our story the faction represented by Khadal secretly possesses this forgotten and forbidden technologies of Chobyn.
En.wikipedia.org
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Also we want to show you some of our concept arts to make the long text a bit more colourful:
That’s all for now, thanks for your attention, we hope that it was interesting! See you next time, we have something more ;)
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The story is great! And your artwork is amazing!
really cool :) keep it up xD
That's how modifications need to be done ! Epic Work
As a big fan of Dune, I had to comment on this story:
The first recorded no-room technology came about around 3000 years into Leto II's reign. Sometime around or after then, the Harkonnen's also acquired a no-globe. A major component of Leto II's golden path was to oppress humanity with his prescience, so that they would develop technology to counter it (no-technology) and so they would evolve the capability to escape prescience. The latter was the purpose of his breeding program which ended with Siona Ibn Faud Al-Seyefa Atreides.
It's ludicrous to think that no-technology would have been developed BEFORE Paul-Muad'Dib Atreides, who was the first recorded human with prescience (the result of the Bene Gesserit millenia-long breeding program). The only known way around his prescience was guild navigators, as with the assassination plot in Dune Messiah.
The story also mentions "their ships", as if a Great House, let alone a single person, could own and operate a space ship themselves. The Guild had all rights on intersteller transport with their monopoly. The Guild would transport people and things from planet to planet. In the original Dune it's mentioned that during transit all ships were anonymous. An transport full of Atreides could be right alongside one carrying Harkonnen and neither would know. It wasn't until the Scattering after Leto II's death, when the Ixians developed their artificial Navigation machines and artificial Melange, that the Guild lost absolute control of space travel.
The matter is that we also consider books written by Herbert's son, where it is clearly said that no-room was invented before, and it was invented by a certain Chobyn, we did not think him up, it was in the books ("House Atreides", "House Harkonnen", "House Corrino"). Maybe someone does not agree with that, but Herbert's son has more rights to decide ehre so we side with him.
Also, in our story, Khadal's faction possesses this tech secretly, so we cannot speak about monopoly here at all, it is obvious that this is illegal. Khadal is a "third faction", a mastermind...
P.S.:
>>> "The first recorded no-room technology came about around 3000 years into Leto II's reign. Sometime around or after then, the Harkonnen's also acquired a no-globe."
In fact, by that time House Harkonnen was already destroyed, it did not exist.
I didn't know that, I read House Atreides and couldn't stand to read any more of Brian's drivel. Still, even if Brian Herbert wrote those inconsistencies, they are still inconsistencies - and part of the reason I don't really consider any of his books to be canon, because there were loads of them even in House Atreides. Brian does not seem to have a good grasp of the Duniverse at all; the themes, the societies, the cultures, anything really. He just writes up a very literal and shallow story and shoves it onto Arrakis or Geidi Prime and calls it a Dune book.
As to the matter of Khadal having an alternate means of space travel to the Guild...he would also have to have a rogue Guild Navigator. I suppose that is possible though.
The claims that House Harkonnen died when the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen died, I cannot dispute. However, the Dune Encyclopedia (which I consider more canon than Brian's work, and which Frank Herbert himself approved of) claims that the house lived on as a House Minor under the leadership of the Rabban family (Glossu "Beast" Rabban was not the last of his side of the family). I found it a pretty clear implication that the contents of the no-globe in Heretics of Dune featured a lot of trademark Harkonnen material - sexualized and brutal imagery for example. To me, this suggests that the Harkonnens existed in some form when they acquired their no-globe, during the reign of Leto II or perhaps during the famine times. I believe, if I recall correctly, that Duncan Idaho suggested this in Heretics of Dune. However the interpretation that House Harkonnen was effectively destroyed by Paul Muad'Dib Atreides isn't impossible.
Please note I love what this mod is doing, Dune needs more exposure and definitely more games. Also love the artwork! I guess I take issue more with Brian Herbert than with the specific work of this mod team regarding this storyline.
interesting, you know all those things as well as i do, yet you miss something pretty well stated in first dune. house harkonnen wouldnt be dead even if there was no rabban family continuation as house minor. practically every single atreides after death of Leto I was a harkonnen. jessica being barons daughter, paul and alia his grandchildren and so on.
as for the brians stuff. well i did mildly enjoy his "house" stuff, then became rather indiferent about chronicles, really battle for corrin rendition was complete utter bullcrap, yet i still read through them. i dont really even consider reading hunters and sandworms. still no canon for me, since it misses a great deal of more important aspects of franks work like philosophy, religion, politics and such. i rather chose other franks stuff, pandora trilogy (even though in the last book i hated that "romantic stupidity", that was a bit too cheap, i suppose it was bill ransoms work :) ), whipping star, or recently purchased hellstroms hive and heisenbergs eyes.
nevertheless i can sign under kengous last paragraph.
In a strict sense you're absolutely right. Emperor Paul-Muad'Dib Atreides ruled that the Harkonnen title had passed to the Lady Jessica, but she renounced the title, letting it fall to the next heir: Paul Atreides himself. In so doing, the Harkonnen family and Atreides family were combined once and for all.
However, according to the Dune Encyclopedia (which is not strictly canon, I'll admit), the family Harkonnen-Rabban did survive as a separate House Minor. It is my interpretation that it is this family that ruled Geidi Prime, and that they maintained the same culture as the Harkonnens. For practical purposes they were the Harkonnens, if not strictly by title.
i have to admint that havent read the dune encyclopedia....yet. so no need to defend it :). i even have to agree with you because of that no-globe-in-heretics reason. i just had to state the "darth vader thingy" clearly :). i suspect that star wars actually borrowed this from dune.
btw as you can see im an adorer of dune as well :). my all time favourite books, lead by god emperor.
The first artwork is awasome. Evil simling little girl ;D
Thanks for all your comments, we are glad that people are so interested in that.
All your criticism is good, but understand, Frank Herbert's books are not quite suitable for an RTS game on their own. Also we do not want to simplify his great creation to a level of a computer game. This is the reason why we decided to invent something ourselves, but without distorting anything, that's why we looked through the books to see if any details can be used (like the no-room technology).
And, I will give away one secret. Khadal's faction does not use living Navigators. We wanted to make them use forbidden computer technologies, and they do it only to stay in the shadows and to create their insidious schemes.
By the way, Khadal is not the leader of this faction, he is merely a representative. You'll learn more when the campaign will be finished.
And another important detail - all the events, at least of the first episode, will unfold in a very short period. It is still a subject of our internal discussion, whether it will be several days, a couple of weeks or several months, but not more. The events will be swift and intriguing, and the plot will be shrouded in mystery. That's why I cannot give more details about why we decided to build the plot in this way.
I dont care what the story says this is plain awsome!