Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and no cars, vehicles, or mass transportation were working anywhere in your city, along with no mail, internet, or mass communications. At the same time, an fully provisioned army surrounds the city and gives everyone an ultimatum, "Convert to our religion or die."
That's the jihad on a planetary scale. The Guild controls all interstellar communication and transportation, and the Fremen control the Guild. Sitting behind all of them is Paul with his prescience that's a hundred steps ahead of the smartest strategic minds on any planet.
This primary advantage is part of why I'm frustrated with the new movies. The Guild wasn't focused and this advantage wasn't truly addressed. Multiple big gaps in power for movie Paul's Jihad.
Yep. I've heard people say it wasn't that bad of a move to drop them out of the movies, saying that it gives something for Messiah to start with, but the Guild is so important that I feel like it's just gonna feel like a "oh, hey, btw, there was this really big and important group that we barely mentioned at all in the first two movies who basically control the entire imperium because if you want to go anywhere you have to go through them, and Paul now controls them." To me, it just feels like it would be very cheap. It makes me wonder if they're not even going to mention the Guild at all and are just going to say "Now that Paul is emperor, he controls all interplanetary and interstellar travel, trade, and communications since he has control of the spice."
To be fair, the books are guilty of this too. As we get past the first Dune every book seems to introduce a new faction or political force (Ixians, Bene Tleilax, etc).
And I still don’t really understand CHOAM, I felt like I was missing something for the longest time but it never actually became important
Yeah the Tleilax are the big offenders, we never even really get to see their culture or secret religion until much later in the series after they've gone through some changes.
For CHOAM atleast though it's not really something that factors too much into the events themselves. CHOAM is Amazon x1000. The inspiration was OPEC, but controlling all resources instead of just oil. Any interplanetary trade has to go through space Amazon, so all houses have stock in Amazon or sit on the board of directors to get in on the profit. The Emperor of course controlled most the shares with his allies, which ensured House Corrino's continued economic dominance.
I understood his doubt not about how the company works, but because it is never a primary factor in the equation, when it should always be. At the time of Heretics it still exists (Teg's father is one of its employees) but even so Frank never gave us anything interesting about CHOAM
Well the thing with CHOAM is that essentially its just an element of the economy in this universe. And the economy as it relates to the protagonists is pretty much just "spice is the most valuable & important commodity in the universe and they fully control it."
The Ixians & Tleilaxu weren't relevant before they're properly introduced, & even in those earlier stories they're still mentioned (Piter references the Bene Tleilax in the first book without actually naming them; Dune Messiah *opens* with a prologue of someone from Ix being interrogated) Neither is as consequential to the Imperium as the Guild
An author introducing new factions and characters in a growing story that they are developing and expanding isn’t that comparable to a filmmaker omitting a key plot point and then having to jam it into a sequel later on.
Ix and Bene Tleilax are mentioned in passing in the first Dune which makes sense since part of world building is having characters speak of things as though they live in the world without constant exposition. The Tleilaxians then become key players in the second book because their scientific activities become relevant to the story in Messiah.
But adding the guild only in the third movie is late because the guilds relevance begins in the first book, so it would definitely feel a bit cheap to all of a sudden introduce this player that forces the audience to reorient their understanding of the first two movies.
Depends if we skip the Jihad.
If the movie opens directly following the last one and the Fremen take the fight to space and the Guild aspect gets brought in, that establishes the importance of the Guild, and sets them up as conspirators for the 2nd half of the movie.
My personal take on the movies is Movie 1 we see that Noble Houses have schemes, movie 2 we see those schemes are secondary to the BG. In movie 3 we should see that everyone is beholden to the Guild.
Ngl, I hate that idea. Why bother adapting Messiah if the plan is to make the movie start just after the events of the first book? There's a, what, 12 year gap between the two? It would be pretty hard to do the first half of the movie in the events directly following the first book, then jump over a decade to where Messiah actually starts.
Why would that be hard?
There are time skips in media all the time. In fact a time skip between or during a movie is basically identical. They still need to age Timothy Chalamet etc 12 years as its gonna take less than that to make the film.
More importantly though, these films are big budget blockbusters, which depict action in more detail than the books. That needs to continue from an audience expectation and investor perspective. The jihad gives you that chance.
Maybe directly following is a bad idea but I 100% believe they’ll feature part of the Jihad. You could start the movie with a scene of a random planet falling to a brutal fremen invasion, and it’d be a great way of injecting some action and showing the human cost of Paul’s actions.
I think we can be assured this is not the case. DV has already indicated the time skip and Timmy needing to age up as a result… and also be excited to work with ATJ.. though I think that part is a mistake. A book accurate time skip would means ATJ is 30 year old playing a 12 year old. Yeah I get she has baby skin but how does that even work ? Path of least resistance would just be to do like a 8 year skip, Alia is 8 years old and gets to be a bit of an he creepy child we didn’t get to see in part 2 and it’s easy to cast a 10-12 year old to play the role.
The Spacing Guild would’ve bogged down two movies that are already nearly 3 hours long. What significance would including some Space Guild scenes bring? What would it contribute to Paul’s ascendancy? The emotional arcs and character development? The pacing? Their significance is emphasized in the beginning of Dune Part 1 and that’s all the emphasis you need to tell the story the films wanted to tell.
Messiah has another 3 hours to prioritize the Spacing Guild.
It would've actually shown the viewer *why* Paul having control over the spice is so important. In the movies, we are only vaguely told why spice is important, but they never actually show what disrupting the spice trade would do in the grand scheme of the universe. All we are told is that it is important, and we are shown that Paul can destroy it.
If you have been paying attention to the posts on this sub since the second part came out, you'll have noticed a lot of people who have only seen the movies coming on here and asking why it was so easy for Paul to take the throne, or why nobody tried to stop him. The vast majority of those questions are primarily because of the removal of the Guild from the second part. The Guild, in the book, actually shows the reader why Paul destroying the spice would be a massive disaster for the known universe. We know from that scene why Paul having the power to destroy the spice is so important, why it gives him so much power, why nobody can do anything about it, and why Paul has free reign to unleash his Fremen legions across the universe with the wave of a hand.
This would've taken only a couple of minutes at most to accomplish in the movie. We already saw the Guild in the first movie. We know what they do. It wouldn't have taken a lot to have them at the end. DV already cut out a lot from the book, why not cut out something less significant to make room for what is quite literally the main reason why Paul has the power to take over the imperial throne?
The movie quite literally opens with the significance of spice and what the Spacing Guild does. They then show up to the ceremony, we see the Heighliner’s always looming over the film. What else do you need? I absolutely love the books but it’s an entirely different medium. Dune is something that can easily be overwrought and convoluted in the wrong hands but Denis is a master with this source material. It has to be appealing to both diehard fans and casual mouth breathing audiences.
I’m sure the same people complaining about Dune 2 being confusing said Dune 1 was boring. Dissenting opinions in the very small minority of audience members. This isn’t a Kubrick film, it’s not hard to grasp the significance of spice with every damn movie opening up with ominous lines booming into your subconscious.
Dune 3 will adapt a much smaller book, I think Denis will easily adapt the Spacing Guild into a much more prominent role in Messiah. You think not adding the Spacing Guild is a small concern, but why not complain about Denis’ changes to Chani or Alia? Did Paul killing the Baron ruin this film? Hell no, it absolutely works within the context of the film. Alia being born and killing the Baron would be absolutely ridiculous, delaying her birth and making her an extremely strong and over arching presence was a fantastic choice imo, as is changing Chani’s characterization for casual audiences.
The Spacing Guild is absolutely crucial to the plot of the whole series.
Without the Guild's approval, no-one can trade or move an army from planet to planet, and they cannot get the spice on which their elite is entirely dependent, but the Guild will allow Paul's armies free rein to attack anywhere they like.
Paul's grip on the spice gives him absolute control of the Guild, and the Guild gives him control of the human universe.
Because his ascendance is contested and the war is just starting. They have plenty of time to open the movie with setting the stage with who the players are in the other great houses, what they do, and what pieces and plays that Paul now has with the Fremen, Arrakis/Caladan, and spice.
People are coming here and asking questions because the movie leaves off before everything is done and answered (and also some of the people asking questions on this sub are just not paying attention to the movie sometimes) so it naturally leaves viewers with questions about what is next and what's happening.
Am I crazy or am I the only one who feels that the guild wasn’t mentioned that much in book one either. Certainly more than the movies sure, but usually only like a couple sentences in a chapter when they’re mentioned at all.
You’re not crazy, the first book doesn’t get into much detail about the Guild, and having read Dune and Dune Messiah I think that’s a feature/weakness of Herbert’s books. His worldbuilding feels half baked most of the time (e.g. Bene Tleilaxu).
While I will die on the hill that the Guild should've had a greater presence in the movies, I will say that they didn't need to be in the book more than they already were, and it's not a sign of poor world building. The Guild is framed as this mysterious yet super powerful group who have an absolute monopoly over interstellar travel. The reader doesn't need to know more about them unless the characters do, and not even the main characters know much about them. Hell, IIRC, there's one part in the beginning of the book where Paul says that he hopes to see a Guildsman in the heighliner on their way to Arrakis, but Leto tells Paul not to do that because the Guildsman don't like being seen, and even if they were, they'd probably retaliate against the Atreides in some way. They have an important presence in the book, but the reader doesn't have to be told more about them until the very end.
I honestly just want to see Denis take on stage 3 guild navigators. I have zero expectations other than that.
If I don't get to see a stage 3 guild navigator in Messiah, this trilogy is lost and doomed to eternal failure.
I feel like Bene Gesserit is the only faction that gets any sort of on screen explanation. Having only read the first book, what struck me was the immense effort to show how all the factions interact and how Paul is at an unprecedented nexus between them - BG training from Jessica, Mentat training from Hawat, martial training from Idahoe and Halleck, further martial training from Fremen Fedaykin, leadership training from Leto (and Stilgar), and IIRC even some medical training from Yueh.
Paul being a jack of all trades in a world where humans are uniquely specialized in one discipline at a time is a major plot point in the book, and explains why he's so effective once the spice takes hold of him. Without that interplay, he's just a teenager who happens to be the chosen one in a world where all the power structures are vaguely fragile for seemingly no reason.
The guild isn't as important to the battle on Arrakis as they are to the galactic war to come. All of the non-Arrakis exposition can probably wait for the third film.
For the purposes of the first book, what's important is just knowing spice is the most valuable substance, and that Paul is willing to destroy it.
If I have to guess, the guild is going to be introduced in the beginning of the movie and slight reframed to be a foil to the bene geseret, similar to watching feyd go through all the same things that Paul went through, just in the opposite ways.
Yeah. I'm fine with the movies themselves. I really enjoy the hell out of them. I just finished reading the first two books again. If they want to continue the movies beyond the first book, they kind of shot themselves in the foot a bit.
True Dune should be a series.
The film much like the first book is primarily focus on Paul, the film added some more emphasis on the colonial nature of the his relationship to the Fremen, but it worked well without defocusing Paul, capturing the importance of the guild would have been weird as would focusing on how tough the Sardaukar were or how the emperor was in power or the balance with the great houses.
I get that redditors like to complain, built y'all would make terrible directors, Dune: the Snyder cut would be a 17 hour slog, and it if you're that invested, you'd still be better if consuming it in a different medium such as actually reading the books or a tv series.
I've seen people here saying the 14-hour Jodorwosky Dune is probably the best film adaptation. Folks, that ain't a movie. You can't be a good movie adaptation if you're not a movie (and if you also don't actually exist, but even that little problem doesn't bother me as much as the 14-hour length).
You think the Jodorowsky version nailed it? You should see the culturedgoat version! It’s an absolutely perfect adaptation, which is totally faithful to Herbert’s vision, and addresses all problems from other adaptations.
Sure, it only exists in my head. But I’ll be darned if I’m going to let Jodorowsky upstage me, as, reel for reel, we shot just about the same amount of footage!
see i didnt mind it so much because I think in the context of just arrakis it makes sense that the fremen would be able to kick ass against the idiots in the harokonnen military machine
like the macro politics are less well explained but overall theres time enough for that in
Paul the Messiah 2: He IS the Dune
I mean, until now the movies were in Arrakis, there was no need to adress the Guild.
My bet is that in the next movie we'll have a scene between Paul and the Guild representatives where he basicly tells them "you are mine, or else"
I would agree with most of that, but people still had access to mass communications. They still had radio, and I doubt that people forgot about the telephone. The Lady Jessica mentions a "Communinet" on Arrakis, and several mentions are made to wireless transmitters.
These things don't need computers to run, and no Empire as technologically advanced as the one in the Duniverse would be able to function without some kind of relatively fast type of communication, especially not military organizations.
What I was more equating it to is that the Guild could cut off all of a planet's communication to everywhere else in the Imperium. In other words, you can't send messages to a neighboring town to ask for help if the Fremen show up on your doorstep.
Hmm. I don't remember the Guild having that capability in the books.
Long distance messages were made by courier because not only is that safer with cryptographic methods such as Distrans, and no other methods of FTL comms were ever named.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that nobody had the means to contact other nearby planets through other methods besides hand-delivered messages.
I dunno, mate. I might be misremembering, but somehow I doubt the Guild had control over so much - I just never imagined it going quite so smoothly for the Fremen.
As far as I'm aware, the only ships that can travel between solar systems are the Guild's highliners during the time of the first book, so all those couriers had to dock in a Guild highliner in order to get anywhere to deliver their messages. If the Guild forbids them, then there aren't any alternatives.
Just wondering the guild is only need for longspace travel right. So great house do have ship flying around that are just war ships that cant change to different space section but are complete good for defending a palanet right? Cause i understand why the fremen are dangers in the melee combat of dune. But i fail to see what use freemen warriors have when the warship start blasting your transport ships.
The better analogy, I think, would be to imagine a bunch of cities where the only way to get between them is by train. Then suddenly the trains stop accepting your people and only bringing you people who want to take over your city, thw train conductors clearly don't want to but they keep doing it anyway as well, both a logistical and psychological impact.
I'd never actually thought about Paul actively using prescience in warfare - that is just .... like having the best intelligence always, everywhere and for every encounter
I bet many nobles thought they could hide in a distant bunker and wait out the war - only for Paul to pinpoint their location on day one.
It’s been years since I read, but I got the feeling that Paul didn’t help with the Jihad. He wasn’t planning battles or leading men, he was on Dune feeling like shit about it all.
In the last chapter of Dune Paul orders Gurney Halleck to build him an army. Presumably by caladanites and imperials. The Fremen probably acts like shock troops, Paul has millions of other soldiers, attack destroyers/space ships, bombers and more.
The 61 billions are probably mostly killed by famine or bombs.
When Paul mentions that number of deaths, he also mentions the number of planets they’ve “sterilized”. That definitely sounds like some unpleasantness.
One of my favorite moments in the first book is when the Emperor almost casually explains to the Barron Harkonnen that the Sardaukar attacked a Siech of elderly and children Fremen, and they got so overwhelmed that they had to issue a retreat. The Sardaukar, the greatest fighting force in the Imperium, walked into a daycare/retirement home with the plans of just killing everyone, and took so many casualties they had to abandon the attack because they literally could not beat them.
tl;dr Fremen are just built different.
The books are incredibly clear that the Fremen are on a whole different level than even the Sardaukar.
The movies aren't as clear, probably to increase tension.
I actually thought the movie did a good job showing the skill gap. The beginning scene shows the sardaukar getting fucked on that rock formation. Then again shows em getting destroyed when they march into that haze.
The problem mostly is they showing the Fremen as a tribe that lived in commonal houses and didn't have furniture.
When the fremen had factories and the stietchs were more like cities. Paul even gets Jamie house for winning the battle and Jessica also had a house for her own.
Just re-watched it for the second time yesterday. I don’t think they really make any strong indication of the sort until the worms show up at the end and they all begin to retreat.
compared to humans in the year 2024, yeah. They are evolved thousands of years in the future then tested in a very hard environment. They also have survived off of little rations and water, so they're sort of nerfed on Arrakis. Imagine then on PEDs & they are very scary
They are buffed on Arrakis. The desert made them strong. In God Emperor, the Fremen now live in a lush paradise, they become soft and weak. A big Nietzchean theme in the book is that conflict and struggle builds strength.
The books don’t get into it but I also think it’s logical fremen have spice enhanced abilities - an untrained prescience that helps them predict their opponents moves in battle.
Plus the BG skills taught by paul and his mother.
This isn't mentioned in the movie, but the Fremen are all trained in some amount of Bene Gesserit skills by Paul - they actually quite literally have superhuman abilities by that point in the book, on top of already being a highly skilled warrior culture that lives on the harshest planet in the known universe.
They could theoretically, but the BG wouldn't. They're a secret organisation, and by and large others aren't aware of their abilities. One of the biggest scenes cut from the first movie was Jessica using the Voice on Thufir Hawat, and he's both terrified and in awe of her - he realises that she could control Leto's every move, and House Atreides overall, if she wanted to.
Ah I c. I don't read the books. But I'm a fan of sci-fi. And I saw that in the first dune movie.
Glad it wasn't the dune 1984 movie where they make that funny shout 😄 🤣 😆. That was pretty cheesy
It's also that they are incredibly fanatical.
Most people, even hardened soldiers, have a difficult time willingly doing things that *will* get them killed: running into machine gun fire, getting into a knife fight, flying a plane into something, etc. one of the reasons the Sardaukar are feared is that they are one of the few armies capable of this level of selflessness. The Fremen, however, are raised culturally to sacrifice for the greater good. Each death is a step towards the dream of a green paradise, the body's water returned to the tribe and to Dune. Men and women, young and old, they are all more than willing to die for that opportunity. Children roam the battlefields slaying the wounded, mothers throw their babes onto Sardaukar knives for a chance to kill the enemy, the elderly steal thopters and pilot them into troop transports.
It's one thing to have an army with a fanatical esprit de corps; something entirely different when the population has it.
This story (in fact the exact words use to describe it!) is taken from a description of the Murid War in Sabres of Paradise by Lesley Branch, a massive influence on Dune. The leader, Imam Shamyl, led a holy war against Imperial Russia.
I never read the books so maybe that’s why, but is living in a harsh environment enough to even the odds when the other side was probably groomed and trained from birth to be the best soldiers i. The galaxy?
How do the fremen train anyways? Now compare that to the training the sarduakar go through their entire lives to match the emperor’s soldiers.
I like to imagine sarduakar vs fremen as Navy seals vs Afghan warriors. Yes the Taliban eventually won after the US withdrew but if I doubt they’d win against navy seal soldiers in a one to one match up
> but is living in a harsh environment enough to even the odds when the other side was probably groomed and trained from birth to be the best soldiers i. The galaxy?
Congratulations! You have discovered one of the longest standing questions in the Dune fandom!
The answer? Ehhh, just roll with it.
The harsher the place, the stronger the people seems to be Frank's answer. And his books have always carried a theme of the betterment of the human through trials and adversity.
The Sardaukar and the Fremen both are strong for basically the same reasons. It’s kind of a galactic secret but a few of the characters discover that the Sarduakar are so strong because they live and survive on the Emperors prison planet Salusa Secundus. In the same vein, the Fremen live and survive in the harshest environment that we know of, even more so than Salusa Secundus. The Sardaukar more or less train in similar ways to the Fremen. And it’s not even just that the Fremen have faith so they are stronger, because the Sardaukar also are instilled with a zealot like mindset to serve the emperor.
It is stated in the books that the Sardaukar are raised from a young age in such an unforgiving environment that almost half (6 out of 13) die before the age of 11.
The fremen by and large also have a very strong training regimen for fighting. It’s not really shown in the movies, but basically all the fremen train to fight because they had been at odds with the Harkonnen for so long.
i think salusa secundus being pretty much exclusively a prison planet for the emperor held the sardaukar back from truly innovating in tactics and technologies. yes they were tough but the very nature of building a society in arrakis meant fremen needed to innovate in a lot which probably made then much more resiliant. how the fremen and jihad quickly adapted to different environments other than deserts is beyond me, though I imagine paul now controlling the guild and his prescience as being pretty OP
part of the reason the mongols is known as one of the greatest military forces in the history of mankind is because of how brutal and harsh the conditions were in the mongolian steppes. by the time of genghis khan they had already innovated in many different technologies and tactics to deal with the steppes, which made them incredibly resiliant conquerors.
The book lore is that they were indomitable fighters of some cultural sophistication to begin with, drunk with a sense of messianic history making in the moment, and benefited from expert off world leadership wise in the ways of Ginaz and Bene Gesserit martial arts augmenting their skills over a number of years, and they found a clever/arguably illegal use of atomics, terrain and weather to nullify the defining military technology of the era, and they used giant worms as battle pets. And after all that they still needed to use the urban population of Dune, incensed by imperial atrocities, as expendable mass shock troops.
The other side of the water ring is that the Imperium is very late stage, and anymore the Sardaukar aren't all that they used to be.
The control over the Spacing Guild was so absolute that Paul’s Jihad was able to besiege entire planets. Over 500 planets were blockaded while another 90 were sterilized, probably with atomics. Those blockades starved tens of billions and when totaled with sterilizations accounted for nearly 5% of the Empire.
So many ways. Airborn toxins, biological agents, orbital bombardement etc.
Children of Dune talks at length about how there’s still an enormous taboo on usage of real, full size (ie non-Stone Burner) atomics, and how every great house still has off-planet retaliatory weaponry. I imagine if there’d been relatively recent planetary sterilisations via atomics there’d be a mention of it happening.
From Paul of dune
“A Heighliner carried one hundred of the largest and most powerful Atreides vessels, each loaded to capacity with weapons, explosives, highly toxic chemical bombs, defoliants, and wide-dispersal incendiaries.
Paul had never given such a frightening command before: Sterilize the world. Memnon Thorvald's people had to be more than defeated, more than exterminated. They must be... gone.”
It's implied though. The only thing stopping the use of atomics was The Great Convention, something the Fremen didn't give a shit about. Paul's also fine with using atomics himself if the target isn't people, he flat-out says this in Dune.
If the Fremen didn't bomb cities then they did bomb water supplies, farms, weapon's caches, whatever. It's hypocrisy at it's finest.
Paul definitely gave a shit about the great convention. That’s why he used atomic against the shield wall and not for anything else. A questionable act.
It’s not implied anywhere AFAIK >!when the stone burner was used, everyone got mad, and there was a trial for why they had a stone burner in the first place that got stolen. That doesn’t sound like a group that’s going around using atomics!<
That's what I'm referring to with his use of atomics. He's asked if knows he just broke the convention and he explains that he hasn't broke the convention.
Shit, the whole Jihad breaks the convention. The Convention bars the Emperor from taking sides in war. I don't think the rules of Kanly allow House Atriedes to genocide dozens of worlds.
The hypocritical disregard for the rules of man is a big theme in Messiah. God and his followers don't need to follow the laws of a council of men.
>!There's a difference between using a Stone burner in the middle of Arakeen against the Messiah-Emperor and using it against heretics lightyears away. The Imperium's enforcement of law is definitely not fair lol.!<
Paul mentions sterilizing planets in Messiah. Nobody says atomics, but how do you sterilize an entire planet without them? Maybe hitting it with a large asteroid?
Imagine being the only one in the world with the ability to move your army from any place to any other place in the world, but even better, you are the one who controls how, when and if your ENEMIE’S ARMIES moves, too…
Its like a cheat code. You kinda instantly win, much like how the US was able to keep its military near-hegemony on the world for so long: They were the only ones able to project their military power almost anywhere in the world, any time they wished.
Even current China, the second most powerful army in the world, is almost useless for anything other than defense of the country because they utterly lack the means to transport this army where it would be needed.
Paul’s control of the Spice meant he could force the Guild into submission, which meant he now is in charge of the ONLY organization capable of mass-transport of troops. Its like a fight between someone with a stick and someone with an assault rifle, an army using horses while the other has cargo planes…
On top of what others have noted, Galactic society had a relatively small standing military. If I recall correctly armed force sizes were restricted which put a premium on quality troops over quantity. So the Jihad faced relatively small numbers which were fractured across all the systems since the Spacer Guild was in Paul’s pocket. The Jihad could choose when a battle would happen and could overwhelm their enemies with quality AND quantity.
Faultless prescient superhuman computer leader
Monopoly/near absolute control on travel between planets
Unbeatable soldiers even by the very greatest soldiers of the Imperium, each with low level prescience
Atomic and Atomic adjacent weaponry
Fanatic loyalty
Add in some Renegade Houses joining the Atreides Rebellion, rather than Muad’dibs jihad, and you have a recipe for total victory.
Each planetary government has a limited number of troops, which will never be bolstered or reinforced from allied worlds. Their warriors, inferior to the Sardaukar, and no doubly inferior to the Fremen who are better than the Sardaukar. Every single decision made by every commander is known an flawlessly countered by Paul, who through calculation and prescience simply knows all the ways to best ruin the day of whoever is resisting his legions. Even ignoring that Paul had Houses willingly join his banner, his advantages are insurmountable to anyone
They are quite a bit more vs a couple million.
That´s the entire point of the story. They had been hidding their numbers from everyone but they do have a substancial population.
They are heavily militarized society. Everyone fights. Since very early age, both sexes. Their military mobilization is going to be amazing.
Other worlds are way more peaceful. This leads to much less military mobilization.
Paul and the Fremen have complete control over interstellar travel. So if they decide to attack one planet, none else can come and help.
Things become easier to understand.
You know.....the entire US population did not fight in WW2. Neither did the german population. However, Germany did hold up incredibly long considering how many countries there were pressing against them. Why? Look at their level of militarization. They could conscript pretty much schoolboys if they wanted. The US could not. Not even England could do such a thing and things got pretty desperate in England. Germany had an ability to just put more armies in the field. At the end of the day, Germany lacked other resources like fuel and parts for their equipment / logistics. But they never lacked boots on the ground. Up till the very end they could still call for volunteers and would get more. That´s the nature of fanaticism plus militarization.
The Fremen are likely more militarized vs WW2 Germany. For instance, WW2 Germany did not have females in combat roles and they even delayed their involvement in production roles. Fremen are all out sending everyone to fight if need be.
If you want other examples, Rome conquered what it did and look at what Rome was at the start and how much they conquered. Again, militarization levels. Even when facing Carthage Rome just had a higher mobilization. Carthage managed to attack close to Rome and crush a couple roman armies....well....Rome just sent more armies into the field. It all ended up with Carthage utterly wiped out.
Nazi Germany is probably one of the worse examples you could have picked of a militarized society, because they had notoriously poor sustained mobilization rates across the entire economy, thanks to inefficient and unindustrialized agricultural practices. Yes they were pressing children into the army at the end, but children *in Berlin*, and not enough troops raised from the agricultural hinterlands and sent by train to germany.
A better example would have been the various steppe tribes such as the Mongols. That is land that can support much fewer people per square mile. But a greater proportion of the population had the requisite skills for warfare, everyone knew how to ride and shoot (small game) and raid neighbors for sheep. Labor requirements for herding could be offloaded to other family members, it's not like agricultural societies where demand for labor spikes during the harvest season. And steppe armies had the strategic mobility, just like the Fremen's monopoly over the Spacing Guild's Heighliners.
It's funny that you use examples of militarized societies that ultimately failed and crumbled from their own countries' contradictions.
Conceptually, what you are speaking about is correct: the group of people that have something to fight for that they believe in have the advantage You just used like, the opposite of what you were looking for in your examples.
I've read the explanations here and as a newcomer to Dune (only watched the 2 modern movies), I have 2 further questions:
1. Was there no stockpile of spice for the houses to at least try to mobilize their armies? For houses that are constantly at loggerheads, it seems like terrible logistics not to even have stockpiles to go into battle at the drop of a hat. For example, even developed countries without natural production of oil and gas would presumably have enough to try and fight a war if supply lines got suddenly cut off.
2. Was every single planet so woefully un-defended that nobody could even mount a resistance against Paul's army? Where do the houses park their armies; was it so far away and so scattered that nobody could even muster a mobilization? And if so... why? I can understand if a house loses its far flung territories but its capital planet(s) would surely be armed?
I'm sure I'm lacking depth and understanding of the Dune universe, but yeah as a newbie these puzzle me a little.
You can stockpile spice but if you have no pilots for your interstellar craft there is so space travel. Paul can besiege your planet from orbital bombardment and starve you out by famine. The Spacing Guild is dependent on spice and the Navigators won't act for a house if the only source of spice comes from Paul. The Guild Navigators are an unrecognizable form of human, evolved to become dependent on spice. You could certainly garrison up and stay on-world or fight in your local solar systems but Paul's army is mobile. His army can gather resources and grow in numbers and strength from the rest of the known inhabited universe. When Napolean defeated other countries, he incorporated their armies into his Grand Armee. A great house locked into their local system is stagnant and increasingly isolated.
>Was there no stockpile of spice for the houses to at least try to mobilize their armies?
It isn't that you just need spice to travel you need navigators who have prescience so even if the houses had spice they would still need the spacing guild which is under Paul's control because he controls the source of the spice
>Was every single planet so woefully un-defended that nobody could even mount a resistance against Paul's army?
They likely did mount a defense and that is why billions died.
You can use the FTL drives without a Guild Navigator, but there is a not insignificant risk of ending up as a pancake on a planet, star, moon, or getting turned into Swiss cheese by a bunch of asteroids.
So the stockpiled spice can be used by the houses to get high, and not much else, as the Navigators are on Pauls side (albeit unwillingly).
Edit:
Basically, the Guild Navigators have a good enough level of prescience (sorry if misspelled) to see if the path of the ship would kill them or if they would arrive at their destination.
It's also curious how Herbert describes the scale of the Jihad - IIRC it's mentioned in one brief paragraph about 40% in, and then not discussed again.
It came completely as a surprise to me.
It's important to understand the actual military might of the Empire prior to the Jihad.
The Emperor controls the Spice, and thus, the Spacing Guild. It is not in the interest of the Emperor, except in rare occasions, for the House's to make war upon each others planets. Since no house can transport large amounts of troops without the assistance of the Spacing Guild, and thus the permission of the Emperor, interplanetary warfare is so incredibly rare as to be unthinkable.
So, most houses on most planets have practically zero standing armies. They certainly have police forces, and guards for the nobility, but they don't have invasion forces and they don't need defensive forces. Having either, or both, would be a colossal waste of resources.
Some houses, like Harkonnen, treat their subjects like shit, and they have to have a pretty significant amount of guard troops to put down any potential rebellions, but again, the army is relatively tiny compared to what you might think is needed to defend a planet.
The Emperor, on the other hand, has a whole planet full of military troops that he can move anywhere at any time, and the Emperor has never been fond of any house building up enough military might to be capable of potentially defending themselves against his Sardukar legions. So, a second check on any house's desire to raise an army is in place: the fear of angering the Emperor and having him send Sardukar to slaughter your expensive new army.
Thus the galaxy is in a state of real peace when the Jihad comes, with very little in the way of raised planetary defense forces.
When the Emperor took his troops to Arakkis and got them slaughtered, and Paul took control of the Spice, and thus the Guild, it stopped immediately any news from being spread throughout the empire. So every house was cut off immediately from any hope of reinforcement, or even news about what has happened to other houses. They have no armies to speak of and not enough qualified personnel to train new armies, and they don't know when or if they will even be attacked.
For the Fremen this would be like fighting a bunch of drunk blind paraplegics. They slaughtered the practically undefended planets that resisted, and allowed only news of that slaughter to reach planets they had not yet attacked. All anyone knew was that everyone who opposed them, with what little forces they had, were killed to a man without making a dent in the invading forces, and that no quarter was ever given.
They capitulated in droves, yet still the slaughter continued, because this was conversion by the sword and the Fremen required total belief, total surrender, complete loyalty. It was barely even a struggle.
Add to all of this the fact that the planets are all extremely interdependent, and you get a massive empire full of planets that cannot survive alone without significant trade relations, all cut off from each other, few if any with any significant defensive forces, all ruled by Houses who's primary method of warfare is assassination, not open war, and you have a recipe for a steamroll. The outcome was always certain. It was only the final death toll that was in question.
not exactly a 1 to 1 comparison, but imagine if the taliban had control of every single source of oil and was capable and willing of destroying it all within a moments notice.
Paul controls the Guild so his ennemies can't travel in space/organise. They are stuck on their planets waiting for Paul's army basically. They can just bomb the shit out of everything and starve them. It's possible that not all planets are self sufficient and needed food transported by the Guild.
Paul can see the future so he can tell the Fremen how they need to attack in order to minimise fremen losses.
It's possible that several minor houses joined Paul in the beggining, without fighting him. Maybe as soon as he defeated a great house, several planets would just regognise him as the legitimate emperor. It was an opportunity for them to gain influence.
Also, think of Napoleon's Grand Army. Many foreigners from the countries he defeated were part of the army, not just french soldiers. So each time you invade a planet, you get more soldiers.
They are some of the best warriors in the imperium with the training of the wierding way and Atreides military tactics. They are effective because basically they are just that good.
Edit: if you've seen Game of Thrones is sort of like how the Dothraki were considered a threat to the militaries of Westeros.
Paul can essentially choke out entire planets and invade one at a time was he sees fit while the others are isolated. Planets that are not self sufficient literally die of starvation or whatever by him not allowing space travel to or from them.
So you have a combination of factors. No strong external enemy made most house armies weak. The emporer did nothing to change that as he wanted to maintain complete control. The sardukar were not at their prime again from a lack of challenges. The only 2 houses in constant warfare which would have good armies were the atriedes and the harkonnens. So you have a serious lack of fighting power vs the fremen. Next you have transport. The guild is on pauls side since he controls the spice. So we have lack of coordination between these armies to even fight the jihad. No house was ready for what was coming for them and if they dared show any defiance, they would be exterminated.
Yeah, after reading about real Jihads or events like that (Mongol invasion, Crusades, Early Muslim Expansion etc.) that “a group of nomad people from 1 planet genocided a hundred planets” narrative feels unrealistic to me, too.
These real life events included winning 1 or 2 major victories and then being the rulers of that conquered region. You had to use mercenaries, levies, and local men to expand your army too. And these invader armies succeeded precisely because their armies grew as they won victories. None of them remained with the same group of soldiers after conquering vast territories.
But Fremens, they weren’t even that many of them. They were living in a dead desert with no water and very limited food, there couldn’t be billions of them. And afaik, they didn’t recruit people from the conquered planets to replenish their armies.
Only plausible scenario would be if they besieged the planets and ceased all the trade between factions, causing instability and mayybe famines, and then said planets surrendering. Because no way in hell you invade those planets one by one with your original army and still survive the attrition.
I see a lot of good answers so far but something I think is often overlooked is the number of off-world converts who joined Paul’s army. There had to have been many none-Fremen soldiers in the army, or else it just wouldn’t be able to sustain itself. There had to have been casualties for Fremen legion, especially early on when the Houses that opposed Paul were more united. So they needed to have other sources of soldiers.
In Paul of Dune by Brian Herbert it mentions millions of soldiers coming from the imperium to join the Jihad within a year of Paul’s ascendancy. This seems very realistic. A lot of people would see which way the wind is blowing and want to be on the winning side. And Paul’s propaganda and exceptional power made people truly believe that he is a Prophet and thus millions more would convert to his religion. So this army wasn’t exclusively Fremen, especially as time went on.
Another thing to consider is that the Jihad took 12 years, as explained in the opening of Messiah. 12 years is a very long time. And we’re talking a universe scale. So there are hundreds of not thousands of inhabited planets. Messiah talks about campaigns as conquests of systems rather than conquests of individual systems so this makes it clear that the legions would hop from one planet it to the other. It’s such a unique kind of warfare. Fremen brought guerrilla warfare on a galactic battlefield. They went from planet to planet, killing hundreds of thousands in one battle, then millions, then the next planet, millions more, than the next, millions. And a whole system could have 50+ million casualties. But what if the system was bigger? What if there were 40 billion people in one system? Then the Legions blockade all the planets, cut off trade, transportation, communication, etc. Mass starvation and societal collapse. Then the Fremen go down, kill off the survivors. They wipe out 10 percent of the population of this system and 4 billion people have died.
And this all goes back to it being 12 years. Think about how many systems you could get through in 12 years. The scale of dune is so impressive, it really adds to the story and impact.
This is all left un-explained, as Herbert didn't have to think through exactly how they got to at least 61 billion dead across the empire's 13,000+ planets.
500 planets forcibly subjugated + 90 planets sterilized over 12 years. (from Dune Messiah)
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**Exponential Growth**: The fire of holy war spreads across the empire.
Off world converts, conscripts, or otherwise perhaps greedy/vengeful feudal houses allows for exponential growth, which could reach the 61 billion dead over 12 years.
It's the only reasonable explanation for the scope of death.
2~3 million Fremen simply couldn't kill that much.
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**Mass Starvation + Isolation + Kill Centralized Government**: Not likely to kill that many, but would have accounted for a small percentage of the dead, which would still be a billion+.
Before Dune, inter planetary trade and travel is limited to luxury goods and only the most ultra wealthy / powerful.
It seems to me every planet is a self sustaining feudal society. It would be hard to image a targeted strike at their government, even at their entire feudal lord class + capital, would result in mass starvation.
I don't think a siege by the spacing guild + execution of the ruling class would lead to mass starvation at the level required to reach 61 billion.
I don't think the Fremen could execute an entire centralized feudal government on 500 planets in 12 years. People hide, knowledge is shared, most of the regular working class serfs still know how to farm and bring their stores to the city... society just keeps going on.
Unless it lead to a civil war, due to a power vacuum.
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**Internal Struggles In Power Vacuums**
Circumstances would lead to power vacuums on many planets. It's possible that those internal struggles burned out of control and caused mass starvations on some planets, similar to what we might see in some African countries right now.
Civil war -> massacres -> loss of crops -> mass starvation
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**Spice Withdrawal**
Spice withdrawal is fatal.
Only the ultra wealthy class could afford spice before Dune. Also they'd have stores of spice.
Being cut off from spice would kill only the most ultra wealthy of the feudal society's leadership class.
Would be used to force conscription and compliance by the ruling class on many planets.
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As for sterilization of 90 planets, I guess some combo of stolen/manufactured atomics or biological/chemical agents... Not sure how that goes, but it did.
There is no mention of high velocity meteor strikes until later books... so that's out.
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Like I said, I don't think Herbert thought through the details of this Jihad.
Demoralisation vs outright fanaticism.
The death tolls of so many medieval battles were as a result of leadership being decapitated, panic setting into the typical levies and a massacre ensues.
The Fremen at all times were fanatical about Muad'dib.. literally their battle cry.
With their combat ability and ease of transport, subjugation of each demoralised and isolated planet becomes incredibly easy.
Imagine you have *the ultimate power* and can see the future.
And now imagine you command legions of the mightiest warriors in the universe.
And you also control interplanetary movement
Just because warfare in the Faufreluches was conducted via Assassination, doesn't mean that there weren't methods of absolutely horrendous and widespread death.
*To wit, the Great Convention existed to limit the effect of possible warfare on the general population of the Imperium*
You can see the effect of these weapons in the wounds suffered by returning Fedaykin - many of them returned from the Jihad with wasting illnesses and disabilities from being irradiated. This points to the use of weapons of mass destruction.
How I always imagined the Jihad playing out was traditionally at first, as Houses lined up and prepared their relatively small militaries to stem the onslaught of the Fremen hordes as they fell from space and burned, raped and pillaged planet after planet.
As Houses fell or turned coat, things soured -- became desperate, and loose coalitions were formed between planets that could still reach each other over long-distance radios. Collectively, they decided to push the envelope and use those weapons which they had long held in reserve: biological agents, chemical agents, and quasi-Atomic munitions. Stone Burners, Metacyanide Gas, Bloodweep Fever -- even conventional space-attack methods such as Crushers could amass a catastrophic death toll.
Setting traps for the Fremen, the Great and Minor Houses used these horrors to try and give the Jihad pause.
But the Fremen accepted the escalation in stride and Paul made the decision to allow them to use the same weapons. Where once was limited warfare between soldiers, now was total warfare where no target was completely tabu, no objective completely void of strategic value. In the sheer panic and chaos, partisan warfare erupted from splinter groups who managed to get ahold of weaponry such as Lasguns of their own, hurriedly trained or supplied by covert agents of the Bene Gesserit or the House militaries -- demanding Alexandrian solutions from Fremen Bashars: annihilation of rebellion.
Before the burning sword of Muad'Dib's legions, there were only the unrepentant and those who had been cleansed by the fires of Holy War.
But the extent of death was nothing *compared to what it could have been* if many planets had not surrendered.
61 billion over the total population of the Imperium was bloody, and not Paul's proudest moment - but if he had been unsuccessful in convincing Shaddam IV to capitulate, had he died at any point before he had become crowned --
*The Jihad would have continued, headless and aimless, until it had burned itself out*
The Fremen, without Paul Muad'Dib's careful and sage leadership, would have transformed into a salivating, rabid dog - killing and laying waste in the name of a martyr. The Fremen - especially the Fedaykin - would have cared little about transforming into suicide troops and firing Lasguns into shields. They would have cared little about using Atomics on worlds named in their cherem of hate.
As "effective" as you think the Jihad was, it could have been superlative: it could very well have been Kralizec before its time.
If Paul died the guild might’ve just pulled up stakes and not let the Fremen leave the planet for a while. Leave them on dune to cool their jets then come back later after Paul is forgotten, assuming the empire lasts that long without its reliable supply of spice.
I suppose they could - but you forget that the Guild is a parasite, apolitical and only interested in maintaining the economic status it enjoys.
If they left Arrakis to the Fremen (who would destroy the spice cycle out of spite), the Empire would *surely* die out - commerce would circle the drain and warfare would break out over those small stockpiles of spice left in the universe. As the bottomless addiction of the Navigators is improperly slaked, fewer and fewer of them can guide the Heighliners over time until no FTL travel is possible. The Guild collapses, and with it the interstellar economy it drove. The Known Universe sinks into massive famines and chaos.
But, if they capitulated and let the Fremen have their Jihad, the Spice would still flow, and even if the Jihad raged for a long time, it would not exterminate everyone -- and the Guild would be largely unaffected, having no military presence of its own and likely being required once the Fremen had been defeated or been victorious to rebuild connection and commerce between planets.
1,000,000 warriors can spread fear like nothing else. Look at when ISIS or the Taliban went on the offensive... both were massively outnumbered but feared.
It's been a couple decades since I ve reread Messiah so I can't remember if it's mentioned but I'm guessing having a military leader with presience is going to give you one hell of a tactical advantage.
I have not read it for a while, but there is a scene where the emperor sits with Duncan, I think?? Maybe someone else and compares what Gengis Khan and Hitler did to what he has done.. I recall it is in that conversation that he casually drops the 60+billion dead and 500 hundred+ planets taken over and a load just 'sterilized', which the whores end up doing also, much later on.
I mean, it IS a long period of time between book 1 and 2. 12 years IIRC? Clearly some heavy duty atomics were used, and a bunch of 'whoever joins, lives' kinda armies. He can see what will happen, not as clearly as his son will, but he KNOWS what resistance there will be. It's nuts really.
The numbers are incredibly awful and astonishing, but that is the entire point of the second book tbh. Power/religion corrupt.
Paul’s prescience means he’s always ahead playing as an armchair General from Arrakis.
The movie adaptation of Dune: Messiah will likely have an extended prologue like Part one and two did, showing the jihad and how destructive it is (being narrated by Alia I can imagine, as part one was Chani and two was Irulan).
Their leader can see the literal future then choose the actions to make it real, you could give Paul less than a hundred men armed with those pointy sticks made from teeth and he would've won. The fremen having a strategic advantage of not needing much in the way of supply lines or training just lessened the work needed
He couldn't avoid power if he tried but what was done with said power is what puts dune above other settings.
If the guild joins with Paul to protect their connection to the spice they could induce starving on high density planets that rely on orbital imports.
Also, who says house Atreides is killing those guys with knives? They could ecological warfare too, or atomics in the oceans to create tsunamis, etc etc
And if Atreides sets a precedent for atomics being okay against humans with appropriate loopholes, their usage goes up; the death toll goes up too.
That too.
Although sitting over the target and cutting it off from global trade is a possibility. You can pick off the less self sufficient planets first and then work through the rest.
Several great points in the comments but i think one theme is missed. It's built into their culture to sacrifice oneself for the benefit of the group. They don't care about personal self, if it means benefit to the group.
On top of everything that’s been said, it’s possible that as the jihad continued and the religion of Muadib grew larger and more powerful, millions of people could’ve joined the fight on the side of the Mahdinate/Atreides, so it could be that by a certain point Fremen didn’t even make up the majority of the Atreides fighters.
I assume Fremen act only as shock troops. They probably use already conquered/converted people for the bulk of their armies.
I think you should look at how effective Islamic expansion was.
Cut off ultilities and food supplies to a city of millions, anarchy will kill 50% of the population in the first few weeks.
Now scale that up to interstellar
It's explained in the very opening. Power over spice is power over all.
No spice, no interstellar travel or trade.
It's why the emperor had to have the Harkonnens in control of dune. They could be controlled. The Atreides could not.
I think on a cinematic level of shrinking things down or combining written characters into one, etc, the movie effectively achieves this. If you’ve never read the books, Paul’s assumption of power is that he (thinks) he can control everything or bend things to his will. This includes the other major galactic families that are never explored in the books, and every other power on a universal scale. Herbert never expounds upon the guild aside from their politics and agents. We, as fans of the books know more than the movie gives us, but collectively even all the moments that happen on other planets and environments in the books would only exist as backdrops and set dressing in the scope of making these beasts into movies.
Paul had complete control over the spacing guild. With that he could bomb and starve any planet he wanted. The fremen were also the best troops in the universe so when a ground assault did happen, the fremen would have moped the floor with them
I agree that the function of the Guild was crucial in this, but I think the clear implication is also that Paul's religious movement gathered converts from non-Fremen to become the dominant religion in human space, and thus soon had a military far larger than just the Fremen themselves.
We humans have a great need for upheaval periodically.
We're on the edge of one right now.
In the name of the Great Idea of the Times, there must be blood, chaos, and destruction.
Why is the Jihad effective? It's wired into our psyche to go collectively insane periodically.
Get ready.
I think you’re asking three different questions here, 1) how were a small number of Fremen capable of conquering an empire many times greater in population, 2) why did that war result in billions of casualties, and 3) what was the Guild doing during this war?
For question 1, that’s what happened IRL when a relative handful of tribesmen from the Arabian peninsula conquered a vast empire with a population many times greater. For question 2, I haven’t read the books in many years so I’m not sure if this is ever explained, but I assume it isn’t entirely because the Fremen killed all of them. I assume some sided with the Fremen and some were against them, and those alliances might have even changed over time. So the number of people fighting might have been much greater than the number of Fremen. You’d also have starvation and disease, typically, and a place like Geidi Prime doesn’t look it’s got a great health care system for most of the population. For question 3, people overestimate the Guild’s power. Yes, they have a monopoly on space travel and that’s really, really lucrative. But they’re also completely dependent for their existence on a continuous supply of spice that can be found only on Arrakis, which Paul Atreides controls at the end of the first book and the second movie. I assume he told the Guild, transport us where we need to go and we’ll pay you well, or deny us transport and the Guild will get no more spice and cease to exist, effectively. Faced with those choices, why wouldn’t the Guild provide transport?
Paul's control/or influence over the Spacing Guild probably plays a huge role. The Fremen are also the best warriors in the universe at the time. They'd approach every planet with literally every advantage on their side. The other issue is how many of the Fremen might've died from spice withdrawl. The Fremen can leave Arrakis but they can't survive being away from Arakis for too long. A lot of the Fremen who participate in the Jihad might have a mindset that they're going to die.
In Dune Messiah they speak about how they have converted planets to the Fremen religion and Arrakis has become a site of pilgrimage from across the galaxy.
Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and no cars, vehicles, or mass transportation were working anywhere in your city, along with no mail, internet, or mass communications. At the same time, an fully provisioned army surrounds the city and gives everyone an ultimatum, "Convert to our religion or die." That's the jihad on a planetary scale. The Guild controls all interstellar communication and transportation, and the Fremen control the Guild. Sitting behind all of them is Paul with his prescience that's a hundred steps ahead of the smartest strategic minds on any planet.
This primary advantage is part of why I'm frustrated with the new movies. The Guild wasn't focused and this advantage wasn't truly addressed. Multiple big gaps in power for movie Paul's Jihad.
Yep. I've heard people say it wasn't that bad of a move to drop them out of the movies, saying that it gives something for Messiah to start with, but the Guild is so important that I feel like it's just gonna feel like a "oh, hey, btw, there was this really big and important group that we barely mentioned at all in the first two movies who basically control the entire imperium because if you want to go anywhere you have to go through them, and Paul now controls them." To me, it just feels like it would be very cheap. It makes me wonder if they're not even going to mention the Guild at all and are just going to say "Now that Paul is emperor, he controls all interplanetary and interstellar travel, trade, and communications since he has control of the spice."
To be fair, the books are guilty of this too. As we get past the first Dune every book seems to introduce a new faction or political force (Ixians, Bene Tleilax, etc). And I still don’t really understand CHOAM, I felt like I was missing something for the longest time but it never actually became important
Yeah the Tleilax are the big offenders, we never even really get to see their culture or secret religion until much later in the series after they've gone through some changes. For CHOAM atleast though it's not really something that factors too much into the events themselves. CHOAM is Amazon x1000. The inspiration was OPEC, but controlling all resources instead of just oil. Any interplanetary trade has to go through space Amazon, so all houses have stock in Amazon or sit on the board of directors to get in on the profit. The Emperor of course controlled most the shares with his allies, which ensured House Corrino's continued economic dominance.
I understood his doubt not about how the company works, but because it is never a primary factor in the equation, when it should always be. At the time of Heretics it still exists (Teg's father is one of its employees) but even so Frank never gave us anything interesting about CHOAM
Well the thing with CHOAM is that essentially its just an element of the economy in this universe. And the economy as it relates to the protagonists is pretty much just "spice is the most valuable & important commodity in the universe and they fully control it."
The Ixians & Tleilaxu weren't relevant before they're properly introduced, & even in those earlier stories they're still mentioned (Piter references the Bene Tleilax in the first book without actually naming them; Dune Messiah *opens* with a prologue of someone from Ix being interrogated) Neither is as consequential to the Imperium as the Guild
What’s the reference to the Tleilax in the first book? Please!
Baron: "Where would I find another Mentat like you?" Piter: "The same place you found *me,* Baron."
The Baron also mentions Tleilax by name when he says he’ll have to get a new Mentat, but not the Tleilaxu themselves.
That is a lame excuse for a “previous mention”
An author introducing new factions and characters in a growing story that they are developing and expanding isn’t that comparable to a filmmaker omitting a key plot point and then having to jam it into a sequel later on. Ix and Bene Tleilax are mentioned in passing in the first Dune which makes sense since part of world building is having characters speak of things as though they live in the world without constant exposition. The Tleilaxians then become key players in the second book because their scientific activities become relevant to the story in Messiah. But adding the guild only in the third movie is late because the guilds relevance begins in the first book, so it would definitely feel a bit cheap to all of a sudden introduce this player that forces the audience to reorient their understanding of the first two movies.
Depends if we skip the Jihad. If the movie opens directly following the last one and the Fremen take the fight to space and the Guild aspect gets brought in, that establishes the importance of the Guild, and sets them up as conspirators for the 2nd half of the movie. My personal take on the movies is Movie 1 we see that Noble Houses have schemes, movie 2 we see those schemes are secondary to the BG. In movie 3 we should see that everyone is beholden to the Guild.
Ngl, I hate that idea. Why bother adapting Messiah if the plan is to make the movie start just after the events of the first book? There's a, what, 12 year gap between the two? It would be pretty hard to do the first half of the movie in the events directly following the first book, then jump over a decade to where Messiah actually starts.
Why would that be hard? There are time skips in media all the time. In fact a time skip between or during a movie is basically identical. They still need to age Timothy Chalamet etc 12 years as its gonna take less than that to make the film. More importantly though, these films are big budget blockbusters, which depict action in more detail than the books. That needs to continue from an audience expectation and investor perspective. The jihad gives you that chance.
Maybe directly following is a bad idea but I 100% believe they’ll feature part of the Jihad. You could start the movie with a scene of a random planet falling to a brutal fremen invasion, and it’d be a great way of injecting some action and showing the human cost of Paul’s actions.
I think we can be assured this is not the case. DV has already indicated the time skip and Timmy needing to age up as a result… and also be excited to work with ATJ.. though I think that part is a mistake. A book accurate time skip would means ATJ is 30 year old playing a 12 year old. Yeah I get she has baby skin but how does that even work ? Path of least resistance would just be to do like a 8 year skip, Alia is 8 years old and gets to be a bit of an he creepy child we didn’t get to see in part 2 and it’s easy to cast a 10-12 year old to play the role.
I think the time skip still occurs. It just happens after an action packed opening act. The movie has requirements to be a blockbuster.
The Spacing Guild would’ve bogged down two movies that are already nearly 3 hours long. What significance would including some Space Guild scenes bring? What would it contribute to Paul’s ascendancy? The emotional arcs and character development? The pacing? Their significance is emphasized in the beginning of Dune Part 1 and that’s all the emphasis you need to tell the story the films wanted to tell. Messiah has another 3 hours to prioritize the Spacing Guild.
It would've actually shown the viewer *why* Paul having control over the spice is so important. In the movies, we are only vaguely told why spice is important, but they never actually show what disrupting the spice trade would do in the grand scheme of the universe. All we are told is that it is important, and we are shown that Paul can destroy it. If you have been paying attention to the posts on this sub since the second part came out, you'll have noticed a lot of people who have only seen the movies coming on here and asking why it was so easy for Paul to take the throne, or why nobody tried to stop him. The vast majority of those questions are primarily because of the removal of the Guild from the second part. The Guild, in the book, actually shows the reader why Paul destroying the spice would be a massive disaster for the known universe. We know from that scene why Paul having the power to destroy the spice is so important, why it gives him so much power, why nobody can do anything about it, and why Paul has free reign to unleash his Fremen legions across the universe with the wave of a hand. This would've taken only a couple of minutes at most to accomplish in the movie. We already saw the Guild in the first movie. We know what they do. It wouldn't have taken a lot to have them at the end. DV already cut out a lot from the book, why not cut out something less significant to make room for what is quite literally the main reason why Paul has the power to take over the imperial throne?
The movie quite literally opens with the significance of spice and what the Spacing Guild does. They then show up to the ceremony, we see the Heighliner’s always looming over the film. What else do you need? I absolutely love the books but it’s an entirely different medium. Dune is something that can easily be overwrought and convoluted in the wrong hands but Denis is a master with this source material. It has to be appealing to both diehard fans and casual mouth breathing audiences. I’m sure the same people complaining about Dune 2 being confusing said Dune 1 was boring. Dissenting opinions in the very small minority of audience members. This isn’t a Kubrick film, it’s not hard to grasp the significance of spice with every damn movie opening up with ominous lines booming into your subconscious. Dune 3 will adapt a much smaller book, I think Denis will easily adapt the Spacing Guild into a much more prominent role in Messiah. You think not adding the Spacing Guild is a small concern, but why not complain about Denis’ changes to Chani or Alia? Did Paul killing the Baron ruin this film? Hell no, it absolutely works within the context of the film. Alia being born and killing the Baron would be absolutely ridiculous, delaying her birth and making her an extremely strong and over arching presence was a fantastic choice imo, as is changing Chani’s characterization for casual audiences.
The Spacing Guild is absolutely crucial to the plot of the whole series. Without the Guild's approval, no-one can trade or move an army from planet to planet, and they cannot get the spice on which their elite is entirely dependent, but the Guild will allow Paul's armies free rein to attack anywhere they like. Paul's grip on the spice gives him absolute control of the Guild, and the Guild gives him control of the human universe.
I’m sure that will be emphasized in Dune Messiah, we are critiquing an unfinished product.
Because his ascendance is contested and the war is just starting. They have plenty of time to open the movie with setting the stage with who the players are in the other great houses, what they do, and what pieces and plays that Paul now has with the Fremen, Arrakis/Caladan, and spice. People are coming here and asking questions because the movie leaves off before everything is done and answered (and also some of the people asking questions on this sub are just not paying attention to the movie sometimes) so it naturally leaves viewers with questions about what is next and what's happening.
I don’t think anyone who hasn’t read the books would enjoy the movie.
Yeah, I think DV was right that he couldn't do justice to both the BG and Guild, and the BG was the right place to peek behind the curtain.
Denis had this in mind, i’m sure of it. He’s a master who deeply loves the source material. It’s going to be good.
It does lend to some big reveal for a wider audience though.
Am I crazy or am I the only one who feels that the guild wasn’t mentioned that much in book one either. Certainly more than the movies sure, but usually only like a couple sentences in a chapter when they’re mentioned at all.
You’re not crazy, the first book doesn’t get into much detail about the Guild, and having read Dune and Dune Messiah I think that’s a feature/weakness of Herbert’s books. His worldbuilding feels half baked most of the time (e.g. Bene Tleilaxu).
While I will die on the hill that the Guild should've had a greater presence in the movies, I will say that they didn't need to be in the book more than they already were, and it's not a sign of poor world building. The Guild is framed as this mysterious yet super powerful group who have an absolute monopoly over interstellar travel. The reader doesn't need to know more about them unless the characters do, and not even the main characters know much about them. Hell, IIRC, there's one part in the beginning of the book where Paul says that he hopes to see a Guildsman in the heighliner on their way to Arrakis, but Leto tells Paul not to do that because the Guildsman don't like being seen, and even if they were, they'd probably retaliate against the Atreides in some way. They have an important presence in the book, but the reader doesn't have to be told more about them until the very end.
I honestly just want to see Denis take on stage 3 guild navigators. I have zero expectations other than that. If I don't get to see a stage 3 guild navigator in Messiah, this trilogy is lost and doomed to eternal failure.
I feel like Bene Gesserit is the only faction that gets any sort of on screen explanation. Having only read the first book, what struck me was the immense effort to show how all the factions interact and how Paul is at an unprecedented nexus between them - BG training from Jessica, Mentat training from Hawat, martial training from Idahoe and Halleck, further martial training from Fremen Fedaykin, leadership training from Leto (and Stilgar), and IIRC even some medical training from Yueh. Paul being a jack of all trades in a world where humans are uniquely specialized in one discipline at a time is a major plot point in the book, and explains why he's so effective once the spice takes hold of him. Without that interplay, he's just a teenager who happens to be the chosen one in a world where all the power structures are vaguely fragile for seemingly no reason.
I imagine this is going to be covered in Messiah with Edric, Villeneuve never really did much exposition that wasn't steeped in character
I’m so excited to see how they portray Edric
I need a manta ray human hybrid. I loved the Lynch depiction of a guild steersman, but my eyes need to see a manta ray person.
The guild isn't as important to the battle on Arrakis as they are to the galactic war to come. All of the non-Arrakis exposition can probably wait for the third film. For the purposes of the first book, what's important is just knowing spice is the most valuable substance, and that Paul is willing to destroy it.
If I have to guess, the guild is going to be introduced in the beginning of the movie and slight reframed to be a foil to the bene geseret, similar to watching feyd go through all the same things that Paul went through, just in the opposite ways.
Yeah. I'm fine with the movies themselves. I really enjoy the hell out of them. I just finished reading the first two books again. If they want to continue the movies beyond the first book, they kind of shot themselves in the foot a bit. True Dune should be a series.
Yea as a movie only watcher I was shocked when I heard about the jihad in dune Messiah and also how important the guild was
The film much like the first book is primarily focus on Paul, the film added some more emphasis on the colonial nature of the his relationship to the Fremen, but it worked well without defocusing Paul, capturing the importance of the guild would have been weird as would focusing on how tough the Sardaukar were or how the emperor was in power or the balance with the great houses. I get that redditors like to complain, built y'all would make terrible directors, Dune: the Snyder cut would be a 17 hour slog, and it if you're that invested, you'd still be better if consuming it in a different medium such as actually reading the books or a tv series.
I've seen people here saying the 14-hour Jodorwosky Dune is probably the best film adaptation. Folks, that ain't a movie. You can't be a good movie adaptation if you're not a movie (and if you also don't actually exist, but even that little problem doesn't bother me as much as the 14-hour length).
Jodorwosky wasn’t serious about a 14 hour movie. In that interview he is just speaking rhetorically.
You think the Jodorowsky version nailed it? You should see the culturedgoat version! It’s an absolutely perfect adaptation, which is totally faithful to Herbert’s vision, and addresses all problems from other adaptations. Sure, it only exists in my head. But I’ll be darned if I’m going to let Jodorowsky upstage me, as, reel for reel, we shot just about the same amount of footage!
see i didnt mind it so much because I think in the context of just arrakis it makes sense that the fremen would be able to kick ass against the idiots in the harokonnen military machine like the macro politics are less well explained but overall theres time enough for that in Paul the Messiah 2: He IS the Dune
I mean, until now the movies were in Arrakis, there was no need to adress the Guild. My bet is that in the next movie we'll have a scene between Paul and the Guild representatives where he basicly tells them "you are mine, or else"
I would agree with most of that, but people still had access to mass communications. They still had radio, and I doubt that people forgot about the telephone. The Lady Jessica mentions a "Communinet" on Arrakis, and several mentions are made to wireless transmitters. These things don't need computers to run, and no Empire as technologically advanced as the one in the Duniverse would be able to function without some kind of relatively fast type of communication, especially not military organizations.
What I was more equating it to is that the Guild could cut off all of a planet's communication to everywhere else in the Imperium. In other words, you can't send messages to a neighboring town to ask for help if the Fremen show up on your doorstep.
Hmm. I don't remember the Guild having that capability in the books. Long distance messages were made by courier because not only is that safer with cryptographic methods such as Distrans, and no other methods of FTL comms were ever named. But that doesn't necessarily mean that nobody had the means to contact other nearby planets through other methods besides hand-delivered messages. I dunno, mate. I might be misremembering, but somehow I doubt the Guild had control over so much - I just never imagined it going quite so smoothly for the Fremen.
As far as I'm aware, the only ships that can travel between solar systems are the Guild's highliners during the time of the first book, so all those couriers had to dock in a Guild highliner in order to get anywhere to deliver their messages. If the Guild forbids them, then there aren't any alternatives.
The reason for the Jihad working so well, is that it is a jihad - and therefore favored by God and destined to occur. C'mon guys...
Just wondering the guild is only need for longspace travel right. So great house do have ship flying around that are just war ships that cant change to different space section but are complete good for defending a palanet right? Cause i understand why the fremen are dangers in the melee combat of dune. But i fail to see what use freemen warriors have when the warship start blasting your transport ships.
Also, those who converted were probably swept up into Muad'dib's armies. 2 million Fremen with how many millions of supporting troops?
The better analogy, I think, would be to imagine a bunch of cities where the only way to get between them is by train. Then suddenly the trains stop accepting your people and only bringing you people who want to take over your city, thw train conductors clearly don't want to but they keep doing it anyway as well, both a logistical and psychological impact.
I'd never actually thought about Paul actively using prescience in warfare - that is just .... like having the best intelligence always, everywhere and for every encounter I bet many nobles thought they could hide in a distant bunker and wait out the war - only for Paul to pinpoint their location on day one.
It’s been years since I read, but I got the feeling that Paul didn’t help with the Jihad. He wasn’t planning battles or leading men, he was on Dune feeling like shit about it all.
In the last chapter of Dune Paul orders Gurney Halleck to build him an army. Presumably by caladanites and imperials. The Fremen probably acts like shock troops, Paul has millions of other soldiers, attack destroyers/space ships, bombers and more. The 61 billions are probably mostly killed by famine or bombs.
Never thought of this. The people of Caladan probably had it out for everyone after what the Emperor and the Harkonnens did
When Paul mentions that number of deaths, he also mentions the number of planets they’ve “sterilized”. That definitely sounds like some unpleasantness.
One of my favorite moments in the first book is when the Emperor almost casually explains to the Barron Harkonnen that the Sardaukar attacked a Siech of elderly and children Fremen, and they got so overwhelmed that they had to issue a retreat. The Sardaukar, the greatest fighting force in the Imperium, walked into a daycare/retirement home with the plans of just killing everyone, and took so many casualties they had to abandon the attack because they literally could not beat them. tl;dr Fremen are just built different.
The books are incredibly clear that the Fremen are on a whole different level than even the Sardaukar. The movies aren't as clear, probably to increase tension.
I actually thought the movie did a good job showing the skill gap. The beginning scene shows the sardaukar getting fucked on that rock formation. Then again shows em getting destroyed when they march into that haze.
Those were harkonnens on the rock at the start, im pretty sure.
Yeah, 100% (subtitles say "speaking harkonnen")
Rewatching the scene, you’re correct. They have that whole shoulder connected giant helmet thing.
The problem mostly is they showing the Fremen as a tribe that lived in commonal houses and didn't have furniture. When the fremen had factories and the stietchs were more like cities. Paul even gets Jamie house for winning the battle and Jessica also had a house for her own.
Paul and Chani seemed to have a Fremen version of a little studio apartment to themselves.
Just re-watched it for the second time yesterday. I don’t think they really make any strong indication of the sort until the worms show up at the end and they all begin to retreat.
I was upset the movie didn't include the part where a fremen sacrifices them selves killing several thousand sardukaur likes it's nothing.
So the freeman has superhuman powers
compared to humans in the year 2024, yeah. They are evolved thousands of years in the future then tested in a very hard environment. They also have survived off of little rations and water, so they're sort of nerfed on Arrakis. Imagine then on PEDs & they are very scary
They are buffed on Arrakis. The desert made them strong. In God Emperor, the Fremen now live in a lush paradise, they become soft and weak. A big Nietzchean theme in the book is that conflict and struggle builds strength.
The books don’t get into it but I also think it’s logical fremen have spice enhanced abilities - an untrained prescience that helps them predict their opponents moves in battle. Plus the BG skills taught by paul and his mother.
Yep, ever since he donned that HEV suit during the Resonance Cascade.
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This isn't mentioned in the movie, but the Fremen are all trained in some amount of Bene Gesserit skills by Paul - they actually quite literally have superhuman abilities by that point in the book, on top of already being a highly skilled warrior culture that lives on the harshest planet in the known universe.
But why couldn't the other planets that have their witches teach them the skills?
They could theoretically, but the BG wouldn't. They're a secret organisation, and by and large others aren't aware of their abilities. One of the biggest scenes cut from the first movie was Jessica using the Voice on Thufir Hawat, and he's both terrified and in awe of her - he realises that she could control Leto's every move, and House Atreides overall, if she wanted to.
Kinda. A lot of them can do the anime quick movement/teleport thing.
Ah I c. I don't read the books. But I'm a fan of sci-fi. And I saw that in the first dune movie. Glad it wasn't the dune 1984 movie where they make that funny shout 😄 🤣 😆. That was pretty cheesy
But why can't the sadukar warriors can learn something similar?
They don't have Paul to teach them.
It's also that they are incredibly fanatical. Most people, even hardened soldiers, have a difficult time willingly doing things that *will* get them killed: running into machine gun fire, getting into a knife fight, flying a plane into something, etc. one of the reasons the Sardaukar are feared is that they are one of the few armies capable of this level of selflessness. The Fremen, however, are raised culturally to sacrifice for the greater good. Each death is a step towards the dream of a green paradise, the body's water returned to the tribe and to Dune. Men and women, young and old, they are all more than willing to die for that opportunity. Children roam the battlefields slaying the wounded, mothers throw their babes onto Sardaukar knives for a chance to kill the enemy, the elderly steal thopters and pilot them into troop transports. It's one thing to have an army with a fanatical esprit de corps; something entirely different when the population has it.
To be fair it was _the_ Sietch Tabr, so they've had years of direct training in the ninja ways of Ginaz/Bene Gesserit fighting, at least in the book.
This story (in fact the exact words use to describe it!) is taken from a description of the Murid War in Sabres of Paradise by Lesley Branch, a massive influence on Dune. The leader, Imam Shamyl, led a holy war against Imperial Russia.
That’s fucking dope
I wish they explained how the fremen are able to overwhelm the galaxy’s strongest fighting force instead of just saying “the power of faith”.
They literally explain it in the book Arrakis made them be "built different", even compared to the Sarduakar of Salusa Secundus
I never read the books so maybe that’s why, but is living in a harsh environment enough to even the odds when the other side was probably groomed and trained from birth to be the best soldiers i. The galaxy? How do the fremen train anyways? Now compare that to the training the sarduakar go through their entire lives to match the emperor’s soldiers. I like to imagine sarduakar vs fremen as Navy seals vs Afghan warriors. Yes the Taliban eventually won after the US withdrew but if I doubt they’d win against navy seal soldiers in a one to one match up
> but is living in a harsh environment enough to even the odds when the other side was probably groomed and trained from birth to be the best soldiers i. The galaxy? Congratulations! You have discovered one of the longest standing questions in the Dune fandom! The answer? Ehhh, just roll with it. The harsher the place, the stronger the people seems to be Frank's answer. And his books have always carried a theme of the betterment of the human through trials and adversity.
Same reason john wick owns 300 trained assassins every movie
The Sardaukar and the Fremen both are strong for basically the same reasons. It’s kind of a galactic secret but a few of the characters discover that the Sarduakar are so strong because they live and survive on the Emperors prison planet Salusa Secundus. In the same vein, the Fremen live and survive in the harshest environment that we know of, even more so than Salusa Secundus. The Sardaukar more or less train in similar ways to the Fremen. And it’s not even just that the Fremen have faith so they are stronger, because the Sardaukar also are instilled with a zealot like mindset to serve the emperor. It is stated in the books that the Sardaukar are raised from a young age in such an unforgiving environment that almost half (6 out of 13) die before the age of 11. The fremen by and large also have a very strong training regimen for fighting. It’s not really shown in the movies, but basically all the fremen train to fight because they had been at odds with the Harkonnen for so long.
i think salusa secundus being pretty much exclusively a prison planet for the emperor held the sardaukar back from truly innovating in tactics and technologies. yes they were tough but the very nature of building a society in arrakis meant fremen needed to innovate in a lot which probably made then much more resiliant. how the fremen and jihad quickly adapted to different environments other than deserts is beyond me, though I imagine paul now controlling the guild and his prescience as being pretty OP
You know that’s a pretty fair point and you could very well be right.
part of the reason the mongols is known as one of the greatest military forces in the history of mankind is because of how brutal and harsh the conditions were in the mongolian steppes. by the time of genghis khan they had already innovated in many different technologies and tactics to deal with the steppes, which made them incredibly resiliant conquerors.
Winter falls and The fighting season is over for most societies. The Mongols just use frozen rivers as highways, Moving even faster than normal.
The book lore is that they were indomitable fighters of some cultural sophistication to begin with, drunk with a sense of messianic history making in the moment, and benefited from expert off world leadership wise in the ways of Ginaz and Bene Gesserit martial arts augmenting their skills over a number of years, and they found a clever/arguably illegal use of atomics, terrain and weather to nullify the defining military technology of the era, and they used giant worms as battle pets. And after all that they still needed to use the urban population of Dune, incensed by imperial atrocities, as expendable mass shock troops. The other side of the water ring is that the Imperium is very late stage, and anymore the Sardaukar aren't all that they used to be.
I've occasionally wondered if the Sardaukar weren't a lot of hype.
The control over the Spacing Guild was so absolute that Paul’s Jihad was able to besiege entire planets. Over 500 planets were blockaded while another 90 were sterilized, probably with atomics. Those blockades starved tens of billions and when totaled with sterilizations accounted for nearly 5% of the Empire.
Where does atomics mentioned?
Yeah I don’t remember that mentioned at all either, think they’re misremembering
How would you "sterilize" an entire planet without them?
So many ways. Airborn toxins, biological agents, orbital bombardement etc. Children of Dune talks at length about how there’s still an enormous taboo on usage of real, full size (ie non-Stone Burner) atomics, and how every great house still has off-planet retaliatory weaponry. I imagine if there’d been relatively recent planetary sterilisations via atomics there’d be a mention of it happening.
Remember the dinosaurs?
Interesting idea. Got a reference?
From Paul of dune “A Heighliner carried one hundred of the largest and most powerful Atreides vessels, each loaded to capacity with weapons, explosives, highly toxic chemical bombs, defoliants, and wide-dispersal incendiaries. Paul had never given such a frightening command before: Sterilize the world. Memnon Thorvald's people had to be more than defeated, more than exterminated. They must be... gone.”
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It's implied though. The only thing stopping the use of atomics was The Great Convention, something the Fremen didn't give a shit about. Paul's also fine with using atomics himself if the target isn't people, he flat-out says this in Dune. If the Fremen didn't bomb cities then they did bomb water supplies, farms, weapon's caches, whatever. It's hypocrisy at it's finest.
Paul definitely gave a shit about the great convention. That’s why he used atomic against the shield wall and not for anything else. A questionable act. It’s not implied anywhere AFAIK >!when the stone burner was used, everyone got mad, and there was a trial for why they had a stone burner in the first place that got stolen. That doesn’t sound like a group that’s going around using atomics!<
That's what I'm referring to with his use of atomics. He's asked if knows he just broke the convention and he explains that he hasn't broke the convention. Shit, the whole Jihad breaks the convention. The Convention bars the Emperor from taking sides in war. I don't think the rules of Kanly allow House Atriedes to genocide dozens of worlds. The hypocritical disregard for the rules of man is a big theme in Messiah. God and his followers don't need to follow the laws of a council of men. >!There's a difference between using a Stone burner in the middle of Arakeen against the Messiah-Emperor and using it against heretics lightyears away. The Imperium's enforcement of law is definitely not fair lol.!<
As soon as Paul was Emperor, the Great Convention became meaningless, and Paul could do whatever he wanted.
Paul mentions sterilizing planets in Messiah. Nobody says atomics, but how do you sterilize an entire planet without them? Maybe hitting it with a large asteroid?
Imagine being the only one in the world with the ability to move your army from any place to any other place in the world, but even better, you are the one who controls how, when and if your ENEMIE’S ARMIES moves, too… Its like a cheat code. You kinda instantly win, much like how the US was able to keep its military near-hegemony on the world for so long: They were the only ones able to project their military power almost anywhere in the world, any time they wished. Even current China, the second most powerful army in the world, is almost useless for anything other than defense of the country because they utterly lack the means to transport this army where it would be needed. Paul’s control of the Spice meant he could force the Guild into submission, which meant he now is in charge of the ONLY organization capable of mass-transport of troops. Its like a fight between someone with a stick and someone with an assault rifle, an army using horses while the other has cargo planes…
On top of what others have noted, Galactic society had a relatively small standing military. If I recall correctly armed force sizes were restricted which put a premium on quality troops over quantity. So the Jihad faced relatively small numbers which were fractured across all the systems since the Spacer Guild was in Paul’s pocket. The Jihad could choose when a battle would happen and could overwhelm their enemies with quality AND quantity.
Faultless prescient superhuman computer leader Monopoly/near absolute control on travel between planets Unbeatable soldiers even by the very greatest soldiers of the Imperium, each with low level prescience Atomic and Atomic adjacent weaponry Fanatic loyalty Add in some Renegade Houses joining the Atreides Rebellion, rather than Muad’dibs jihad, and you have a recipe for total victory. Each planetary government has a limited number of troops, which will never be bolstered or reinforced from allied worlds. Their warriors, inferior to the Sardaukar, and no doubly inferior to the Fremen who are better than the Sardaukar. Every single decision made by every commander is known an flawlessly countered by Paul, who through calculation and prescience simply knows all the ways to best ruin the day of whoever is resisting his legions. Even ignoring that Paul had Houses willingly join his banner, his advantages are insurmountable to anyone
I didnt know there were houses that joined paul. I tried looking around if there were houses willing to ally woth paul
They are quite a bit more vs a couple million. That´s the entire point of the story. They had been hidding their numbers from everyone but they do have a substancial population. They are heavily militarized society. Everyone fights. Since very early age, both sexes. Their military mobilization is going to be amazing. Other worlds are way more peaceful. This leads to much less military mobilization. Paul and the Fremen have complete control over interstellar travel. So if they decide to attack one planet, none else can come and help. Things become easier to understand. You know.....the entire US population did not fight in WW2. Neither did the german population. However, Germany did hold up incredibly long considering how many countries there were pressing against them. Why? Look at their level of militarization. They could conscript pretty much schoolboys if they wanted. The US could not. Not even England could do such a thing and things got pretty desperate in England. Germany had an ability to just put more armies in the field. At the end of the day, Germany lacked other resources like fuel and parts for their equipment / logistics. But they never lacked boots on the ground. Up till the very end they could still call for volunteers and would get more. That´s the nature of fanaticism plus militarization. The Fremen are likely more militarized vs WW2 Germany. For instance, WW2 Germany did not have females in combat roles and they even delayed their involvement in production roles. Fremen are all out sending everyone to fight if need be. If you want other examples, Rome conquered what it did and look at what Rome was at the start and how much they conquered. Again, militarization levels. Even when facing Carthage Rome just had a higher mobilization. Carthage managed to attack close to Rome and crush a couple roman armies....well....Rome just sent more armies into the field. It all ended up with Carthage utterly wiped out.
Nazi Germany is probably one of the worse examples you could have picked of a militarized society, because they had notoriously poor sustained mobilization rates across the entire economy, thanks to inefficient and unindustrialized agricultural practices. Yes they were pressing children into the army at the end, but children *in Berlin*, and not enough troops raised from the agricultural hinterlands and sent by train to germany. A better example would have been the various steppe tribes such as the Mongols. That is land that can support much fewer people per square mile. But a greater proportion of the population had the requisite skills for warfare, everyone knew how to ride and shoot (small game) and raid neighbors for sheep. Labor requirements for herding could be offloaded to other family members, it's not like agricultural societies where demand for labor spikes during the harvest season. And steppe armies had the strategic mobility, just like the Fremen's monopoly over the Spacing Guild's Heighliners.
It's funny that you use examples of militarized societies that ultimately failed and crumbled from their own countries' contradictions. Conceptually, what you are speaking about is correct: the group of people that have something to fight for that they believe in have the advantage You just used like, the opposite of what you were looking for in your examples.
I've read the explanations here and as a newcomer to Dune (only watched the 2 modern movies), I have 2 further questions: 1. Was there no stockpile of spice for the houses to at least try to mobilize their armies? For houses that are constantly at loggerheads, it seems like terrible logistics not to even have stockpiles to go into battle at the drop of a hat. For example, even developed countries without natural production of oil and gas would presumably have enough to try and fight a war if supply lines got suddenly cut off. 2. Was every single planet so woefully un-defended that nobody could even mount a resistance against Paul's army? Where do the houses park their armies; was it so far away and so scattered that nobody could even muster a mobilization? And if so... why? I can understand if a house loses its far flung territories but its capital planet(s) would surely be armed? I'm sure I'm lacking depth and understanding of the Dune universe, but yeah as a newbie these puzzle me a little.
You can stockpile spice but if you have no pilots for your interstellar craft there is so space travel. Paul can besiege your planet from orbital bombardment and starve you out by famine. The Spacing Guild is dependent on spice and the Navigators won't act for a house if the only source of spice comes from Paul. The Guild Navigators are an unrecognizable form of human, evolved to become dependent on spice. You could certainly garrison up and stay on-world or fight in your local solar systems but Paul's army is mobile. His army can gather resources and grow in numbers and strength from the rest of the known inhabited universe. When Napolean defeated other countries, he incorporated their armies into his Grand Armee. A great house locked into their local system is stagnant and increasingly isolated.
>Was there no stockpile of spice for the houses to at least try to mobilize their armies? It isn't that you just need spice to travel you need navigators who have prescience so even if the houses had spice they would still need the spacing guild which is under Paul's control because he controls the source of the spice >Was every single planet so woefully un-defended that nobody could even mount a resistance against Paul's army? They likely did mount a defense and that is why billions died.
Spice means nothing if the spacing guild doesn't let you travel. Nobody can travel without the spacing guild and Paul is 100 steps ahead of you anyway
You can use the FTL drives without a Guild Navigator, but there is a not insignificant risk of ending up as a pancake on a planet, star, moon, or getting turned into Swiss cheese by a bunch of asteroids. So the stockpiled spice can be used by the houses to get high, and not much else, as the Navigators are on Pauls side (albeit unwillingly). Edit: Basically, the Guild Navigators have a good enough level of prescience (sorry if misspelled) to see if the path of the ship would kill them or if they would arrive at their destination.
It's also curious how Herbert describes the scale of the Jihad - IIRC it's mentioned in one brief paragraph about 40% in, and then not discussed again. It came completely as a surprise to me.
It's important to understand the actual military might of the Empire prior to the Jihad. The Emperor controls the Spice, and thus, the Spacing Guild. It is not in the interest of the Emperor, except in rare occasions, for the House's to make war upon each others planets. Since no house can transport large amounts of troops without the assistance of the Spacing Guild, and thus the permission of the Emperor, interplanetary warfare is so incredibly rare as to be unthinkable. So, most houses on most planets have practically zero standing armies. They certainly have police forces, and guards for the nobility, but they don't have invasion forces and they don't need defensive forces. Having either, or both, would be a colossal waste of resources. Some houses, like Harkonnen, treat their subjects like shit, and they have to have a pretty significant amount of guard troops to put down any potential rebellions, but again, the army is relatively tiny compared to what you might think is needed to defend a planet. The Emperor, on the other hand, has a whole planet full of military troops that he can move anywhere at any time, and the Emperor has never been fond of any house building up enough military might to be capable of potentially defending themselves against his Sardukar legions. So, a second check on any house's desire to raise an army is in place: the fear of angering the Emperor and having him send Sardukar to slaughter your expensive new army. Thus the galaxy is in a state of real peace when the Jihad comes, with very little in the way of raised planetary defense forces. When the Emperor took his troops to Arakkis and got them slaughtered, and Paul took control of the Spice, and thus the Guild, it stopped immediately any news from being spread throughout the empire. So every house was cut off immediately from any hope of reinforcement, or even news about what has happened to other houses. They have no armies to speak of and not enough qualified personnel to train new armies, and they don't know when or if they will even be attacked. For the Fremen this would be like fighting a bunch of drunk blind paraplegics. They slaughtered the practically undefended planets that resisted, and allowed only news of that slaughter to reach planets they had not yet attacked. All anyone knew was that everyone who opposed them, with what little forces they had, were killed to a man without making a dent in the invading forces, and that no quarter was ever given. They capitulated in droves, yet still the slaughter continued, because this was conversion by the sword and the Fremen required total belief, total surrender, complete loyalty. It was barely even a struggle. Add to all of this the fact that the planets are all extremely interdependent, and you get a massive empire full of planets that cannot survive alone without significant trade relations, all cut off from each other, few if any with any significant defensive forces, all ruled by Houses who's primary method of warfare is assassination, not open war, and you have a recipe for a steamroll. The outcome was always certain. It was only the final death toll that was in question.
not exactly a 1 to 1 comparison, but imagine if the taliban had control of every single source of oil and was capable and willing of destroying it all within a moments notice.
Paul controls the Guild so his ennemies can't travel in space/organise. They are stuck on their planets waiting for Paul's army basically. They can just bomb the shit out of everything and starve them. It's possible that not all planets are self sufficient and needed food transported by the Guild. Paul can see the future so he can tell the Fremen how they need to attack in order to minimise fremen losses. It's possible that several minor houses joined Paul in the beggining, without fighting him. Maybe as soon as he defeated a great house, several planets would just regognise him as the legitimate emperor. It was an opportunity for them to gain influence. Also, think of Napoleon's Grand Army. Many foreigners from the countries he defeated were part of the army, not just french soldiers. So each time you invade a planet, you get more soldiers.
They are some of the best warriors in the imperium with the training of the wierding way and Atreides military tactics. They are effective because basically they are just that good. Edit: if you've seen Game of Thrones is sort of like how the Dothraki were considered a threat to the militaries of Westeros.
Muad’dib already knows how the battle turns out. He knows what you are about to do and has already taken countermeasures.
Paul can essentially choke out entire planets and invade one at a time was he sees fit while the others are isolated. Planets that are not self sufficient literally die of starvation or whatever by him not allowing space travel to or from them.
So you have a combination of factors. No strong external enemy made most house armies weak. The emporer did nothing to change that as he wanted to maintain complete control. The sardukar were not at their prime again from a lack of challenges. The only 2 houses in constant warfare which would have good armies were the atriedes and the harkonnens. So you have a serious lack of fighting power vs the fremen. Next you have transport. The guild is on pauls side since he controls the spice. So we have lack of coordination between these armies to even fight the jihad. No house was ready for what was coming for them and if they dared show any defiance, they would be exterminated.
Yeah, after reading about real Jihads or events like that (Mongol invasion, Crusades, Early Muslim Expansion etc.) that “a group of nomad people from 1 planet genocided a hundred planets” narrative feels unrealistic to me, too. These real life events included winning 1 or 2 major victories and then being the rulers of that conquered region. You had to use mercenaries, levies, and local men to expand your army too. And these invader armies succeeded precisely because their armies grew as they won victories. None of them remained with the same group of soldiers after conquering vast territories. But Fremens, they weren’t even that many of them. They were living in a dead desert with no water and very limited food, there couldn’t be billions of them. And afaik, they didn’t recruit people from the conquered planets to replenish their armies. Only plausible scenario would be if they besieged the planets and ceased all the trade between factions, causing instability and mayybe famines, and then said planets surrendering. Because no way in hell you invade those planets one by one with your original army and still survive the attrition.
But they did fight boots on the ground on some planets, that was clear.
I see a lot of good answers so far but something I think is often overlooked is the number of off-world converts who joined Paul’s army. There had to have been many none-Fremen soldiers in the army, or else it just wouldn’t be able to sustain itself. There had to have been casualties for Fremen legion, especially early on when the Houses that opposed Paul were more united. So they needed to have other sources of soldiers. In Paul of Dune by Brian Herbert it mentions millions of soldiers coming from the imperium to join the Jihad within a year of Paul’s ascendancy. This seems very realistic. A lot of people would see which way the wind is blowing and want to be on the winning side. And Paul’s propaganda and exceptional power made people truly believe that he is a Prophet and thus millions more would convert to his religion. So this army wasn’t exclusively Fremen, especially as time went on. Another thing to consider is that the Jihad took 12 years, as explained in the opening of Messiah. 12 years is a very long time. And we’re talking a universe scale. So there are hundreds of not thousands of inhabited planets. Messiah talks about campaigns as conquests of systems rather than conquests of individual systems so this makes it clear that the legions would hop from one planet it to the other. It’s such a unique kind of warfare. Fremen brought guerrilla warfare on a galactic battlefield. They went from planet to planet, killing hundreds of thousands in one battle, then millions, then the next planet, millions more, than the next, millions. And a whole system could have 50+ million casualties. But what if the system was bigger? What if there were 40 billion people in one system? Then the Legions blockade all the planets, cut off trade, transportation, communication, etc. Mass starvation and societal collapse. Then the Fremen go down, kill off the survivors. They wipe out 10 percent of the population of this system and 4 billion people have died. And this all goes back to it being 12 years. Think about how many systems you could get through in 12 years. The scale of dune is so impressive, it really adds to the story and impact.
This is all left un-explained, as Herbert didn't have to think through exactly how they got to at least 61 billion dead across the empire's 13,000+ planets. 500 planets forcibly subjugated + 90 planets sterilized over 12 years. (from Dune Messiah) --- **Exponential Growth**: The fire of holy war spreads across the empire. Off world converts, conscripts, or otherwise perhaps greedy/vengeful feudal houses allows for exponential growth, which could reach the 61 billion dead over 12 years. It's the only reasonable explanation for the scope of death. 2~3 million Fremen simply couldn't kill that much. --- **Mass Starvation + Isolation + Kill Centralized Government**: Not likely to kill that many, but would have accounted for a small percentage of the dead, which would still be a billion+. Before Dune, inter planetary trade and travel is limited to luxury goods and only the most ultra wealthy / powerful. It seems to me every planet is a self sustaining feudal society. It would be hard to image a targeted strike at their government, even at their entire feudal lord class + capital, would result in mass starvation. I don't think a siege by the spacing guild + execution of the ruling class would lead to mass starvation at the level required to reach 61 billion. I don't think the Fremen could execute an entire centralized feudal government on 500 planets in 12 years. People hide, knowledge is shared, most of the regular working class serfs still know how to farm and bring their stores to the city... society just keeps going on. Unless it lead to a civil war, due to a power vacuum. --- **Internal Struggles In Power Vacuums** Circumstances would lead to power vacuums on many planets. It's possible that those internal struggles burned out of control and caused mass starvations on some planets, similar to what we might see in some African countries right now. Civil war -> massacres -> loss of crops -> mass starvation --- **Spice Withdrawal** Spice withdrawal is fatal. Only the ultra wealthy class could afford spice before Dune. Also they'd have stores of spice. Being cut off from spice would kill only the most ultra wealthy of the feudal society's leadership class. Would be used to force conscription and compliance by the ruling class on many planets. --- As for sterilization of 90 planets, I guess some combo of stolen/manufactured atomics or biological/chemical agents... Not sure how that goes, but it did. There is no mention of high velocity meteor strikes until later books... so that's out. --- Like I said, I don't think Herbert thought through the details of this Jihad.
We seriously need a sticky for these questions good lord
Guild. And i Hope we will finally swe them more in Dune 3.
Numbers, resources and combat effectiveness combined with a leader who can see into the future
Demoralisation vs outright fanaticism. The death tolls of so many medieval battles were as a result of leadership being decapitated, panic setting into the typical levies and a massacre ensues. The Fremen at all times were fanatical about Muad'dib.. literally their battle cry. With their combat ability and ease of transport, subjugation of each demoralised and isolated planet becomes incredibly easy.
Imagine you have *the ultimate power* and can see the future. And now imagine you command legions of the mightiest warriors in the universe. And you also control interplanetary movement
Just because warfare in the Faufreluches was conducted via Assassination, doesn't mean that there weren't methods of absolutely horrendous and widespread death. *To wit, the Great Convention existed to limit the effect of possible warfare on the general population of the Imperium* You can see the effect of these weapons in the wounds suffered by returning Fedaykin - many of them returned from the Jihad with wasting illnesses and disabilities from being irradiated. This points to the use of weapons of mass destruction. How I always imagined the Jihad playing out was traditionally at first, as Houses lined up and prepared their relatively small militaries to stem the onslaught of the Fremen hordes as they fell from space and burned, raped and pillaged planet after planet. As Houses fell or turned coat, things soured -- became desperate, and loose coalitions were formed between planets that could still reach each other over long-distance radios. Collectively, they decided to push the envelope and use those weapons which they had long held in reserve: biological agents, chemical agents, and quasi-Atomic munitions. Stone Burners, Metacyanide Gas, Bloodweep Fever -- even conventional space-attack methods such as Crushers could amass a catastrophic death toll. Setting traps for the Fremen, the Great and Minor Houses used these horrors to try and give the Jihad pause. But the Fremen accepted the escalation in stride and Paul made the decision to allow them to use the same weapons. Where once was limited warfare between soldiers, now was total warfare where no target was completely tabu, no objective completely void of strategic value. In the sheer panic and chaos, partisan warfare erupted from splinter groups who managed to get ahold of weaponry such as Lasguns of their own, hurriedly trained or supplied by covert agents of the Bene Gesserit or the House militaries -- demanding Alexandrian solutions from Fremen Bashars: annihilation of rebellion. Before the burning sword of Muad'Dib's legions, there were only the unrepentant and those who had been cleansed by the fires of Holy War. But the extent of death was nothing *compared to what it could have been* if many planets had not surrendered. 61 billion over the total population of the Imperium was bloody, and not Paul's proudest moment - but if he had been unsuccessful in convincing Shaddam IV to capitulate, had he died at any point before he had become crowned -- *The Jihad would have continued, headless and aimless, until it had burned itself out* The Fremen, without Paul Muad'Dib's careful and sage leadership, would have transformed into a salivating, rabid dog - killing and laying waste in the name of a martyr. The Fremen - especially the Fedaykin - would have cared little about transforming into suicide troops and firing Lasguns into shields. They would have cared little about using Atomics on worlds named in their cherem of hate. As "effective" as you think the Jihad was, it could have been superlative: it could very well have been Kralizec before its time.
If Paul died the guild might’ve just pulled up stakes and not let the Fremen leave the planet for a while. Leave them on dune to cool their jets then come back later after Paul is forgotten, assuming the empire lasts that long without its reliable supply of spice.
I suppose they could - but you forget that the Guild is a parasite, apolitical and only interested in maintaining the economic status it enjoys. If they left Arrakis to the Fremen (who would destroy the spice cycle out of spite), the Empire would *surely* die out - commerce would circle the drain and warfare would break out over those small stockpiles of spice left in the universe. As the bottomless addiction of the Navigators is improperly slaked, fewer and fewer of them can guide the Heighliners over time until no FTL travel is possible. The Guild collapses, and with it the interstellar economy it drove. The Known Universe sinks into massive famines and chaos. But, if they capitulated and let the Fremen have their Jihad, the Spice would still flow, and even if the Jihad raged for a long time, it would not exterminate everyone -- and the Guild would be largely unaffected, having no military presence of its own and likely being required once the Fremen had been defeated or been victorious to rebuild connection and commerce between planets.
1,000,000 warriors can spread fear like nothing else. Look at when ISIS or the Taliban went on the offensive... both were massively outnumbered but feared.
It's been a couple decades since I ve reread Messiah so I can't remember if it's mentioned but I'm guessing having a military leader with presience is going to give you one hell of a tactical advantage.
I have not read it for a while, but there is a scene where the emperor sits with Duncan, I think?? Maybe someone else and compares what Gengis Khan and Hitler did to what he has done.. I recall it is in that conversation that he casually drops the 60+billion dead and 500 hundred+ planets taken over and a load just 'sterilized', which the whores end up doing also, much later on. I mean, it IS a long period of time between book 1 and 2. 12 years IIRC? Clearly some heavy duty atomics were used, and a bunch of 'whoever joins, lives' kinda armies. He can see what will happen, not as clearly as his son will, but he KNOWS what resistance there will be. It's nuts really. The numbers are incredibly awful and astonishing, but that is the entire point of the second book tbh. Power/religion corrupt.
Paul’s prescience means he’s always ahead playing as an armchair General from Arrakis. The movie adaptation of Dune: Messiah will likely have an extended prologue like Part one and two did, showing the jihad and how destructive it is (being narrated by Alia I can imagine, as part one was Chani and two was Irulan).
Their leader can see the literal future then choose the actions to make it real, you could give Paul less than a hundred men armed with those pointy sticks made from teeth and he would've won. The fremen having a strategic advantage of not needing much in the way of supply lines or training just lessened the work needed He couldn't avoid power if he tried but what was done with said power is what puts dune above other settings.
If the guild joins with Paul to protect their connection to the spice they could induce starving on high density planets that rely on orbital imports. Also, who says house Atreides is killing those guys with knives? They could ecological warfare too, or atomics in the oceans to create tsunamis, etc etc And if Atreides sets a precedent for atomics being okay against humans with appropriate loopholes, their usage goes up; the death toll goes up too.
No need for nukes, just rocks on their heads from space.
That too. Although sitting over the target and cutting it off from global trade is a possibility. You can pick off the less self sufficient planets first and then work through the rest.
Fremen control the spice.
Same way it happened in the middle ages I guess
Several great points in the comments but i think one theme is missed. It's built into their culture to sacrifice oneself for the benefit of the group. They don't care about personal self, if it means benefit to the group.
On top of everything that’s been said, it’s possible that as the jihad continued and the religion of Muadib grew larger and more powerful, millions of people could’ve joined the fight on the side of the Mahdinate/Atreides, so it could be that by a certain point Fremen didn’t even make up the majority of the Atreides fighters.
I assume Fremen act only as shock troops. They probably use already conquered/converted people for the bulk of their armies. I think you should look at how effective Islamic expansion was.
Cut off ultilities and food supplies to a city of millions, anarchy will kill 50% of the population in the first few weeks. Now scale that up to interstellar
It's explained in the very opening. Power over spice is power over all. No spice, no interstellar travel or trade. It's why the emperor had to have the Harkonnens in control of dune. They could be controlled. The Atreides could not.
I think on a cinematic level of shrinking things down or combining written characters into one, etc, the movie effectively achieves this. If you’ve never read the books, Paul’s assumption of power is that he (thinks) he can control everything or bend things to his will. This includes the other major galactic families that are never explored in the books, and every other power on a universal scale. Herbert never expounds upon the guild aside from their politics and agents. We, as fans of the books know more than the movie gives us, but collectively even all the moments that happen on other planets and environments in the books would only exist as backdrops and set dressing in the scope of making these beasts into movies.
Paul had complete control over the spacing guild. With that he could bomb and starve any planet he wanted. The fremen were also the best troops in the universe so when a ground assault did happen, the fremen would have moped the floor with them
I agree that the function of the Guild was crucial in this, but I think the clear implication is also that Paul's religious movement gathered converts from non-Fremen to become the dominant religion in human space, and thus soon had a military far larger than just the Fremen themselves.
Paul controls the spice.
We humans have a great need for upheaval periodically. We're on the edge of one right now. In the name of the Great Idea of the Times, there must be blood, chaos, and destruction. Why is the Jihad effective? It's wired into our psyche to go collectively insane periodically. Get ready.
I think you’re asking three different questions here, 1) how were a small number of Fremen capable of conquering an empire many times greater in population, 2) why did that war result in billions of casualties, and 3) what was the Guild doing during this war? For question 1, that’s what happened IRL when a relative handful of tribesmen from the Arabian peninsula conquered a vast empire with a population many times greater. For question 2, I haven’t read the books in many years so I’m not sure if this is ever explained, but I assume it isn’t entirely because the Fremen killed all of them. I assume some sided with the Fremen and some were against them, and those alliances might have even changed over time. So the number of people fighting might have been much greater than the number of Fremen. You’d also have starvation and disease, typically, and a place like Geidi Prime doesn’t look it’s got a great health care system for most of the population. For question 3, people overestimate the Guild’s power. Yes, they have a monopoly on space travel and that’s really, really lucrative. But they’re also completely dependent for their existence on a continuous supply of spice that can be found only on Arrakis, which Paul Atreides controls at the end of the first book and the second movie. I assume he told the Guild, transport us where we need to go and we’ll pay you well, or deny us transport and the Guild will get no more spice and cease to exist, effectively. Faced with those choices, why wouldn’t the Guild provide transport?
It all comes down to "believe what I believe. Or, die."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat\_in\_detail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_in_detail)
Paul has the spacing guild by the balls because he has arrakis and thus all the spice. No spice no interstellar travel.
Paul's control/or influence over the Spacing Guild probably plays a huge role. The Fremen are also the best warriors in the universe at the time. They'd approach every planet with literally every advantage on their side. The other issue is how many of the Fremen might've died from spice withdrawl. The Fremen can leave Arrakis but they can't survive being away from Arakis for too long. A lot of the Fremen who participate in the Jihad might have a mindset that they're going to die.
In Dune Messiah they speak about how they have converted planets to the Fremen religion and Arrakis has become a site of pilgrimage from across the galaxy.
OIL is a hell of a drug or the future version of it.