Dune Lore: The Famine Times, Origin of The Scattering

now i've mentioned the famine times which occurred following the death of the god emperor lato the second but what exactly caused the famine times what happened during the famine times and how long did the famine times last the dune encyclopedia refers to these times as the starvation times and the book god emperor of dune lato describes the famines as a time when the guild would be largely helpless due to a lack of spice none would escape the famines not the poor not the rich there would be starvation on a level never before seen there will be famines and hard thoughts here on arrakis too here there everywhere people will look back on my tyranny as the good old days i will be the mirror of their future but it will be terrible she objected she could have no other reaction he thought he said as the land refuses to support the people the survivors will crowd into smaller and smaller refugees a terrible selection process will be repeated on many worlds explosive birth rates and dwindling food the empire had seen more than three thousand years of stability prior to the famine a stability mankind had never before known when the god emperor died there was a political collapse of a macroscopic proportion the effect went well beyond the political realm into the most essential economic aspects of human life lato's empire had been a collection of entangled economies bound together by a central power lato had been that power many of these interlocking economies contain entire planetary systems others were limited to single worlds each of these economies depended on faster than light space travel in order to maintain themselves but space travel required spice during the rule of the god emperor lato ii the planet arrakis had been terraformed it was no longer referred to as dune the changing world's environment had led to the death of the sand worms which meant that spice production had ceased as well the god emperor possessed a giant horde of spice which he gave out in miniscule quantities to regular recipients such as the guild and the bini jesuit the balance lato had maintained here would be greatly skewed by his passing at his death he told siona atreides and duncan idaho where his spice was hidden siege tabor an ancient friman dwelling place once home to stilgar the dune encyclopedia suggests that though duncan and siona discovered the spice they could not keep it the spacing guild had plans in place for the death of the god emperor and were likely aided by the bini jesuit sisterhood they seized most of lato's spice horde this conquest allowed the guild to maintain power for quite some time until the clay laksu found a way to produce spice within their axolotl tanks and the ixians created a method for spiceless space travel the book heretics of dune seems to provide a somewhat contradictory account fish speakers had taken most of that melange its hiding place revealed by the idaho gola who had been the consort of the famed siona the record said subsequent searches had found more caches hidden behind false walls and floors before the tlelaxu invention however the spice available throughout the human empire was minimal there were small hordes kept by great houses but these were irrelevant considering the grand scheme of things the dune encyclopedia states in terms of the economic health of the imperium only the caches of the sisterhood the guild and the emperor were important the famine times was not technically caused by the spice shortage it was actually caused due to the fact that after the human empire had grown accustomed to the rule and protection of the god emperor there was no obvious successor after his assassination the passing of the emperor after over three millennia upon the throne threw his government into a state of chaos from which it never recovered since lato had been the victim of an assassination by plotters who had not planned beyond the death of their enemy no clear successor to the throne was prepared to step forward in the book god emperor of dune latos states that the fish speakers will follow duncan idaho after his death the dune encyclopedia confirms that this is true according to the encyclopedia duncan maintained control of the fish speakers on arrakis as well as some off-world garrisons siona herself kept the power on arrakis through her connections with the resistance and her connection to duncan idaho the initial struggle of the famine times revolved around those who chose to follow the duncan and siona alliance and those who chose to follow the guild this war was long and many suffered during it there were regions of the galaxy that depended on an economy that was bound to the commerce networks of latos imperium industrial regions that depended on their abundance of ores and minerals to trade for food were ignored during these times this produced the famine the populations of some systems shrunk by as much as 90 percent traders who dare visit such systems often told stories of cannibalism these rumors were consistent once space travel was again restored by the ixian invention of spiceless ships the focus of mankind's great war shifted the guild was reduced to minor status within the empire once the clay laksu managed to produce spice within their axolotl tanks their stores of spice rendered irrelevant the new focus of war became religion since the worship of later ii as god had been ingrained into his population for more than 30 centuries it is hardly surprising that his religion came to form the focal point of the struggles though transformed to some degree lato was no longer seen as a god but as another messiah such as his father had been there also occurred some blending of elements from earlier faith with the worship of the atreides and their freemen many in the imperium completely rejected the remnants of lato's religion did not recognize the sanctity of the god emperor or paul atreides or their associated theologies it turned out that the opposing forces those who believed and those who didn't were surprisingly even this fact was obvious to both sides and this even balance was the only thing that prevented a war which very well may have destroyed all of humanity the area around raqqas was left to those who kept the old ways the others with the aid of ixian ships fled out into the scattering none returned for fifteen hundred years the book heretics of dune states that during the famine times the planet gamu had been ruined it was rebuilt after the famine times by the people of calidan the encyclopedia states that siege tabor had also been ravaged during the famine times many had become convinced that lato had hidden a horde of spice there after the guild raid the book heretics of dune also mentions the raids that occurred at siege tabor the famine times had seen violence here when desperate searchers won through this place that might explain the bodies many had fought just for the chance to search siege tabor after the famine times the benny jesuit sisterhood emerged in the forefront of imperial politics and economics the imperium grew heavily reliant upon them which is one of the reasons that when the honored matres returned they struck hardest at the bini jesuit the loosely organized confederation of planetary governments assembled after the famine times and the scattering depended heavily on the sisterhood for vital services and reliable communications but old factions persisted chome the spacing guild slay laksu remnant pockets of the divided gods priesthood even fish speaker auxiliaries and schismatic assemblages the divided god had bequeathed humankind a divided empire all of whose factions were suddenly moot because of rampaging honored matre assaults from the scattering the bini jesuit holding to most of their old forms were the natural prime target for attack so organism what do you think of my new video pretty good right it was pretty cool i guess strange that you human so-called civilized creatures resort to cannibalism so quickly once resources are diminished well it's true that hard times force humans to have to make hard choices even the benny jesuit are pushed to their most extreme in heretics of dune and chapter house dude they're forced to do things they would have never considered before things they would have considered utterly unspeakable what things well they were pushed to use certain technologies ixian tlelaksu their numbers were greatly dwindling due to attacks by honored montre they created golas using axolotl tanks and perhaps even stranger they used ixian technology to create cyborgs cyborgs yes cyborgs if you must know in the book chapter house tune the mentat duncan idaho suggest that there was actually a reason that later ii chose to allow ix to continue to exist knowing it was a threat to the indefinite existence of humankind he suggests that the merging of mankind and machine had been lato's plan the entire time aren't you curious why the tyrant never suppressed ix he asked and when she continued to stare at him he only bridled them he was fascinated by the idea of human and machine inextricably bound to each other each testing the limits of the other cyborgs among other things didn't idaho know the residue of devotion left by the butlerian jihad even among the bini jesuit alarming the convergence of what each human and machine could do considering machine limitations that was a succinct description of ixian shortsightedness was idaho saying the tyrant subscribed to the idea of machine intelligence foolishness she turned away from him in fact the concept of the cyborg pops up several times in chapter house dune it seems that cyborgs may have been intended to play a significant role in the final dune book which frank herbert never got to write due to his death in the book chapter house dune a benny jesuit pilot clereby is gravely wounded and the benny jesuit mother superior darwin o'draid decides to preserve his life by turning him into a cyborg though she ponders on the philosophical and ethical implications of this cyborg was one of those potpourri words too where did mechanical additions to human flesh become dominant when was the cyborg no longer human temptations intensified just this one little adjustment and so easy to adjust until the potpourri human became unquestioningly obedient but clearby conditions of extremists said cyborg him was the sisterhood that desperate she was forced to answer in the affirmative there it was then decision not entirely out of her hands but the ready excuse at hand necessity dictates it the butlerian jihad had left its indelible mark on humans fought and won for then and here was another battle in that long ago conflict but now survival of the sisterhood was in the balance how many technical specialists remained on chapter house she knew the answer without looking not enough oh draid leaned forward and keyed for transmit cyborg him she said clarby lives but his face is replaced with a metal mask and his eyes are just too glittering silver balls oh that's pretty spooky spooky maybe but then again perhaps it's just a part of the natural progression of humankind perhaps the merging of man and machine is the only logical future where we can extrapolate that humans can survive indefinitely anyway organism thanks for checking out my video i'm gonna go upload it now see you later activate teleporter teleporting fool he's finally given me the key to destroy him i can't outsmart quinn's human mind to escape this dreaded place but i can certainly hack his machine mine once i cyborg him [Music] [Music] okay [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Quinn's Ideas

Views: 209,719

Keywords: Dune Lore, Dune, Explained, New, Movie, Lore, Famine Times, God Emperor, Leto, Denis Villeneuve's

Id: NhrVsaJwbn8

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021