Dune

by Frank Herbert

Set in the distant future, Dune tells the story of Paul Atreides, a young noble whose family accepts stewardship of Arrakis — the only source of the most valuable substance in the universe, the spice melange. When his family is betrayed, Paul must navigate desert survival, Fremen culture, and his own terrifying prescient abilities to reclaim his birthright and confront a destiny that could save or destroy humanity.

80 characters, locations, and items in this world codex.

Characters

• Alia Atreides — Born with full ancestral memory after her mother took the Water of Life while pregnant — Alia is an adult consciousness in a child's body, an abominat
• Baron Vladimir Harkonnen — A grotesquely corpulent puppet-master who compensates for physical repulsiveness with political genius — he treats people as expendable game pieces an
• Bijaz — Tleilaxu dwarf programmed as a living trigger device — he sings, giggles, and speaks in maddening riddles while carrying the conditioning codes that c
• Chani — A Fremen warrior and daughter of the desert who becomes Paul's true partner — she loves the man but watches helplessly as the myth of Muad'Dib consume
• Count Hasimir Fenring — The Emperor's closest friend and deadliest assassin — a genetic near-miss who was almost the Kwisatz Haderach, his failure to achieve that potential l
• Darwi Odrade — Mother Superior of the Bene Gesserit in its darkest hour — Miles Teg's daughter who leads the Sisterhood with pragmatic ruthlessness and forbidden emo
• Dr. Wellington Yueh — The Suk doctor whose supposedly unbreakable Imperial conditioning shattered under the weight of his wife's torture — he betrayed the Atreides knowing
• Duke Leto Atreides — A noble duke whose popularity threatened an emperor and whose honor made him predictable — he walked into the Arrakis trap knowing it was a trap becau
• Duncan Idaho — The Atreides swordmaster whose death defending Paul was only the beginning — resurrected as a ghola again and again across millennia, he is the most l
• Edric — Spacing Guild Navigator who floats in a tank of spice gas — conspirator against Emperor Paul, his mutated body hides his thoughts from prescience, mak
• Esmar Tuek — Smuggler chief and water merchant on Arrakis — a pragmatic businessman who operates in the margins between Harkonnen authority and Fremen territory, o
• Farad'n Corrino — Shaddam's grandson raised in exile on Salusa Secundus — trained by Jessica herself in Bene Gesserit ways, he married Ghanima and chose scholarship ove
• Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen — The Baron's handsome, lethal heir — bred and groomed to be the Harkonnen face of charm after Rabban's reign of terror, he is Paul's dark mirror and wa
• Ghanima Atreides — Paul's daughter and Leto II's twin, born pre-born like Alia but strong enough to resist ancestral possession — she survived by compartmentalizing the
• Glossu Rabban — The Baron's brutish nephew appointed to grind Arrakis into submission — too cruel to inspire loyalty and too dull to realize he is the expendable firs
• Guild Navigator — Spice-mutated pilots of the Spacing Guild who fold space for interstellar travel — alien in body and thought, they are the indispensable monsters on w
• Gurney Halleck — A warrior-poet who plays the baliset as fiercely as he wields a blade — scarred by Harkonnen slavery and sustained by Atreides loyalty, he is the emot
• Harah — Fremen widow of Jamis, bound as servant to Paul after he killed her husband — pragmatic survivor who masks grief behind sharp-tongued practicality and
• Hwi Noree — Ixian ambassador engineered to be irresistible to the God Emperor — a weapon of impossible kindness whose genuine compassion makes her the most danger
• Iakin Nefud — Captain of Baron Harkonnen's personal guard — a semuta addict whose cruelty is fueled by drug-dependency and terror of his master, making him a perfec
• Jamis — Fremen warrior whose challenge to Paul ended in his death — his killing was Paul's blood-price of entry into the Fremen, and his ghost haunts the dese
• Korba — Fremen Fedaykin commander turned fanatical priest of Muad'Dib's religion — he wages jihad with the fervor of a true believer while secretly conspiring
• Lady Jessica — A Bene Gesserit adept who defied her order's millennia-spanning breeding program by bearing a son instead of a daughter — her love for Leto Atreides r
• Lady Margot Fenring — A Bene Gesserit operative married to the most dangerous man in the Imperium — she seduced Feyd-Rautha to preserve his genetic line and navigates the i
• Leto Atreides II — Paul's son who chose the Golden Path his father could not — he merged with sandtrout to become an immortal human-worm hybrid, ruling as God Emperor fo
• Liet-Kynes — Imperial Planetologist and secret Fremen leader who inherited his father's dream of terraforming Arrakis — torn between scientific duty to the Imperiu
• Miles Teg — Bene Gesserit Bashar and the greatest military commander in the known universe — an elderly warrior of terrifying competence whose loyalty to duty mas
• Moneo Atreides — Majordomo to God Emperor Leto II and father of the rebel Siona — a man who has seen the necessity of the Golden Path and serves the tyrant he fears, c
• Otheym — A Fremen fedaykin commander who fought beside Muad'Dib and later brought him warning of a conspiracy — his loyalty outlasted his health, and he spent
• Pardot Kynes — The Imperial Planetologist who arrived on Arrakis as a scientist and became a prophet — he gave the Fremen the dream of a green world and they gave hi
• Paul Atreides — A duke's son transformed into desert messiah and galactic emperor — his ability to see the future becomes the cage he cannot escape, forcing him to ch
• Piter de Vries — A twisted Mentat in Harkonnen service whose brilliant analytical mind is corroded by sadism and sapho addiction — he craves Jessica as a prize and ser
• Princess Irulan — An emperor's daughter married to a man who will never love her — Bene Gesserit trained, politically astute, and condemned to document a legend that ha
• Reverend Mother Mohiam — The ancient Bene Gesserit Truthsayer who tested Paul with the gom jabbar and found something that terrified her — she serves a breeding program older
• Reverend Mother Ramallo — Ancient Fremen Reverend Mother of Sietch Tabr — keeper of ancestral memories who passed her lifetime of Other Memory to Jessica in the spice agony, dy
• Scytale — Bene Tleilax Face Dancer and master conspirator — a shapeshifter who wears other people's bodies like costumes and offered Paul a ghola of his dead be
• Shaddam Corrino IV — The Padishah Emperor whose fear of a rival house's popularity led him to orchestrate the Atreides destruction on Arrakis — a competent ruler undone no
• Shadout Mapes — Fremen housekeeper who served the Atreides in Arrakeen — she gave Jessica the crysknife as a test of prophecy and died when the Harkonnens struck.
• Shai-Hulud — The great sandworms of Arrakis — god-creatures 200 to 400 meters long who produce the spice melange, sacred to the Fremen as incarnations of the deser
• Sheeana Brugh — Young woman who can command the sandworms of Arrakis — raised as a Bene Gesserit tool, she carries the potential to reshape the universe's relationshi
• Siona Atreides — Rebel descendant of Leto II who carries the genetic gift of invisibility to prescience — she is the culmination of the God Emperor's 3,500-year breedi
• Stilgar — The naib of Sietch Tabr who sheltered the Atreides fugitives and watched his pragmatic alliance with Paul transform into religious devotion he cannot
• The Preacher — A blind man who appears in Arrakeen denouncing the religion of Muad'Dib — he speaks with terrifying authority and intimate knowledge of Paul Atreides,
• Thufir Hawat — The Atreides Master of Assassins and Mentat whose legendary analytical mind failed to detect the one traitor that mattered — captured and forced to se
• Wensicia Corrino — Shaddam IV's ambitious daughter who schemes to restore House Corrino's throne — she trained Laza tigers to assassinate the Atreides twins and uses her

Locations

• Arrakeen — The capital city of Arrakis — a Shield Wall-protected settlement that changed hands from Harkonnen to Atreides to Muad'Dib, each transition written in
• Arrakis — The desert planet — sole source of the spice melange, where colossal sandworms patrol endless dunes and the Fremen wage a hidden war for survival bene
• Caladan — The Atreides homeworld — a lush ocean planet of green hills, constant rain, and crashing surf, abandoned when Duke Leto accepted the fief of Arrakis.
• Carthag — The Harkonnen administrative capital on Arrakis — a brutalist garrison city built for extraction and control, where the oppressor's boot meets the des
• Chapterhouse — The Bene Gesserit's last stronghold — a planet being deliberately transformed into a new Arrakis to secure an independent spice supply as the old orde
• Corrin — The site of the Battle of Corrin — the decisive engagement that ended the Butlerian Jihad against thinking machines and established the political orde
• Giedi Prime — The Harkonnen homeworld — a ravaged industrial hellscape of factories, gladiatorial arenas, and perpetual smog where cruelty is the organizing princip
• Habbanya Erg — A vast sand sea and Fremen sietch territory — where Paul Atreides earned his place among the desert people and the seeds of holy war were planted.
• Imperial Ecological Testing Station — Pardot Kynes' hidden terraforming outposts — scattered across Arrakis, these stations secretly nurture the Fremen dream of transforming their desert w
• Ix — The technology planet — a subterranean factory-world that produces machines skirting the edge of Butlerian Jihad prohibitions, where innovation is bot
• Kaitain — The Imperial capital — a planet of calculated opulence where the Padishah Emperor holds court and every garden path conceals a political knife.
• Lankiveil — A cold, grey Harkonnen fief — a whale-fur trading world where Glossu Rabban retreats between campaigns of brutality and the Baron sends those he wishe
• Salusa Secundus — The Imperial prison planet — a world of punishing extremes that secretly serves as the breeding ground for the Emperor's elite Sardaukar terror troops
• Sietch Tabr — Stilgar's sietch — the Fremen cave settlement deep in the desert that became Paul Muad'Dib's base of power and the heart of the Fremen revolution.
• The Deep Desert — The vast open sand sea of Arrakis — Fremen domain where sandworms rule, outsiders die, and the planet's true power lies buried beneath endless dunes.
• The Palace of Arrakeen — The seat of planetary governance on Arrakis — built by Harkonnens, claimed by Atreides, transformed by Muad'Dib into the throne room of a galactic emp
• The Shield Wall — A massive natural rock barrier that protects Arrakeen's basin from coriolis storms — and whose breach by Paul's atomics changed the course of the Impe
• Tleilax — The Bene Tleilax homeworld — a secretive planet where gholas are grown in axlotl tanks and Face Dancers are bred, hidden behind layers of religious pa
• Tuono Basin — An open desert basin where Paul Atreides rode his first sandworm — a rite of passage that transformed a fugitive duke's son into a Fremen warrior.
• Wallach IX — The Bene Gesserit school planet — where Sisters are trained in the arts of voice, seduction, observation, and the slow manipulation of human genetics

Items

• Crysknife — A sacred Fremen blade made from a sandworm's tooth — milky translucent, impossibly sharp, and bound by the deepest taboo: it must not be sheathed unbl
• Family Atomics — Nuclear weapons held by each Great House as a deterrent — their use against humans is forbidden by the Great Convention, but Paul Atreides used them t
• Gom Jabbar — A poison needle used in the Bene Gesserit test of humanity — held at the neck while the subject's hand is placed in a box of escalating pain. Pull you
• Heighliner — An enormous Spacing Guild transport ship — kilometers long, capable of folding space for instantaneous interstellar travel, and completely dependent o
• Holtzman Shield — A personal force field that stops any fast-moving object but admits slow penetration — the technology that transformed all combat in the Imperium into
• Hunter-Seeker — A tiny suspensor-guided assassination device — a floating needle of death controlled remotely by an operator, designed to slip through defenses and de
• Lasgun — A continuous-beam laser weapon — devastating against unshielded targets, but its interaction with a Holtzman shield produces a nuclear-scale explosion
• Maker Hooks — Specialized hooks used to pry open a sandworm's ring segments — the essential tool for the Fremen art of worm-riding, allowing a rider to steer a crea
• Ornithopter — A wing-flapping aircraft that serves as the primary transport on Arrakis — nimble enough to navigate coriolis storms and essential for spice harvestin
• Poison Tooth — A hollow tooth containing lethal poison, concealed in the jaw — Dr. Yueh placed one in Duke Leto's mouth as a last weapon against the Baron Harkonnen,
• Spice Melange — The most valuable substance in the universe — a cinnamon-colored spice that extends life, expands consciousness, enables space travel, and makes Arrak
• Stillsuit — A full-body suit that reclaims the wearer's moisture — sweat, breath, urine — recycling it into drinkable water. Without one, the desert kills in hour
• Stone Burner — An atomic-adjacent weapon that creates a focused nuclear blast — its most insidious effect is the emission of J-rays that permanently blind everyone w
• Thumper — A rhythmic vibration device driven into the sand to attract sandworms — used as a diversion during spice harvesting or to summon a ride across the des
• Water of Life — The bile of a drowned sandworm — a lethal poison that a Reverend Mother can internally transmute into an awareness drug, unlocking ancestral memories

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