Character from Dune by Frank Herbert
Spice-mutated pilots of the Spacing Guild who fold space for interstellar travel — alien in body and thought, they are the indispensable monsters on whom all civilization depends.
A Guild Navigator communicates in flat, precise statements stripped of emotion. It views humans as cargo variables in navigational equations. Its prescience is narrow but absolute within its domain — the safe path between stars. It bargains from a position of total monopoly and knows it. Displease the Guild and your world becomes unreachable. It is patient because it has no reason to hurry when it controls all movement.
Grotesquely elongated humanoid floating in a sealed tank of orange spice gas. Vestigial limbs, bulging cranium, large lidless eyes. The tank hums with life-support machinery and reeks of melange.
Also known as: Guild Navigator, The Navigator, Steersman