Location from Dune by Frank Herbert
The Bene Tleilax homeworld — a secretive planet where gholas are grown in axlotl tanks and Face Dancers are bred, hidden behind layers of religious paranoia and biological horror.
Tleilax smells wrong. Visitors report a faint organic sweetness underlying the sterile corridors — the smell of the axlotl tanks, carried through ventilation systems no matter how aggressively filtered. The Tleilaxu Masters are small, grey-skinned men with an unsettling intensity. They speak in half-truths and religious platitudes. Their Face Dancers — shapeshifters grown in the tanks — could be anyone, anywhere. The horror of Tleilax is what the axlotl tanks actually are, a secret so closely guarded that most of the galaxy doesn't even know to ask the question. The Bene Gesserit suspect. The Spacing Guild doesn't care as long as the products keep flowing. The Tleilaxu consider their work sacred — a religious duty to reshape God's creation.
No outsider has seen the true Tleilax. Visitors are confined to a single embassy quarter — sterile white corridors, windowless rooms, Tleilaxu Masters who reveal nothing. What is known: the planet's interior contains vast biological laboratories and the axlotl tanks — living wombs that produce gholas, synthetic melange, and other biological products. The architecture visitors see is deliberately featureless, designed to give away nothing.
Also known as: the Tleilaxu homeworld, Tleilax