User Guide

rrakis, third planet of Canopus - commonly known as Dune - a planet so inhospitable and barren that
it barely seems credible it can sustain life. A planet at the mercy of its cruel climate with ground
temperatures that soar as high as 350 degrees making it desperately hard for vegetation to grow or
animal life to survive.
Much of Dune save its small polar caps is covered in endless sand plains and hills punctuated only by jagged
outcrops of the rock scarring out of the surface. There are giant tidal dust basins too, and the air is often thick
with dust particles which rapidly clog machinery. Frequent, violent storms with raging winds blow up without
warning proving fatal to anything caught in the open.
But there is life on Dune - small burrowing creatures survive in this furnace world: kangaroo mouse, kit fox,
desert hare, sand terrapins and countless insects which thrive in the heat. And there are worms too - the shai
- hulud or Old Man Of The Desert, giant sandworms which grow to hundreds of metres in length.
Each worm guards its own territory jealously, rippling at great speed across the sand and burrowing
voraciously through the under-soil to attack anything setting up vibrations.
Dune is home to intelligent life as well, in the form of a tribal race known as the Fremen who eke out a living
in a constant battle against the elements. They are fierce, independent and instantly recognisable by their
liquid blue eyes caused by contact with a spice which occurs naturally there. Water is the most precious thing
on Dune and the Fremen do everything possible to preserve it, wearing special suits to collect the body’s
moisture.
The stillsuit recycles perspiration by a process of filtration and heat exchange. Water is so central to Fremen
existence that many customs and rituals have grown up around it: a person’s moisture is considered to belong
to the tribe and is ritually extracted when they die while spitting is a sign of respect.
The Fremen simply sought to survive against the odds before the arrival of a man who gave them a dream of
changing their lives by transforming their environment. Pardot Kynes was an Imperial ecologist despatched to
the planet by the Emperor for research purposes. He at once saw the planet could be changed, that its people
could lead a better life.
He offered them a vision of Dune that was covered in vegetation, where water was abundant. Convinced by
Kynes that the dream was achievable, they set about reclaiming its deserts by creating catch-basins to collect
underground water and wind-traps to gather moisture from the air.
2
A
Dune_Eng 26/8/97 11:16 am Page 2