Tertius Eileen Anteac/DE



Tertius Eileen Anteac was a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother and Truthsayer during the last years of the reign of the God Emperor Leto II Atreides. According to the God Emperor's knowledge, Anteac was a descendant of the famous Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam. She served faithfully the plans of the God Emperor concerning the Ixians.

Biography
She was born on Paquita. Though there were no official Bene Gesserit headquarters on that planet during the later part of Leto's empire, some of the professors at the University were Bene Gesserits of Hidden Rank, and watched for girls who showed signs of having special abilities such as strong analytical skills or empathetic sensitivity. Eileen came to the attention of a Sister during a riot in the square facing the University entrance gates. A group of children and adults were stoning three little girls, calling them "witch's spawn" and accusing them of placing spells on the townspeople. By the time the Sister had called reinforcements and had scattered the crowd, only Eileen still lived. She acquired a scar in her forehead from those rocks and kept it as a reminder.

Training
Eileen was cared for at the University, and when she was strong enough, she was sent to the Chapter House on Wallach IX/DE for training. Academic records show that Anteac was a brilliant analyst, and her training soon specialized in data collection, synthesization, and analysis. In a BG record, there is an indication she had also received some mentat training, officially illegal during Leto II's Imperium.

She was given parallel work, however, in Truthsayer apprenticeship, her empathetic skills being abnormally high. She became one of the youngest women to be initiated as a Reverend Mother and was apprenticed to the legendary R.M. Marius Luanna Cattalane. From her, Anteac learned the famous diplomatic skills.

Anteac was also known as a defender of the younger Sisters when they attempted reforms within the organization: The political support which elected her to the General Council seems to have come from the liberal and radical factions. She was not only a Truthsayer according to the Compendium Matres, but also a member of the Sisterhood's General Council, a Mater Felicissima for the final ten years of her life.

Arrakis
By the time she was fifty Anteac had become one of the most important members of the annual delegation to Arrakis, working closely under her superior, R.M. Syaksa.

Together with the Reverend Mother and also Truthsayer Marcus Claire Luyseyal she went for an audience with the God Emperor which coincided with the Royal Festival held every ten years. She and Luyseyal received the message the assistant to the Ixian Ambassador, Othwi Yake, that Face Dancers had infiltrated in the Ixian Embassy and were planning to assassinate Leto II. The message did not reached Leto's hands in time, but anyway it failed, as both Anteac and Luyseyal knew it would. They achieved little in their meeting with the God Emperor, and he took the priceless spice-essence with which they expected to test his mortality.

Later, Leto enlisted Anteac's aid in detecting the Tleilaxu Face Dancers who had replaced almost everyone in the Ixian embassy, except the new ambassador, Hwi Noree. During her mission, Anteac identified the duplicate of Othwi Yake, since the original had sent her the message of the Assassination Attempt against the God Emperor. Then, Moneo Atreides, Leto's Majordomo, recognized that Anteac was a secret Mentat, a skill prohibited in the Empire, but Leto afirmed that he knew that already and that that amused him.

Hwi Noree, the new Ixian Ambassador, shared her knowledge of the environment in which she was brought up with Anteac, who had been conscripted by Leto to lead a Fish Speaker assault on Ix, in order to wrest the secret of Hwi's origins. When the notice of Leto and Hwi's marriage was going to take place, Anteac was shocked, and at the same time, annoyed that her order had allowed such a talented woman as Hwi to pass through their training without turning her into one of them, a true Bene Gesserit sister.

Anteac lead the Fish Speaker invasion of Ix, where they captured Malky, the former Ixian Ambassador. However, the faithful Anteac died during the mission.

Character
The Bene Gesserit Annals also note that her philosophy showed a strong sense of the absurd and that she had the sometimes inconvenient habit of expressing her perceptions openly. Reverend Mothers, members of an ultraconservative sect within the Sisterhood, attempted to censure what they labeled her "unconventional and disconcerting sense of humor," but were unsuccessful. The records show Anteac as being an intelligent woman fully capable of making independent decisions, taking the responsibility for them, and giving her life in support of their execution.

Legacy
1500 years later, Duncan Idaho affirmed that Reverend Mother Bellonda, advisor of Mother Superior Darwi Odrade and also a Mentat, was indeed a descendant of Anteac.

Anteac has been known in the legends variously as "the witch" who in some way contributed to the death of both the God Emperor and his Lady Hwi Noree and as the martyr who gave her life in an attempt to follow the God Emperor's orders. She remained a figure treated with curious ambiguity in the mythos of the Holy Church and in the legends of the Oral History until became an historical actuality through material discovered in the Rakis Hoard and through subsequent information released from the Bene Gesserit Archives and he role as a trained Bene Gesserit Truthsayer, caught between conflicting commitments, both of which were ultimately crucial to her Sisterhood. She stands in the Compendium Matres as a martyr for the Sisterhood.

Appearances

 * God Emperor of Dune
 * Chapterhouse: Dune (mentioned only)