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Nudune This article or section refers to elements from Expanded Dune
There are separate pages for this subject as it appears in the other canons, the reasons for this are explained here

The Spacing Guild, also called the Guild of Navigators on rare occassions, was an interstellar shipping and trade conglomerate during the years of the Corrino Empire and later the Atreides Empire, and one leg of the political tripod maintaining the Great Convention. The Guild was the second mental-physical training school established after the Butlerian Jihad, the first being the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, and the Guild monopoly on space travel and upon international banking was taken as the beginning point of the Imperial Calender.

First established by VenKee Enterprises as Foldspace Shipping Company in 88 BG following the Battle of Corrin, Emperor Salvador Corrino announced the creation of the Independent Spacing Guild from the former FSC decades later following the defeat of the company after the galactic civil war. This name was shortened over time to simply the Spacing Guild. The re-established Guild maintained a monopoly on space travel until it was broken by the development of the Navigational Machine by the Ixians during the reign of Leto Atreides II.

History[]

Early foundations[]

"The origins of the Spacing Guild are shrouded in cosmic mists, not unlike the convoluted pathways a Navigator must travel."
―Archives of the Old Empire[src]


Foldspace theory and first prototype[]

In 177 BG, during the Butlerian Jihad, scientist Norma Cenva extended the Holtzman Effect to complete the theory of spacefolding on Poritrin, while working for Savant Tio Holtzman. She had spent a great deal of her life conceiving, designing and testing the spacefolder idea up to this point. The next year, she was released from the contract that made her inventions Holtzman's property by her father Aurelius Venport the next year. Venport then used the profits gained by his company VenKee Enterprises to assist her in beginning building the first actual spacefolding ship. Unfortunately the ship endured only two years before it was taken from her by Lord Niko Bludd and Holtzman himself. Venport and Cenva were cat out of the planet.

Kolhar shipyards[]

After leaving Poritrin, Norma was captured and tortured by the Titan Xerxes. This event unlocked her dormant abilities to control her molecular structure and utilize formidable new prescient abilities. After killing Xerxes she went to the planet known as Kolhar where she summoned her mother Zufa Cenva and Aurelius Venport, who had been looking for her on Salusa Secundus. The three set about transforming Kolhar into the first Junction, a massive construction yard to build ships with Norma's new Holtzman engines.

In 164 BG, Aurelius Venport was persuaded by High Priestess Serena Butler of the Jihad to offer the technology to the Army of the Jihad. In an agreeement which was made on Salusa, it was settled that although the Jihad would be given the Kolhar shipyards and the foldspace technology for now, Venport and his company would recieve the rights after the Jihad ended. This would be a setback to Venport's finance, but in the long run, it would extremely benefit VenKee.

The fact that the document Origins of the Spacing Guild was a publication of the League suggests that the term Spacing Guild somehow came into use during this period, although this seems unlikely based on context. For example, Josef Venport had no familiarity with the term in 3 BG when Norma Cenva first used it openly.

Space travel problem[]

By the year 108 BG, fifty-six years after this agreement, however, Norma Cenva still couldn't find a way to fold space safely. One out of every ten flights was lost due to this reason. Because a pilot had no way of knowing exactly where a space folding ship was likely to appear, ships often appeared in the middle of suns to burn or crashing into planets without enough time for a pilot to react. In the years between, Aurelius, who she had married, had died, and their son Adrien Venport had taken over. The first ships had used complicated computers with lightning fast reflexes, but when the Jihad discovered this they had insisted on their complete destruction. Norma subsequently devoted all her efforts into finding a solution and consumed ever increasing amounts of melange that gave her prescience and helped her think and concentrate better.

Norma Cenva[]

Against the doctor's suggestion, Norma decided to give an answer to the navigational problem once and for all in 88 BG. She filled her room with extravagant portions of melange in gas form. While consuming melange, she had an epiphany. Her unique talents, combined with the power of the spice melange, helped her realize the potential for carefully screened and trained humans to fold space safely. When the experience finished, she saw that her body was tragically deformed, resembling her original dwarfish shape, only with an even larger head. For some reason she decided not to revert to her previous form, considering it now an unnecessary expenditure of energy. The whole physical journey to beauty seemed shallow to her, infinitely insignificant. She realized that for one to obtain such levels of prescience would need full spice immersion, total exposure and complete dependence. Her crews constructed an airtight clearplaz chamber where she would breathe gas form melange, without food and water.

Foldspace Shipping Company[]

After the Battle of Corrin, Adrien Venport created the new Foldspace Shipping Company, whose spacefolders were navigated by prescience enabled by melange based on Norma's innovation. The monopoly of VenKee Enterprises (renamed Venport Holdings) through this company did not last long, however, before it was revoked by Jules Corrino, the second Emperor after the Jihad, resulting in numerous competing foldspace companies springing up, like Celestial Transport and EsconTran. However, unlike Venport Holdings, their competition was unable to guarantee safe travel due to the secret to making Navigators remaining with VenHold. Eighty-five years after the end of the Jihad, Norma Cenva's great-grandson Directeur Josef Venport ran the company with ruthless efficiency, dreaming of taking humanity to new heights of progress. He used this dream, as well as feeling slighted at his family's monopoly being taken away, to mercilessly crush his competition and even kill rival CEOs. His company continuing to develop new technology and even trying to reverse-engineer the technology of the Thinking Machines resulted in the fanatical Butlerians declaring Venport and his entire company their enemies.

Official establishment and monopoly[]

"I propose the creation of an independent Spacing Guild to serve commerce throughout the Imperium. Communication and transportation is the tapestry that binds our civilization together across countless planetary systems. Trade must be allowed to function unfettered by war or the threat of war. Under this new Spacing Guild, I will see that you have all the Navigators you wish, and all the spice you need."
Emperor Roderick Corrino to Norma Cenva[src]

During the resulting struggle, which ended up involving House Corrino as well, Venport Holdings went from being the greatest economic power in the Imperium into nothing, as the Butlerians and Emperor Roderick Corrino systematically reduced the company's power and assets. During the Battle of Denali, frustrated at her Navigators being killed during the turmoil, Norma Cenva negotiated with Roderick and agreed to allow Venport Holdings to be destroyed in exchange for the formation of an Independent Spacing Guild created from the former Foldspace Shipping Company that would unite the Imperium with safe foldspace travel.

Later Corrino Empire[]

The Guild wielded this formidable power during and after the time of Paul Atreides ten thousand years later. The Guild was forced to pay a tax to the Imperial throne per flight. This fact brought about the conflict between Earl Dominic Vernius and emperor Elrood Corrino IX, because the new Ix-ian highliner design increased the capacity by 18 percent thereby decreasing Imperial income.

Arrakis Affair[]

In the year 10191 AG, when the Arrakis Affair boiled up, the Guild made overtures to the Bene Gesserit. The Guild hinted that its Navigators were "bothered about the future" or saw "problems on the horizon." Two years later, the Guild lowered its price so that every Great House's army headed to Arrakis with the Emperor Shaddam IV to stop the rebellious Paul "Muad'Dib" Atreides. However, Paul threatened to destroy the spice if they did not ship all the troops home. They had no choice – their limited powers of prophecy showed Paul was capable of it – and they sent everyone home, yielding to the control of the man who quickly became the new Emperor.

Atreides Empire[]

Memnon Thorvald[]

Five years later, Paul saw a strike against Caladan by the rebellion of Landsraad nobles, led by Memnon Thorvald, in a prescient vision. Paul also knew the Guild was helping them, and ordered the somewhat guilty Guild Navigator Beric to strand the rebels in their starships in distant space with no supplies.

Plot against Muad'Dib[]

Seven years after the Caladan affair, the Guild participated in another plot against the Emperor through the Steersman Edric. Due to his relative power within the Guild, and his ability to elude Paul's prescience abilities, Edric was a principle conspirator against Paul along with the Face Dancer Scytale, Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam and Princess Irulan Corrino, the Emperor's wife in name only. However, the group's plot was discovered and revealed to Paul by his Fremen friend and faithful follower Otheym. After Paul was blinded by a stone burner and disappeared into the desert, Edric was killed by Stilgar, along with all the participants of the conspiracy.

Impact of the God Emperor[]

New problems for the Spacing Guild created by the ascendancy of Leto II to the title of God Emperor. Leto's extremely long lifespan, coupled with his decision to realize the The Golden Path strategy, saw him hoard the Spice melange with no concern for short-term problems. Thus, over the many centuries of his rule the Spacing Guild was forced to do his bidding, and their unique powerbase of old was significantly diminished.

Post-God Emperor Role[]

While the Spacing Guild remained a powerful body even after the death of Leto Atreides II, their power gradually eroded during the Scattering. By the time of the arrival of the Honored Matres the success of the groups sent out in the Scattering had created new but largely unknown threats to their hegemony. This was because Ixian no-ships, which could perform the most of the same functions of a Guild Navigator, were in common use. As a result, the Guild no longer had a monopoly on space travel. The Guild did not retain no significance however; they used the Guild Key to decipher the Stolen Journals.

Structure[]

Hierarchy[]

Spacing guild

From the Dune (1984 movie) prologue

The Spacing Guild was by its very nature a secretive organization that took up functions previously covered by the Thinking Machines, just as Mentats and the Bene Gesserit did. Their very existence rests on the proprietary knowledge they had clung to for thousands of years.

The inner structure of the Guild during and after the time of Paul Atreides was never fully revealed. However, it is known that the role of Guild Navigator was most prestigious, and the ambition of almost all of those who joined the Guild.

Other known Guild roles included the Chief Administrator, the administrative staff, Navigator attendants, Guild ambassadors, and technical support staff.

Dependency[]

The Guild Navigators were utterly dependent on the Spice Melange to safely deliver a vessel via the Holtzman Effect. Even a partial restriction on the Guild's spice requirements rendered them powerless, and reduced long distance trade and transport to a snail's pace.

Prior to the discovery of the Spice Melange's prescient powers, the use of the Spacefolder was very dangerous. One in about every ten Spacefolders was destroyed during travel, because of the lack of a viable method for avoiding gravitational hazards. The safety record was improved in the decades following the end of the Butlerian Jihad even without the use of computers and Navigators by various shipping companies to about 99%, while Venport Holdings (the successor to VenKee Enterprises) had a perfect safety record thanks to the use of Navigators. Seeking to restore his family's monopoly on foldspace travel, Josef Venport hired agents to sabotage his competitors' spacefolders, trying to force them out of business, so that he could seize their assets.

Appearances[]

  • Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (mentioned)
  • Dune: The Machine Crusade (mentioned)
  • Dune: The Battle of Corrin (mentioned)
  • Mentats of Dune (mentioned)
  • Navigators of Dune
  • Dune: House Atreides
  • Dune: House Harkonnen
  • Dune: House Corrino
  • Dune: The Duke of Caladan
  • Dune: The Lady of Caladan
  • Dune
  • Paul of Dune
  • Dune Messiah
  • The Winds of Dune
  • Children of Dune
  • God Emperor of Dune
  • Heretics of Dune
  • Chapterhouse: Dune
  • Hunters of Dune
  • Sandworms of Dune


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