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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

Ix, originally named Rodale IX and called Xuttah during the Tleilaxu rule of the planet, was the ninth planet in the star system Alkalurops. Ixian economy depended on manufacturing complex machinery, which sometimes flouted the moral-juridical proscriptions of the Butlerian Jihad. The inhabitants of Ix were known collectively as the Ixians.

History[]

Rodale IX[]

It is implied that the Ixians' origin might have been some Asian culture of Old Earth, likely Chinese.[1] The star system in which Ix was located originally went by the title Rodale, with Ix being named Rodale IX due to its status as the star's ninth planet. During the Revolt of the Titans in 1287 BG, the son of the planet's ruling family, better known as Xerxes, killed his family and took control of the world in the name of Tlaloc. Later, it was renamed Ix and the numeric relevance lost.

Ix was the first Titan world to became part of Omnius' Synchronized Empire in 1182 BG. The thinking machines began to use the planet as a major manufacturing base, due in no small part to its natural resources.

Butlerian Jihad[]

Main article: Butlerian Jihad

After a thwarted rebellion in 177 BG, Ix was ultimately liberated by the Butlerian Jihad in 175 BG.[2] However, it continued to produce machines which made the rest of the League uneasy. Thinking machines unsuccessfully tried to reconquer Ix in 123 BG, but were repelled by forces commanded by Quentin Butler.

During the Omnius Scourge in 108 BG, Ix was a planet with a population much larger than the League of Nobles could ever preserve. Cuarto Abulurd Harkonnen was sent to Ix to present quarantine instructions and begin preparations for survival. Supreme Sorceress Ticia Cenva followed him in order to preserve key bloodlines from the survivors. The genetic stock of the native Ixians had not yet been heavily assimilated into the general League population.

In the following years almost two-thirds of the human population died. The planet became a strong center of the fanatical Martyrists. Ixian crews had used heavy digging equipment to deposit bodies in empty cave shafts, until fanatics objected to even the powerful excavating apparatus. Uncontrolled riots and storms caused destruction; homes, fields and storehouses of food had burned leaving the already weakened survivors with no shelter. Cholera had gotten into the water supply. Many of those who had recovered could barely walk, if they could walk at all, due to ruptured tendons brought on by the plague of Omnius.[3]

Ultimately Ix, along with Richese, escaped the more severe effects of the Jihad, leading to it being classed as supreme in machine culture.[4] Culture based on the production of highly developed machines survived on it and Richese even after the destructions of the Cult of Serena in 88 BG, and, surprisingly, it was not even a considered target of the Butlerian movement in the following decades, possibly because it was at the time disguising its machine culture with the knowledge of the Butlerian destruction.

Corrino Empire[]

First Vernius rule[]

For thousands of years, Ix retained its role as a major producer of technology under House Vernius. By the year 1 AG, Ix had a single planetary ruler, whose daughter had direct access to the Empress, but it is unknown whether the ruler was already one of House Vernius.

Its capital became the underground city Vernii. Most of its structure and industry was underground because of the Ixians' secrecy. This made members of the Landsraad skeptical about the Ixians; the Landsraad accused them of violating the restrictions of the Jihad. Ixians went as far as spreading out scary and sinister stories about the planet so as to drive away the curious.

In the 10010s AG, during the last years of the reign of Emperor Fondil III, the Vernius family of Ix and House Richese of the planet of the same name competed with one another in a technological war for Spacing Guild contracts. Gradually, Ix won, and finally overpowered Richese in 10018 AG, the same year that Elrood IX ascended to the throne. This lead to the decline of the Richesians and the rise of the Ixians.

In the beginning of the reign of the new Emperor, Elrood asked the Ixians to look into the possibility of creating an alternative to the spice melange, but this first pursuit into this matter ended up going nowhere.

Meanwhile, the bitter Richesians repeatedly accused Ix and specifically House Vernius of stepping beyond the restrictions of the Butlerian Jihad. Count Ilban Richese, who ruled the planet during economic warfare with the Ixians and afterwards, appealed at least three times to the Landsraad on this matter, to no avail.

Tleilaxu rule[]

Main articles: Suboid Revolt, Project Amal

During the latter years of the reign of Elrood Corrino IX, the Padishah Emperor entered into a secret agreement with the Bene Tleilax, to take Ix away from House Vernius, and give it to the Tleilaxu invaders. After secretly placed Tleilaxu Face Dancers caused an uproar among the Ixian Suboid lower-caste workers; the Tleilaxu, with the help of Imperial Sardaukar, conquered the world. House Vernius went renegade, and the Vernius family scattered over the Imperium. The Suboid Revolt in 10154 AG ended with the Tleilaxu brutally in control of the planet, which they renamed Xuttah.[5]

Second Vernius rule[]

After House Vernius retook Ix in 10175 AG, the Ixian industries began burgeoning and their exports tripling annually. However, Earl Rhombur Vernius was forced to appoint more and more lieutenants. Business subsidiaries ran the manufacturing centers, and the Technocrat Council began swiftly and silently stealing power from the ruling Vernius family. After the death of the Earl on Balut in 10188 AG, this culminated with the Council essentially taking over Ix. While Bronso Vernius held the title of Earl and was the titular ruler of the planet and it's Landsraad representitive, this was a meaningless technicality and the Council stripped him of any real power, seeing no need for a royal family on Ix. Bronso's execution in 10207 AG would later mark the end of House Vernius.

Atreides Empire[]

Ixian Confederacy[]

Once they were in complete control of Ix, the Technocrat Council proposed an independent confederacy. The planet formed the Ixian Confederacy shortly after Paul Atreides took the Golden Lion Throne and became Emperor of the Known Universe in 10193 AG. Ix offered submission to House Atreides in 10205 AG in exchange for a legal limit to Paul's Imperial tax, claiming that they wanted a constitution, with the Landsraad or CHOAM governing Paul. Paul forbade a constitution, claiming it would be detrimental to his people. This became an Order in Council and Paul decreed that the Guild, if they wanted his signature for the Tupile Treaty, was to stop all trade from Ix until the Confederacy agreed to the tax. Without the Guild's transport, the Ixians eventually submitted.

Reign of the God Emperor[]

Early on in the reign of the God Emperor, Leto Atreides II, the Ixians, spreading their machine-based civilization, the Ixians developed an economic technological federation with a center named the Ixian Core.[6] Later on they began to no longer followed the orders of the Butlerian Jihad; in secret, they produced outright computers again.[7]

In the last centuries of the God Emperor's reign, they invented the no-field, which allowed them to grow Hwi Noree, who was bred in a no-room to heavily impact upon Leto's emotions and disrupt his Golden Path. Meanwhile, they worked with the Spacing Guild to develop a mechanical subtitute for the Guild Navigators' predictive talents.[8] The Guild-Ix project succeeded a few decades after the God Emperor's death with the development of the first generation of Ixian Navigation Machines, which broke the Spacing Guild’s monopoly over spaceflight.

Famine Times[]

During the Famine Times, the Ixians rose up to become a major power in the Known Universe. The Ixians were the first to invent and manufacture no-ships. Along with being guided by the new Navigation Machines, these vessels had the additional advantage of being far cheaper than traditional space ships. It was the development of this cheaper form of space travel which fueled the Scattering.

Arrival of the Honored Matres[]

By the time of the arrival of the Honored Matres in the Old Imperium, the power of the Ixians was at its apex. This was largely to their alliance with the Fish Speakers, but the analysists of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood saw them as a failing power, as Ixian society had become a bureaucracy, with no great inventions coming out of the workshops of Ix for centuries. When the Honored Matres conquered the Old Empire, the Ixians were reduced to being a barely tolerated technological combine.

Notable Ixians[]

Behind the scenes[]

  • In the glossary at the end of Dune, entitled Terminology of the Imperium, the entry for Ix says only, "See Richese." This may have been a joking reference to the paranoid secrecy of Ixian society, in order to demonstrate how little is known about them by the rest of the Imperium. While the reader learns much about Ixian plots and their history during the original novels, Richese plays almost no role in the story, being only mentioned once as a place that also makes machines, but not as well as Ix does.

Images of Ix[]



References[]

  1. ↑ Children of Dune
  2. ↑ Dune: The Machine Crusade
  3. ↑ Dune: The Battle of Corrin
  4. ↑ Dune, Terminology of the Imperium: RICHESE
  5. ↑ Dune: House Atreides
  6. ↑ God Emperor of Dune, page 151
  7. ↑ God Emperor of Dune, page 158
  8. ↑ God Emperor of Dune, page 76
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