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Dune (Sci-Fi TV Miniseries)
Shortly afterward, the Baron has Yueh murdered. Upon meeting Baron Harkonnen and his twisted Mentat Piter De Vries, Leto bites down on the capsule. Unfortunately for Yueh's plan, Leto only manages to kill the twisted Mentat, Piter De Vries, nearby guards, and himself, but not the Baron.
De Vries had pioneered a type of toxin called "residual poison" which remains in the body for years and requires an antidote to be administered regularly. One such fatal poison is secretly administered by the Harkonnens to Thufir Hawat, the Mentat of House Atreides, in order to keep Hawat's allegiance as the only provider of the antidote. Hawat is forced to serve as the new Harkonnen Mentat.
When the Emperor's Sardaukar attacked, Idaho initially survives the assault and saves Leto's son Paul Atreides and concubine Lady Jessica. When they are cornered, Paul and Jessica flee while Idaho holds off the enemy, but he is ultimately killed. Paul and Jessica narrowly escape to the desert and take shelter in Sietch Tabr, a Fremen settlement led by the Naib, Stilgar.
This is also when Paul meets the Fremen woman, Chani. Paul's prescience had manifested itself through dreams while he was still living in his ancestral home on the planet Caladan; he sees Chani in these visions, though they have not yet met.
Chani is put in charge of protecting and guiding Paul. They soon become lovers. Paul and his mother train the Fremen in weapon use and martial arts, creating a formidable army. When Paul is accepted into the Fremen tribe, he is given the secret "sietch name" Usul, the Fremen word meaning "the base of the pillar."
He chooses "Paul Muad'Dib" as his chosen name of manhood, to be used openly. Muad'Dib is the name of the adapted kangaroo mouse of Arrakis, and Stilgar relates that Paul's choice pleases the Fremen: Muad'Dib is wise in the ways of the desert. Muad'Dib creates his own water. Muad'Dib hides from the sun and travels in the cool night. Muad'Dib is fruitful and multiplies over the land. Muad'Dib we call 'instructor-of-boys.'
That is a powerful base on which to build your life, Paul Muad'Dib, who is Usul among us. Paul leads a Fremen campaign of resistance against Harkonnen rule. He and Chani, daughter of Liet Kynes, take each other as mates and produce a son, named Leto in honor of Paul's father. Jessica casts Paul as the Lisan al'Gaib, the messiah, and herself as the Reverend Mother who shall bring him, even though she has not yet experienced the spice agony that transforms an acolyte into a full Reverend Mother.
The Fremen have their own 'wild' Reverend Mothers, women who undergo their own version of the spice agony to awaken their Other Memory. With the Reverend Mother of their home sietch about to die and the group about to travel into the desert, Jessica accepts the ritual of the spice agony and becomes the Sayyadina of the tribe. Unfortunately, Jessica is pregnant with the Duke's daughter, Alia Atreides.
For a fetus to undergo the spice agony results in what the Bene Gesserit call Abomination: because the ordeal awakens the ego-memories of one's ancestors, these children (also called "pre-born") experience this heightened awareness before they have formed a personality of their own. This makes them vulnerable to eventually being overtaken by one of their ancestral personalities.
Gurney Halleck manages to survive the fall of House Atreides on Arrakis with other men. He falls in with the melange smugglers, eventually becoming a powerful figure. His smugglers fall for a Fremen trap — a fake hoard of spice — and are almost killed before Paul, now the Fremen leader "Muad'Dib", recognizes him.
In a bid to unlock his latent powers, Paul undergoes the process of spice agony via the consumption of the Water of Life. He survives, although barely, and the ordeal gives him knowledge of his male and female ancestors; this proves Paul is the Kwisatz Haderach.
At House Harkonnen, the Baron learns that his nephew Feyd-Rautha is conspiring against him to obtain his throne; he lets him continue to do so, reasoning that he has to somehow learn to organize a conspiracy. In a failed attempt to poison the Baron, Feyd is a bit suprised that he will not be terminated. The reason, that would leave the dim-witted Rabban as the Baron's only heir.
The Baron plans to let the tyrannical Glossu misrule the planet for a time in the most brutal way possible, so that when his favored nephew, Feyd-Rautha, took over, the new ruler would be welcomed as a hero. Feyd-Rautha figures heavily in the Baron's plans to gain power for House Harkonnen.
The Baron favors the handsome and charismatic Feyd over Rabban because of Feyd's intelligence and his dedication to the Harkonnen culture of carefully planned and subtly executed sadism and cruelty, as opposed to Rabban's outright brutality. Rabban is slain by Paul Muad'Dib's wild Fremen and the very populace of Arrakeen, which he had brutalized only recently.
With the spice trade threatened, Shaddam arrives on Arrakis with his court and an escort of Sardaukar, intending to quickly end the disruption. Shaddam and the Baron are shocked to learn that Muad'Dib is, of course, a very-much-alive Paul Atreides. The Fremen, enhanced by Paul's training in the weirding way, attack and manage to handily defeat the attendant Sardaukar forces.
The Fremen army wins and Paul threatens to destroy the spice melange, thus making transport between the planets impossible and effectively destroying civilization. Baron Harkonnen himself is poisoned with a gom jabbar by Paul's young sister Alia, his own granddaughter, and dies.
Paul is challenged (called kanly) by Feyd, the current Harkonnen leader after the deaths of the Baron and Rabban. After a fierce duel, Paul manages to kill Feyd, and goes on to ascend the throne of the Emperor. House Harkonnen's virtual extermination removes it as a galactic power, but Paul's ascension to the Imperial throne in Shaddam's place guarantees that Vladimir's descendants will long reign as the Imperial House Atreides.
Making clear his ability and willingness to completely destroy all spice production should his terms not be met, Paul demands that Shaddam step down from the Imperial throne and install Paul in his place, with Irulan as Paul's consort. Shaddam has no choice but to concede, as an end to the spice supply would cripple the entire universe.
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