How many Duncans does it take to get to the center of a....


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orald
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Post by orald »

I'd have to agree early mentioned mantats seem to not need or use the spice except Piter, actually sappu(sp?) juice being mentioned more closely to mentats as an energy source, but spice also eccelerates and elevates the mind, so I wouldn't be surprised they used it to elevate their thinking processes.

I'll rephrase my last post then. Maybe they don't have to use it to function, but it enhances them.
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Post by Tyrant »

lol..your signature brian brian brian...i think your giving him too much credit..it should say kevin kevin kevin..he is the spider queen ... not brian ..brian is the just the puppet figure head
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Post by orald »

In view of Duncan's repeated stupidity and failure to survive enough time to die of natural causes, I hereby rename this thread to "How many Duncans does it take to screw a lightbulb?"

And Tyrant, I think putting "Kevin" instead ruins it, the 'K' is much too "sharp" for the balance of the original quote.
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Post by Freakzilla »

My last signature at Arrakeen was:

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Post by Omphalos »

orald wrote:In view of Duncan's repeated stupidity and failure to survive enough time to die of natural causes, I hereby rename this thread to "How many Duncans does it take to screw a lightbulb?"

And Tyrant, I think putting "Kevin" instead ruins it, the 'K' is much too "sharp" for the balance of the original quote.
And it might send the wrong message, too. :wink:
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Post by inhuien »

Phaedrus wrote:
inhuien wrote:
In HoD Frank Herbert wrote:Taraza smiled and moved farther into the room. No signs of the melange cycle in Teg, she observed. Teg's advanced years always raised the suspicion that he might resort to the leavening effect of the spice. Nothing about him revealed even the faintest hint of the melange addiction that even the strongest sometimes turned to when they felt their end approaching. Teg wore his old uniform jacket of Supreme Bashar but without the gold starbursts at shoulder and collar. This was a signal she recognized. He said: "Remember how I earned this in your service. I have not failed you this time, either."
The quote above may not state that Teg had an avertion to Spice but it’s clear from it that he didn’t take it regularly.
He wasn't addicted, but he took it in strong enough doses to lengthen his life. We also know he took it in "increased" doses when the Sisterhood trained him as a Mentat and tested him for prescience.
So you're saying that it's like a Magic Pill, once taken the effects last a lifetime? Naaa, I don't agree.
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Post by Mandy »

The spice is kind of magical, but I don't think he was implying that Teg only took it once.
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Post by SandChigger »

Grrrrr. NO MAGIC IN THE DUNIVERSE. :twisted:


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Post by inhuien »

Neither was I, my question was that once Spice is taken the geriatric effect are everlasting and do not require regular doses to maintain the effect(?).
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Post by Mandy »

Well.. the effect would last but you'd still age normally. If you took spice for several years, and then quit, it would probably lengthen your lifespan but you would still age (like quitting smoking can put years back on your life). I imagine Teg took spice on a regular basis, just not in high enough doses to cause addiction.
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Post by Tleilax Master B »

This topic has been bothering the shit out of me for some reason. Mandy is exactly right. The passage says that Teg doesn't have the look of someone with a heavy melange addiction. But he most definately does take it, did even when he was a small child, and its resulted in him having extended life. Quotes to follow:

"Could I have a drink of water?" Taraza asked. "It has been a long and
tiresome journey. We came the last stage by one of our transports, which we should have replaced five hundred years ago."
Teg lifted himself from the chair, went to a wall panel and removed a chilled water bottle and glass from a cabinet behind the panel. He put these on a low table at Taraza's right hand. "I have melange," he said.
"No, thank you, Miles. I've my own supply."
Teg resumed his seat and she noted the signs of stiffness. He was still
remarkably supple, however, considering his years.


Miles keeps melange on hand at his house--because he uses it!

His head tipped back, Teg took a long swallow of the drink, his gaze on the ornate ceiling of Taraza's small parlor. This no-ship was an old-fashioned model, built in the days when more care had been taken with decoration --heavily incised cornices, baroque figures carved in every surface.
The taste of the drink pushed his memory back into childhood, the heavy infusion of melange . . .
"My mother made this for me whenever I was overly strenuous," he said, looking at the glass in his hand. He already could feel the calming energy flow through his body
.


Here he is drinking melange , note a "heavy infusion" of it, and comments on how his mom regularly gave it to him when he was a kid after stenous activity.

He spoke quickly, wanting to divert Taraza from such ideas. "Dimela thinks the long use of melange makes many people become like you."
"Is that so? Isn't it odd, Miles, that a geriatric potion should have so many
side effects?"
"I don't find that odd."
"No, of course you wouldn't." She drained her glass and put it aside. "I was addressing the way a significant life extension has produced in some people, you especially, a profound knowledge of human nature."
"We live longer and observe more
," he said.
"I don't think it's quite that simple. Some people never observe anything.
Life just happens to them. They get by on little more than a kind of dumb
persistence, and they resist with anger and resentment anything that might lift them out of that false serenity."
"I've never been able to strike an acceptable balance sheet for the spice," he said, referring to a common Mentat process of data sorting.
Taraza nodded. Obviously, she found the same difficulty. "We of the Sisterhood tend to be more single-track than Mentats," she said. "We have routines to shake ourselves out of it but the condition persists."
"Our ancestors have had this problem for a long time," he said.
"It was different before the spice," she said.
"But they lived such short lives."
"Fifty, one hundred years; that doesn't seem very long to us, but still . . ."
"Did they compress more into the available time?"
"Oh, they were frenetic at times."


This passage shows that Miles was using melange and living longer, like so many other people, but has spent at least some portion of his life trying to decide what was an acceptable amount to take and what was over doing it (the aforementioned deep melange addiction IMO). Myles struck a balance with its use.


OK, case closed? :D
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Post by inhuien »

OK, case closed. :D
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Post by inhuien »

Thank You everyone who contributed here I had always though that one had to take Melange constantly for your life span to be increased.
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Post by MICAH »

Did Frank disagree with the ENCYCLOPEDIA as far as the amount of Duncans from this era also? or did he disagree with it as a whole? From what i remember there were quite a few.
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Post by Tleilax Master B »

MICAH wrote:Did Frank disagree with the ENCYCLOPEDIA as far as the amount of Duncans from this era also? or did he disagree with it as a whole? From what i remember there were quite a few.
There are a ton of them in the Dune Encyc. I don't know that Frank ever addressed the amount of Duncans in the DE, at least I've never seen any printed opinion on it from him. Of course, he didn't consider the DE canon and made it clear he reserved the right to change stuff in HoD and ChD. I personally think Mcneilly went a little wild with the Duncans in the DE. But I suspect it was one of those sort of details Frank left out because it wasn't really relevant to where he was going with the story.
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Post by Freakzilla »

I believe Duncan did refer to his past incarnation as "dozens" in one of the latter books.
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Post by SandChigger »

3,500 years...Leto probably went through quite a few, no?
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Post by Phaedrus »

Didn't we come up with an estimate of the number of Duncans based on a likely average lifespan? Or something like that?

Maybe I'm just making things up.

You have to remember that even after Leto, the Tleilaxu and the Bene Gesserit still produced Duncan gholas. There were a lot of the buggers. I'm going with an average service of 15-20 years, meaning somewhere around 200 Duncans during Leto's reign.

How long does it take the Tleilaxu to grow a Duncan, anyway? It had only been a few months when the one in GEoD was sent, and they said they needed another year for a new one. Do they make a new Duncan every couple of years, just in case, or do they have some means to accelerate growth and learning?
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Post by The Sons of Idaho »

I think it makes sense that the Tleilaxu would constantly make backups to have ready once the God Emperor tired of the current one. I think they would have gotten use to the constant need for new ones and would try to have them ready for the sake of keeping Leto happy.

But also, having developed a means of growth acceleration by then is not too far fetched. The BT can do some pretty amazing things... like chairdogs.
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Post by orald »

Phaedrus, someone did try to make an estimate, but it's more than difficult to do, what with so many of them dying "prematurely".

Then the discussion turned to the time defenition of a generation and how it could've changed by the time of Dune or GEoD with the spice(I just had a thought that a generation would still be about the same since the unwashed masses that form the overwhelming share of the populace wouldn't have the means to get spice or decent medical care, and their lifespans are still about "normal" in relation to ours, maybe a tiny bit better).

There was also a discussion I remember about whether the BT use growth accelleration or just make back-ups all the time. I don't recall a defenitive solution either way.
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Post by Tleilax Master B »

The Sons of Idaho wrote:I think it makes sense that the Tleilaxu would constantly make backups to have ready once the God Emperor tired of the current one. I think they would have gotten use to the constant need for new ones and would try to have them ready for the sake of keeping Leto happy.

But also, having developed a means of growth acceleration by then is not too far fetched. The BT can do some pretty amazing things... like chairdogs.
It would make sense that the BT would have Duncans growing continously in the tanks so they could meet the needs of the Prophet at anytime IMHO.
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Post by Tyrant »

pfffttt...prophet?..paul was the prophet....letos straight up god
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Post by Freakzilla »

Tyrant wrote:pfffttt...prophet?..paul was the prophet....letos straight up god
Not to the Bene Tleilax.
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Post by orald »

Freakzilla wrote:
Tyrant wrote:pfffttt...prophet?..paul was the prophet....letos straight up god
Not to the Bene Tleilax.
Yea, those dirty infidel BT. :x
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Post by Tleilax Master B »

Tyrant wrote:pfffttt...prophet?..paul was the prophet....letos straight up god
Powindah Poison!! Learn your books, Powindah scum!

They had waited millennia for this time, his people. Waff savored the moment now. All through the bad times of the Prophet Leto II (not God Emperor but God's Messenger), all through the Famines and the Scattering,
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