Ixians and Feudalism

[Freakzilla]

So...
Did the Ixians and Richese inhabitants came from Earth also?

Earth is the cradle of the human civilization, everyone in Dune is human... except Leto.

[Freakzilla]

Well i believe it was in God Emporer that Leto said people travelled across space at a snails crawl before the guild. And if they did have Holtzman technology, then that would still make distance travel a challenge being the risk.

Actualy, it says...

Without melange to ignite the linear prescience of Guild Navigators, people
cross the parsecs of space only at a snail's crawl.

Like I said, that's if you want to do it safely. Anyone can flip the switch on a spaceship but if you want to survive, it's a little more complicated.

Do you believe that the Guild monopolized something that was already easily accessed?

The Guild made space travel safe and reliable by using prescience to predict the safe course. I believe there was already space folding technology but there was no guarantee that you would come out on the other side unharmed. Without a Navigator, you would have to take many, many small jumps where as with one you may be able to do it in one... and know you'll survive.

[Freakzilla]

Also, you talking like the pre machine revolt society has that travel? Cause i could totally see that. It makes the empire after the BJ much more of a "dark age" like era.

Exactly. The BJ was in 88 B.G (Before Guild), I believe. There was already interstellar travel and an empire.

[dunecat10193]

Thats reall cool. That makes me think that there could be many societies across the univese that nobody has come in contact with yet.
If that were the case, it makes the scattering seem more of an attempt to keep the Empire from becoming something like the HM and become a threat to the rest of the duniverse. I kind of thought that anyway, but reproducing always outweighed the other pros.

But yeah, its not like anything but space folding makes sense for space travel. Perhaps a device that perpetuates tiny space folds, but i could see such a computer being banned by the BJ.

So when would you think Ix is formed? Cause i personally can see them coming in towards the beginning of the BJ, functioning as the one carefully controlled technological resource they had.

[Freakzilla]

Thats reall cool. That makes me think that there could be many societies across the univese that nobody has come in contact with yet.

There may be some that have separated and lost contact with the core of the empire.

If that were the case, it makes the scattering seem more of an attempt to keep the Empire from becoming something like the HM and become a threat to the rest of the duniverse. I kind of thought that anyway, but reproducing always outweighed the other pros.

I think the point of The Scattering was to simply spread humanity out so that no one person (like Leto II) could control them all.

But yeah, its not like anything but space folding makes sense for space travel. Perhaps a device that perpetuates tiny space folds, but i could see such a computer being banned by the BJ.

Exactly. The Guild was a product of the BJ. I think it's possible they probably did have navigation computers before then. Using prescients instead of a computer was to be in compliance.

So when would you think Ix is formed? Cause i personally can see them coming in towards the beginning of the BJ, functioning as the one carefully controlled technological resource they had.

I imagine they were probably one of the last group of planets to be settled in the original expansion of mankind into the universe. When that was, who knows.

[ULFsurfer]

DE mentions that Ixians were left alone because of the supply and demand of technologies and it was best that way. Nothing about being spatially isolated out in the fringes..
I dunno about Tleilaxu, too lazy to look up right now.

Then it's another question whether you think DE is canon or not.

[dunecat10193]

Thats the shit. I feel you completely on that...

[dunecat10193]

I thnk that either Ix was always technologically adept, or that the BG pulled some strings cause they saw the need for technology. The whole fringe planet probably wouldnt make sense anyway being that instant space travel makes distance not a factor. Though the longer the distance, the more melange may be needed. Though the navigators are kida perpetually able to navigate, or so i would think...

[Freakzilla]

They had the cool cat videos.

[Freakzilla]

It's often said that a navigator's prescience is limited and linear, so...

[dunecat10193]

I bet they use more melange than they need too, so they would totally ask for extra for whatever excuse possible.

[leagued]

Because they violate the tenants of the Butlerian Jihad.

They are not a Great House but a confederation.

This comes from the quote in Messiah, right? About the Ixian Confederacy offering submission?

Unless there is other evidence about this I'm not sure I'd feel 100% arguing that Ix is ruled internally by a confederation. Stilgar could have easily been referring to a confederacy of planets/houses opposed to the Jihad that Ix had notional/nominal/titular head of. A power bloc of political entities w/ mutual goals (ie not being crushed by Paul's armies).

[Naïve mind]

Quite early in his ascendancy he had revealed to the lxians the exact location of the supposedly secret Ixian Core, the heartland of the technological federation which they governed. It had been a secret the lxians thought safe because they paid gigantic bribes for it to the Spacing Guild. Leto had winkled them out by prescient observation and deduction-and by consulting his memories, where there were more than a few lxians.

-- from God-Emperor of Dune.

Again, not proof positive that it's not a coalition of major houses. Just--suggestive.

[leagued]

Quite early in his ascendancy he had revealed to the lxians the exact location of the supposedly secret Ixian Core, the heartland of the technological federation which they governed. It had been a secret the lxians thought safe because they paid gigantic bribes for it to the Spacing Guild. Leto had winkled them out by prescient observation and deduction-and by consulting his memories, where there were more than a few lxians.

-- from God-Emperor of Dune.

Again, not proof positive that it's not a coalition of major houses. Just--suggestive.

Agreed. Had not remembered that quote, thanks.
A very interesting quote but I"m not sure it makes it all that more clear. Does the heartland mean a province on Ix? A specific planet where their leadership secretly holds out and directs a larger coalition of planets? Do they bribe the Guild to keep it secret in the way the Fremen kept their spice harvesting and ecological transformation secret or the way Tupile is kept secret? We have examples of both in the Chronicle- the hiding of a planet and the hiding of a region on a planet.
I kind of like the idea of the Ixian Confederacy being multiple planets but I don't have real ground to argue it. Its possible and its internally consistent but its also untestable. Just like string theory.

[Naïve mind]

A very interesting quote but I"m not sure it makes it all that more clear. Does the heartland mean a province on Ix? A specific planet where their leadership secretly holds out and directs a larger coalition of planets? Do they bribe the Guild to keep it secret in the way the Fremen kept their spice harvesting and ecological transformation secret or the way Tupile is kept secret? We have examples of both in the Chronicle- the hiding of a planet and the hiding of a region on a planet.

A planet, I think. No-one would ever dream that an unknown region of a planet could be hidden from Leto.

[leagued]

That was my thought as well, though that would seem to imply that the Ixian federation is a muli-planet affair, right?

[Freakzilla]

There is never a mention of a Great House ruling Ix, nor the Bene Tleilax, who tend to be lumped together. There's precious little information on Ix and most of it seems to have been posted here.

Ix and [Richese] were on the fringes of the impirium, this is how they escaped the more sever effects of the BJ. I don't even think [Ix was] part of the Landsraad:

Three -- Planetary feudalism remained in constant danger from a large
technical class, but the effects of the Butlerian Jihad continued as a damper on
technological excesses. Ixians, Tleilaxu, and a few scattered outer planets were
the only possible threat in this regard, and they were planet-vulnerable to the
combined wrath of the rest of the Imperium. The Butlerian Jihad would not be
undone. Mechanized warfare required a large technical class. The Atreides
Imperium had channeled this force into other pursuits. No large technical class
existed unwatched. And the Empire remained safely feudalist, naturally, since
that was the best social form for spreading over widely dispersed wild frontiers
-- new planets.
~CoD

This quote also implies there are other planets outside the Landsraad, too.

[Freakzilla]

Because they violate the tenants of the Butlerian Jihad.

They are not a Great House but a confederation.

This comes from the quote in Messiah, right? About the Ixian Confederacy offering submission?

Yes

"The Ixian Confederacy offers submission," Stilgar said, "but their
negotiators question the amount of the Imperial Tax which they --"
"They want a legal limit to my Imperial will," Paul said. "Who would govern
me, the Landsraad or CHOAM?"

...

"We must have control of taxes, Sire."
"Our price to the Guild for my signature on the Tupile Treaty," Paul said,
"is the submission of the Ixian Confederacy to our tax. The Confederacy cannot
trade without Guild transport. They'll pay."
~DM

[Freakzilla]

RICHESE: fourth planet of Eridani A, classed with Ix as supreme in machine
culture. Noted for miniaturization. (For a detailed study on how Richese and lx
escaped the more severe effects of the Butlerian Jihad, see The Last Jihad by
Sumer and Kautman.)
~Dune

[georgiedenbro]

Well i believe it was in God Emporer that Leto said people travelled across space at a snails crawl before the guild. And if they did have Holtzman technology, then that would still make distance travel a challenge being the risk.

Actualy, it says...

Without melange to ignite the linear prescience of Guild Navigators, people
cross the parsecs of space only at a snail's crawl.

Like I said, that's if you want to do it safely. Anyone can flip the switch on a spaceship but if you want to survive, it's a little more complicated.

Do you believe that the Guild monopolized something that was already easily accessed?

The Guild made space travel safe and reliable by using prescience to predict the safe course. I believe there was already space folding technology but there was no guarantee that you would come out on the other side unharmed. Without a Navigator, you would have to take many, many small jumps where as with one you may be able to do it in one... and know you'll survive.

I thought of a few things from these comments. One is that we never learn of how the Guild established its monopoly, so there very well could have been decent freelance prescients out there who could navigate ships that eventually were 'run out of town' or forced to join the Guild. The Guild and the BG were not necessarily the only two training schools to emerge from the BJ:

We have two chief survivors of those ancient schools: the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild.

Some of these lesser schools may even exist in 10,191, but they don't have major influence, and if they possess navigation capabilities the Guild certainly don't allow them to use it. I also agree that navigation technology existed prior to the Guild, but specifically in the form of AI. The trick that it seems to have taken Ix 15,000 years to come up with was how to design a navtech that doesn't involve direct use of AI.

Another thing I thought of is a bit more chilling, which is that if AI-based navtech did exist prior to the Butlerian Jihad, it would automatically mean that machine AI was in possession of this technology (or even was the technology in a manner of speaking). If we were to think in terms of the prequels (Christ let it not be so), that the machines were sentient AI that ended up at war with humanity, then they would most certainly have been able to flee with their navtech once the war was lost and escape to who-knows-where. The fact that no one in Dune ever worries about the return of all those AI-dictators that fled so long ago seems to me enough evidence that there never were any such dictators, since there would have been no way in such a war to wipe them all out and prevent some from escaping and regrouping over time like the Cylons. Even though the glossary does specify that mankind mounted a "crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots" this doesn't necessarily imply that robots were actually at war with humans; it could easily have been humans with robots doing their work for them at war against other humans.

I always imagined, when I first read the series, that mankind had rebelled against the kind of mental stagnation that was produced from having an AI-ridden society. The idea being that when relying on machines, mankind becomes machine-like and sterile, as Leto II put it, and that the average mind under these conditions decays and becomes slavish. This is quite different from suggesting that humans were literally slaves, as we see in the prequels. Being literal slaves to machines would be nothing more than a simple power dispute, which obviously has nothing to do with the central themes of the Dune series, one of which is the race consciousness that eventually rebels against stagnation. The BJ was the first major act of race consciousness we're told about, and the BG (and Paul) sense another one coming in Dune.

Having said that, I'd say that another thing keeping Ix in line in terms of what kind of tech they produced is that if they ever produced the types of tech that would create too much comfort and stagnation it would eventually (in the long-term) lead to another Jihad against technology. Even if the Imperium and the Landsraad didn't threaten to destroy Ix were they to pursue certain types of advances, they themselves might very well have reigned themselves in so as to continue having a good long-term economic prospect of stably supplying slow upgrades to technology to the Imperium. IMO it was Leto II who forced them and others to abandon slow, safe and steady progress and to instead desperately pursue more extravagant technology in order to end the 3,500 year tyranny. In this sense I think Leto II, himself, created the conditions whereby mankind was threatened by the extinction-level hunter seekers. Nevertheless even if he did create the potential for that threat only to solve it, he still did prevent that type of threat from ever being relevant again, and so I think we can accept him at his word that his Golden Path really was necessary.

[JasonJD48]

As far as the Ixian Confederacy goes, I'm going to quote a British program called 'Yes Prime Minister'

Sir Humphrey Appleby: East Yemen, isn't that a democracy?
Sir Richard Wharton: Its full name is the Peoples' Democratic Republic of East Yemen.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Ah I see, so it's a communist dictatorship.

Point being, names can be misleading, it may be called a confederation and it may be one, but it also may not be one.


As for Ix being on the fringes, I don't think that means physical distance, but rather that the fanatical movement only scratched them. Think of it this way, a religious movement in the US is going to catch on in some parts of the country more than others just based on culture and demographics. As for why the Imperium accepts them, its out of self interest.

As for what travel looked like pre-Guild, I figured that the Guild being formed in close tandem with the Jihad was a good indication that they used computers to navigate, there being no more computers, there needed to be an alternative.

[Frideric de Sabalan]

My guess on Ix, Tleilax, and other such non-House planets isn't that they're not part of the Imperium- which is supposedly coextensive with the Known Universe- but merely have a separate, privileged legal status.

Looking at the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, one of the obvious historical sources for the Imperium, there were a vast variety of territories with varying legal status- those ruled by the Emperor as part of his patrimony, those owned by Kings, Dukes, Counts, &c., properties belonging to the Church and ruled by bishops or abbots- but also "Imperial Free Cities", which were self-governing and free from noble rule, and the sorts of republics that emerged in northern Italy in Florence, Venice &c.

In the Duniverse we have a variety of jurisdictions already- direct Imperial rule, Quasi-Fiefs, Fiefs Complete... my understanding is that is that the Ixian Confederacy is merely an unusual constituent of the Imperium, an alliance of several planets granted special privileges, and probably self-governing along more republican than monarchical lines, just as they're more urbanized & adavanced in technology.

As such, when Paul took over the Imperium, he had to negotiate a separate submission from the Ixians, just as he had to obtain submissions from the Guild, the Landsraad, various individual Houses who resisted, and other such constituents.

[Serkanner]

interesting on topic text

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[Freakzilla]

Three -- Planetary feudalism remained in constant danger from a large
technical class, but the effects of the Butlerian Jihad continued as a damper on
technological excesses. Ixians, Tleilaxu, and a few scattered outer planets were
the only possible threat in this regard, and they were planet-vulnerable to the
combined wrath of the rest of the Imperium. The Butlerian Jihad would not be
undone. Mechanized warfare required a large technical class. The Atreides
Imperium had channeled this force into other pursuits. No large technical class
existed unwatched. And the Empire remained safely feudalist, naturally, since
that was the best social form for spreading over widely dispersed wild frontiers
-- new planets.
~CoD

IX and BT were tolerated on the fringes because they supplied the imperium's toys

[distrans]

mostly whips and chains...