Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

The Harkonnens only had a CHOAM contract to mine the spice, the Atreides were given the planet.

I believe faufreluches simply means the common people, the non-noble class.

Mmm...slight correction?

FAUFRELUCHES: the rigid rule of class distinction enforced by the Imperium. "A place for every man and every man in his place."

PYONS: planet-bound peasants or laborers, one of the base classes under the Faufreluches. Legally: wards of the planet.

(There's also something odd about "the Great Houses in Faufreluches Assembled" in CoD. ???)

Jessica's mind raced and, having considered alternatives, she realized she might have to kill Idaho. The plan upon which she had staked her hopes remained so delicate that nothing could be allowed to interfere with it. Nothing. And Idaho's words hinted that he knew her plan. She gauged their relative positions in the room, moving and turning to place herself in position for a lethal blow.
"I've always considered the normalizing effect of the faufreluches to be a pillar of our strength," she said. Let him wonder why she shifted their conversation to the system of class distinction. "The Landsraad Council of the Great Houses, the regional Sysselraads, all deserve our --"
"You do not distract me," he said.
And Idaho wondered at how transparent her actions had become. Was it that she had grown lax in concealment, or had he finally breached the walls of her Bene Gesserit training? The latter, he decided, but some of it was in herself -- a changing as she aged. It saddened him to see the small ways the new Fremen differed from the old. The passing of the desert was the passing of something precious to humans and he could not describe this thing, no more than he could describe what had happened to the Lady Jessica.
Jessica stared at Idaho in open astonishment, not trying to conceal her reaction. Could he read her that easily?

The Chigger is correct. The Faufreluches is the hierarchical system of the Imperium.

My bad, I was thinking of the pyons.

Hm. "What are Sysselraads?" would have made a good trivia question...

Actually, didn't Sysselraads come up in a trivia thread somewhere once? (DN BBS?)

I don't know. We've been through so many trivia questions, I couldn't tell you.

Sysselraad is the council of the minor houses of a planet. It's like the Landsraad, but only have powers about some planetary matters, like internal commerce and planet land divisions.

IMO, it's the most obvious explanation. Frank didn't give us information about it.

Ahp, he only uses the term that once. They're described as "regional"...so it depends on how you interpret that as to whether they are just planetary or have jurisdiction extending over possibly many nearby systems.

Since they are mentioned after the Landsraad, which is an Imperium-wide body, I'm inclined to think they might be more than single planet bodies.

Anyone recognize "syssel" as meaning anything?

SandChigger wrote:Anyone recognize "syssel" as meaning anything?

I surely didn't recognize it but google turned up a reference to it being an old Danish administrative unit.
clicky click

I hadn't even bothered to google it yet.

This seems relevant:

Another old administrative unit in Denmark, the 'Syssel', is often used to describe an area, but nowadays almost exclusively when referring to Vendsyssel - the northern tip of Jutland. Over the years, the difference between the administrative units and the geographical areas has increased. Where the old 'counties', containing a different number of 'districts', only vaguely defined a specific geographical area, it became even vaguer when the larger counties were defined by the large administrative reform of 1970. Even some of the larger municipalities today cannot be said to lie within a single geographical area.

Your question above Sandchigger got me thinking about the meaning of "raad" and it seems to refer to counsel or advice and once more this is from the old Dutch.

Oh, yeah. It's related to the Rat in Rathaus (and, ultimately, rathskeller). Now obsolete in English:

rede:
n. advice or counsel given by one person to another : What is your rede? (There's a new old one for you, Orald!)

v.t. 1 advise (someone) : Therefore, my son, I rede thee stay at home.
2 interpret (a riddle or dream).

LOVE words.

Chig you would love my Practicum of Grammar instructor from last semester, he used language and words in ways I had never seen in a grammar class before. We had to do a project for the class and I expanded a lesson I created for the 8th graders I was observing at the time, they were having difficulties wih dialect, so I used Broad Scots (Yes I know its not a dialect but a language bear with me) and the poetry of Robbie Burns AND some of his songs as recorded by various artists. I had a list of words and a cd of recordings of proper pronunciation for them to listen to, they had a lot of fun because I went for the more humorous material and the scottish accent was so different from what they are use to hearing that they paid closer attention.

For the Practicum of Grammar presentation I expanded the exercises to make it more appropriate for the class and provided a more historical slant to the work and my teacher had a blast! and even expanded upon some of the history of English and Gaelic words from certain time periods and how words have evolved. It was great!

Oh, my instructor is well versed in grammar covering American English, English, Spanish, French, Latin, and I believe German.

Rob

(And a wee bit of Gaelic, too, it sounds like? )

SandChigger wrote:(And a wee bit of Gaelic, too, it sounds like? )

Most likely though he never listed it as one of the grammars he was fluent in though his knowledge of language beyond the ones listed was encyclopedic. I'm keeping in contact with him to grab as much knowledge from him that I can.

Rob

Lisan Al-Gaib wrote:Sysselraad is the council of the minor houses of a planet. It's like the Landsraad, but only have powers about some planetary matters, like internal commerce and planet land divisions.

IMO, it's the most obvious explanation. Frank didn't give us information about it.

The killed Wizards of the Coast d20 went with this explanation as well. IIRC, the Sysselraads were given a minor vote in Landsraad matters.

Those guys at WotC read the books before they expanded the universe, it would seem.

Does the term Landsraad refer to the Houses as a whole, then, or merely to synods? Are all the Houses ever convened? Who, then, sits in on these councils, and who is it that serves on the Landsraad High Council?

EsperandoAGodot wrote:Those guys at WotC read the books before they expanded the universe, it would seem.

The guys at WotC did nothing of the sort.

The game was produced by Last Unicorn Games, which was bought out by WotC during the same time-frame. WotC more or less allowed the book to be released at one gaming convention, then killed it. The influence of the HLP, which has never had a clue about how to handle the various Dune licenses, didn't help matter, either.

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11518.phtml

EsperandoAGodot wrote:Does the term Landsraad refer to the Houses as a whole, then, or merely to synods? Are all the Houses ever convened? Who, then, sits in on these councils, and who is it that serves on the Landsraad High Council?

HIGH COUNCIL: the Landsraad inner circle empowered to act as supreme tribunal in House to House disputes.

Would the High Council be almost a sort of legislative counterpart to CHOAM? - a small number of the most powerful Houses making big decisions. But also acting as an upper-house to the General Assembly of the Landsraad which would debate more day-to-day matters.

As for convening the Landsraad - Houses would have to have dedicated Landsraad representatives on Kaitain so as not to tie up anyone important. But in such a big room, giving every House a voice... that'd take all day, and night, and day...

-- Could Sysselraads be "regional" to a region of space - getting consensus on lesser issues before bringing proposals to Kaitain?

Well then the guys at Last Unicorn read the books.

Interestingly, BH and KJA contributed, and the backstory is completely different in the book than it is in the Prequel novels, despite the sourcebook being the first appearance of House Vernius and that itinerant House that the Guild employs.

EsperandoAGodot wrote:Interestingly, BH and KJA contributed ...

Also open to debate.

Their "editor" credits on the book are essentially meaningless, much like their "executive producer" credits on the Dune 2010 movie. Sometimes, companies have to credit certain people; it doesn't mean they did any work.

There's no real evidence to suggest that The Hack or The Sidekick contributed anything to the Dune RPG other than holding their hands out for their checks.

Well, besides Houses Vernius, Richese, and Wayku, and their associated stories...no, nothing at all.

And valuable and exciting contributions they were, eh?

Ix had no House associated with it. It didn't belong to the Landsraad so far as I remember. On the fringes.

"Richese" appears only three times in all of FH's books, and ALL in the Terminology at the end of Dune.

Wayku? Why who?

EsperandoAGodot wrote:Well, besides Houses Vernius, Richese, and Wayku, and their associated stories...no, nothing at all.

We're clearly looking at two different books.

Here's the one I'm discussing:

http://www.arrakis.co.uk/jpg/dunecover_med%5B1%5D.jpg

SandChigger wrote:And valuable and exciting contributions they were, eh?

Oh, just lovely.

SandChigger wrote:Ix had no House associated with it. It didn't belong to the Landsraad so far as I remember. On the fringes.

Well known. However, the inclusion of House Vernius, their story, and a plug for House Atreides shows that BH and KJA were involved. Likewise for House Richese and House Wayku.