Dune: Cultures: Ixians

The Ixians

The Ixians are the technological powerhouse of the Imperium. If its technical, scientific, futuristic or in anyway cool, it was designed and built by the Ixians. They’ve created everything form hunter-killers through the Spacing Guild’s Heighliners. Ix is named for being the ninth planet about its star, in the old Roman numeral system.

During the time of the old empire, Ix was a resource rich planet. As such many factories were set up on the planet to produce goods. When the thinking machines took over humanity, Ix was one of the first planets to fall because of its great amount of technology. It was also the first planet recaptured permanently by the humans during the Butlerian Jihad. By that time most of the world was mined, and only hollow caves remained.

Before the time of Muad’Dib, these caves became the home of the Ixians. This would allow the secretive Ixians to work without fears of being spied upon from above. Despite being an industrious world, Ix is a pristine nature scene all across the surface.

Culturally speaking, Ix is a militant Marxist’s wet dream. The people of Ix are divided into two categories, management and workers. And much like Brave New World, each of those categories is also divided. At the top are the nobles, business executives, engineers and scientists. The next level is the low-level administrator, lesser engineers and nameless beaurecrats. Both of these groups enjoy great personal freedoms and wealth. They live in the top portions of the caves of Ix.

Those who live in the lower parts of the caves are the suboids. The suboids were a joint creation of the Ixians and the Tleilaxu, who were genetically created to be docile, stupid and subservient. The suboids are incapable of independent thought and are effectively only subhuman. And they are treated as such. They have little rights, yet they perform all the grunt labor of the planet. They live in terrible hovels in the sub-basements of the caves.

These poor conditions led to a suboid revolt about 30 years before the time of Muad’Dib. The Tleilaxu sent face dancers to Ix to rouse the suboids to fight their oppressors to gain more rights. Although the Tleilaxu were not concerned with suboids rights at all. They needed the technological infrastructure of the planet to perform experiments to create artificial spice. With the help of Emperor Shadam’s Saurdikar, the Tleilaxu took control of Ix.

They controlled the planet for 30 years before House Atreides retook the industrial planet in the name of its proper rulers House Verinius. During this time the Tleilaxu let the planet fall into disrepair. By the time the forces of Duke Leto arrived the planet was in shambles. But the hard working Ixians didn’t let this stop them. In a short time they rebuilt their planet and made it once again a universal player in technologies. House Corrino who was blackmailed into repaying for the reconstruction. Since it was after all the Corrinos’ who authorized the attack on the planet first.

The Ixians became so strong, that during Muad’Dib’s jihad, the Ixians were never attacked. In fact, many other planets joined with the Ix to form the Ixian Confederacy. These groups of planets did eventually join the Atreides Empire, but did enjoy a certain amount of autonomous rule compared with other worlds.

During the time of the Tyrant, the Ixians sold most of their wares to the God Emporer. Despite being one of their best customers they still tried, unsuccessfully, numerous times to assassinate Leto II. Their best attempt to kill Leto came in the form of Hwi Noree. She was a genetically created woman, who was supposed to be the woman of his dreams. She was! She was absolutely perfect to him in every way. She unwittingly provided enough of a distraction to Leto II that he was assassinated by his grand-grand…..grand niece Siona and Duncan Idaho just before his marriage to Hwi.

After the scattering the Ixians remained the dominant technological power in the old imperium. Although some of those in the scattering did create their own technological marvels, that surpassed Ix. But when the Honored Matres came back form the scattering, it was Ix that they turned to for technological advice. The bene Gesserit predict that the Ixians will be crushed by competition for the scattering, but this sadgeezer would have to disagree.

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This Dune review is © 2004 Ryan Bechtel.
Not for reproduction without the authors express permission.

Dune names, characters and everything else associated with the series are the property of Sci-Fi Channel, New Amsterdam Entertainment, and the assorted publishing companies who own the rights to the various Dune novels.