New World for Dune 2d20 RPG
A little off-the-path world forgotten by the Empire and home to pirates.
Our Dune: Adventures in the Imperium game has been humming along much of this year. I’m running it for my daughter (who loved the movies) and wife (who loved both the Villaneuve and Linch movies). Neither have read the books, so the Imperium is mostly a mystery to them. To lean into this and have allow them to discover the world of Dune without a massive info dump, I started them on a backwater world run by a small House Major (Fujimori) that hadn’t really managed to hit their stride in the millennium of running the world. They have been playing as one of the House Minor — the Cailean — that served the Fujimori loyally…even though this was their homeworld for thousands of years before their masters were foisted on them.
Throughout the plot of the game sessions, the new generation of Cailean are more amibtious and get several openings to advance their masters and themselves. One of these adventures was the uncovering of a major pirate base only 11 light years from their homeworld. (We’re using House Reyder, lightly described in The Great Game: Housed of the Imperium sourcebook as the baddies.) They discovered that the Reyder use “slow FTL” — faster than light travel buth not the instantaneous foldspace of Dune. Without the use of high-order machine intelligence, slow FTL is dangerous — with a 10-20% loss rate for ships using it. It is also highly illegal, as the Spacing Guild has the monopoly on safe interstellar travel. Gaining the aid of the Guild, the Cailean maneuvered the Fujimori into an invasion of the world.
PURANA (Gamma Tucanae ): a star system in the older portions of Imperial space, it is a F4V main sequence star with a mass of 1.5 sols, diameter of 2.2 sols, and a luminosity of 11.3. Bright, hot, and with a quick rotational period. The heat and brightness mean a high local radiation level and of the eleven planets, the third sat in the prime zone.
BHUMI (Gamma Tucanae 3): A Class V habitable world, Bhumi saw limited colonial efforts during the early expansion before the Butlerian Jihad, and for reasons only speculated at, was overlooked in the rush for exploring further into space. One possibility is the native flora often was toxic, the fauna was highly aggressive, and even with a strong magnetic field, the planet saw higher than average rates of solar irradiation. With two Class I moons, the planet has a stable axial tilt of 19.6˚ and a strong magnetic field powered by active tectonics.
Nevertheless, recent surveys conducted by House Fujimori and the Spacing Guild have revealed a populated world of approximately 500 million people. Technological development is stunted, with only a few of the larger cities possessing modern amenities. Much of the world is governed by petty potentates with limited area of influence. The most developed of the cities, Dari, is the site of the lone spaceport on the world. The city has been dependent on House Reyder, a minor house that has operated the spaceport out of the sight of the Empire and the Guild, and which had been illegally using slow FTL equipped ships to move to other nearby worlds to operate clandestinely.
Gravity on the world is 1.1g (In game terms, a scene trait of “heavy gravity”) and an atmospheric pressure at surface of 16.2psi. The planet possesses no ice caps and 71% is covered in ocean. The climate is warm to hot and tropical.
The population of the world is listed as “independent” with no ruling family, at present. The low population is spread in dense clusters and much of the planet is untamed. The primary languages are an older form of Galach, Dravid, and Hindi. There is no organized planetary forces, and the few fighting forces present tend to be local, the equivalent of “militia” under rulers than could be considered “nascent houses.”
The primary resources for exploitation would be agricultural and mineral — the planet and system is a treasure trove of heavy metals and radioactives. The human capital is mostly uneducated, the political systems rife with corruption and inefficiencies.
In game terms, taking a planet is an expensive endeavor. Note the near panic of the Atreides on arriving at Arrakis and finding much of the spice mining equipment in poor shape. Not only do they have quotas to meet, but the expense of moving the house from Caladan would have been prohibitively expensive. The invasion the Harkonnen plan nearly bankrupts them. This is why most “wars” in Dune as hit and run affairs, more to make a point or gain a very specific goal, than invasion.
Using the House Management rules from chapter four of the Great Game, gaining the title to Bhumi would require a boon ventures of Gain Territory (wealth 50, Communicate, Diff 5) to gain the sirdar to the world. This alone could be a series of adventures set at the court in Kaitain as the characters’ house attempts to gain the Emperor’s favor for taking the world under their rule. Moving their forces will require a wealth 10 to have the Guild move their people to Bhumi. Once they have succeeded, at the very least they will need to Claim Domain, Secondary (12 resources/per domain and an Understand, Diff 5) to organize production to the point the house to provide material to the Imperial markets. Once they have secondary domains, the next House management cycle would allow them to attempt to grow a domain to a primary. Fortifications, building military forces, all would need to be done fairly quickly. Since most houses won’t have this kind of money or resources, there is the option to take a loan from the Guild Bank. For simplicity sake, assume the loans would have a certain period with a fixed interest rate — say 10% for 20 years. If the house finances all of this, you’re looking at a principal of, say, 75 wealth, for a yearly expense of 11 wealth on top of the other usual expenses to maintain the house. (Debt is the most subtle slavery of all.)