Honored Matres

In the fictional universe of the Dune saga, the Honored Matres, a name that could be taken as a parody of the name Reverend Mother, are an extraordinary group of women, an all-female society returned from the Scattering in order to establish a new empire from the remnants of the Old Empire of Leto II. These women are a central topic of the last two books of the Dune Saga, Heretics of Dune, and Dune Chapterhouse.

History

Return to the old empire

According to the speculation of some characters in Chapterhouse Dune, the Honored Matres, or Harlots, an insult used by the Bene Gesserit when referring to them, originated after the death of Leto II, the God Emperor. Billions of people from the old empire departed in a diaspora known as the Scattering. Representatives from each of the empire's groups and orders marched in fleets of No-Ships, following Leto II's Golden Path to save mankind from destruction..

Violent and merciless, the Honored Matres return to the old empire displaying military and sexual capabilities that seem to indicate a combined origin between the Fish Speakers, Leto II's female army, and the Bene Gesserit sent into the Scattering. The Tleilaxu Face Dancers' infiltration attempts make the Bene Tleilax their primary target, all the while capturing and torturing as many Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers as they can to learn their secret abilities. At the same time, the Bene Gesserit hope to decipher the motivations and origins of their new enemies, to learn enough about them to defeat them.

With the Tleilaxu conquered and destroyed, with the planet Arrakis laid waste in a brutal attack in which Bene Gesserit Bashar Miles Teg perishes, the Honored Matres relentlessly pursue the Bene Gesserit, attacking and destroying their keep after another. and schools scattered throughout the empire. After capturing Murbella, a young Honored Matre, the Bene Gesserit train her in her knowledge, and when she joins her Sisterhood, she provides them with the knowledge to know how to attack them. Finally Connection, the main base of the Honored Matres, is attacked and conquered following the plan of Mother Superior Darwi Odrade. In the aftermath of the attack, Odrade and the Great Honored Matre Logno perish, giving Murbella the chance to accede to both offices and taking over the rest of Odrade's plan to unify both sisterhoods.

The End of Honored Matres

The first sequel to the original saga, Hunters of Dune, sees the Bene Gesserit unify with the Honored Matres in a New Sisterhood. Joining forces to prepare for the confrontation with the unknown Enemy, both factions struggle to coexist in this new form under the leadership of Mother Commander Murbella.

However, groups of renegade Matres remain under the command of the High Honored Matre Hellica with bases on the captured worlds of Buzzell, Gammu, and Tleilax. For twenty years, Murbella leads the Brotherhood against the renegades, culminating in the Battle of Tleilax, where Hellica is slain and the planet is completely destroyed. After killing Hellica, Murbella discovers that she was in fact a face dancer.

Origins

Murbella realizes, after exploring her Other Memories, the missing link in the Bene Gesserit theory of the origin of Honored Matres; Although initially a hybrid group of Bene Gesserit and Fish Speakers, they developed their violent tendencies with a third input: awakened Tleilaxu women. The Tleilaxu's best kept secret, the axlotl tanks, were actually the women of their race, kept in a vegetative state. Attacking every Tleilaxu planet in their path, the military capabilities of the Bene Gesserit and Fish Speakers ensured victory. They managed to free a number of axlot tanks, and concentrated on rehabilitating the near-brain-dead women. These Tleilaxu women, enraged against their own men, clamored for vengeance, and set about destroying every existing Tleilaxu world. This fury led to and explains the name of the new order, Honored Matres.

The Enemy

Murbella also discovers the nature of the unknown Enemy: they are the reappeared Thinking Machines, which everyone thought had been extinct for millennia but were actually gathering enough force to finally exterminate the human race. Through Other Memories she witnesses the Honored Matres' first encounter with the Enemy. A young Matre commanding a successful conquest expedition on a planet controlled by remnants of the former Thinking Machine empire. Discovering the persistence of the human race in the Galaxy, the Thinking Machines destroy the empire of the Honored Matres in response, forcing them back into the remnants of the former Empire of a Million Worlds.

Features

Honored Matres rule through sexual enslavement, overwhelming physical power, and the terror inspired by their bloody methods. They are merciless and highly reactive and irritable, often resorting to extreme measures of violence at the slightest provocation. Initially, the Bene Gesserit believe these tendencies stem from rage at the inability to satisfy their growing desires, an addiction to the use of sexual control over their slaves. Ultimately Murbella, the combined Mother Commander of the Honored Matres and the Bene Gesserit, discovers through her Other Memories that these tendencies originated from a reaction of the Tleilaxu females towards the males, due to the millennia of abuse they suffered like tanks. axlotl.

Prana-Bindu and the Hormu fighting style

One of the great grails or goals of the Bene Gesserit, Prana-bindu conditioning, is taken to its maximum level by these women: immediate reflexes that are activated in the form of an unconscious drive, without using the brain. This allows them to react, attack, and defend at much higher speeds than an Expert Reverend Mother. Together with their Hormu fighting style, focused on the use of blows designed to weaken points on the opponent's body, they make them a physically formidable enemy.

Alternatives to Melange Spice

Honored Matres use a drug that raises their adrenaline levels, further increasing their speed and stamina. However, this drug, an artificial but equally addictive substitute for the spice melange used by the Gesserits, does not allow access to the Other Memories. A side effect of its consumption is the appearance of orange spots when adrenaline levels rise (anger attacks), which can sometimes alert others to your level of anger: the more orange, the more anger, until no more. can be controlled and attack. The melange can be applied to these women as a substitute for this drug, as happens with the captured Murbella, without major side effects.

Honored Matres use a agony-inducing device, the T-Probe, which allows them to imprint knowledge directly into the nervous system.

Addictive Tantric Sexuality

The Bene Gesserit accuse them, and most of the Old Empire agree, that the sexual arts of Honored Matres make them whores. In their early history the Honored Matres did extensive research to discover how to fully control their population when their tax systems began to fail. As explained in Dune Chapterhouse, Matres trained in the arts of Sex Imprinting delved into their past and reinterpreted the ancient tantric sexual art, honed with their abilities to control so they could amplify the individual's orgasmic response to addictive levels, thus sexually enslaving as many men as they needed to establish their dominance. Those affected, or rather, addicted to these sexual practices, suffer from a hangover and the addictive effects of a drug.

Their domination of populations through sex is something extraordinary but extremely dangerous, since it plays with the deepest unconscious drives of the human species, according to the judgment of the Bene Gesserit, a skill that they match with their art of Print men on rare occasions.

Language skills

Apparently, one of the most important vestiges the Bene Gesserit left of the Scattering to Honored Matres was the gift of the Voice. The use of the Voice consists of adjusting the vocal tone in order to control the subconscious of the receiver, so that he is forced to comply with the will of the speaker without knowing how. Although the Matres know the power of the Voice and use it in a rather rudimentary fashion, they do not tolerate it in the more skilled Bene Gesserit, killing them almost instinctively at the first attempt at manipulation.

Training and Features

Honored Matres typically begin their training at puberty, the age at which they experience the first manifestation of Prana-binbu reflexes. Military squads of Matres seek out, select, and slaughter entire communities to kidnap their future followers or apprentices. Many are chosen for their great beauty, as in the case of Murbella, others for their ability or perhaps bodily talent, gallantry, such as Logno, or Lady, The Great Honored Matre The Spider Queen of Harlots according to the Bene Gesserit.

Government and Military Tactics

Honored Matres are a military autocracy, using the aforementioned powers to dominate the entire society. They use terror, the so-called pogroms or raids, razzias, to subdue society under their rule with an almost Spartan spirit. They trust no one, only the men they have turned into their sex slaves, and even so they are constantly tested. In this way they managed to dominate an empire in the Scattering several times larger than the Million Worlds before ruled by the God Emperor. An empire, according to them, effective.

Their form of government is an absolute bureau-aristocracy; The Great Honored Matre reigns with near-absolute power, yet the Council of Honored Matres sees to it that the Grand Honored Matre does not put all her comrades in harm's way.

Even with such power, they were overthrown and driven from their empire by the Enemy, an unknown superior force: Handlers reminiscent of the Face Dancers of the Bene Tleilax controlling Hordes of Futars, hybrids of human and feline, unknown biological weapons, new diseases... They have escaped back to the ancient empire of the Known Universe en masse, fleeing from the Enemy. The former Empire of a Million Worlds is only the first step in consolidating their new stronghold, but it is here that they come into conflict with the Bene Gesserit, wielders of forgotten knowledge and abilities coveted by Honored Matres.

It is common and almost traditional for the succession of the Great Honored Matre to take the form of an assassination, either by direct confrontation, poisoning, etc...

Bibliographic reference

• Frank Herbert, Herejes de Dune. Editions Debolsillo: Barcelona, 2003. ISBN 978-84-9759-731-9
• Frank Herbert, Dune Capitular House. Editions Debolsillo: Barcelona, 2003. ISBN 978-84-9759-770-8
• Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson Dune Hunters. Plaza & Janés, Barcelona, 2008. ISBN 978-84-01-33679-9