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Lankiveil

The name Lankiveil is generally believed to be a derivative of Llanc IV Il, apparently named for a young dead prince of the Old Empire whose ferown-tomb still stands on an isolated isle. Shunning this paynim etymology, the Lankiveilis themselves commonly claim Lankiveil to have been the name of the deva that led St. Soobbesm, the bastard son of Maometh's brother's half-wife's concubine's sister, to the planet. The synthetic exegesis makes the angelic Lankiveil be the celestial rebirth of the prince after being freed from jahannam by Maometh's prayers.

The planet is noted for its heavy water cover and relatively cold temperature for a biospheric world. Native lifeforms are mostly at a rare Ordovician level of development. Despite this plethora of advanced alien creatures, the most famous animal of Lankiveil, the Vair or so-called Fur Whale, was until recently of Terranic origin.

Lankiveil had a long history of political & marital entanglement with House Harkonnen, owing to their homeworld of Giedi Prime being mainly of Lankiveili Buddhislamic faith after being swordily converted (from the Sikunic sect) by the infamous usurper-baron Maragir. After the kanly-extermination of House Lankiveil proper in 9997 by Philippos XV Atreides, the Landsraad elevated the native House Minor Rabban to the Amiralhaj County, under condition of feudal duty to their more prestigious kinsmen House Harkonnen.

One will note at once that the Comital title of the Rabbans would normally outrank the Baronial title of the Harkonnens. The Count Glossu, resenting the overlordship of his uncle, was often bothered by this. After the deposition of Leto I Atreides, Vladimir was eligible to claim the title of Duke of Arrakis by right of conquest and so regularize the ranking issue; he refused, on grounds of kanly-honor not to take a title filthied by his foe. Glossu apparently took this as a personal insult, and it is noted that in his last years he arrogated himself the quasi-title of Acting Duke of Arrakis, though never in communications with his uncle.

There were two main industries on Lankiveil. The first & elder was the lucrative field of religious tourism, for Lankiveil was the great Fifth Kaaba of the largest branch of Orthodox Buddhislam in the known universe. Most of the northeastern archipelago was Sanghamosque land, with the great Ilamamates conventionally passed down to second sons of the House Minor families. The ruler of the planet held the prestigious title of Amiralhaj as secular guardian (and beneficiary) of the pilgrimages. Contrariwise, the Sanghamosque also took an important role in arming House Harkonnen. As an act of pious charity, the Ilamams would purchase enslaved soldiers from the interstellar markets, and free them in exchange for their conversion & renunciation. Naturally, the soldiers were expected to become not common renunciates, but continue their secular profession in a more spiritual tune as members of the Order of Black Chenrezig, the elite crusaders whom the Atreides contemptuously called the "Gwanyin Ghazis". It is said that Gurney Halleck's rejection of such an offer was the beginning of his personal vendetta with Glossu Rabban.

The other great industry of Lankiveil was of course whale fur. Originally the peltes were merely one of the many products of the traditional whaling of the antarctic archipelago, and it was worn scarcely by even the secular magnates of the northern hemisphere. Buddhislamic teaching regarded the bloody industry as impure & sinful, and this impractical disgust at the livelihood of the southern isles was one contributor to the lack of progress made in catechizing them. And the Siridars, who were almost parasitic on the clergy who were their sole source of profit, did not dare dispute them.

This changed during the reign of Countess Falia Lankiveil-Harkonnen. Her predecessor & elder sister Irina, exposed in a scandalous relation with an Ilamam's designated heir, was found stabbed to death; chaukmurky had been poured into each of her wounds. Falia had spent much of her youth offworld on Kaitain, and when she arrived in Lankiveil's orbit she stopped there, did not descend, and had herself crowned there by a Noukker of the Sardaukar. For the next nine years she remained stationed in orbit while she opened the monasteries & mosques to the pillage of her offworld mercenaries. (Her descendant Muad'Dib, who made Countess Falia a saint of the Golden Elixir, once remarked that while his strategies were learned from hers, even the fury of his Fremen against the heretical homeworld of their oppressors had not matched the ferocity of the sack which she had worked on her own planet.) When she finally deigned descend to the planet to be welcomed by the condottieri she had enfeoffed, she wore a whale fur dress to signal that she was inaugurating a new Lankiveil; she wore the same a two months later on Kaitain for her wedding.

Having created demand and impatient to build up the industry, Falia opened up the planet to settlement from skilled seamen on very generous terms. Many came from many worlds, but the most numerous were the endonymous Astrapaistag- Nonconformist Vajrayana Christians from Yiretel. Their religion, preoccupied with the crucifixion, had little issue slaughtering the beasts that quickly became a symbol of their god.

While Falia's successors did not continue her ruthlessly anticlerical policy, they did carry on the business she had established. The Buddhislamic clergy in time quietly economized their condemnation of the industry- all except a few monastic hardliners no longer preached against the wearing of the Vair; they merely condemned the unclean paynims who produced it. The Fur Whale was adopted as a symbol of the planet & house, and Lankiveil's southern hemisphere itself became known as Whales. However, an obvious problem quickly faced House Lankiveil- with their efficient industrialization, the whales were being killed faster than they could be replaced.

The original Vair was a creature descended from the fur seals of Old Earth, mostly evolved without artificial intervention. Gestation took three years and twins were rare, to grow to mature size took 50. In favorable markets, to harvest the whales at 20 years of age more than broke even on the cost of the harvest, but this killed them before they had long been in sexual maturity. This system could not go on.

These facts were explained to the Bene Tleilax, who quickly set to work improving the stock. In the first iteration, sexual maturity and growth were accelerated and brood size increased, but at the cost of maternal health; this proved unworkable. The second iteration brought a breakthrough. With appropriate sedation (that of course could be grown in the whale's own body through an additional organ) & the inclusion of certain clotting genes modified from the Yirateli manta, the whales could be captured by a suspensor carrywhale, flayed, and then set back in the sea still alive. Regrowing a pelt was, after all, far quicker than regrowing an entire whale. To protect the harvest the Vairs' natural predators, the indigenous endocerids, were exterminated by a targeted virus.

This revolution in whaling pleased the siridars, but it did not please the whalers. By this time the immigrant Astrapaistag had intermarried & syncretized with the native South Islanders, and the harvest of the whole whale was sacred to them. The new system was like torturing Christ without killing him. There were riots, which were suppressed. Emigration followed. The Buddhislamists, long envious of the favorable exemptions to the Faufreluches that Falia had given the Vajrayana Christians, pushed the siridars to act against this risk to their profits.

A six-year moratorium on emigration was announced while foreign workers were sought. After thirty years the ban was still in place, and the whaling airships had been stuffed with slaves. The Astrapaistag, disappointed by their lords, were courted by Atreides agents. A plan was formed, whereby the main Atreides force would divert Harkonnen attention by the seizure of a space port on Giedi Prime (and dig in, making no further forrays), the Count Rautha would then be murdered by his Falianag bodyguards, and a smaller elite Atreides force would then assist in the Astrapaistag seizure of their planet.

When word came that Giedi Prime faced an unexpected raid by House Ginaz and the Atreides were making their move at once to coordinate, the Lankiveili side of the plot was immediately set in motion. Count Rautha was slain, though his brother Sirush quickly retook the holy city of Haj. The Astrapaistag regime who had seized the Southern Isles were offered relatively lenient terms (Sirush was not entirely displeased with his brother's death), but Alipticon Corippus, their contact with the Atreides, warned them not to trust Sirush and urged them to wait for their allies to arrive. So they waited, and waited, while one by one the islands fell. The leaders of the revolt settled in for a lengthy siege on their last stronghold- they were told the Atreides had been delayed by a counterraid to Caladan but were on their way. But they were instead destroyed almost at once by an orbital strike. Sirush saw little issue with annihilating a single island, and he could rely on the Tleilaxu to help deal with any environmental aftereffects.

The Falianag bodyguard were hanged, drawn, & quartered, while the other Vajrayana Christians were crushed down to the lowest level of the Faufreluches, legally bound to the planet and indeed to their isles of residence, forbidden to practice any other occupation than the filthy art of whaling that their religion now cried out against. Alipticon, who of course had been the traitor, converted to the state religion with Sirush's personal oversight, and was rewarded for his loyalty by being enfeoffed Lord of the Southern Isles, thus to be lamented forever by his former people as the man who had sold his soul for Whales. His House Minor maintained an impeccable record of Buddhislamic piety, and centuries later his direct descendant Zeng Corippus was the Count Glossu Rabban's bashar on Arrakis.

Free of the need to care about the Astrapaistag's scruples, House Lankiveil, and later House Rabban, gave the a Tleilaxu permanent contract to refine the Vair stock. Seeking greater efficiency, the serpentine vertebrate body plan was discarded in favor of skeletal-esophageal "windowpanes" linked by networks of furred skin. The introduction of this variety was detained only by the need to manufacture new forms of carrywhale to harvest with. Still iterations continued. Few of the high class consumers who bought & wore Vair knew that the original cuddly Fur Whale that seethed rampant on the House Rabban crest was extinct except in a few aquariums.

The Imperial Planetologist Timon Akat, whom Count Abulurd Rabban hired to examine the state of the oceans, reported that while the ecosystem seemed stable to support human life (or at least it was being altered so quickly that it couldn't destabilize), it seemed that almost all native or terranic macroscopic life apart from a few common fish species had been displaced by a trophic network of iterations, most of which bore only a very slant resemblance to the notions of fur or whale. He later wrote, "I'd had to deal with planets where religious dogma meant that there was widespread disbelief in evolution by natural selection, and Lankiveil was one of them, but it was only when speaking to the Bene Tleilax that I began to suspect that religions could exist that regarded evolution as very real, and also mortally sinful. I don't think the Harkonnens could restore their oceans even if they wanted to."

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The natives of Lankiveil are noted for greyish skin, bluish hair, and craggy rectangular faces; these features are common even among the Astrapaistag, who had intermarried much with the old whalers. Renunciates or partial renunciates to Lankiveili Buddhislam have a red triskelion with three dots tattooed on their forehead and cheeks, a triple symbol of the Three Jewels and the Three Muhammads.

#Lankiveil team wake up #Dune #Lankiveil #Mater Aracus

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