In Preparation for an upcoming campaign i am currently rereading the Dune Books. Right now i am about halfway through the third (Children of Dune) and a question came up that, as far as i can remember, doesnt get adressed in the books:
in the chapter where Leto starts his transformation it says
> Leto groped on the sand with his right hand until his fingers encountered
the leathery skin of a sandtrout. It was the large one he had expected. The
creature didn't try to evade him, but moved eagerly onto his flesh. He explored
its outline with his free hand -- roughly diamond-shaped. It had no head, no
extremities, no eyes, yet it could find water unerringly. With its fellows it
could join body to body, locking one on another by the coarse interlacings of
extruded cilia until the whole became one large sack-organism enclosing the
water, walling off the "poison" from the giant which the sandtrout would become:
Shai-Hulud.
> The sandtrout squirmed on his hand, elongating, stretching. As it moved, he
felt a counterpart elongating and stretching of the vision he had chosen. This
thread, not that one. He felt the sandtrout becoming thin, covering more and
more of his hand. No sandtrout had ever before encountered a hand such as this
one, every cell supersaturated with spice. No other human had ever before lived
and reasoned in such a condition.
doesn't this mean that another who is on a similar level of spice saturationlike a guild navigator, or alia atreides, or a reverend mother after a spice orgyalthough im not too sure about that last onecould undergo that same transformation? because don't forget: once it has been done, there will be those who try to emulate him, and eventually one should be able to find out how he did it...
i'm asking because this might be something i could "offer" one of my players as a means to advance his character
Probably not after Leto's death unless some part of him consented to it. Keep in mind that post God Emperor sandworms all carry a pearl of his awareness with them.
>>47800429
Who is to say that it wouldn't drive them mad?
Or that they'd be able to control their body without the abilities of the kwisatz haderach.
I seem to recall Leto getting force fed a truly preposterous quantity of spice, or the waters of life, or whatever it was not long before his transformation started. Quantities that no one short of a kwitsach haderach could have any hope of surviving. This was probably necessary for it to work like it did.
His twin sister might have been able to copy it, possibly Alia, but neither did. Alia of course didn't stick around for long to ponder what had happened, and his sister probably had no desire to follow Leto's path.
>>47801193
but isnt the whole point about the quisatz haderach that he is basically just a malemaybe also more capablereverend mother?
that's why i asked, because the main reason he is able to cope with the amount of spice he's fed is his (past lives') bene gesserit training.
>No other human had ever before lived
and reasoned in such a condition. Delicately Leto adjusted his enzyme balance,
drawing on the illuminated sureness he'd gained in spice trance. The knowledge
from those uncounted lifetimes which blended themselves within him provided the
certainty through which he chose the precise adjustments, slaving off the death
from an overdose which would engulf him if he relaxed his watchfulness for only
a heartbeat. And at the same time he blended himself with the sandtrout, feeding
on it, feeding it, learning it
to me this just reads like "his witchpowers allowed him to do it [spoilers]and his prescience gave him the exact details
>>47801166
based on the way the whole scene is described, i would assume that the bare minimum requirement to not die is bene gesserit training, or something else that gives a similar level of selfcontrol. this doesnt outright exclude going mad, but i would say it makes it a lot less likely.
>>47801409
As a KH Leto was in tune with his memories of ancestors of both sexes, whereas Reverend Mothers got the shared memories of the RMs before them. Guild Navigators are a dead end, always choosing the safe path and this cowardice and hesitation would prevent them from succeeding. Only Paul (who rejected it,) Alia, Leto, and Ghanima could have survived. Maybe some of the assholes in the last two books but who gives a shit about them?
>>47801582
but still, the selfcontrol that is nessecary comes from the bene gesserit training, wich up to the events of the first book, was mostly exclusive to women.
so doesn't it then follow that if you could manage to oversaturate a reverend mother with spice she should be able to make the transformationwith a certain probability of failure/death, of course?
because the prescience of leto helped him to adjust the right way, but that wouldnt be nessecary if you already knew what to do because someone else has done it before and taught the way of how to do it (wich, as far as im aware, leto never acutally did, but this whole discussion is a massive "what if-?" anyway)
>>47800429
Muad'dib could have, Alia and Ghanima probably also had the capability. Ghanima knew what was involved and it terrified her, Muad'dib became the coward we all know because he knew either he or one of his descendents would do it, eventually. Navigators are too spineless to do anything other than the safe path, because thats what they were bred for-the safest path. Reverend mothers only ever went for the female history, and would have been rendered insane by experiencing the male side on top of the female side-most of their training was reinforcement of the fear of that side. Even Leto only managed it because brain-ghengis helped him out.
This isn't generic anime powerup #038, i would avoid giving it to a player unless its a seriously loose narrativist game-you would need gesserit training and a will of diamond to merely survive getting to the point where it is viable, much less milk the Kwisatz Haderach state without going mad and killing yourself like the Tlielaxu ones did. Give your player something like Alia's genetic buffs, being able to disembowel a soldier with your toenail, rather than unleashing a Kwisatz Haderach
>>47801672
I doubt it, because one of the reasons Herbert wrote Dune was to showcase how a superhuman could disrupt a society; all the Atredies Kwizatz Haderachs are more than human in a way that's fundamental to the stories so in my opinion they're the only ones who could do it.
>>47801409
Given Leto's utterly unmatched powers of prescience, he at least would appear to be much more than any reverend mother, even if such might not be the case of any KH.
>>47801910
>>47801730
oh, dont't get me wrong - i didn't doubt any of that. i was just wondering on whether or not a "regular" human (meaning not-main-character humans) could achieve the transformation.
but i think the case has been made somewhat convincingly that you'd need a very strong plot armor to do it.
>>47800429
No, Leto II like has hyper powerful levels of prana-bindu binding, beyond those of Paul (Leto II and his sister were born with higher levels of prescience and Leto II's level of prescience eventually surpassed Paul's) so unless a character has like absolute prana bindu levels from breeding programs and a prescient father it's impossible.
>>47801409
No, as KH Leto has a perfect vision of how he has to bind the sand trout, without that it would be impossible. A Bene Gesserit (or any reverend mother) only has imperfect prescience at best with no predictive abilities.
>>47802086
Not at all, I think your underestimating exactly how much Leto II needed prescience for this. Plus in Dune no written character is a 'normal' human, all characters from the 2nd book on are results of multi generation breeding programs that basically make them superhuman without factoring prana-bindu binding
