D. Ebdrup posted:

Somehow, this ended up in the cursed images thread:

whydirt posted:

Do you like elaborate hats? Then you’ll love the miniseries.

redreader posted:

edit: also what is cybertrex 300? I googled him and just found references to this thread.

kiimo posted:

joined a Dune facebook group. Two days of failson posts and I left.

D. Ebdrup posted:

The CGI hasn't aged well at all.

kiimo posted:

I furiously hated the costumes in the mini-series.

Shageletic posted:

Lol is that a pic of Cybertrex 300

E: motherfucker has a cape

TK-42-1 posted:

I am personally very glad I stopped at God Emperor.

Phlegmish posted:

I liked Heretics more than God Emperor. The latter book is just nothing but the big fat worm sitting there and monologuing to himself about how tough it is to be a big fat worm who controls the universe.

Super Waffle posted:

Don't forget that he also thinks about getting a big fat worm dick made. Best part of the book.

skasion posted:

Guess you’ll never be the head of an intergalactic pussy cult

Phlegmish posted:

he crammed it in there, but then didn't know what to do with it most of the time.

BeanpolePeckerwood posted:

BeanpolePeckerwood posted:

Idaho arose while Garun was still talking. There was a clear view of the high Wall from nearby-straight down the central street, a view from the base in the sand to the top in the sunlight. Idaho strode to the corner of the guest house out into the central street. He stopped there, turned and looked at the Wall. The first look told why everyone said it was not possible to climb that face. Even then, he resisted thinking about a measurement of the height. It could be five hundred meters or five thousand. The important thing lay in what a more careful study revealed tiny transverse cracks, broken places, even a narrow ledge about twenty meters above the drifting sand at the bottom . . . and another ledge about two-thirds of the way up the face. He knew that an unconscious part of him, an ancient and dependable part, was making the necessary measurements, scaling them to his own body-so many Duncan-lengths to that place, a handgrip here, another there. His own hands. He could already feel himself climbing. Siona's voice came from near his right shoulder as he stood in that first examination. "What're you doing?" She had come up soundlessly, looking now where he looked. "I can climb that Wall," Idaho said. "If I carried a light rope, I could pull up a heavier rope. The rest of you could climb it easily then." Garun joined them in time to hear this. "Why would you climb the Wall, Duncan Idaho?" Siona answered for him, smiling at Garun. "To provide a suitable greeting for the God Emperor."

This had been before her doubts, before her own eyes and the ignorance of such a climb, had begun to erode that first confidence. With that first elation, Idaho asked: "How wide is the Royal Road up there?" "I have never seen it," Garun said. "But I am told it is very wide. A great troop can march abreast along it, so they say. And there are bridges, places to view the river and . . . and . . . oh, it is a marvel." "Why have you never gone up there to see it yourself?" Idaho asked. Garun merely shrugged and pointed at the Wall. Nayla arrived then and the argument about the climb had begun. Idaho thought about that argument as he climbed. How strange, the relationship between Nayla and Siona! They were like two conspirators . . . yet not conspirators. Siona commanded and Nayla obeyed. But Nayla was a Fish Speaker, the Friend who was trusted by Leto to make a first examination of the new ghola. She admitted that she had been in the Royal Constabulary since childhood. Such strength in her! Given that strength, there was something awesome about the way she bowed to Siona's will. It was as though Nayla listened for secret voices which told her what to do. Then she obeyed.

Idaho groped upward for another handhold. His fingers wriggled along the rock, up and outward to the right, finding at last an unseen crack where they might enter. His memory provided the natural line of ascent, but only his body could learn the way by following that line. His left foot found a toehold. . . up . . . up . . . slowly, testing. Left hand up now . . . no crack but a ledge. His eyes, then his chin lifted over the high ledge he had seen from below. He elbowed his way onto it, rolled over and rested, looking only outward, not up or down. It was a sand horizon out there, a breeze with dust in it limiting the view. He had seen many such horizons in the Dune days. Presently, he turned to face the Wall, lifted himself onto his knees, hands groping upward, and he resumed the climb. The picture of the Wall remained in his mind as he had seen it from below. He had only to close his eyes and the pattern lay there, fixed the way he had learned to do it as a child hiding from Harkonnen slave raiders. Fingertips found a crack where they could be wedged.

He clawed his way upward. Watching from below, Nayla experienced a growing affinity for the climber. Idaho had been reduced by distance to such a small and lonely shape upon the Wall. He must know what it was like to be alone with momentous decisions. l would like to have his child, she thought. A child from both of us would be strong and resourceful. What is it that God wants from a child of Siona and this man? Nayla had awakened before dawn and had walked out to the top of a low dune at the village edge to think about this thing that Idaho proposed. It had been a lime dawn with a familiar winding cloth of dust in the distance, then steel day and the baleful immensity of the Sareer. She knew then that these matters certainly had been anticipated by God. What could be hidden from God? Nothing could be hidden, not even the remote figure of Duncan Idaho groping for a pathway up to the edge of heaven. As she watched Idaho climb, Nayla's mind played a trick on her, tipping the wall to the horizontal. Idaho became a child crawling across a broken surface. How small he looked . . . and growing smaller. An aide offered Nayla water which she drank. The water brought the Wall back into its true perspective. Siona crouched on the first ledge, leaning out to peer up- ward. "If you fall, I will try it," Siona had promised Idaho. Nayla had thought it a strange promise. Why would both of them want to try the impossible?

Idaho had failed to dissuade Siona from the impossible promise. It is fate, Nayla thought. It is God's will. They were the same thing. A bit of rock fell from where Idaho clutched at it. That had happened several times. Nayla watched the falling rock. It took a long time coming down, bounding and rebounding from the Wall's face, demonstrating that the eye did not report truthfully when it said the Wall was sheer. He will succeed or he will not,- Nayla thought. Whatever happens, it is God's will. She could feel her heart hammering, though. Idaho's venture was like sex, she thought. It was not passively erotic, but akin to rare magic in the way it seized her. She had to keep reminding herself that Idaho was not for her. He is for Siona. If he survives. And if he failed, then Siona would try. Siona would succeed or she would not. Nayla wondered, though, if she might experience an orgasm should Idaho reach the top. He was so close to it now.

Idaho took several deep breaths after dislodging the rock. It was a bad moment and he took the time to recover, clinging to a three-point hold on the Wall. Almost of its own accord, his free hand groped upward once more, wriggling past the rotten place into another slender crack. Slowly, he shifted his weight onto that hand. Slowly . . . slowly. His left knee felt the place where a toehold could be achieved. He lifted his foot to that place, tested it. Memory told him the top was near, but he pushed the memory aside. There was only the climb and the knowledge that Leto would arrive tomorrow. Leto and Hwi. He could not think about that, either. But it would not go away. The top . . . Hwi . . . Leto . . . tomorrow . . . Every thought fed his desperation, forced him into the immediate remembrance of the climbs of his childhood. The more he remembered consciously, the more his abilities were blocked. He was forced to pause, breathing deeply in the attempt to center himself, to go back to the natural ways of his past. But were those ways natural? There was a blockage in his mind. He could sense intrusions, a finality . . . the fatality of what might have been and now would never be. Leto would arrive up there tomorrow. Idaho felt perspiration run down his face around the place where he pressed a cheek against the rock. Leto. will defeat you, Leto. I will defeat you for myself, not for Hwi, but only for myself. A sensation of cleansing began to spread through him. It was like the thing which had happened in the night while he prepared himself mentally for this climb. Siona had sensed his sleeplessness. She had begun to talk to him, telling him the smallest details of her desperate run through the Forbidden Forest and her oath at the edge of the river. "Now I have given an oath to command his Fish Speakers," she said. "I will honor that oath, but I hope it will not happen in the way he wants." "What does he want?" Idaho asked. "He has many motives and I cannot see them all. Who could possibly understand him? I only know that I will never forgive him." This memory brought Idaho back to the sensation of the Wall's rock against his cheek. His perspiration had dried in the light breeze and he felt chilled. But he had found his center. Never forgive.

Idaho felt the ghosts of all his other selves, the gholas who had died in Leto's service. Could he believe Siona's suspicions? Yes. Leto was capable of killing with his own body, his own hands. The rumor which Siona recounted had a feeling of truth in it. And Siona, too, was Atreides. Leto had become something else . . . no longer Atreides, not even human. He had become not so much a living creature as a brute fact of nature, opaque and impenetrable, all of his experiences sealed off within him. And Siona opposed him. The real Atreides turned away from him. As I do. A brute fact of nature, nothing more. Just like this Wall. Idaho's right hand groped upward and found a sharp ledge. He could feel nothing above the ledge and tried to remember a wide crack at this place in the pattern. He could not dare to allow himself into the belief that he had reached the top . . . not yet. The sharp edge cut into his fingers as he put his weight on it. He brought his left hand up to that level, found a purchase and pulled himself slowly upward. His eyes reached the level of his hands. He stared across a flat space which reached outward . . . outward into blue sky. The surface where his hands clutched showed ancient weather cracks. He crawled his fingers across that surface, one hand at a time, seeking out the cracks, dragging his chest up . . . his waist . . . his hips. He rolled then, twisting and crawling until the Wall was far behind him. Only then did he stand and tell himself what his senses reported. The top. And he had not required pitons or hammer.

A faint sound reached him. Cheering? He walked back to the edge and looked down, waving to them. Yes, they were cheering. Turning back, he strode to the center of the roadway, letting elation still the trembling of his muscles, soothe the aching of his shoulders. Slowly, he turned full circle, examining the top while he let his memories at last estimate the height of that climb. Nine hundred meters . . . at least that. The Royal Roadway interested him. It was not like what he had seen on the way to Onn. It was wide, wide . . . at least five hundred meters. The roadbed was a smooth, unbroken gray with its edge some one hundred meters from each lip of the Wall. Rock pillars at man height marked the road's edge, stretching away like sentinels along the path Leto would use. Idaho walked to the far side of the Wall opposite the Sareer and peered down. Far away in the depths, a hurtling green flow of river battered itself into foam against buttress rocks. He looked to the right. Leto would come from there. Road and Wall curved gently to the right, the curve beginning about three hundred meters from the place where Idaho stood. Idaho returned to the road and walked along its edge, following the curve until it made a returning "S" and narrowed, sloping gently downward. He stopped and looked at what was revealed for him, seeing the new pattern take shape. About three kilometers away down the gentle slope, the roadway narrowed and crossed the river gorge on a bridge whose faery trusses appeared insubstantial and toy like at this distance. Idaho remembered a similar bridge on the road to Onn, the substantial feel of it beneath his feet. He trusted his memory, thinking about bridges as a military leader was forced to think about them-passages or traps. Moving out to his left, he looked down and outward to another high Wall at the far anchor of the faery bridge. The road continued there, turning gently until it was a line running straight northward.

There were two Walls along there and the river between them. The river glided in a man-made chasm, its moisture confined and channeled into a northward wind drift while the water itself flowed southward. Idaho ignored the river then. It was there and it would be there tomorrow. He fixed his attention on the bridge, letting his military training examine it. He nodded once to himself before turning back the way he had come, lifting the light rope from his shoulders as he walked. It was only when she saw the rope come snaking down that Nayla had her orgasm.

BeanpolePeckerwood posted:

Darkness. Duncan looked at a woman's face. He had seen a face like this one before: a single tride taken from a longer holo sequence. Where was that? Where had he seen that? It was an almost oval face with just a small widening at the brow to mar its curved perfection. She spoke: "My name is Murbella. You will not remember that but I share it now as I mark you. I have selected you." I do remember you, Murbella.

Green eyes set wide under arched brows gave her features a focal region that left chin and small mouth for later examination. The mouth was full-lipped and he knew it could become pouting in repose. The green eyes stared into his eyes. How cold that look. The power in it. Something touched his cheek. He opened his eyes. This was no memory! This was happening to him. It was happening now! Murbella! She had been here and she had left him. Now she was back. He remembered awakening naked on a soft surface . . . a sleeping pad. His hands recognized it. Murbella unclothed just above him, green eyes staring at him with a terrible intensity. She touched him simultaneously in many places. A soft humming issued from between her lips. He felt the swift erection, painful in its rigidity. No power of resistance remained in him. Her hands moved over his body. Her tongue. The humming! All around him, her mouth touching him. The nipples of her breasts grazed his cheeks, his chest. When he saw her eyes, he saw conscious design. Murbella had returned and she was doing it once more! Over her right shoulder, he glimpsed a wide plaz window -- Lucilla and Burzmali behind that barrier. A dream? Burzmali pressed his palms against the plaz. Lucilla stood with folded arms, a look of mingled rage and curiosity on her face. Murbella murmured in his right ear: "My hands are fire." Her body hid the faces behind the plaz. He felt the fire wherever she touched him. Abruptly, the flame engulfed his mind. Hidden places within him came alive. He saw red capsules like a string of gleaming sausages passing before his eyes. He felt feverish. He was an engorged capsule, excitement flaring throughout his awareness. Those capsules! He knew them! They were himself . . . they were . . . All of the Duncan Idahos, original and the serial gholas flowed into his mind. They were like bursting seedpods denying all other existence except themselves. He saw himself crushed beneath a great worm with a human face. "drat you, Leto!" Crushed and crushed and crushed . . . time and again. "drat you! drat you! drat you! . . ." He died under a Sardaukar sword. Pain exploded into a bright glare swallowed by darkness. He died in a 'thopter crash. He died under the knife of a Fish Speaker assassin. He died and died and died.

And he lived. The memories flooded him until he wondered how he could hold them all. The sweetness of a newborn daughter held in his arms. The musky odors of a passionate mate. The cascade of flavors from a fine Danian wine. The panting exertions of the practice floor. The axlotl tanks! He remembered emerging time after time: bright lights and padded mechanical hands. The hands rotated him and, in the unfocused blurs of the newborn, he saw a great mound of female flesh -- monstrous in her almost immobile grossness . . . a maze of dark tubes linked her body to giant metal containers. Axlotl tank? He gasped in the grip of the serial memories that cascaded into him. All of those lives! All of those lives! Now, he remembered what the Tleilaxu had planted in him, the submerged awareness that awaited only this moment of seduction by a Bene Gesserit Imprinter. But this was Murbella and she was not Bene Gesserit. She was here, though, ready at hand and the Tleilaxu pattern took over his reactions. Duncan hummed softly and touched her, moving with an agility that shocked Murbella. He should not be this responsive! Not this way! His right hand fluttered against the lips of her vagina while his left hand caressed the base of her spine. At the same time, his mouth moved gently over her nose, down to her lips, down to the crease of her left armpit. And all the time he hummed softly in a rhythm that pulsed through her body, lulling . . . weakening . . . She tried to push away from him as he increased the pace of her responses. How did he know to touch me there at just that instant? And there! And there! Oh, Holy Rock of Dur, how does he know this? Duncan marked the swelling of her breasts and saw the congestion in her nose. He saw the way her nipples stood out stiffly, the areolae darkening around them. She moaned and spread her legs wide. Great Matre, help me! But the only Great Matre she could think of was locked securely away from this room, restrained by a bolted door and a plaz barrier. Desperate energy flowed into Murbella. She responded in the only way she knew: touching, caressing -- using all of the techniques she had learned so carefully in the long years of her apprenticeship. To each thing she did, Duncan produced a wildly stimulating countermove.

Murbella found that she no longer could control all of her own responses. She was reacting automatically from some well of knowledge deeper than her training. She felt her vaginal muscles tighten. She felt the swift release of lubricant fluid. When Duncan entered her she heard herself groan. Her arms, her hands, her legs, her entire body moved with both of the response systems -- well-trained automation and the deeper, deeper plunging awareness of other demands. How did he do this to me? Waves of ecstatic contractions began in the smooth muscles of her pelvis. She sensed his simultaneous response and felt the hard slap of his ejaculation. This heightened her own response. Ecstatic pulsations drove outward from the contractions in her vagina . . . outward . . . outward. The ecstasy engulfed her entire sensorium. She saw a spreading blaze of whiteness against her eyelids. Every muscle quivered with an ecstasy she had not imagined possible for herself. Again, the waves spread outward. Again and again . . . She lost count of the repetitions. When Duncan moaned, she moaned and the waves swept outward once more. And again . . . There was no sensation of time or surroundings, only this immersion in a continuing ecstasy. She wanted it to go on forever and she wanted it to stop. This should not be happening to a female! An Honored Matre must not experience this. These were the sensations by which men were governed. Duncan emerged from the response pattern that had been implanted in him. There was something else he was supposed to do. He could not remember what it was. Lucilla? He imagined her dead in front of him. But this woman was not Lucilla; this was . . . this was Murbella. There was very little strength in him. He lifted himself off Murbella and managed to sink back onto his knees. Her hands were fluttering in an agitation he could not understand. Murbella tried to push Duncan away from her and he was not there. Her eyes snapped open. Duncan knelt above her. She had no idea how much time had passed. She tried to find the energy to sit up and failed. Slowly, reason returned. She stared into Duncan's eyes, knowing now who this man must be. Man? He was only a youth. But he had done things . . . things . . . All of the Honored Matres had been warned. There was a ghola armed with forbidden knowledge by the Tleilaxu. That ghola must be killed!

A small burst of energy surged into her muscles. She raised herself on her elbows. Gasping for breath, she tried to roll away from him and fell back to the soft surface. By the Holy Rock of Dur! This male could not be permitted to live! He was a ghola and he could do things permitted only to Honored Matres. She wanted to strike out at him and, at the same time, she wanted to pull him back onto her body. The ecstasy! She knew that whatever he asked of her at this moment she would do. She would do it for him. No! I must kill him! Once more, she raised herself onto her elbows and, from there, managed to sit up. Her weakened gaze crossed the window where she had confined the Great Honored Matre and the guide. They still stood there looking at her. The man's face was flushed. The face of the Great Honored Matre was as unmoving as the Rock of Dur itself. How can she just stand there after what she has seen here? The Great Honored Matre must kill this ghola! Murbella beckoned to the woman behind the plaz and rolled toward the locked door beside the sleeping pad. She barely managed to unbolt and open the door before falling back. Her eyes looked up at the kneeling youth. Sweat glistened on his body. His lovely body . . . No! Desperation drove her off onto the floor. She was on her knees there and then, mostly by will power, she stood. Energy was returning but her legs trembled as she staggered around the foot of the sleeping pad. I will do it myself without thinking. I must do it. Her body swayed from side to side. She tried to steady herself and aimed a blow at his neck. She knew this blow from long hours of practice. It would crush the larynx. The victim would die of asphyxiation. Duncan dodged the blow easily, but he was slow . . . slow. Murbella almost fell beside him but the hands of the Great Honored Matre saved her. "Kill him," Murbella gasped. "He's the one we were warned about. He's the one!" Murbella felt hands on her neck, the fingers pressing fiercely at the nerve bundles beneath the ears. The last thing Murbella heard before unconsciousness was the Great Honored Matre saying: "We will kill no one. This ghola goes to Rakis."

BeanpolePeckerwood posted:

Mister Speaker posted:

yeah on second thought maybe i don't want to read the last two books