Sardaukar

The Sardaukar are a fictional army from Frank Herbert's Dune universe, as depicted in the Dune series of science-fiction novels.

Sardaukar are the soldiers of House Corrino who rules the known universe (the Imperium) at the time of Dune. Until Paul Atreides organizes the Fremen on Arrakis, they are the foremost soldiers in the universe and are feared by all. The Sardaukar are the key to House Corrino's hold on the Imperial throne. They are the soldier-fanatics of the Padishah Emperor and the Corrino dynasty.

Sardaukar are trained from infancy on the planet Salusa Secundus, House Corrino's original (and environmentally barren) homeworld as well as the formal Capital world of the Empire prior to the Butlerian Jihad. Known to the rest of the Empire as the Emperor's Prison Planet, Salusa Secondus is home to the vicious training grounds of the Sardaukar, who fight voraciously in a mock-up of natural selection - ensuring that only the best enter formal Imperial service. Like the Fremen on the planet Dune, the intense difficulties of simply surviving the barren terrain and fellow populace on Salusa Secondus leave only the toughest alive. Further, their training emphasized ruthlessness and near-suicidal disregard for personal safety. In conjunction with intense conditioning for loyalty to the Emperor, the Sardaukar are estimated as worth ten times their number in Landsraad house levies. The Sardaukar are normally organized under legions of roughly 30,000 soldiers each, and it is said that one legion alone can pacify any planet foolish enough to incur the Emperor's wrath. However, the Sardaukar have become far more complacent during the reign of Emperor Shaddam IV, when appropriations for training went down while the number of Bursegs (generals) increased. By the time of the novel Dune (the coming of Paul Atreides as the prophesized Muad'Dib), the Sardaukar were defeated by the Fremen on Arrakis and House Corrino lost the Imperial throne to House Atreides.

During Children of Dune, Princess Wensicia, daughter of the deposed Emperor Shaddam IV, initiates a plot for the return to power of her family and the Sardaukar. However, her son Farad'n voluntarily surrendered them to the new Emperor, Leto Atreides II. Leto later disbanded the Sardaukar and replaced them with the Fish Speakers.

Before the time of the novel God Emperor of Dune, one of Leto II's many gholas (clones) of Duncan Idaho led the remnants Sardaukar in an unsuccessful revolt.

The best known historian of the Sardaukar was their Colonel Otto Aramsham. Col. Aramsham and some of the best Sardaukar were sent to infiltrate the smuggler band of Gurney Halleck, and Aramsham himself attempted to kill Paul Atreides shortly after this. Colonel Aramsham was outfought, forced by Paul to surrender, and Paul spared his life.

Aramsham was then sent by Paul to the Padishah Emperor with a message that verified that Paul was the leader of the Fremen in their great rebellion.

Colonel Aramsham had failed to kill Paul; the Sardaukar ethic was biased to suicide rather than surrender; but Aramsham felt that duty required him to get the message to the Emperor. Still, the very same day the Harkonnen army and almost all the Sardaukar on Arrakis were wiped out at the Battle of Arrakeen.

Aramsham, greatly shamed and embittered by his continued survival, was subjected to much criticism by his initial surrender to Paul. He felt that the other surviving Sardaukar thought him a coward.

Otto Aramsham was an intelligent man who was mentally and socially clumsy. As an example, when Paul Atreides forced his surrender and unmasked him as a Sardaukar, Paul held up as proof a knife of one of Aramsham's men, that Aramsham himself had carried. It was clearly a Sardaukar issue knife, right down to the artistic decorations on the handle. That Aramsham or his men were carrying such an identifiable knife on a covert mission points to the clear fact that Aramsham was a blunderer. Also when Aramsham's men infiltrated Gurney Halleck's smuggler band Halleck very quickly knew they were not trustworthy, though at first he did not know who they were.

Aramsham later wrote THE SARDAUKAR STRIKE, which many years later influenced the ghola of Duncan Idaho to lead the aforementioned revolt against the God Emperor. THE SARDAUKAR STRIKE was a very good history, but filled with jingoism.

The defeat on Dune, the Sardaukar's later revolt against the God Emperor, and the general decline of the Sardaukar organization all finally caused the abolishment of the Sardaukar corps. They were replaced by the female Fish Speakers, who in time, by and large, had Sardaukar blood in their veins.

Otto Aramsham, some say, eventually committed suicide.

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