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Not organized along Feudal lines (as most of rest of the Imperium is), the Tleilaxu are secretive and very little is known about them although in Heretics Of Dune their society is said to be a Meritocracy . They are chiefly known for their biological products such as artificial eyes, Gholas , and Face Dancers . The use of "Bene" before their name suggests that they are an order of some kind, like the Bene Gesserit ; this becomes clear in the last two books of the series. BENE TLEILAX HISTORIES The founder of the Bene Tleilax was a Master named , a distant offshoot of Buddhism and Sufism , and are organized along theistic lines. They have spent thousands of years concealing this fact, waiting for their ascendancy, which they believe to be occurring in '' Heretics Of Dune ''. By the events of '''' (though the Scytale from Dune Messiah was a face dancer whereas the one in Chapterhouse: Dune was a Master) who was captured by the Bene Gesserit. What he never told them is that in a tube implanted in his chest were cell samples from his entire order, plus many characters from earlier Dune novels: essentially, even though he was the only one left, he could single-handedly resurrect his Order. The ancestors of the Bene Tleilax show up in '' Butlerian Jihad '' series by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. There, they are a civilisation of human merchants known as the Tlulaxa who specialise in slaves and replacement organs. They claim that the organs are grown artificially in organ farms. In reality, the vast majority of the organs are harvested from slaves. The Tlulaxa also have working organ farms, but they are used mainly as a front, providing only a small fraction of the replacement organs. BENE TLEILAX TECHNOLOGIES The Bene Tleilax are masters of biological science and control the secrets of a number of important technologies in the Dune universe. Ghola A ghola is a clone, grown in an axolotl tank from the '' would be over 5,000 years old through his serial incarnations. Axolotl Tank An axolotl tank is essentially a brain-dead woman whose womb is used as a tank to create gholas and other creatures. The Bene Tleilax's use of their women in this capacity is why no one has ever seen a Tleilaxu female. In '' Heretics Of Dune '', it is revealed that the Tleilaxu have developed the ability to grow the spice Melange in axolotl tanks, breaking the monopoly on spice that Arrakis held for thousands of years which strongly determined the economics and the politics of the Imperium. In '''', the Bene Gesserit have acquired axolotl tank technology and are able to use it to make gholas for their own purposes. The axolotl tank is similar to the reproductive "stumps" in Herbert's '' Hellstrom's Hive ''. Face Dancer Face dancers are sterile creatures, with full sentience, but with a genetically programmed loyalty to the Tleilaxu masters. They are used by the Tleilaxu throughout the universe to impersonate key people after killing the originals. Over the course of the series, the Tleilaxu try to create more perfect mimics, to the point where the face dancers lose their ability to mimic and their awareness of themselves as face dancers, so perfectly do they mimic their subjects. At that point, the face dancer effectively ''becomes'' the person he or she is mimicking, and passes beyond the control of the Tleilaxu, as happens in the book "Heretics of Dune". Tleilax Master Masters are the real minds of the Bene Tleilax. They have the ability to regain their genetic memory with ease, allowing them to live forever, using the axlotl tanks to create gholas of themselves. They are often described as short, dwarf-like characters with gray skin, elfin features and pointy teeth. Tleilaxu Masters control their Face Dancer minions through whistled commands. In Heretics Of Dune , the Master Tylwyth Waff attempts to control the perfectly mimicked Face Dancer copy of High Priest Hedley Tuek but fails due to the copy's complete assimiliation into its new form. Further, Masters usually implant some form of whistled command in any ghola they create. In Dune Messiah , the Master Bijaz controls the Ghola Hayt through a specific whistling intonation that renders Hayt open to implanted commands. |
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