Arrakeen (Arrakis)

Arrakeen was once the capital of Arrakis since its foundation until the coming of the Harkonnens. While few doubt that the purpose-built city of Carthag is more luxurious than the sparser, and older, confines of Arrakeen, the former capital is definitely easier to defend and, despite the depredations of the Harkonnens during their reign, the residency of the planetary governor still retains a modicum of respect amongst the indigenous population. Arrakeen is built with wide, open streets, slablike architecture, and high stone walls to shunt wind and to facilitate the almost constant removal of sand. On the main thoroughfares through the city, particularly the one leading to the governor’s residence, date palms are grown and maintained— despite the difficulty and expense of doing so. This is, in most senses, a perfect illustration of how Arrakeen is used by those who come from offworld. Arrakeen is not a model of ostentatious luxury in the way that Carthag is, but it is not truly of Arrakis.

While most homes and other buildings have water traps and other features to try and catch what little moisture there might be in the air, the most common means of acquiring water is to buy it from a water-seller. These merchants tend to drive small, mechanical carts with large storage drums attached to the back. A small tap allows water to be decanted into a personal water bottle, or a large flue enables people to buy enough water to fill a container for a whole family. These merchants tend to own large areas of land just outside Arrakeen, which are built into large-scale water farms, with deep-sunk wells and converted stillsuit technology, used to draw moisture from the air and retain it. While such a job is essential to continuing life in Arrakeen, the job is looked down on both by the off-world inhabitants of the city, who consider it an uncouth practice, and by the Fremen—for whom the idea of selling water in this fashion is extremely distasteful. The location of the water-sellers’ residences, however, does provide a key to the architectural disposition of the city itself.

ARRAKEEN ARCHITECTURE

The outskirts of Arrakeen consist of large water-farms and a few collections of still-tents where those Fremen who operate within the city, but do not live within a permanent residence, dwell. There is then a circle of small dwellings, in which most of the working people of Arrakeen live; these are the street cleaners, repair workers, miners who are no longer as active on the dunes as they once were. This is also where most of the spice refining facilities are found, with many of the inhabitants living extremely close to their work, tending to the machines which process spice for delivery to the Emperor or other customers. The next layer of the city is chiefly composed of engineers and those vital to the spice mining and spice trade. The center of the city is where the elite live—in the largest and most carefully maintained of buildings.

The buildings of Arrakeen are remarkable in themselves, built in an extremely peculiar style. Most of the architecture of Arrakeen is constructed from cyclopean blocks of dark or grey stone, quarried from the various stretches of mountain and bedrock nearby. This is supplemented with other varieties of stone, brought in from offworld. The stark interior architecture itself recalls ancient Terran models, with high ceilings, crossbeams stretching across open spaces of dark stone. This aesthetic is found throughout the Arrakeen dwellings, though, obviously, on a substantially less spectacular scale. The governor’s residency is infamous for the water it consumes, and the few Fremen who serve its current occupant whisper of the presence of a ‘Weirding Room’, to which water is diverted in vast quantities. To what purpose, few are truly certain. Those who have been within it describe it as a paradise, though, again, they are less than clear what kind of paradise it might be.

THE POPULATION OF ARRAKEEN

Arrakeen’s population is extremely heterogeneous, with people from throughout the universe taking residence there. The presence of the spice and Dune’s political importance lures offworlders in great numbers, adding to the native population, divided between Fremen— nomadic, desert-dwelling descendants of ancient settlers on the planet, and a class of people categorized throughout the Imperium as ‘pyons’, those born on the world and essentially falling under the ruling House’s authority. To natives of Arrakis, these are the ‘city folk’. Most organized labor on Arrakis is performed by the city folk, though they are supplemented by Fremen—often employed as servants, or less frequently as bodyguards. Fremen are considered poor workers by most city-dwellers, and frequently the Fremen who work alongside the city-folk are those who have lost their role in Fremen society, or are there for reasons of their own, particularly spying on the ruling House. Most offworlders in Arrakeen are there in a political capacity, serving the interests of a House or of the Guild. Arrakeen is a city of spies, and the closer one draws to the center of the city, the more evident this becomes.

Surrounding the governor’s residency are the various residences and embassies of the Landsraad. The current inhabitant of the governor’s residency is Count Hasimir Fenring the Imperial Spice Observer—while the fief of Arrakis is held by the Harkonnens, their preference for their own, newly built city, meant that the residency lay empty. While Count Fenring (described on p.259) is typically at the side of the Padishah Emperor, he is also occasionally dispatched to Arrakis to observe how the planet is being run and ensure that the spice flows consistently. This has resulted in considerable additional political and espionage resources being concentrated in Arrakeen, as the Houses see Fenring’s presence as being a route to earning the ear of the Emperor himself.

Fenring’s formidable reputation as an assassin and skilled duelist—said to be better than even one of the Emperor’s Saudaukar—renders this a risky proposition, and the intrigue concentrated around the governor’s residency is careful, polite even. The assassinations that do take place are carefully orchestrated and use the most sophisticated of methods. There is little use of crude methods such as hunter-seekers. Instead, most favour carefully administered poisons which induce death while obscuring the cause.

The Emperor’s presence is felt strongly in Arrakeen, far more strongly than elsewhere on the planet, and Corrino imagery manifests in surprising abundance. Some Mentats have speculated that this is a deliberate slight to the Harkonnens, and that the Emperor may only be a few years from removing their fief, while others insist that the relationship between the Harkonnens and the Padishah Emperor are actually closer and stronger than are commonly supposed.

Arrakeen is a city that stands in defiance to the hellish conditions surrounding it. It is built to endure, certainly, but also to prove the power of the Corrino Empire over both the planet itself, and the other Major Houses that might seek to claim the fief. Many have some influence over its disposition, from CHOAM to the Spacing Guild to the Landsraad and even the Fremen, but ultimately, from a legal standpoint, spice melange is the preserve of the Padishah Emperor, no matter who may temporarily hold sway over its control.