Carthag (Arrakis)

Carthag is approximately 200 kilometers from Arrakeen and requires a difficult journey across the particularly inhospitable wastes known as the Broken Lands. It was constructed by House Harkonnen shortly after it was granted the fiefdom of Arrakis in 10,114 A.G. While Arrakeen was for many generations prior the planet’s largest city and the traditional seat of the planetary governor, the relatively unadorned and stark nature of much of the architecture rendered it unsuitable for the more baroque Harkonnen tastes. As a result, Carthag was built to suit their own aesthetic preferences.

If Arrakeen is a city built in defiance of Arrakis, Carthag is built in carefully willed ignorance. It is a metropolis constructed as though it were on another world entirely. The Harkonnens won the fiefdom of Arrakis and began to exploit it in earnest upon their arrival. The Baron Dmitri Harkonnen, upon arrival on Arrakis, quickly decided that the relative austerity of Arrakeen architecture was not to his tastes. As a result, work began on the creation of Carthag. The new capital city offered a level of opulence and luxury that Arrakis had never previously possessed. It is a series of beautifully constructed, carefully adorned and exquisitely rendered citadels.

CARTHAG’S LOCATION

The city’s location was carefully chosen, with the Broken Lands serving as a highly effective shield against any threat of attack from Arrakeen save from the air. By making access on foot virtually impossible, Carthag was insulated against a great deal of the varieties of political intrigue which make Arrakeen so dangerous. Visitors from Arrakeen must travel by ornithopter, and, as a result, can be tracked by Harkonnen security forces from even before they have entered the confines of the city.

This position also ensures that Carthag is the first port of call for mining vessels as they return from the desert. Rather than laboriously making one’s way to Arrakeen, it is possible for mining machinery to halt at Carthag to refuel. This is another, entirely deliberate strategy on behalf of the Harkonnens, enabling them to keep a much closer eye on the spice brought in by their various harvesters. The cynical have suggested that this also enables the Harkonnens to assemble their own supplies of spice, out of sight of many of the Emperor’s attendants and wardens. This is, again, entirely deliberate. The current Baron Harkonnen is renowned for his mastery of political maneuvering and for the acuity of his trade deals—few in the Landsraad doubt that he has turned Carthag into a spice manufacturing facility of some kind.

CARTHAG’S ARCHITECTURE

Carthag is a walled city, and heavily guarded. The Harkonnens are both wealthy and paranoid, and it is partly the constant fear of assassination that resulted in the founding of Carthag. As with Arrakeen, the central districts of Carthag are occupied chiefly by the palatial complex constructed for the Harkonnen rulers. These are huge—much larger than the governor’s residency— and built entirely with offworld stone in a brutalist fashion, a symbol of their pitiless character. Steep walls, impassive stone faces, narrow windows, and an overwhelming dehumanizing aesthetic are characteristics of the city.

POPULATION OF CARTHAG

The population of Carthag is substantially different from the diversity of Arrakeen. There are almost no Fremen in the city at all, and the few that are there are treated poorly and with extreme suspicion, only remaining if they have no other options. Most of the population are city-dwellers or former offworlders directly loyal to the Harkonnens, with a small number from other Houses the Harkonnens either own or seek to curry favor with. There is also a substantial deputation from the Guild, with which the Harkonnens deal extremely carefully, ensuring that their space travel rights are absolutely secure. Again, it is widely supposed that the Harkonnens can maintain a special relationship with the Guild as a result of their own secret supply of the spice.

The entirety of Carthag is essentially dedicated to procuring the favor of the Landsraad and the Guild. Beyond the various mining and refining centers, the city is filled with brothels and drinking establishments, as well as clubs for the wealthy to indulge their various vices in. It is a shopfront for everything the Harkonnens can offer to those who pledge their fealty to the Baron’s strategies. Whatever predilection one might possess, the various lairs of corruption in Carthag are likely to offer them— and in their most expensive and debauched form.

This reputation is only reinforced by the presence of the current ruler of Carthag and the planetary governor of Arrakis itself, at least while his uncle, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, remains off planet. Glossu Rabban is renowned for his brutality and thuggishness. While the Baron Harkonnen is praised for the sharpness of his mind (however colossal and perverse his appetites might be), Rabban possesses no such redeeming features. He is coarse and savage in his approach to the Fremen and to Arrakis itself—exploiting it and the fief as ruthlessly as he can. As virtually the entire population of the planet knows, this comes at the order of the Baron himself, but the frenzied nature with which the Fremen are attacked and Arrakis is drained of its spice and water… that is all Rabban.