Leto Atreides II

**Leto Atreides II** (10205-10209 AG - 13724-13728 AG), also known as the **God Emperor**, the **Tyrant**, **Dur**, **Guldur**, the **Great God Dur**, the **Worm**, **Worm God**, or **Old Worm**, or the **Prophet** or **Prophet of God** by the Bene Tleilax, was the fourth and last ruler of the Atreides Empire, before it began to break up into a loose federation ruled by various powerful groups. He was the second to hold the title of Padishah Emperor, and the first and only to hold the title of God Emperor. He was born the second son of Paul Atreides and his Fremen concubine Chani Kynes, the daughter of Liet Kynes, just after his twin sister Ghanima Atreides. After the death of his aunt, the regent Alia Atreides, Leto II proclaimed himself Emperor and ruled for 3,508 standard years, guiding humankind with his iron fist towards survival. He was named after the Duke Leto Atreides, his paternal grandfather, and Leto Atreides II the Elder, his older brother, who was murdered in infancy.

## History

### Upbringing

Leto II and his twin sister Ghanima were born on planet Arrakis during the reign of Emperor Paul Atreides. Their mother Chani died shortly after giving birth to the two children, due in large part to complications arising from large amounts of contraceptives that were surreptitiously given to her by Paul's legal wife Irulan Corrino. Paul had anticipated the birth of a daughter, Ghanima, due to his prescient visions. However, Leto's arrival came as a surprise to the Emperor. Both children were pre-born.

Following Chani's death, and the apparent death of their father in the desert of Arrakis, Leto and his sister became the legal responsibility of Paul's younger sister, the regent Alia. Though they were granted a fine upbringing, little attention was bestowed upon them by their aunt, who was possessed by Abomination and enthralled by her own power and the mysticism developed around the Atreides name by Paul.

### Evolution on Arrakis

When they were nine years old, Leto and Ghanima gained the attention of their paternal grandmother, Lady Jessica, who returned to Arrakis from Caladan to inspect them as part of her obligations to the Bene Gesserit. While visiting, Jessica sensed the latent power present in the twins, and upon the realization that they could be a threat to the psychologically unstable Alia, pressed her Fremen allies to help protect them.

At this same time, Leto's prescient powers began to emerge. Through visions and intuition he discovered the Golden Path that his father had earlier uncovered and begun to follow. However, unlike Paul, Leto developed a greater understanding of the Golden Path's implications. He sensed not only its dangers but also the painful steps that had to be taken to avoid it unraveling, which would be to the peril of humankind.

After Leto and Ghanima escaped a failed assassination attempt by House Corrino, the two split up, with Ghanima conditioned to believe her brother was dead, so that if she were to be interrogated on his whereabouts, she would not be able to tell the truth.

Leto then slipped into almost total anonymity, using the time and relative seclusion to build a foundation of power and knowledge through which the full impact of the Golden Path could be realized. To enact such steps required a strong (almost brutal) grip on power, and a longevity that would override the shortsightedness and impatience of Man.

Thus, after spending time amongst a variety of fringe Fremen elements, including The Preacher, Leto accepted sand trout upon his body and began the conversion into a human-sandworm hybrid. This transformation (which, at the beginning, was essentially a form of exoskeleton), boosted Leto's strength, reflexes and speed immensely, and he was able to move across large distances on foot.

### Ascendancy to Emperor

After his transformation had progressed to a sufficient stage, Leto emerged from the desert and returned to the city of Arrakeen to confront the possessed Alia and claim the throne of the empire. After Alia managed to briefly overcome her possession and take her own life, Leto claimed the title of Padishah "God" Emperor and promptly married his sister to consolidate his hegemony. The marriage was purely legal. Ghanima accepted Farad'n Corrino as her mate, but their descendants would be known as Atreides. The same year, Leto began writing his diaries, which would later be known as the Stolen Journals.

### Early years as God Emperor

Shortly after his ascendancy, Leto ordered a new ghola of Swordmaster Duncan Idaho from the Bene Tleilax to serve him as Commander of the Royal Guard, as the original Hayt ghola had been killed by the Fremen Naib Stilgar during the last days of Alia's regency. During the earliest years of his reign, Leto used the existing Fremen forces as well as Farad'n's Sardaukar troops, which he had given to him upon his ascension to the throne, to enforce his rule. His armies of Fremen and Sardauakar were commanded by a series of Idaho gholas, which would usually be replaced after they tried to kill him and he killed them in response, although very occasionally he allowed them to have natural deaths.

Over the centuries, Leto's empire, which he ruled as the God Emperor, became multigalactic through gradual growth. Very early on in this expansion, Leto suppressed the ancient Order of Mentats and banned the training of Mentats because they formed a nucleus of independent opposition.

#### Death of Ghanima

While Leto lived on for millenia, his sister and wife Ghanima, being but a mortal human woman, died after a relatively normal life in the first years of Leto's rule. After told of her death, Leto, heartbroken, wrote this in his journals:

"The sand beach as grey as a dead cheek, a green tideflow reflects cloud ripples; I stand on the dark wet edge. Cold foam cleanses my toes. I smell driftwood smoke."

He pressed a strand of Ghanima's hair, with a starflower blossom which she once brought to him, between these pages of the journals.

### The Fish Speakers

While for centuries the Fremen and Sardaukar legions were enough for Leto, he ultimately decided that these forces were unsuitable to his needs. Leto believed that male dominated military forces were essentially predatory and would turn against the civilian population in the absence of an external enemy, whereas a female one would tame and calm. He also needed a reliable religious organization to enforce what was coming to be known as Leto's Peace to ensure the unfolding of the Golden Path. Because of this, he founded a new all-female army to serve him, commanded by the continuing series of Duncan Idahos.

Leto named the army the "Fish Speakers" because the first priestesses spoke to fish in their dreams. Although the Fish Speakers were all female, males were still employed as house guards, and their commander Idaho was male. With the exception of the nomadic Amazons who legend described as once ruling part of the Asian steppes of Old Earth, the Fish Speakers were just about the only effective all-female army known throughout the history of the universe. They were also, in terms of worlds ruled and historical longevity, the most effective military force ever known.

### Burning of the Nine Historians

In his 2,116th year as the God Emperor, the famed Nine Historians came to Leto's attention. The historians angered Leto, for they had lied in their works, and he thought they deserved to be punished. On his orders, they were rendered unconscious, then burned on pyres of their own published works. Not one of them felt the flames, and they died peacefully. When Leto was petitioned by other historians seeking word of their fellows, he said:

"They were destroyed because they lied pretentiously. Have no fear that my wrath will fall upon you because of your innocent mistakes. I am not overly fond of creating martyrs. Martyrs tend to set dramatic events adrift in human affairs. Drama is one of the targets of my predation. Tremble only if you build false accounts and stand pride-fully upon them. Go now and do not speak of this."

Rumors of this spread across the Empire in the years that followed, through accounts which were later judged by the Bene Gesserit to have originated with Leto himself through his majordomo Ikonicre.

### Last Days

#### Suppression of Wallach IX

In the 3,431st year of Leto's reign, he learned through prescience of the Mentat School the Bene Gesserit thought they had hidden on Wallach IX. He sent Duncan Idaho to extinguish the School in order to enforce his ban of the Order, but some of the Mentat-Sisters escaped, hiding their identities and continuing work for the Sisterhood.

#### Visit of Sisters Chenoeh and Tawsuoko

In the 3,507th year of Leto's reign, Bene Gesserit Sisters Quintinius Violet Chenoeh and Tawsuoko came to Arrakis to confirm the long-suspected execution of the Nine Historians. Sister Chenoeh was invited to accompany the Fish Speakers in an entourage which accompanied one of Leto's infrequent peregrinations. At one point, she was invited to trot behind the Royal Cart and converse with the God Emperor himself. He told Chenoeh to tell the Sisterhood that he would "resore the outward view" and that the Bene Gesserit of all people should know the dangers of breeding for a particular characteristic, of seeking a defined genetic goal. Leto also told her things which she did not include in her report to the Sisterhood - thoughts on how he would be remembered, but also the statement that he would never see her again because she would not live to become a Reverend Mother. His predictions came true, as Chenoeh died in the Spice Agony due to melange incombatiblity.

#### Events leading up to the assassination

A year after Chenoeh's death, Leto sensed the need for the next step on the Golden Path and knew that his rule must end for further progress to occur. Thus Leto used Siona, a distant descendant of Ghanima and her concubine Farad'n, and a Duncan Idaho ghola created by the scheming Tleilaxu, after the previous one tried to assassinate him and he had killed him, according to the usual pattern. With them, he sowed the seed of the Atreides genes for future generations.

##### Assassination attempt by the Bene Tleilax

During this period, the Bene Tleilax attempted to kill Leto during his progression in the Royal Cart across the Idaho River with his majordomo Moneo Atreides, the newest Duncan Idaho ghola and an entourage of Fish Speakers. Face Dancers approached the group disguised as Museum Fremen (the remnants of the old Fremen of the desert days) before all transforming into a copy of Duncan, each having also obtained uniforms identical to those worn by Idaho. Their hope was to confuse the Fish Speakers into not knowing which Duncan to obey and to kill the God Emperor in the confusion. This failed, however, when Duncan took off his uniform, and so the Fish Speakers knew to obey the commands of the naked Duncan as they fought the Face Dancers. After this incident, he had the Tleilaxu Ambassador publically flogged and expelled.

##### Assassination attempt by the Bene Gesserit

Also in the months leading up to the God Emperor's death, two Reverend Mothers and Truthsayers, Tertius Eileen Anteac (who was also a secret Mentat) and Marcus Claire Luyseyal, came to Arrakis. They were warned about the upcoming assassination attempt by the Tleilaxu by Othwi Yake, the assistant to former Ixian ambassador Iyo Kobat, the man who had supplied the weapon Leto's most recent Duncan Idaho had used to try and kill the God Emperor, but their message to him arrived only after the assassinatioin had already failed, because the captain of the Fish Speaker guard would not believe them. Anteac and Luyseyal were granted an audience with Leto, however, at the end of which he agreed to continue the spice allotment of the Sisterhood at its current level for the next decade despite a further attempt at assassination using spice essence by the Sisters.

##### Hwi Noree and death of Malky

Leto fell in love with the new Ixian Ambassador Hwi Noree. Hwi was a direct female clone of Leto's former friend and advisor Malky created by the Tleilaxu in an Ixian no-chamber. Since Hwi was conceived and raised outside of his prescient abilities, Leto was unaware of her until she was presented to him as an ambassador. Leto was instantly smitten with Noree, and within a few months proposed marriage to her, and set the date of betrothal. After the announcement that Leto and Hwi were to wed, Hwi's uncle Malky was recalled to Arrakis by Leto, and murdered by Moneo after a last personal discussion with his old friend.

#### The assassination

A few weeks later, Leto, Hwi, and Moneo lost their lives when Siona ordered the bridge they were crossing to be cut by a lasgun by her assistant, Nayla. They all fell to their deaths into the Idaho River. In dying, he released the dormant sandtrout from his body. These began to reverse the terraforming on Arrakis. The planet begin to revert into a desert world from the realized Fremen dream of a lush paradise.

### Legacy During the Scattering and Later

During and after his reign, Leto II was viewed as an extremely controversial figure. Following Leto's death, a chain of dramatic events took place over a span of 1,500 years. This included the Famine Times, the Scattering, and the recreation of the sandworms on Arrakis, which emerged from the sandtrout that escaped from Leto's body when he fell into the water. Many of the established power brokers who existed at the start of his rule were either destroyed or significantly weakened, due to his draconian tactics and a monopoly on the spice melange. To his admirers, Leto II was known as the God Emperor, but to his enemies (including the Bene Gesserit) he was labeled the Tyrant of the known universe. He was worshipped by the Bene Tleilax as the Prophet of God after his death.

The religion of the God Emperor also continued on Dune, which became known as Rakis. He was worshipped by the priests of the new Church of the Divided God, which became the dominant force on Rakis and had essential control of the planet, as the great Divided God and the third member of the Holy Triumvirate of Heaven, the other being his grandmother Jessica, and his father, Muad'Dib. It was also believed by the Priests of Rakis that he had carried within him the spirit of his brother, Leto II the Elder. This worship continued until the attack on the planet by the Honored Matres and also with those returned to the Old Empire from the Scattering, who called Leto II Dur or Guldur.

#### Living on in the sandworms

It was also said that within each sandworm that grew on Arrakis after his death, a pearl of his consciousness existed. This theory was supported when, 1,500 years after his death, an Arrakeen girl named Sheeana, who was a direct descendant of Siona and Duncan Idaho who later became the youngest ever Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit, displayed the power to control the worms.

### Ghola 1,500 years after Assassination

#### On the *Ithaca*

1500 years after the death of the God-Emperor, aboard the no-ship the *Ithaca*, Duncan Idaho, and Sheeana decided to create a ghola with the cells of Leto II from the Tleilaxu Master Scytale's nullentropy tube. As he grew towards his teenage years, Leto II's ghola was a quiet, mysterious child, due in some part to not being raised with the ghola of his twin Ghanima. As Leto matured, he was explicably drawn to the hold of the ship, where a kilometer of sand held the last remaining sandworms from Dune.

As Leto reached the age of maturity, Leto was almost assassinated in an algae-food processing plant on the ship. One of the two Enhanced Face Dancers aboard the vessel decided that Leto being allowed to continue living was in direct conflict to the Outside Enemy's desire. As Leto visited the sandworms in the hold of the ship, the Face Dancer of Thufir Hawat actually tried to save Leto's life, as the Face Dancer thought himself to be Hawat. Days later, it was revealed that it was the Enhanced Face Dancer who was impersonating the Jewish Rabbi, who desired Leto's death before he became a teen.

#### On the Day of Kralizec

##### The *Ithaca* is Captured

A week later, the *Ithaca* was captured by the Enemy, who were revealed to the crew and passengers of the ship to be Omnius/Daniel and Erasmus/Marty, reborn leaders of the new Thinking Machine empire. The ship and select passengers were then brought to Synchrony, capital of the Machine Empire, so that Omnius and Erasmus could capture the Ultimate Kwisatz Haderach, whom Erasmus predicted was most likely aboard the ship.

##### Worms Released onto Synchrony

Most of the passengers associated directly with the ghola of Paul Atreides were led to the Cathedral by the machines in the heart of Synchrony; but Sheeana and Leto were left behind and stayed on the ship, with ideas of their own. As Leto communicated with the sandworms in the ship's hold, he told Sheeana that they desired to be released out into the semi-arid world. Leto and Sheeana then released the sandworms into the Machine capital, and the worms destroyed much of the city as they burrowed deep into the planet's crust, and as they came up they shattered many of the flow-metal buildings.

Meanwhile, galaxy altering events occurred in the Cathedral: The two gholas of Paul Atreides and Paolo battled and dueled to Paolo ending up in a coma, and Omnius was banished permanently to another plane of existence by Norma Cenva/Oracle of Time.

The loss of the Omnius Evermind contributed even more greatly to Leto's guidance of the worms destruction, as the robotic machines were near paralyzed in dealing with the worms as they coursed through their main city. Knowing that the machines were distracted by the melee enabled Khrone, leader of the Enhanced Face Dancers, to declare that the time of Face Dancer hegemony over the Known Universe had arrived. To counter this threat, Erasmus then activated his long before-placed "kill switch" he had put into their genetic make up hundreds of years before, and using the galaxy-wide tachyon net, all of Khrone's Face Dancers throughout the Known Universe were instantly killed.

Before the sandworms could reduce all of Synchrony to rubble, the Ultimate Kwisatz Haderach, Duncan Idaho, was revealed. He shared throughout flow-metal memory with Erasmus, creating a man/machine super-being who would guide the galaxies in a future of peace and prosperity.

##### Permanently One with the Sandworms

No longer needing to guide the sandworms on a course of destruction, Leto realized that he was happiest when embonded as one with the giant creatures, and placed his body as a type of genetic material inside on the worms ring casings. Leto merged with the worm, and became this time, a non-conscious human/sandworm genetic entity.