Scytale

[Dunenewt]

How did Scytale the Face Dancer become Scytale the Master, or were they different characters?  Discuss.

[Vanguard3000]

Presumably they were different characters.  Scytale may have been the "John" or "Mark" of the Tleilaxu.  Or, he may have assumed the name for psychological purposes.

Another option is that Scytale the Master may have been born with cells from Scytale the Face Dancer, but it does not seem likely, as the Master has no memories of his previous incarnation (which would have been the only reason they would have used the cells).  Also, there is a very defined line between the Face Dancers - paeons, slaves, mules - and the Masters.  Creating a Master out of a Face Dancer's genes would probably have been an unsavoury concept, even for the Tleilaxu.

[Dunenewt]

So perhaps the Master was named after the Face Dancer, who was held in high regard by the BT due to his connections with Muad'dib.  Just out of interest, I never understood why the BT had children, instead of just creating gholas of themselves.

[Vanguard3000]

They probably did grow their spawn in their Axolotl tanks.  After all,

[hide]The tanks were Tleilaxu women.[/hide]

[Dunenewt]

Yes, but I never understood why they'd create new unique versions, when they could just recreate themselves.

[Mahdi]

It is stated that Scytale had, in a previous life, met Paul, suggesting that it is the same character.

So, either Herbert made a continuity error in his own books (purposley in order to make the character Scytale) or, just as plausibly to me (we are dealing with fiction, after all) Scytale's DNA was altered to that of a master.

Look at how differently Face Dancers are treated in Messiah than in Heretics.  Scytale is most definately NOT a simple, mindless tool like all other face dancers are presented as in Heretics (and GEOD, for that matter).  He was a brilliant and powerfull man who out played the guild and the bene gesserit.

I think that as the Tlielaxu religion and social order evolved, so did there genetic philosophy.  Scytale was probably rewarded for his work creating the first Ghola who recovered his memory by being remade as a master, and in the thousands of years after that the face dancers were dumbed down and become a poorly regarded collection of creatures. 

[Dunenewt]

There's three main theories I've heard on this.

1)Genetic promotion, as described by Mahdi

2)The characters are unrelated

3)It was a mistake by Frank

[MrFlibble]

Clearly the Face Dancers at the time of Muad'Dib were different from the ones described in Heretics and Chapterhouse. As Mahdi pointed out, Scytale the Face Dancer has a human personality (human core I'd say), while post-Tyrant Face Dancers are purely genetically engineered, inhuman beings.

E.g. Scytale talks about a code of honor guiding his actions (compassion towards the intended victim), while the Face Dancers in Heretics are described as completely amoral.

There's three main theories I've heard on this.

1)Genetic promotion, as described by Mahdi

2)The characters are unrelated

3)It was a mistake by Frank

I strongly oppose the latter two, since it's mentioned in Heretics that

Scytale had spoken to Muad'dib

There aren't probably too many Tleilaxu who had done so, right?

And the "mistake theory" seems highly unfavourable to me, since Scytale is one of Dune Messiah's major characters, and I find it unlikely that Frank somehow "forgot" about him.

I think that as the Tlielaxu religion and social order evolved, so did there genetic philosophy.

The Tleilaxu religion did not evolve. Mother Superior Taraza says in Heretics that their religion and society is "a pattern frozen through millennia". But their genetic engineering techniques developed, of course, allowing, among other things, the Masters to gain immortality through gholas, growing gholas from cells instead of "reviving" dead corpses and so on.

[Mahdi]

Millenia has passed Between Dune and Heretics.  Their religion is most defiantely not the same in Messsiah as it is in Heretics, or even  in GEOD when they, you know, killed their future God.

[Dante]

Perhaps it was necessary in order for him to be considered such...

But that's nether here nor there. I firmly subscribe to the theory that Scytale was a Face Dancer who was genetically 'promoted' to be a Master at some point following the discovery of waking old memories. It says that he met Muad'dib, saw the Tyrant as a baby or something along those lines. And one character was a Face Dancer, the other a Master. Given the Tleilaxu mastery over their own genes, the answer becomes obvious.

Yes, but I never understood why they'd create new unique versions, when they could just recreate themselves.

Several reasons.

1- A stagnant population lends itself to disease.

2- Keeping brilliant men alive is one thing, but one should not preclude the possibility of more being born.

3- Constantly regrow yourself and repeat throughout a population and sooner or later the genetic pool will start to shrink. The effect will be the same as inbreeding. The Tleilaxu could probably deal with this, but why make more work for themselves?

4- The fitness of an organism decreases over evolutionary time. In order to keep up with new threats and conditions a species must evolve. The Tleilaxu were able to get around that through genetic modification (as they did to the last Duncan), but again it seems like a lot of work to preserve every member of a population and treat their genes to be more up to date.

Etc...

Given the genetic manipulation that the Tleilaxu were supposed to be capable of (extended quite dramatically in the DE), it's really not a stretch of the imagination to consider the Scytales as the same person.

[SandChigger]

Actually, he became a Master after a millennium of loyal and devoted service as a cabaret singer in London! (The one on Gansireed, not the one on Terra, the latter no longer in existence by then.)

He used to wow them with a jazz scat rendition of Macbeth, among other things.

<i>O yeah...till Dunsinane shall come to Gansireed ... bop bop WOW!</i>

(Yup, been a long day here.)

[MrFlibble]

Their religion is most defiantely not the same in Messsiah as it is in Heretics, or even  in GEOD when they, you know, killed their future God.

Ahem, Leto II was never the Tleilaxu God. They revered him as the Prophet, the God's Messenger, but never as God Emperor.

In Messiah or GEoD, the Tleilaxu never reveal anything about themselves. In Heretics, it is mentioned that Leto II knew their deception but seemingly did nothing about it.

They had waited millennia for this time, his people. Waff savored the moment now. All through the bad times of the Prophet Leto II (not God Emperor but God's Messenger), all through the Famines and the Scattering, through every painful defeat at the hands of lesser creatures, through all of those agonies the Tleilaxu had built their patient forces for this moment.

We have come to our moment, O Prophet!

The city that lay beneath his high window he saw as a symbol, one strong mark on the page of Tleilaxu design. Other Tleilaxu planets, other great cities, interlinked, interdependent, and with central allegiance to his God and his city, awaited the signal that all of them knew must come soon. The twinned forces of Face Dancers and Masheikh had compressed their powers in preparation for the cosmic leap. The millennia of waiting were about to end.

Waff thought of it as "the long beginning."

Yes. He nodded to himself as he looked at the crouching city. From its inception, from that infinitesimal kernel of an idea, Bene Tleilax leaders had understood the perils of a plan so extended, so protracted, so convoluted and subtle. They had known they must surmount near disaster time and again, accept galling losses, submissions and humiliations. All of this and much more had gone into the construction of a particular Bene Tleilax image. By those millennia of pretense they had created a myth.

"The vile, detestable, dirty Tleilaxu! The stupid Tleilaxu! The predictable Tleilaxu! The impetuous Tleilaxu!"

Even the Prophet's minions had fallen prey to this myth. A captive Fish Speaker had stood in this very room and shouted at a Tleilaxu Master: "Long pretense creates a reality! You are truly vile!" So they had killed her and the Prophet did nothing.

How little all of those alien worlds and peoples understood Tleilaxu restraint. Impetuosity? Let them reconsider after the Bene Tleilax demonstrated how many millennia they were capable of waiting for their ascendancy.