Dune 2D20: Session 1 - Trip to Gamont

The blue sun rose over Bonavera, lighting up the Studio City of Lake, glittering off the almost-frozen surface of the artificial body of fresh water that half encircled it. The planet wasn't warm enough to have a natural water cycle, yet.

 

Figaro, two fisted editor and House mentat to the Viracocha dynasty, summoned four people to his office for a secret mission:

• Tost Alejandrez, Superfluous offspring of Earl Viracocha 
• Sister Victoria, Bene Gesserit Bodyguard
• Huascar Quilago, Stunt man but for real
• Doctor Saman Ichuri, Slumming Suk Doctor

Figaro didn't turn to greet his visitors, watching them in the rear view mirror of his editing desk with one eye, while the other focused on his work. He was cutting together three movies at once, hands flicking across the controls as he put the finishing touches on a documentary, an investment pitch and a porno. He cursed the director's sloppy work, then remembered he had company.

The situation was this: House Runasimi, to which House Viracocha owed fealty, was at war with House Orlok (and by extension House Nuntius). House Runasimi was good at political maneuvering, not direct combat, and needed mercenaries. Runasimi gave the procurement to Viraccha, and now the mentat was giving it to the four agents. They were competent enough that they might actually succeed, expendable enough that it wasn't a big deal if they failed, and low profile enough that they wouldn't instantly be recognized on the covert adventure they were about to embark on.

 

The specifics of the mission: there was a convention on Gamont, where a number of mercenary armies would be holding demonstrations and soliciting contracts. The agents had the dispensation of the house to initiate a contract with one of these armies in order to defend the house. Figaro stipulated that the ideal mercenary army would be

• Effective
• Loyal
• Within House Runasimi's budget

He understood that in procurement, you rarely got all three of "good, loyal, and cheap". He counted on the agents negotiating aggressively and using their heads to get a good deal.

 

The agents concurred with Figaro's plan for the expedition: they would travel as tourists undercover, using a commercial shuttle to board the Guild Heighliner and staying at a hotel on Gamont prior to attending the conference. They decide to bring three retainers with them:

• Lydia Maru, makeup artist and master of disguise
• Mentat Joe, ageing human computer with a drug bug addiction and a phobia of insects
• Jasper the Bodyguard, alcoholic House Ginaz fanboy
  

The group picked up some minor equipment from the House reserves, and away they went.

Dune 2D20: House Viracocha

House Viracocha rules the Studio City of Lake, the heart of House Runasimi’s media empire. Though Bonavera is an unpopular place to shoot film due to the harsh light of its blue star, one out of every five movies in the Known Universe is produced in Lake. Filmbooks, movies, documentaries, pornography, Viracocha does it all.

The House is led by Earl Alejandro Viracocha. A sound mixer born into the pyon class, Alejandro’s skill at blackmail and his ability to instantly tell whether something would be popular saw his meteoric rise through the house production companies. He attained Earldom by buying off the sitting Earl’s debts, in exchange for the hand of his daughter Castine Viracocha in marriage. He is adept at anticipating and servicing House Runasimi’s media and propaganda needs. Privately, he considers them soul crushingly dull, referring to them as “corporate” or “the suits” in conversation.

Earless Castine Viracocha is an enthusiastic skier, mountaineer, hunter and explorer. Most of her media appearances are documentaries about her outdoor adventures. The Imperium is a mature civilization, but many colony worlds remain undeveloped or underexplored. Bonavera itself is only fully mapped at a satellite level, and Castine enjoys leading visiting nobility on hunting trips and ecological surveys to see if House Viracocha’s terraforming efforts are taking. She channels profits from the Viracocha media empire into real estate and tourism projects, building resorts for winter sports like skiing and repulsor jumping.

The Earl’s chosen heir is Capæcnencæpæc "Cappy" Viracocha, investigative journalist. Cappy is a master of disguise and an expert at getting people to share information with her. Her budding intelligence network gives House Viracocha greater control of incoming information as well as outgoing. It also makes her suspicious enough to be worth assassinating, or at least taking as a hostage. The Earl has told her publicly that if she gets captured doing something stupid, he’s nominating one of her siblings as heir rather than paying the ransom.

The Viracocha family would be helpless without House Mentat Figaro, the two-fisted screenwriter-editor-producer who leaves his personal touch on all the House’s most popular brands. Though his formal training is in propaganda and psychology, his true love is special effects work, hand painting each frame of a film to achieve the perfect blend of photorealism and style. He even finds time to do a little HR and personnel management work in-between, though he considers it an irritating distraction and prefers to farm it out to the House Truthsayer.

Dune 2D20: House Runasimi

House Runasimi rules the terrestrial planet Bonavera, the fourth planet orbiting the blue star Rigel. Blue stars are poor candidates for life but the rocky world once hosted vast ecologies of alien coral, which now form the backbone of its massive mountain chains. The first settlers to the world lived in tunnels and caves carven from the planet’s natural “pores” while they slowly terraformed the surface, binding atmospheric nitrogen and using it to cultivate algae, fertile soil and plants until the air was breathable.

 

The world now sports patches of plant life, cultivated by enterprising dirt farmers on ridges and valleys in between the marble cliffs.

Runasimi’s military is just powerful enough to govern its own planet, and the assorted houses minor who directly administer the regions beyond its own holdings. Lacking vast armies or skilled assassins, the house exerts influence on imperial politics through soft power. The Diplomacy College in the planetary capital of Huanchaco is second only to the Bene Gesserit finishing schools in teaching its pupils to acquire and wield power, attracting students from other houses across the Imperium - and giving House Runasimi direct influence over their education and beliefs. The “Studio City” of Lake (so called because it sits on the shore of the world’s only lake, an artificial creation of the planetologists who oversaw the original settlement) is one of the main centers of cultural warfare in the Known Universe. Great Houses across the Imperium commission filmbooks and plays, songs and comic operas from Lake. All vying to contaminate the universe’s high and low culture alike with their own messages and propaganda.

House Runasimi’s “scholarship” program recruits promising peasants from other houses across the Imperium, offering transportation to Bonavera and a full ride at a premier school. In exchange, the recruits are bonded to the House, repaying the investment with a lifetime of service. It’s a better offer than they’ll get at home.

Dune 2D20: House Nuntius

Nuntius is a House Minor, acquired as a trophy of war by House Orlok in a skirmish with House at-Tam. As a condition of victory, the losing house was forced to bankroll the relocation of House Nuntius’ entire temple-city of Berenike to an aerostat on Rulag.

House Nuntius’ own religion is a cult of the Horned Mother, one of the primary avatars of God appearing in the Orange Catholic Bible. Agents of House Nuntius present as ecumenical missionaries and translators, who can be hired or bought to smooth diplomatic relationships between Houses with radically different religious and cultural beliefs. Privately, within the hermeneutic lecture halls of Berenike Bible College, House Nuntius’ most learned doctors of the church debate the most effective methods for subtly converting outsiders to their own religious views.

House Orlok employs diplomats from House Nuntius to “mediate” disputes with other Houses, primarily to make themselves appear more fearsome by comparison. And also to claim that they have made the required peace overtures prior to declaring war.

Dune 2D20: House Orlok

House Orlok rules the greenhouse world of Rulag, a terrestrial planet orbiting the excessively bright yellow star Rho Cassiopeiae. The planet is shrouded in a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid. This toxic “heavier than air” atmosphere renders the surface uninhabitable, but allows the inhabitants to live in aerostats, floating cities filled with breathable air. The planet has no native life outside primitive aeroplankton, which planetologists incorporated into an aerial ecology populated by sports of earth birds which can survive in the poisonous atmosphere.

House Orlok are great warriors obsessed with their image as great warriors. The war colleges and assassin schools of the Floating World teach their initiates to kill with artistry that inspires fear and respect. They are assisted by a propaganda apparatus that brands and markets the Legions of House Orlok according to their modus operandi: The Flame Cataphracts, who ride into battle on suspensor bikes and suffocate enemies inside their shields with gouts of chemical fire. The Bomb Knights, who kill with spears tipped with high explosive squash heads. The Sulfur Dragoons, who wade into battle wearing thermoplastic fatigues and dissolve their enemies in seas of acid.

House Orlok’s obsession with reputation is its achilles heel. Its soldiers would rather die with style than win and look bad. This also means that any attack on the House’s reputation is a mortal threat to its power. When House Runasimi included unflattering footage of House Orlok’s forces in the third reel of Soldiers of the Queen, its comedy series documenting the Imperium’s most ignominious military pratfalls, it was tantamount to a declaration of war. House Orlok responded with an actual declaration of war, vowing the extermination of House Runasimi in exchange for the sleight.