Honored Matres
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The Honored Matres are an organization in the fictional Dune universe created by Frank Herbert in his six-book Dune series of science-fiction novels.
They developed during the Scattering, presumably as an outgrowth from or a combination of the Fish Speakers and Bene Gesserit organizations. Since the Honored Matres did not have access to the melange or the Water of Life which give the Bene Gesserit their heightened awareness and mental abilities, they substituted another drug that stimulates adrenaline production. In addition to heightening the senses and responses of a user, this stimulant has the unique property of causing brilliant orange flecks to appear in the eyes of an addict when enraged, a common sentiment in an Honored Matre. However, it does not give access to the Other Memories possessed by the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers, nor is there any evidence that it provides the same prescient abilities that accompany large doses of melange.
The Honored Matres are characterized by their extremely violent tendencies and their ability to imprint a man sexually, amplifying his orgasmic response to such an ecstatic (and addictive) height that the victim of an imprinting is a willing slave of the Honored Matre who "marks" him. Both of these qualities are presumably evolutions of the unbridled sexual energies of the Siaynoq communion once enjoyed by the Fish Speakers with the God Emperor Leto Atreides II, once those energies ceased to have a singular focus. The sexual imprinting practiced by the Honored Matres hearkens back to the obvious roots of this order in the original Bene Gesserit, from which they also took elements of the deep prana-bindu training. Both the imprinting and the prana-bindu training were modified and enhanced to give the Honored Matres much more potent abilities in these two areas than their Bene Gesserit progenitors. Honored Matres are superhumanly fast and are more than a match for a fully trained Reverend Mother in direct combat.
By all accounts they ruled a huge empire in the Scattering (several times larger than the Old Empire in size and population), but were eventually overthrown, by what force or entity is unknown. Theories include the 'Super Face dancers,' Daniel and Marty, or the remnants of Omnius' Thinking Machine (AI) empire; there is also a hint in of some force or weapon that makes them vegetables and it briefly theorized that they are fleeing from a biological weapon. The remnant of the Honored Matres then fled back to the Old Empire to build a new dominion.
Several different historical implications are inherent with the appearance of the Honoured Matres - they are the reverse of the events described in Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse Dune, where the Bene Gesserit allied themselves with the Bene Tleilax, though naturally in command of that alliance by virtue of their tools of religious statecraft and manipulation, the Missionaria Protectiva.
In the Scattering, Honoured Matres are the combination of the Fish Speakers of Leto Atreides II and the Bene Gesserit, and are also unique in having developed a replacement narcotic to replace the withdrawal symptoms of the Spice, Melange. Replacing other memories with impressed knowledge imprinted on the nervous system by an interrogative agony-inducing T-probe, developed from the mind-reading Ixian probe for mental interrogation of prisoners of war or captured enemy intelligence operatives.
The Honoured Matre's antagonists (The Ones With Many Faces) appear to be a combination of the Bene Gesserit and the Face Dancers. The Reverend Mother Lucilla encounters Sirafa, one of the Ones With Many Faces on Gammu/Giedi Prime, who is both a Face Dancer and descendant of a Bene Gesserit bloodline.
The Honored Matres rule through sexual enslavement, sheer physical power, and the terror inspired by their draconian methods. They are completely without mercy and quick to anger, often resorting to extreme measures of violence in the face of the slightest provocations. The Bene Gesserit believe that these tendencies arise from the rage that comes from inability to satisfy the increasingly jaded tastes that necessarily come from being able to exercise absolute sexual or sensual control over another person. The leadership succession practices employed by the order are severe; a subordinate sister that manages to kill the leader, the so-called Great Honored Matre, takes her place.
This assassination produces the ultimate Schism of the Bene Gesserit - the conservative faction (who may eventually produce the next generation of Ones With Many Faces) escape with Duncan Idaho on the No-ship from Chapterhouse, while the passionate Bene Gesserit led by the other-memory of Darwi Odrade and Alma Mavis Taraza through Murbella, will combine with the Honoured Matres to face the Ones with Many Faces in an unknown future.
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