Arrakis (Dune)

Still largely covered by desert, Arrakis has in places been turned lush with vegetation on orders from the Emperor Paul Atreides. The current capital city, Arrakeen, features the Imperial Keep (fortress), Alia's temple, the Qizarate's headquarters, and tangles of modern buildings, streets, and bridges that offend the sensibilities of the freely-wandering natives, the superstitious Fremen. Most of them still prefer the wilderness and its old ways. Arrakis is the only place in the universe where the spice, melange, is produced, a critical monopoly that others wish to see broken. Plotters conspire to kidnap a small worm that produces melange and take it offplanet.

The Bene Gesserit

A female order devoted to the mental and physical arts in service to controlling genetic lines, the Bene Gesserit is, in the twelfth year of Emperor Paul Atreides' reign, headed by the bitter and scheming Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam...