As Dune: The Machine Crusade began, Ginjo (now Grand Patriarch of the Holy Jihad) and Serena (Priestess of the Jihad) had become the religious leaders of the human rebellion, and Xavier and Vorian its two generals. Xavier, thinking Serena was dead instead of a captive, had married her sister Octa and started a family. In 191 B.G., Ginjo created the "Seraphim", an elite force tasked with protecting Serena. She became interim Viceroy in 190 B.G. on her father's retirement, but was later relegated to a figurehead by Ginjo as he consolidated his power.
In 164 B.G., the humans were tired of war, but Serena and Ginjo knew that true peace was not possible — the machines had to be destroyed. Serena visited machine leader Omnius on Corrin as an emissary of the Jihad under the pretense of negotiating peace; secretly she planned to provoke Omnius into killing her, thereby making her a martyr and reenergizing the Jihad. Although Erasmus stopped Omnius from murdering Serena, one of her Seraphim bodyguards, on orders from Ginjo, killed her instead. Ginjo manufactured images of Serena being tortured at length and murdered by the thinking machines, using a Serena clone manufactured by the Tlulaxa. The plan worked; dissenters fell silent and the Jihad was galvanized back into action.
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Famous quotes containing the word machine:
“One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.”
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915)