The Order Obsidian Suns

Authored by Damien Harker, Sovereign of the Obsidian Suns

There is a saying among my people of Xal-Kara: “Cloth remembers its maker, as steel remembers its flame.” I find this truth reflected in every thread, every polished curve of the armor that adorns my Order. A uniform is never mere attire — it is a vessel of ideology, a testament to what we revere and what we despise.

The Initiates, those first to enter the shadow, are wrapped in what we call veilcloth — a coarse, matte material that drinks in the light. It affords little protection from a blade, yet it shields the spirit from arrogance. Their armor plates are dull, unfinished. They must earn the right to gleam. Their helmets are expressionless masks with no glow, for the Initiate has not yet found their inner fire. They are as the desert night before the dawn — unseen, untested, but full of potential.

The Ascendants — those proven through silence and blood — wear armor of hardened onyx, shaped to mimic the musculature of a warrior yet smoothed to near-perfect symmetry. It is said that the very air bends around them, whispering the hymns of those who have fallen. Their cloaks bear faint geometric stitching — sigils of victories never spoken aloud. They carry daggers curved in the Xal-Karan style: blades made to resemble crescent moons, honed sharp enough to part the silence itself.

The Shadowfrost, our High Council, are vision incarnate. Their armor is polished obsidian, so flawless it mirrors the void itself. Within its reflection lies not the world, but one’s own conviction. Upon their pauldrons, crescents of burnished froststeel gleam, twin arcs symbolizing Skaldren and Vaelstrøm — light that does not warm, illumination that does not forgive. Their visors emit a low, viridian glow, a reminder that power, when channeled properly, is not loud. It is cold. Still. Eternal.

And then there is mine — the armor of the Sovereign. Forged in the volcanic forges beneath the Ashen Spires of Xal-Kara, it carries veins of green photonic ore — the same that fuels the Temple’s ambient light. My cloak is woven from the hair of the sand-serpent, blackened by exposure to the planet’s cryonic winds. It moves as though alive, rippling in rhythm with my breath. Beneath it, I feel the pulse of the world — the heartbeat of stone and storm.

Our uniforms are not worn for ceremony alone. They are survival. On Xal-Kara, temperatures plunge below death’s threshold. On Arrakis, they rise beyond it. The armor seals against both — an equilibrium of frost and flame. The Order’s attire, in its balance, reflects our doctrine: To endure both the burning and the frozen, to let neither master us.

I have often watched an Initiate gazing at the polished figure of a Shadowfrost, and I see in their posture the stirring of envy — the mortal desire for recognition. Yet envy is a lesser fire, fleeting and loud. What I wish them to see instead is the quiet perfection of restraint, the discipline required to bear one’s radiance unseen.

We are not priests, nor soldiers, nor assassins. We are the silence between breaths — the stillness before the universe exhales. Our garments simply remind us of that truth.

And when the ultraviolet suns of my home rise together — Skaldren to the east, Vaelstrøm to the west — their combined light cannot be perceived by common eyes. Only through the visor of our armor, through lenses tinted to the spectrum of deathlight, does one glimpse the pure violet radiance of eternity.

I wear that color in my mind, and in my purpose. It is the hue of dominion. It is the color of the Obsidian Suns.

Entry I – The Sardaukar Descend

The Sardaukar came not as raiders, but as judgment itself. Their arrival was heralded by blood-red banners whipping in the desert winds, their boots pressing the sand into submission. The Shai-Hulud Syndicate and my Order stood together, for once not as conspirators but as brothers in open defiance of the Emperor’s iron dogs. For days, the sands shook with the clash of blade and cry of men. The Syndicate’s spice-fires turned the air into flame. My assassins became shadows in the storm. But the Sardaukar do not break. They grind.

Zodameraz cam-io, bian mazim! ("O Lordless Heavens, bear witness to our stand!")

Entry II – The Fall of the Syndicate

The Syndicate’s defenses crumbled under the relentless advance. Their caravans burned, their spice vaults burst open like sacrificial offerings to the storm. I stood with their leader, [Redacted], upon the dunes as his empire fell. His eyes were not afraid—only alive, fierce, shining with a love for his people and a hunger for dignity in death.

"Damien," he said, voice rough with blood, "do not mourn us. We burn not to vanish, but to light your path. Carry the Syndicate’s fire into shadow. Make it eternal."

I clasped his forearm, and in that final grip I felt something rarer than fear, rarer than spice—brotherhood, unashamed, carved out of the marrow of war. A vow unspoken but sealed in silence. When the Sardaukar’s blades pierced him, I turned not to fight but to remember. Some deaths cannot be repaid, only honored.

Entry III – Retreat into Shadow

The Order withdrew into the folds of night, our cloaks trailing dust, our hearts heavy yet unbroken. The Syndicate lay in ruin, their leader entombed in fire and sand. But his final words became our new oath:

Zodameraz obelis, vaelstrøm kalas!— ("The heavens burn, the tide endures!")

We would be their living memory. Their name would echo in our whispers, their banners stitched into our shadows. The Emperor may think he crushed rebellion. The Sardaukar may think they silenced us. But beneath the dunes, the Order endures. And the Syndicate, though broken, breathes still in us.

Journal of Lord Damien Harker Cycle 411 — Location: Arrakis, deep desert encampment north of the Shield Wall

Entry: On the Fremen Myths

I find myself surrounded by a people whose mythos runs deeper than the dunes they walk upon. The Fremen — the true natives of this furnace world — breathe belief as if it were water. To them, the desert is not mere landscape; it is scripture written in sand and wind. I, however, approach it as I do all things — with calculation and quiet skepticism. Still, it is not lost on me that power often hides within myth, and so I observe.

They speak of Shai-Hulud, the Great Maker, with a reverence that borders on worship and madness. The worm, both god and beast. To kill it is to blaspheme; to ride it, to transcend. They see eternity in its coils — a being that devours the world and births it anew in its passing. Some say the worms dream beneath the sands, dreaming us all into being. Others whisper that when a worm dies, its spirit becomes the storm.

I heard one Fremen elder say, in that guttural cadence of theirs: “The desert remembers no footprints, but it remembers names.” A poetic fatalism. It struck me, for it echoes my own Order’s doctrine — Oblivion is the womb of power.

I am an off-worlder to them. A pale revenant cloaked in black light. I have seen them avert their eyes, whispering in their tongue when I pass. They mark me as something between omen and ghost. Perhaps they are not entirely wrong.

Their myths are elemental, and yet there is logic buried in their mysticism. To survive Arrakis demands faith in something — if not in gods, then in one’s endurance. Their myth of The Lisan al-Gaib, the Voice from the Outer World, fascinates me most. A prophecy of a stranger who will bring paradise to Arrakis. It is a myth weaponized by history itself — a seed planted to control a people through their longing. Even I, a student of manipulation, can admire its design.

In studying their stories, I see the same architecture of belief that built empires long before my birth. Fear, faith, and survival braided together until indistinguishable. I wonder — were I to write new myths for Xal-Kara, would I too become a god in the eyes of my descendants; do I want this though? The Fremen remind me that faith is the most efficient weapon of all — for it kills quietly, without spilling blood.

I have begun recording fragments of their tongue — chants murmured under starlight, prayers to the worms and the wind. Perhaps, in understanding their myths, I can shape them into instruments. Or perhaps, in understanding them, I will come to see what they see when they look at the endless sand — not death, but a kind of eternity.

Note to self: Seek the Sietch at Sihaya Ridge. There are whispers of a Keeper of Old Songs there — one who knows the unspoken verses of the Shai-Hulud myth. I must hear these before they vanish, devoured by time and empire alike.

-Damien Harker (Lord of Xal-Kara)

Addendum to Journal Entry — “On the Fremen Myths”

Fragmented Chant of the Deep Desert (as overheard near Sietch Sihaya)

“Shai-Hulud, jiva dur ah’man, tah’ne kul shai, tah’ne kul jah’nah…” (“Great Maker, soul beneath the sand, you devour what is weak, you birth what endures…”) “We walk upon your skin, O endless one. Each step a prayer, each breath your gift.” (Literal translation: “The desert is your breath — we live in its inhalation.”) “Lisan al-Gaib, we do not seek you. We become you, in dust, in thirst, in silence.” (“The Voice from the Outer World — we are the echo before it is spoken.”)

I recorded the chant through the veil of a sandstorm — half-mad voices rising like smoke from unseen throats. The words were not sung for beauty but for survival. It was a rhythm meant to keep breath steady through the storm, a ritual of pacing one’s will against the fury of the planet.

There is genius in it. The chant itself regulates breathing, heart rate, and endurance — a spiritual algorithm wrapped in poetry. The Fremen call it “Dun'harra,” the Breath of the Worm. A living prayer designed for function and faith alike.

I observed that those who chanted did not tire. Their eyes were vacant, not with despair but focus — trance-bound, as if entrained by the pulse of Shai-Hulud itself. In that rhythm, they merged with the desert, becoming invisible to it. Perhaps that is their secret: not to conquer Arrakis, but to vanish within it.

I find myself repeating fragments under my breath, half in curiosity, half in hunger for its calm:

“Tah’ne kul shai, tah’ne kul jah’nah…” You devour what is weak. You birth what endures.

Journal of Lord Damien Harker

Entry – The Guardian of the Ash Dunes

Tonight, beneath the ultraviolet glare of Skaldren and Vaelstrøm, I crossed the ash dunes where the wind runs sharp enough to flay skin. There, the desert revealed to me a creature I had only heard spoken of in whispers among the hunters of my House.

It emerged from the fog like a moving cliff—obsidian shell fractured with scars, pincers wide as a man’s dwelling, its eyes glowing with the necrotic hue of the twin suns. The elders call it a Vaelid Scaith, the Shadow-Beast of the Ash Sea. They say it slumbers beneath the stone until disturbed, indifferent until trespass wakes its hunger.

I did not move. Not because of courage, but because instinct whispered what books could not: its violence is not born of malice, but of intrusion. To step wrongly would be to invite judgment. And so I stood, calculating the ground, remembering each step I had taken, measuring the creature’s reach in silence. My breath shallow, my hand upon the hilt, but not drawing—the act of steel would mean certain death.

The beast lowered its massive claws to the sand and scraped a furrow as wide as a trench. A warning. Not a strike. Its nature is not predatory unless provoked. I understood then why the hunters of my people stalk it in groups of twelve or more. The meat of such a beast sustains an entire holdfast, its marrow and blood boiled into sustaining broths, its shell repurposed as armor for initiates of the Order. But alone, it is no quarry—only an executioner.

Step by step, I withdrew, retracing my path as though undoing a trespass. The Scaith’s eyes followed me, luminous, silent. When the last of my footprints overlapped the first, it ceased its vigilance and turned its colossal form away, vanishing into the mist as though it had never been.

I could not help but wonder—how many of my ancestors learned this same lesson in terror? That dominion over Xal-Kara is not forged in conquest, but in acknowledgment. The land and its beasts will not be mastered—they will only allow one’s survival, if their boundaries are respected.

I return tonight shaken, yet sharpened. I have learned a new law of my people: not all strength lies in the strike—sometimes, it lies in restraint.

Chronicle V – The Trials of Skaldren and Vaelstrøm

Entry I – The Bitter Dust

The novices of the Order knelt before me, their lips stained viridian. Each swallowed the draught of Spice, heavy and burning — not in body, but in the marrow of their souls. This was no feast, no indulgence, but the first cut of separation between the flesh and the flame within. The Fremen laugh when offworlders choke on the spice winds, but our initiates drink storms whole. This is the way of the Black Suns: you do not survive the fire — you become it.

"ZIRDO NOCO MAH ZODI!" (Drink the fire, become the fire!)

Entry II – The Splitting of Sight

As the Spice consumed them, I recited the names of the suns: Skaldren, witness; Vaelstrøm, devourer. Their bodies shook. Some wept as visions clawed open their sight. The pale sands of Xal-Kara appeared in their minds, folding into the golden wastes of Arrakis until no boundary remained. Those who failed to master the vision drowned in it, their screams echoing until their voices were lost. The desert keeps such echoes — I call them offerings to Vaelstrøm. Those who endured saw more: lines of possibility branching like black rivers across eternity. Their eyes opened pale and glowing, as though Skaldren had written in their bones.

"IAHAD LONSHI, ZODACAR OD GRAA!" (See beyond flesh, behold the rivers of eternity!)

Entry III – The Trial of Silence

For three days, initiates sat in the dust, unshielded from sun and sand, forbidden water. Their only sustenance was the rhythm of their own breath and the whisper of the Voice within. On the third night, I approached each in turn. To those who faltered, I spoke their true name aloud. They broke, weeping, and were cast aside. But to those who had conquered themselves, I said nothing. They looked into me with eyes like void-lit emerald, and spoke to me instead — not with sound, but with the Voice. Thus are the Sun-Blades born: assassins not of mere flesh, but shadows tempered by Skaldren’s memory and Vaelstrøm’s hunger.

"MADRIAX ZOMD, LOAGAETH!" (Silence is a blade, sharpened by the gods!)

Entry IV – The Ascension Rite

At dawn, the survivors rose. Cloaked in black and viridian, faces hidden, their blades kissed by the spice flames. Each raised their weapon to the horizon, swearing fealty not to coin, nor even to Damien Harker — but to the eternal Suns above. They are not merely killers. They are augurs, shades, vessels of the twin obsidian fires. Their presence unsettles lords, unnerves soldiers, and unsettles even me, their master. Yet this is as it should be. The Obsidian Suns do not breed comfort — they forge inevitability.

The Fifth Chronicle of Damien Harker, Lord Xal-Karan

Entry I – A Name in the Dust

Whispers reached me first: a guild of smugglers, traders, and desert harvesters. Not mere criminals — a syndicate. They call themselves after the Worm itself, as though to claim legitimacy from the very god of this desert: the Shai-Hulud Syndicate.

Where I strike from silence, they bind through spice. Where I sow fear, they weave desire. One shadow, one lure. Together, an empire.

Entry II – First Conspiracies

We met in an abandoned spice refinery, its machinery groaning with the desert wind. Their emissary came robed in sand-colored silks, hands stained with melange, his eyes the deep blue of long addiction.

I expected posturing. Instead, he bowed. “The Order kills obstacles. The Syndicate ensures profit flows. We do not compete, Lord Harker. We complete.”

It was not submission. It was recognition. I felt it in his tone: a predator acknowledging another.

Entry III – Threads of the Pact

The terms came easily:

The Obsidian Suns would guarantee the Syndicate’s convoys, killing rivals, silencing spies, and turning the knives of Houses Harkonnen and Atreides away from their operations.

The Shai-Hulud Syndicate would open its coffers, funneling spice-wealth into my hands, buying silks, poisons, blades, and the silence of informants across Arrakeen.

Two shadows joined. One upon the markets, the other upon the throats.

Entry IV – First Profits

Already the pact bears fruit. The Harkonnen convoys that once moved unchallenged now fall silent in the desert. Whole shipments vanish, only to reappear in Syndicate hands. And the profits — the profits flow like rivers of gold and crimson.

For my assassins, this wealth is not mere coin. It is sharpened steel, it is venom distilled, it is silence bought. Each death now serves two masters: shadow and spice.

Entry V – The Syndicate’s Ritual

Tonight I was invited to a Syndicate ceremony. It was no less ritualistic than my Suns — though theirs was drenched not in blood, but spice. Bowls of melange burned in braziers, smoke curling like spirits. Their acolytes breathed deeply until their voices turned strange, chanting hymns to the Worm.

I understood then: they too are a cult, though their god is not shadow but hunger. And hunger, I can use.

I offered them a shard of black mirror, placed in the flames. The reflection twisted, glowing green through the smoke. They took it as an omen.

Entry VI – Influence Expands

With the Syndicate’s coin, I place Suns within guild-houses, caravans, and merchant courts. Already, minor Houses whisper of “an invisible hand” guiding the spice flow. But they cannot name it.

Meanwhile, the Syndicate grows bold, smuggling spice not just to smugglers, but to nobles themselves. Those who refuse find their stores burn. Those who comply grow addicted — not just to spice, but to the silent promise of protection.

What we weave is not trade. It is dominion.

Entry VII – The Pact Sealed in Blood

To formalize our pact, we agreed to bind it not with paper or contract, but with death. One Harkonnen spy was captured. He begged for life.

Together, Syndicate and Suns slit his throat and let his blood soak into spice, staining it dark. A feast followed, where bowls of that blood-spice were burned, filling the chamber with fumes so heavy that even I tasted visions of the Worm itself.

When I returned to myself, the Syndicate leader clasped my hand. “The Worm devours, the Shadow kills. Together, we reign.”

Entry VIII – The New Empire in Secret

It is done. The Obsidian Suns now move not only in courts and shadows, but in the veins of Arrakis itself — for what is spice, if not blood? And the Syndicate pumps that blood with ruthless precision.

Our enemies still believe we are separate threats. That is their weakness. For when they turn to kill one, the other shall strike from behind.

This is no alliance. This is a fusion. The Shadow and the Sand have become one dominion.

Closing Note of Chronicle V

I once sought only to carve space for my Order. Now, I find myself shaping the arteries of empire itself. The spice is power, yes. But what controls spice is not worm, nor desert, nor Emperor.

The Third Chronicle of Damien Harker, Lord Xal-Karan

Entry I – The Poisoned Cup

Arrakeen hides its knives in silk. The feast tonight was meant to honor my House’s arrival, a polite demonstration of welcome among jackals. They spoke of alliance, of mutual prosperity, of “endurance in this harsh land.” But I have lived too long beneath the pale suns of Xal-Kara to mistake poison for sweetness.

I watched the host drink first, his lips moist with courtesy, his voice lilting with hollow promises. Then his body shuddered. He clutched at his throat, his eyes bulged, and in moments he was little more than meat convulsing on the floor. The laughter around the table broke into shrieks, servants scattering like insects under light.

The poisoner had not been sent for me. Or perhaps they had, and I stole their triumph by drinking only from my concealed flask — wine shipped from Xal-Kara itself, untainted by the hands of Arrakeen servants.

What did I learn? That even a gesture of welcome in this desert is a duel. To dine is to gamble your life. To trust is to quicken your death. I survived, not through honor or vigilance, but through suspicion. Suspicion is my armor here.

And so I drank, as my host’s corpse cooled, and smiled at his retainers who could not look me in the eye.

Entry II – The Knife in Shadow

Power does not come from blood spilled, but from the whisper of blood spilled.

A rival steward — petty, talkative, careless — thought himself untouchable in Arrakeen’s courts. He gossiped of my lineage, sneered at my rituals, mocked the black pyramids my Suns raise in the sand. He thought this harmless. He was wrong.

Tonight, he lies slumped against a wall in the southern quarter. His throat has been opened, so cleanly that the blood trails downward in a perfect, thin ribbon. No one saw who passed him. None heard a sound. My assassins do not fight, they erase.

The killing was never about him. It was a message. And the message is this: “The shadows have teeth.”

By dawn, the court will tremble. They will invent a hundred rumors. Some will blame the Fremen. Some will blame the Harkonnen. Some will whisper of a new Order that bleeds without being seen.

I care not what story they choose, so long as they believe in fear itself. That is the coin with which I trade. And tonight, I have minted it freshly.

Entry III – The Green Flame

The Order thrives not through blade alone, but through ritual.

Beneath our encampment, in chambers carved into a crude pyramid of stone and blackened sand, the air is thick with incense and alchemical vapors. We light no torches — the only illumination is the viridian fire, the Green Flame, a creation of our rites. It burns unnatural, restless, casting shadows that bend the wrong way across the walls. The acolytes kneel before it, faces half-illuminated, half-consumed.

Tonight, I initiated six. Each pressed an obsidian knife to their palms, spilling blood into a shallow basin of sand. When the blood touched the flame, the fire roared unnaturally, devouring it as though it were oil. They did not flinch, though their hands trembled.

Then, together, they chanted the Oath of Shadow: “We vanish, so our Lord may be seen. We bleed, so his House does not. We die, so his shadow lives eternal.”

The words echoed until they seemed no longer theirs, but the desert’s itself. I watched their eyes when it ended — eyes hollowed, sharpened, stripped of hesitation. The flame eats away weakness, leaves only devotion.

My enemies believe they war with men. They do not. They war with weapons wrapped in skin, bound to me by oath, by ritual, by fire.

Entry IV – The Atreides Bargain

I have begun to plant seeds in the green soil of Atreides honor.

Their envoys met me under the blistering noon sun, armor gleaming, faces drawn with the tension of men who believe in ideals, but live in a world that feeds upon them. They spoke of justice, of rightful stewardship, of the Emperor’s gaze upon their efforts here. Noble words, but Arrakis consumes nobility like dry grass before flame.

So I spoke to them plainly: “Let your banners fly unsullied. Let your soldiers march proud, their blades unstained by dishonor. But behind them, in the shadow, let us work. The Order of the Obsidian Suns will be your silence, your knife unacknowledged, your hand unseen.”

I did not speak of assassinations. I spoke of custodianship. I framed my Suns not as murderers, but as guardians of Atreides’ purity. For every dishonorable act, there must be one who performs it, so that others may remain clean.

They listened. And in their silence, I saw understanding. They will not say yes today, perhaps not tomorrow. But the idea has already taken root. And ideas, like sandworms, grow beneath the surface unseen until they shatter the ground above.

Entry V – The Mirror of Shai-Hulud

Today, the sand itself shuddered as Shai-Hulud passed close.

The earth cracked with its hunger, the air thrummed with vibrations that rattled my bones. My retainers wept openly, cowering in the dust, as if a god had walked among them. And perhaps it had. The worm is eternal here. It is death given form, patience given body.

I did not flinch. I watched. And in the silence, I understood: I must learn from this beast.

The worm does not rush. It waits beneath the sand, unseen, until the moment is right. Then it strikes, devouring all without pause, without hesitation. It does not roar or warn. It simply consumes.

So too must my Order become. Not loud, not obvious. Patient. Silent. When we strike, it must be as the worm — without warning, without resistance, with inevitability.

Let the Atreides claim their honor, let the Harkonnen brandish their cruelty. I will master silence itself. And like Shai-Hulud, when I rise, the desert will tremble.

Closing Note of Chronicle III

Each entry I write upon Arrakis teaches me the same truth: this land devours illusions. Feasts, alliances, honor, piety — all are crushed beneath the sand. What remains are those who endure, and those who devour.

I have sharpened my assassins, tested my enemies, initiated new blood into the Flame. And already, whispers of my shadow spread through Arrakeen.

(The shadow of Xal-Kara deepens across Arrakis)

Entry XI – The Feast of Daggers

Damien attends a gathering of noble Houses in Arrakeen. He studies their feigned smiles, catching the scent of poison and the weight of hidden blades. For the first time, he participates — not only observing intrigue, but planting whispers himself.

Entry XII – The Price of Silence

An assassination attempt is made against him, but the assassin yields under interrogation, revealing another House’s complicity. Damien does not kill him. Instead, he enlists him, binding him to the Order of the Obsidian Suns through a ritual vow.

Entry XIII – The Black Canticle

The first esoteric initiation is performed beneath the green-tinged sky of Arrakis. Damien weaves Xal-Karan necromantic rites with new desert-born symbolism. His initiates drink spice-laced water, chanting beneath pyramidal shadow-sigils.

Entry XIV – The Smiling Corpse

A rival merchant mysteriously dies during a festival. His body walks two paces after being stabbed before falling — a theatrical warning orchestrated by Damien’s assassins. Rumors of “the Obsidian Suns’ curse” spread in hushed voices.

Entry XV – The Voice in Chains

Damien trains his Sun-Blades to perfect their use of the Voice in silence and cruelty. A demonstration: forcing a captured conspirator to recite his own crimes before cutting his throat — his voice not his own.

Entry XVI – A Bargain of Ashes

Damien negotiates with a minor House desperate for protection. Instead of demanding fealty outright, he offers their lord a choice: safety under his shadow, or slow erasure by his assassins. They submit — an early example of feudal leverage through fear.

Entry XVII – The Worm and the Pyramid

In solitude, Damien reflects on Shai-Hulud’s dominance and sketches designs for a pyramid temple in the desert. It will serve as both fortress and ritual sanctum for his Order. He envisions it glowing viridian in the night — a beacon and a terror.

Entry XVIII – The Salt Covenant

He conducts a ritual binding of blood and spice with his inner circle. Their loyalty becomes more than oath; it is myth, ritual, and fear intertwined. His assassins become more legend than men.

Entry XIX – The Fractured Blade

A Fremen envoy confronts him, warning that his games in the desert will draw the worm’s wrath. Damien recognizes this as both threat and invitation. He begins to consider alliances not just among Houses, but among tribes.

Entry XX – The Eclipse of Suns

(The rise of Lord Xal-Karan’s shadow in Arrakeen)

Entry I – Arrival on Arrakis Already written. — Damien sets foot on Arrakis, observing its strangeness, tasting its dust, and already beginning to see opportunity beneath its hostile sands.

Entry II – The Taste of Dust Already written. — Learns humility in the storm, sees strength in the Fremen, realizes a myth may be his greatest tool.

Entry III – The Market of Flies Already written. — He witnesses the rot of greed, the petty squabbling of merchants and lesser Houses. He begins to understand Arrakis as a theater of carrion politics.

Entry IV – The Shadow of Shai-Hulud Already written. — Confronts awe of the worm, sees it as the truest symbol of dominion.

Entry V – The Poisoned Cup — Learns the local dialect of assassination, survives an attempt, and begins playing in this “language of venom.”

Entry VI – Knives in the Sand — Rejects coin-bought thugs, begins cultivating true assassins trained in Voice and blade, loyal to the Obsidian Suns.

Entry VII – The Rite of Ash and Salt — His esoteric initiations formally begin. A secret society within Arrakis is born under him.

Entry VIII – The Council of Jackals — He begins maneuvering in feudal politics, remaining silent yet deadly in the council halls.

Entry IX – The Unseen Hand — He orchestrates his first true assassination on Arrakis without being implicated. A merchant prince’s fall sets the tone of his rule.

Journal of Lord Xal-Karan Entry I – Arrival on Arrakis

The sands here are not my own.

Arrakis greets me not with silence, but with the ceaseless howling of the wind and the whispers of the desert’s hidden beasts. I have walked the black basalt dunes of Xal-Kara since birth — sands that breathe no life, where silence is law, and where the only light falls in viridian pallor from twin black suns. But here… here the sand itself is alive. It shifts, it listens. Every grain feels as though it carries a memory of blood and bone.

The sun is blinding. Its gold burns crueler than the pale green glow of my home, and I feel it gnawing at my ashen skin like a predator hungry for color. The men of Arrakis are darker, hardened by this furnace of a world. They look upon me with suspicion, as if the pale cast of my flesh betrays some ill omen. Let them. I have no need for their trust — only their silence, and their obedience.

I sense the spice in the air already. It clings to the lungs like a ghost, bitter and sweet in the same breath. The priests of the Order warned me it would warp the spirit, as the green suns warp the flesh of Xal-Kara. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps it will sharpen me further.

I am told this world is a crucible, that Houses rise and fall here faster than sand slipping through an open palm. Good. I was not shaped to inherit stability, but to thrive amid the ruin of others.

The dunes of Arrakis may be gold, not black — but they will remember my steps.

— Lord Damien Harker, Xal-Karan ll. lll. lV.