Quote from: darthfozzywig;945029It's Beast Rabban who wants to keep the arty, and the Baron who is planning to recycle.

Thanks; that tells me I need to re-read Dune.

Of course, that puts it VERY much back into perspective: given that the Baron was essentially going to sacrifice a piece by letting Rabban run amok but ultimately lose (and hopefully die in the process) on Arakkis, then he may well have just been lying about recycling the artillery.  The Baron surely had to see how useful it was and Rabban having it would have made his job of oppressing the Fremen that much easier, something that ultimately the Baron did not want.  He might well have told his men to chuck the arty tubes into deep space once they'd shipped them off-planet.

I've got a setting fragment that grew out of the question of how Star Trek's federation would deal with Dune's Imperium should they meet.  It's me so it's farther than that, the Terran technology is lower tech, no proper shields etc and the alien human empire was actually created in a very short period of time after the first time a human ship passed through, by low radio frequency AIs who's non-human society went totally on-line leaving behind such small and quiet technology that they weren't noticed.  The base unit of their technology is the size of a grain of sand.  So its drifted off Dune a bunch but you've got the idealistic federation encountering an apparently ancient and baroque human culture that wasn't there when the last scout ship passed by fifteen years earlier.

I expect if Shaddam sent Pickard a sex slave as a gift, Riker'd end up sleeping in them.  Kirk would just put her in his closet with the rest of them

Quote from: David Johansen;945051I expect if Shaddam sent Pickard a sex slave as a gift, Riker'd end up sleeping in them.  Kirk would just put her in his closet with the rest of them

Objection! Kirk is NOT a womanizer! He is married to the Enterprise and USES Women only to save his Ship and Crew.

If there's one thing that riles me up, is misinformation on Kirks's objectification of Women. Kirk did not objectify women, he womanized an object, and THEN took advantage of women for the benefit of said object.

Nuff said.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;945050The Baron surely had to see how useful it was and Rabban having it would have made his job of oppressing the Fremen that much easier, something that ultimately the Baron did not want.  

No, the point was the Baron was extremely profits-conscious. The artillery had served its purpose (sealing the Atreides solders in the caves near Arrakeen) and the metal was now more useful elsewhere.

Remember, the Fremen weren't on the Harkonnens' radar at that point: they were just some desert rabble.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;945081No, the point was the Baron was extremely profits-conscious.

Yes, due to how much the Guild charges for troops transport;).