Editing Spacing Guild (section)

== Overview ==
In the ''Dune'' series, enormous [[starship]]s called [[heighliner]]s employ a scientific phenomenon known as the [[Holtzman effect]] to "fold space" and thereby travel great distances across the universe instantaneously. Navigators are able to use a limited form of prescience to safely navigate interstellar space. Navigators are humans who mutated through the consumption of and exposure to massive amounts of the drug [[Melange (Dune)|melange]], also known as the spice. Control of these Navigators gives the Spacing Guild its monopoly on interstellar travel and banking, making the organization a balance of power against the [[Padishah Emperor]] and the assembled noble Houses of the [[Landsraad]].<ref name="gr">{{Cite web|url=https://gamerant.com/dune-spacing-guild-explained/|title=''Dune'': The Spacing Guild, Explained|first=Joshua Kristian|last=McCoy|date=February 17, 2024|website=[[Game Rant]]|access-date=April 16, 2025}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://geopoliticalfutures.com/the-geopolitics-of-dune/|title=The Geopolitics of ''Dune''|first=Jacob L.|last=Shapiro|website=[[Geopolitical Futures]]|date=April 1, 2018|access-date=April 16, 2025}}</ref> In the 1965 novel ''[[Dune (novel)|Dune]]'', [[Paul Atreides]] seizes control of the [[desert planet]] [[Arrakis]], only known source of the spice, turning the Guild's reliance on the spice into leverage over them. Paul demands that Emperor [[Shaddam IV]] relinquish the Imperial throne to him, but looks to the Spacing Guild agents present for the answer. Paul's ability to threaten, or destroy, the flow of spice has rendered Shaddam powerless, and the Guild forces him to capitulate.<ref name="rudd">{{Cite journal|url=https://publish.lib.umd.edu/scifi/article/view/247/23|title=Paul's Empire: Imperialism and Assemblage Theory in Frank Herbert's ''Dune''|first=Amanda M.|last=Rudd|date=January 27, 2016|journal=MOSF Journal of Science Fiction|volume=1|issue=1|via=publish.lib.umd.edu|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190830103448/https://publish.lib.umd.edu/scifi/article/view/247/23|archive-date=August 30, 2019|url-status=dead}}</ref>

=== Navigators ===
[[File:Guild Navigator Edrik-Hunters of Dune (2006).png|thumb|right|Edrik in his spice tank, as depicted on the cover of ''[[Hunters of Dune]]'' (2006)]]
To enable their prescience, Guild Navigators not only consume large quantities of the spice, but are also continuously immersed in highly concentrated amounts of orange spice gas. This level of extreme and extended exposure causes their bodies to atrophy and mutate over time, their heads and extremities elongating, and causing them to become vaguely aquatic in appearance.<ref name="gr"/><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://screenrant.com/dune-biggest-differences-denis-villeneuve-david-lynch-versions/|title=''Dune'': 10 Biggest Differences Between the 2021 and 1984 Versions|first=Kayleena|last=Pierce-Bohen|date=October 30, 2021|website=[[Screen Rant]]|access-date=October 26, 2022}}</ref><ref name="Messiah">{{cite book |last=Herbert |first=Frank |authorlink=Frank Herbert |title=[[Dune Messiah]] |year=1969 }}</ref> The first external sign of melange-induced metabolic change is visible in the eyes, as the drug tints the [[sclera]] and [[iris (anatomy)|iris]] to a dark shade of blue, called "blue-in-blue" or "the Eyes of Ibad," which is "a total blue so dark as to be almost black." This is a common side effect in all spice addicts.<ref name="Dune">{{cite book |last=Herbert |first=Frank |authorlink=Frank Herbert |title=[[Dune (novel)|Dune]] |year=1965}}</ref>

In ''Dune'', [[Leto I Atreides|Duke Leto Atreides]] notes that the Guild is "as jealous of its privacy as it is of its monopoly," and that not even their own agents ever see Navigators. Leto's son Paul wonders if they are mutated to the point of no longer appearing human. At the end of the novel, two self-identified Guild Navigators accompanying Emperor Shaddam IV are described as "fat", but not otherwise non-human.<ref name="Dune"/> The Guild Navigator Edric, introduced in the first chapter of ''[[Dune Messiah]]'' (1969), is called a "humanoid fish," and described in his tank of spice gas as "an elongated figure, vaguely humanoid with finned feet and hugely fanned membranous hands—a fish in a strange sea."<ref name="Messiah"/> The Navigators' "elongated and repositioned limbs and organs" are noted in ''[[Heretics of Dune]]''.<ref name="Heretics">{{cite book |last=Herbert |first=Frank |authorlink=Frank Herbert |title=[[Heretics of Dune]] |year=1984}}</ref> In 1985's ''[[Chapterhouse: Dune]]'', [[Lucilla (Dune)|Lucilla]] notes that "Navigators were forever bathed in the orange gas of melange, their features often fogged by the vapors," that they possess a "tiny v of a mouth" and "ugly flap of nose" and that "mouth and nose appeared small on a Navigator's gigantic face with its pulsing temples." She also notes that their mutated voices require translation devices, describing "the singsong [[ululation]]s of the Navigator's voice with its simultaneous mechtranslation into impersonal [[Galach (Dune)|Galach]]."<ref name="Chapterhouse">{{cite book |last=Herbert |first=Frank |authorlink=Frank Herbert |title=[[Chapterhouse: Dune]] |year=1985}}</ref>

In an unused passage by Frank Herbert from ''Dune Messiah'' published in ''[[The Road to Dune]]'' (2005), Edric is described as surviving without spice gas once a hole is opened in his tank, though his prescient abilities are practically useless in this state.<ref name="Road to Dune">{{cite book |last=Herbert |first=Frank |authorlink=Frank Herbert |author2=Brian Herbert |author2-link=Brian Herbert |author3=Kevin J. Anderson |author3-link=Kevin J. Anderson |title=[[The Road to Dune]] |year=2005}}</ref>