Scytale takes on the guise of Paul's long-dead friend, Duncan Idaho, to pump a veteran for information about Paul's Keep (fortress/palace), then treacherously murders the veteran and his blind son, and makes off with the son's would-be fiancye, whose remains later turn up in the desert. At stake is preservation of a gene pool the Bene Gesserit sisterhood has long cultivated. The Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, a Tleilaxu Face Dancer named Scytale, and a Guild Steersman named Edric labor to win over Paul's wife, the Princess Irulan, from whom the Emperor withholds a child in favor of his beloved Fremen concubine, Chani.
It follows a treasonous plot that fails to overthrow him but leaves him blind physically and psychically, walking off into the desert and timeless immortality as the 'Muad'dib.'ĭune Messiah opens with a band of conspirators plotting against the Emperor Paul Atreides in the twelfth year of his reign. Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert continues the cosmic drama of Dune, taking up the action in the frustrating twelfth year of the Emperor Paul Atreides' reign.