I haven’t read Dune since high school, so correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like the books were rather vague regarding how exactly the Fremen/deathstills got the water out of someone’s body (some sort of vacuuming/filtering action is assumed). The movies I’ve seen more recently, and they also kept an air of mysticism around the ritual.
Dune: Awakening gives you a big syringe and a bag and sends you to work, like a vampire saving snacks for later. It’s just the way of life on Arrakis, but that does mean at some point in this universe, some lunatic had to be the first one to say “what if we sucked out all their blood?” and everyone kind of went with it.
Gotta do what you’ve gotta do to survive, I guess.
There were “death stills” which were big bags/”coffins” that would dessicate the body and harvest the water. Probably some kind of combination thing where the blood would be drained and distilled into water and then the same with the body tissue. I guess as things go… its not something to complain about as you’re probably dead before you go into it and wont really know anything about it. BUT i think that as a measure of torture I think enemies were put into the death stills, alive and aware. I dont think that’d be a good way to go –… Read more »
I haven’t read Dune, but that’s brutal. Kinda reminds me of this game that came out not long ago The Forever Winter. In it, a giant rogue medical mech hunts down humans and traps them in giant life support body bags were they are slowly broken down for bioelectricity and fuel for the mech, a process that can take days or weeks, meanwhile the victim is keep alive and fully conscious during the worst parts of the process being slowly “digested” by the predator mech.
A good time to point out that despite the impression one might get from just watching Dune, Paul Atreides and the Fremen aren’t really “good.” At best, one could say that they’re just slightly less evil than the current system. From the Dune Wiki: The Jihad ended in 10208 after twelve years of bloodshed. According to Muad’Dib himself and his conservative estimates, his legions caused 61 billion casualties, the sterilization of ninety planets, the demoralization of five hundred additional worlds, and the eradication of forty different religions along with their followers. Ten thousand worlds were subsumed into his new Empire,… Read more »
Absolutely true. The movies do not equal the books. Paul and Leto II are absolutely and utterly evil. They might wring their hands and say they are doing it for the good of humanity, but they are completely and utterly evil. Yes they may save humanity in the end, but they do evil things to get there. They may have been right in their actions to save humanity, but still…. hundreds of billions if not trillions dead, tens of thousands of worlds sterilised by Paul, Leto II and their decisions bringing about what happens later. The new movies make Paul… Read more »
I wouldn’t call Leto II nor Paul necessarily evil, but rather, callous. Actually , Paul understood why the Jihad was necessary (to create a new surge of human DNA that would lead to the invisibility to prescience and thus guarantee humans would not go extinct) but he tried really hard to not have his name attached to it. Meanwhile, Leto II knew that prescience would lead to human extinction and thus ruled as a tyrant for 35 centuries keeping the end goal as the Atreides gene that would guarantee humans being invisible to prescience. I mean, Leto II was the… Read more »
Paul himself said he couldn’t follow The Golden Path; he couldn’t commit the atrocities it asked him to do. He understood it was necessary, but he couldn’t do it.
Harkonnens were small scale evil? Rofl. If they won, it would’ve ultimately led to humanity going extinct. Paul himself was pretty much forced into becoming Emperor and inflicting the jihad because by the point he became the Kwisatz Haderach, he pretty much had only that path to go to have his family survive. Paul pretty much did try to limit the damage the jihad he started did. He eventually saw what the Golden Path would require and felt he could not do it. Leto II is definitely a villain, but he chose to do that to ultimately save humanity from… Read more »
i remember in the Sci fi mini series they did that to someone.
It was considered a great insult to not collect someone’s water when they died. Kinda like “you don’t deserve to live on through us”
Avidly read those books, yeah fairly sure they distill the water out of the blood, and the rest of the body
They do, in something called a deathstill.
Yeah, also you can build the Deathstill in the game, by completing the trials
Neat. I’m not that far yet.
Wasn’t it like a stabby bottle thing they just stabbed into a guy to drain him of water? Or am I thinking of another movie?
That’s Tank Girl 😉
Maybe they got that water extraction doodad from Tank Girl?
Now there’s a reference I’ve heard in some time
I always thought that stillsuits worked like self-contained versions of the device from the beginning of WaterWorld that Kevin Costner used to… “water” the plants.
And also reclaims sweat. And possibly blood if you have a cut or something, but if that stuff is leaving your body, you have other issues than trying to reclaim water.
In the books they even breathe into nasal tubes, breathing in through the mouth and out through the nose, with every breath, to the point where they can do it in their sleep.
If I recall, it was only mentioned like 1 to 2 times. They pretty much have a special machine for draining all the water for a Fremen body for a funeral, i.e. it was done to Jamis’ body in a sort of Fremen funeral. I think they also mentioned draining blood from their enemies quickly if they have the time before they leave the scene of the battle.
Sorry Tim, you’re mistaken. The new Dune movies did show “that big syringe” thing and blood bags. The Harkonnen did use them after their victory in arakeen. In a scene you can clearly identify what is named “Industrial Blood Collector” in Dune Awakening. The “smaller” ones are just scaled down versions as you need in a game like this for progression. Therefore, its not an “invention that the game made up”, it is in fact taken from the movies. Also you cant take the original book 1:1 as well as per definition of the game’s story its playing in a… Read more »
Btw. a question to the first Panel. Is the background taken out of the game and the somehow converted into a “comic-like” style or are you just really really good in getting the landscape that similar looking as in the game ?
I remember the Sardaukar draining blood in the prebattle rain ritual, and Rabban chopping up prisoners after the fight clearly not worried about wasting their blood. But skimming through the battle of Arakeen and its aftermath I cannot find where they’re extracting blood from corpses.
Its a very short scene after the battle, i dont have the movie so cant make a screenshot of it. I do, however have a screenshot of the ingame collector that looks exactly like the movie one: https://ibb.co/N6C36pdm
(Me as vampire during closed beta 😉 )
I found a scene in Dune 2 where the Fremen extract water (not blood) directly from fallen Harkonnen soldiers. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of?
This is exactly it. In the movie they show the fremen draining “water” from the Harkonnen fallen, but it’s clearly from their blood, and there is some sort of filtration device attached. Stillgar comments that the harkonnen have too many chemicals in them for their water to be useful to drink but it can still be used for other purposes.
Waste not, want not.
Sickle cell fun times. Among others.
I immediately assumed it was inspired by Tank Girl when I saw it in the movie.
The clasic books were vague, but the modern books describe it in some detail. A dude even gets put in one alive as a cruel means of execution.
IIRC (and I may not), Cut into pieces, blended, baked, and the steam in harvested.
There is a additional bit on it from Warner Bros, https://youtu.be/29zQBzteAh0
Set up like a film book from the Dune universe
Ohhhhh yeah. In Dune 2. I remember it now; I’ve only seen that movie once.
I re-read the first 3 books between the trailer and new movie. The death stills seem to use a lysis process, breaking open cells and filtering out the membrane and contents to get the water that DNA floats in. I speculate that blood cells would be some of the easiest cells to process, followed by soft organs then muscles
I used to own in house in Casco Maine with a well. I had Poland Spring water on tap. 🙂
In addition to getting the water, remember to filter out and harvest the iron in their blood.
Enough people, you can make a sword out of the blood of your enemies!
Never mind that one can make pretty good meals out of blood, sure we use bovines and pigs for it, but it could work from human blood too.
Yes blood is food, you souther folk have not learnedwhat shirt growing period means and what short cuts are taken for adequate food suply. North is hard mode survival, south is easy mode.
Never heard of Poland Springs water. Then I had one this past week, somewhere in DE, NJ or PA.