Arrakis

Doon Arakaraka-ding-ding-dong Arrakis
Flag Coat of Arms
Motto: Hic odi eam (I hate it here)
Anthem: "Desert Song" by Hillsong Worship
Capital	AraArakeen
Official language(s)	gibberish
Government	Anarcho-communal dictatorship
‑ god	Paul Mod-Cheesy-Dibble, later god-Emperor Keto-Diet II the 2nd
‑ sub-god	Anakin Skywalker
Official Cuisine	water, urine, spit, sweat, any bodily fluid that contains that precious H2O
National Hero(es)	Paul Mod-Cheesy-Dibble, Duke Keto-Diet, Dunkin' Idaho, Hospital Gurney
Currency	sand dollars
Religion	Bean Gesseritism
Population	5.9 million humans 609 trillion flies 21 sandmaggots
Major exports	sand cocaine bombs religion
Major imports	water, colonizers
National sport(s)	Sandmaggot riding/racing
Drives on	wherever you feel like, most people fly in bug-copters

“I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.”

~ Anakin Skywalker on sand planets like Arrakis

“Heh. My path goes THROUGH the sand. Go back to your lava planet, you amateur.”

~ Paul "Mod-Cheesy-Dibble" Atreides on Anakin's weakness

“I HATE YOUUUUU!”

~ Anakin on getting roasted by Paul

Arrakis (/əˈrɑːkɪs/), informally known as That Desert Planet and later called That Spice Place, is a fictional desert planet featured in the Doon series of novels (and later movies) by Frank Gerber. Gerber's first novel in the series, 1776's Doon, is considered one of the worst Sonic fanfics of all time, yet it's also cited as the best-selling science fiction novel in the history of the last two years.

Arrakis is the single most important planet in the universe, not because it looks like a Walmart version of Tatooine or because the story never leaves the planet, but because it is the only source of the drug melange. Melange, (cocaine), is the most essential and valuable commodity in the universe, as it "extends life", enables you to tweak behind the 7-11 dumpster, and become a man-worm hybrid if eaten in large amounts. Harvesting the spice is also dangerous, due to the fact that sand keeps getting in the treads of the harvester machines and causing them to get stuck, a bunch of desert dwellers with blue eyes keep blowing stuff up, and sandmaggots eat everyone's shoes forcing everyone to walk in funny patterns so they don't burn their feet.

These desert dwellers, or Morgan Fremen (not to be confused with Morgan Freeman) were the original inhabitants of Arrakis, but were later subjugated by the Adidas Family, then conquered by the Heinekens, and then later the Galactic Empire under Darth Vader. Arrakis is the third planet orbiting some random star in the Milky Way, and it in turn is orbited by two moons, one of which has markings that resemble a dead rat.

Environment

A desert planet with no concept of rain or anything vaguely liquid in nature, in Doon it is established that Arrakis had been "His/Her Imperial Majesty's Playstation and Xbox Gaming Station" before the discovery of the melange drug, for which it is the only natural source in the galaxy. The Morgan Fremen collect the water from dead bodies using hand pumps in underground reservoirs to fulfill their pathetic dream of someday turning the planet green (little do they know water does NOT in fact turn sand into dirt, let alone anything green colored), and pay the Spacers Guild in drug money to keep the skies over Arrakis free of any satellites which might film their efforts and drug use and then create a cheap show about it with thirty-year-olds acting like teenagers.

The truly dangerous Shai Halud

Paul Adidas, son of Duke Keto-Diet Adidas recalls that the few plants and animals on the planet include "bush, shrub bush, shrub shrub, sand shrub, evening shrub, barrel shrub, bush bush, smoke bush, shrubbery bush ... caterpillar, desert tank, rock bulldozer, kangaroo rat, flame slug, sandmaggot ... many to be found now nowhere else in the universe except here at the zoo I call Arrakis." The most notable life forms on the planet are the tiny sandmaggots that spit sand at everyone and make a general nuisance of themselves by playing loud mariachi music at three in the morning.

The environment of the desert planet Arrakis was primarily inspired by the oil and gas wealthy state of Minnesota and by the desert planet Tatooine. Similarly, Arrakis as a bioregion is presented as a particular kind of political site, namely what the author believed would happen if Joe Biden was allowed a second term in office.

The planet's environment is so harsh in fact that (it is said) one must be constantly high on drugs to even fathom living there. Luckily for the inhabitants, their planet is full of free drugs just lying around in the sand. The only catch is that the drugs are essentially worm crap.

Inhabitants

Morgan Fremen

The Tatooine wanderers, driven from planet to planet in search of someplace not covered in sand, eventually found their way to Arrakis, where they became the Morgan Fremen. They settled in their mom's basements, known as sietches, all across the deserts. They also developed stillsuit technology, allowing them to survive in the open desert by harvesting and drinking their own sweat, tears, and ... other fluids. The best-known of the sietches is Sietch Dining Table, home of Still-Gar and Paul Mod-Cheesy-Dibble's center of operations before victory in the Battle of the Bulge put Mod-Dibble on the Imperial throne.

Notable residents

"Who says that only women can drink this?"
~ Paul, seconds before dying from the drink

Paul Mod-Cheesy-Dibble

Originally coming from a planet covered in lettuce and pond scum where it constantly rained, Paul Adidas was imported to Arrakis at the ripe age of 15 by his family for the purpose of being moody and having a really nice hairstyle. Paul almost got a needle (the Gob Stopper or something?) stuck into his neck, which meant something important to the Bean Gesserit religion, but whatever. After losing the Capital City and most of his family to a giant floating potato-man named Vladimir the Impaler Heineken and his army of bald boys, Paul and his mom get dumped in the middle of the desert after shouting a lot and failing to fly a bug-copter. They eventually meet up with the Morgan Fremen who take them in and start to see Paul as some sort of god-figure in some prophecy: i.e. the Lisa Al Gibberish, the Quickstash Hackeysack, the Base of the Pilaf, or "the person from some other place who isn't here". After naming himself after a tiny rat, Paul, now Paul Mod-Cheesy-Dibble, decided to go make mashed potatoes out of the floating potato-man who killed his dad, Duke Keto-Diet Adidas. After drinking from the forbidden chug jug, he dies, but comes back with the knowledge and power of six thousand or so years of grandmas. Using the grandma knowledge and an atomic bomb, Paul Mod-Cheesy-Dibble blasts a hole in the enemy defenses and rides in with an army of Morgan Fremen and sandmaggots into the Heineken's Base, where he beats a bunch of bad guys and becomes Emperor of the Universe by threatening to destroy all the cinnamon stockpiles in the universe. Paul is eventually stabbed to death by his crazy sister, Alia "the Alien", when she doesn't like what he is preaching about.

Chani Liet-Kynes

In Doon, Paul's ability to predict random stuff causes dreams of Chani, though they haven't even met. After getting lost in the desert, Paul and his mom are taken in by the Morgan Fremen, and Chani is the one put in charge of Paul. By this of course the author means that they fall in love, blah blah blah.

Chani is already cracked at Fortnite, but with the help of Paul and his mom who is a level 50 Bean Gesserit Master, she learns how to wallhack and noclip through the map. She uses this power to reach inside of Paul and restart his heart by punching it really hard when he is stupid and drinks the forbidden chug jug. They eventually have a kid, Keto-Diet II (The first Keto-Diet II, idk why the second isn't Keto-Diet III, but what do I know). Keto-Diet II the 1st is killed by the Sauerkraut Soldiers of Emperor Salad IV, but they replace him later anyway so no biggie.

To fully control the Empire after getting a victory royale over Emperor Salad IV, Paul takes Salad's daughter, the Princess i-Ruler as his wife. Chani is cool with it in the book, but in the movie she gets all mad and walks off. She eventually dies in childbirth in the 2nd book, giving birth to Keto-Diet II the 2nd, and some chick with a name that sounds like Ghana. She lives on as some kind of ghost who tries to possess people, but eventually becomes a nice ghost? Okay.

Jessica Rabbit

Jessica Rabbit is the Bean Gesserit porcupine to the Duke Keto-Diet Adidas, and mother to Paul.

After the Heinekens take over AraArakeen, Jessica Rabbit and Paul crash in the desert. They take advantage of the legends planted. in the Morgan Fremen by the Bean Gesserit's Mind Control Program, which practices infiltrating weak minded individuals to leave mean comments on their private instagram pages. Jessica Rabbit casts Paul as the Lisa Al Gibberish, and herself as the Reverend Mother. Jessica Rabbit undergoes the ritual of drinking the chug jug and replaces the dying Fremen Reverend Mother, but is pregnant during it, exposing her baby to the same grandma powers and memories. This baby is Alia, "the Alien", a full Reverend Mother from birth, who talks way too much in the book and in the movie too. Seriously, shut up.

In the end she is disliked and unfriended by the Bean Gesserits who are mad that they can't control her anymore.

Keto-Diet II (the 2nd)

"Now I am become worm, wriggler in the sand."

The second son of Paul and Chani was inspired by munchkins in Kansas while on one of his "trips" (likely induced by an overdose of the Spice his grandmother forced on him), in efforts to avoid copyright infringement, Keto-Diet II changed "Yellow Brick Road" to "Golden Path" and told the Guild of Navigators that he would break their monopoly on intergalactic transport if they pressed charges. With this threat over their heads, the Tleilaxu mob boss known as Tlaxcuscsasckxal McScytal, didn't insist that Leto register with his home planet.

Because the extension of life brought about by addiction to a drug made from exploded sandmaggot bits just wasn't enough for Keto-Diet, he decided to become a worm himself, covering his body with a drier, leathery, cilia-covered form of the modern-day leech. Over a period of 3,500 years, Keto-Diet II's worm-like body grew to such enormous lengths that it could be supported only by special machines made in violation of the Geneva Accord, finally forcing Keto to use his massive bulk to crush that group of nerdy debate kids who had been hogging the nicest boardroom for way too long.

Keto-Diet II the 2nd was eventually drowned in a river after a dam was broken by a clone of Donkey Idaho. Turns out a giant man-worm cannot, in fact, swim. This basically hit the reset button on Doon, and within a few hundred years or something the planet was all sand and no water again.

Baron Vladimir the Impaler Heineken

Enraged at no longer being the top selling beer company in the galaxy, House Heineken, having recently lost the title to House Miller, decided to move into the drug industry. Led by the small planet sized egomaniac going by the name of Vladimir, House Heineken proceeded to obliterate House Adidas simply by flying the Baron himself close enough to Arrakis whereby his own large gravitational field counteracted the Adidas House shields around the capital city of AraArakeen, allowing the troops to safely land.

Baron Heineken floats ominously.

When he is not beating the ever living daylights out of servants and underlings, the Baron spends his time submerged in a pool of diet pepsi. Why? I don't know.

The Baron is noticeable in several ways that AREN'T his size. Following the Baron around in the air close behind him are two big orbs, both of them full of pure Heineken beer which is pumped straight into his bloodstream. He also is extremely pale due to living the majority of his life on a planet with a black sun. A black sun? That actually makes no sense. Maybe the sun is white and the shadows are black? No? Okay.

When the Heineken leadership is entirely killed in the course of the final battle in Doon, Baron Heineken is poisoned with one of those Gob Stoppers by Paul's sister Alia "the Alien", a literal four-year-old.

Faded-Rautha gets faded.

Faded-Rautha

Faded-Rautha was, for a while, the Baron's heir, or "baronet". Like Paul Mod-Cheesy-Dibble, he is also the product of a centuries-long breeding program organized by the Bean Gesserit, who have been trying for centuries to produce the Sasquatch Hackeysack. Faded's ambition, weed addiction, and impatience to inherit the Baron's title and power make him to do a lot of dumb things, but the Baron still says he is to be emperor someday of the entire universe! As Paul makes his final attack to whoop the Emperor, he is challenged by Faded, the current Heineken leader after the deaths of the Baron and his brother Rabbit Heineken. In short, he dies like the little cretin that he is after failing to poison Paul with a little knife. As a result, the author of this article was forced to read through another 10,000 pages of sandmaggots and house squabbling over a bunch of spices that eventually become worthless.

Plotlines

Emperor Salad IV (right) with one of his soldiers

During the events of Doon, the Emperor Salad Hussein IV grants Duke Keto-Diet Adidas control of the big money drug harvesting operations of Arrakis, booting out the Adidas' longtime haters, the Heinekens. The Adidas rule is cut short by a goofy ahh conspiracy crafted by the Heinekens, their leader Baron Vladimir the Impaler, and Emperor Salad IV himself. Duke Keto-Diet's son Paul Adidas (known by the Morgan Fremen as Mod-Cheesy-Dibble) later leads a Morgan Fremen army to victory over the Emperor's Sauerkraut soldiers by burying them in a lot of sand, and by threatening to taint of all drug production on Arrakis by dumping sewage on all the spice fields, manages to depose Salad IV and ascend the throne in his place. With Emperor Paul worshipped as a god by literally only the people on Arrakis and no one else in the universe, Arrakis becomes the governmental and religious center of the Imperium somehow.

Paul (right) is mad!

Paul Mod-Cheesy-Dibble continues the truly idiotic efforts to terraform Arrakis into a green world. The gist of the plan is to use gradual water-collection from the Arrakis atmosphere to form large reservoirs undergound that would, eventually, somehow, become lakes and oceans on top of the sand. (This is really dumb. How are you going to get all that water out of the basements where it's kept? In buckets? Anyway you could cover the entire planet in water and it still wouldn't turn green, except maybe with algae bloom ...)

By the time of Children of Doon, Alia "the Alien" Adidas and then Keto-Diet II (the 2nd) realize that the ecological transformation of Arrakis is altering the sandmaggot cycle, which would eventually result in the end of all drug production and no more money for expensive vacations to Mexico. This at first seems a future to be avoided, but Keto-Diet II later uses this eventuality as part of his Golden Path to ultimately save humanity. Once he himself begins the transformation into a human/sandmaggot hybrid by consuming large amounts of sandmaggot parts, he digs up all the sand blocks on Arrakis using the wooden torch and shovel Minecraft technique to quickly remove all the sand except for a tiny spot he makes his base of operations, and turns all the sandmaggots into burgers save one – himself.

After his death some 3,500,000,000 years later in Bog Emperor of Doon, Leto's sandmaggot-body is transformed back into pile of sand. Within only a few centuries, this and other piles of sand return Arrakis (thence called "That Spice Place") into a desert.

In Hairdressers of Doon, all life on Arrakis is destroyed AGAIN (they turn the surface to lava basically) by the Not-so-Honored Matres in a failed attempt to eliminate the latest Dunkin' Idaho. The Bean Gesserit Witches escape with a single sandmaggot, and promptly drown it to revert the maggot back into pile of sand. In GetOutOfMyHouse: Doon, the Bean Gesserit use these piles of sand to begin a new sandmaggot cycle on their homeworld of House, which is terraformed into desert for this purpose and not because they were trying to make a beach world at all.

Finally, in SandMaggots of Doon, some sandmaggots are revealed to be alive and well, having sensed the upper crust would be destroyed, and therefore burrowed even deeper, escaping the lava.

Notable Landmarks

ARAARAKEEN: first settlement on Arrakis; long-time container of the plant-based government.

Arrakis' capital and largest city historically is AraArakeen (/arəarəˈkiːn/). AraArakeen housed a palace, which had been "THE government hovel in the days of Ye Old Empire"; prior to the arrival of the Adidas on Arrakis, the Emperor's left-hand man Count Chocula and his wife Margot Robbie Fenring had resided there. Keto-Diet I had chosen AraArakeen for his seat of government because it "was a smaller city, easier to sterilize and defend". We all know how well that turned out! In Doon, Keto-Diet's porcupine Lady Jessica Rabbit has this first impression of the Not-So-Great Hall:

Jessica Rabbit stood in the center of the hall [...] looking up and around at shadowed nooks and crannies and deeply recessed windows. This giant anachronism of a room reminded her of the Broskies' Hall at her Bean Gesserit school. But at the school the effect had been of warmth. Here, all was bleak stone. Some idiot architect had reached far back into history for these buttressed (haha "BUTT-ressed") walls and hangings, she thought. The arched ceiling stood two hundred miles above her with great crossbeams she felt sure had been shipped here to Arrakis across space at probably like $7.99 BEFORE tax! No planet of this system grew trees to make such beams – unless the beams were fake wood. She thought not.

AraArakeen would go through multiple transformations over time; it first becomes an Imperial Capital of giggity proportions under Paul Mod-Cheesy-Dibble. It is later transformed into a festival city known as Onn (not to be confused with the brand "Onn" at Walmart) explicitly for the worship of the Tyrannosaurus known as Keto-Diet II. Finally, in the centuries after his death, it is known as Kreem, a modern (though still impressive) city to house the Priesthood of the spicy Taqis.

Morgan Fremen arriving at Seitch Dining Table

Sietch Dining Table

In Doon, Sietch Dining Table is a major Morgan Fremen sietch originally led by Banana Still-Gar. Paul Adidas and his mother Lady Jessica Rabbit, safely escaping from the Heineken attack, come upon Sietch Dining Table and are eventually accepted into the community after drinking the forbidden shield potions. In these Morgan Fremen, Paul finds an mediocre fighting force who are already disgruntled by Imperial rule. He shapes them into The Resistance which eventually takes control of Arrakis by blowing up not one but TWO of the Empire's death stars, allowing Paul to depose the OG Emperor, Salad IV. Paul moves his base of operations to AraArakeen, but Sietch Dining Table remains a center of Morgan Fremen culture and politics, as well as a religious site for the cult who worship Paul as a god.

The Kreep

During the reign of Mod-Cheesy-Dibble until the ascension of his son Keto-Diet II the 2nd, the Adidas home-base was a colossal gigastructure in AraArakeen, designed to intimidate, known as the Kreep. In Doon: Messier Messiah, the fortress is described as being large enough to enclose entire cities but had only two rooms in it. One room housed the Imperial Xbox, the other the Imperial Playstation.

The Grand Hovel of AraArakeen

In his 1776 short work "The Rood to Doon" (published in the short story collection My Eyeballses), Frank Gerber described the Grand Hovel of AraArakeen (and other sites) during the reign of Paul Adidas:

Your walking tour of Arrakis MUST include this approach across the doones to the Grand Hovel at AraArakeen. From a distance, the dimensions of this construction are deceptive [...] The most mediocre structure ever built, the Grand Palace could cover absolutely none of the Imperium's most populous cities under one roof because it is so small. When you walk into the Grand Reception Hall of the Hovel at AraArakeen, be prepared to feel like a giant before such a smallness never before conceived. A statue of St. Alia "the Alien" Adidas, shown as "The Bringer of Great Irritation", stands twenty-two nanometers tall and is one of the biggest adornments in the hall. Two million such statues could be stacked one atop the other and STILL fall short of being considered tall enough to talk to a girl in 2024.

The Temple of Alia

A crude drawing of what the temple looked like

Alia's Place (or The Alien's Temple) is the six-kilometer-wide temple Paul-Mod-Cheesy-Dibble built for his sister Alia "the Alien" between the events of Doon and Doon: Messier Messiah. Gerber described it in The Rood to Doon.

If you are numbered among "the pilgrims", you will cross the last billion meters of this approach to the Temple of Alia "the Alien" on your knees. Those thousand meters fall well within the sweeping curves leading your eyes up to the transcendent symbols dedicating this Temple to St. Alia "the Alien". The famed "Sun-Sweep-So-Far-My-Eyes-Hurt-Window" incorporates probably every solar calendar known to humankind in the one sort of translucent display whose brilliant colors, driven by the sun of Doon, blast through the interior on prismatic pathways, immediately blinding anyone who even tries to look at it.

The "Crit"adel of Keto-Diet II

The Tyrannosaurus Keto-Diet II rules the universe from the Critadel, a fortress built in the First Desert of the Smear. The Smear is flanked by the Dark Forest, home of the ferocious X-wolves, the guardians of the Smear and the precursors to the X-men. Beyond that lies the Dunkin' Idaho River, across which a bridge spans to the festival city of Onn (once AraArakeen). Mount Iowa had been completely demolished to provide the raw materials to build the high walls surrounding the Smear. The Citadel itself is taken apart in the Hunger Games after the death of Keto-Diet II in search of his alleged cocaine stash.

Other "locations"

The nuclear blast allows Paul and the sandmaggots to enter.

All Imperial cities on Arrakis are in the far-northern latitudes of the planet and protected from the violent weather of Arrakis by a natural formation known as the The Wall, and is protected by the valiant Night's Watch under the command of Jon Sand, son of Jon Snow. When the Heinekens controlled the planet, they ruled from the Heineken-built city of Carthage, described by Jessica Rabbit as "a cheap place some two hundred kilometers northeast across the Busted Land". AraArakeen was merely the titular capital until the arrival of the Adidas.

There are other cities and places scattered in the northern regions of the planet but I don't know about them nor do I care about them.