once a crysknife is drawn, it must not be sheathed until it has drawn blood. Storylines Original series By the time of the events of Dune (1965), humans have been harvesting melange from Arrakis for several thousand years. The indigenous Fremen regard the sandworms as divine, but to everyone else, they are just deadly pests. Few people understand the sandworms' connection to the spice. This is no longer the case by the time of Children of Dune (1976), and numerous groups attempt to smuggle sandworms off Arrakis and transplant them to other planets so as to break the Atreides' monopoly on spice production. In Children of Dune, Leto II consumes massive amounts of spice and allows many sandtrout to cover his body, the concentration of spice in his blood fooling them. This layer gives Leto tremendous strength, speed, and protection from mature sandworms, which mistake his sandtrout-covered body for a lethal mass of water. He calls it a "living, self-repairing stillsuit of a sandtrout membrane", and soon notes that he is "no longer human". Gradually over the next 3,500 years, Leto not only survives, but also is transformed into a hybrid of human and giant sandworm. By the time of God Emperor of Dune (1981), he has exterminated all other sandworms, and his own transformation has modified his component sandtrout. When Leto allows himself to be assassinated, the sandtrout release themselves to begin the sandworm lifecycle anew; subsequent offspring are tougher and more adaptable than their predecessors, allowing them to ultimately be more easily settled on other worlds, thus ensuring the survival of the sandworm species. Each one, according to Leto, carries in it a tiny pearl of his consciousness, trapped forever in an unending prescient dream. Over the next 1500 years, Arrakis (now called Rakis) is returned to a desert by the thriving sandworm cycle. Bene Gesserit Mother Superior Taraza becomes aware in Heretics of Dune (1984) that humanity is being limited by the prescient dream of Leto, and controlled by him through his worm remnants. She engineers the destruction of Rakis by the Honored Matres to free humanity, leaving one remaining worm to start the cycle anew. Taraza is killed; her successor Darwi Odrade takes the worm to Chapterhouse. She submerges it in a spice bath to generate sandtrout, with the goal of terraforming their own planet Chapterhouse into another Dune, and later doing the same on other