Arrakeen still shows the scars from that initial battle all those years ago. We repelled the Harkonnen and Sardaukar forces, but it was a very near thing. There is much of the city still left in ruins.

Yet Arrakeen persists as Duke Leto’s seat of power. House Harkonnen contests this with the ongoing construction of their own capital city, a gaudy blight known as Neo-Carthag.

Our war-torn city is experiencing a major influx of refugees fleeing the ravages of the War of Assassins. Our forces are stretched too thin too sift out all the spies and saboteurs. Rather than exhaust ourselves trying to impose an impossible order, we will allow an acceptable level of chaos, and work it into our computations and plans.

I’ve identified a number of Harkonnen spies. Rather than eliminate them (causing Piter de Vries to send in new, unknown agents), we will allow them to think they have the upper hand. We will feed these spies the information we want the Harkonnen to ingest.