Ganten

Family

• Unknown (Father) + Unknown (Mother)
  • Siblings: N/A
• Spouse: Rayan (deceased as of present)
  • Children: Nasan, Aida (step-daughter), Nalor (adopted son)

Early Life

Ganten was recruited into the Padishah Emperor’s army at an early age, taken to Salusa Secundus to begin his training before he was ten years old.  He was close to one of his fellow soldiers, Nasan, who acted like an older brother to the kid and helped him get a leg up in training when it looked like he was falling behind.  The training sergeants picked up on this and were not pleased by Nasan making things “easy” for Ganten, so they encouraged some of the boys’ peers to do something about it.  Nasan was killed in a training exercise a short while later; Ganten knew that it was premeditated but couldn’t do anything about it since the higher-ups were in on it.  So he threw himself into his training and confronted the ringleader a while later, killing him to avenge Nasan.  He wasn’t punished by his training sergeants, but was instead advanced as he displayed the proper ruthlessness and cunning they wanted.

Nasan and Ganten had ambitions of escaping the Emperor’s army, something that Ganten clung to for the both of them while he continued to act like the model soldier, avoiding making any friends after Nasan’s death.  Other of his peers began to see him as a threat, or rather, that if they killed him, they could make a name for themselves; he got the scar on his face and neck when another boy tried to slit his throat in his sleep.  His attacker did not survive the ordeal.

Arrakis

When he advanced to active work, Ganten and the legion he was attached to spent most of their time hunting down and killing Rogue Houses and other enemies of the Imperium.  Their unit was eventually secretly sent to Arrakis to observe and assist Harkonnen troops with putting out pockets of Fremen that were becoming more troublesome.  Most of his legion wiped out in an ambush on a spice harvester that was used to lure the Fremen, as they underestimated the prowess of the enemy.

Ganten intended on running off if his legion was destroyed because he really didn’t have much of a life and wanted out, so the Fremen killing most of them provided him with the perfect opportunity.  While escaping the doomed harvester with a sandworm on the way, he grabbed one of the remaining retreating Fremen who looked to be injured, whisking them to safety using his antigravity pack.  He set them down in a rock cleft a good ways from the harvester to watch and see who else might possibly make it out; none of the Sardaukar did.  Ganten did what he could to stop the bleeding of the Fremen, who turned out to be a woman who attacked him when she came to later.  She stayed her hand though, seeing that her supposed enemy had not only saved her, but attempted to dress her injuries.  Instead, the woman, Rayan, takes him to her sietch where Ganten is essentially taken prisoner until they can figure out what to do with him.  

His armor and weapons are confiscated and he’s given a set of Fremen clothes and put under watch by guards from the tribe for at least a day before the naib of the tribe comes to inform him that they’ve come to an agreement: since the Sardaukar saved the life of one of their own, he can stay with them under their protection or leave and risk being killed by the desert or other Fremen.  Seeing no other alternative, Ganten grudgingly decides to stay.

Sietch Life

It becomes clear that there’s a lot of friction between him and the adult guards, and continuing to isolate him from the rest of the tribe only accentuates his predicament even more, so Rayan volunteers to have him live in her quarters with her nine-year-old daughter, Aida, who becomes his new warden of sorts while her mother is busy.  The girl takes him around the sietch, explaining the Fremen way of life and how things work where they live, being more talkative with him than she was since her father was killed.  After getting to know him better, Aida also makes up her mind that this man is her new father, despite him not being married to her mother, which flusters both adults.  Interactions with most of the tribe are kept to a minimum until it becomes clear that any plans Ganten had of taking off have diminished.  He begins to see that the Fremen community is more interwoven and complex than he thought, not at all like what he was told about while with the Sardaukar.  

There are still a few people who he has some discord with, such as a thirteen-year-old boy named Nalor who tries to get a rise out of him by threatening to kill him or saying that the tribe will decide he’s not trustworthy and will kill him soon anyways.  Ganten takes the threats lightly–they’re from a child, and he’s had plenty of attempts on his life from other boys when he was one–so he’s quick to rebuff any attack and let the kid roughly know that his attempts to be menacing are futile, which somehow earns the boy’s respect.

The relationship between him and Rayan is also very chilly despite the way they saved each others’ lives.  Rayan’s uncle, Abossim, takes it upon himself to take Ganten under his wing, earning permission to take him on short scouting trips and such so he doesn’t feel like a prisoner, and get rid of the stir crazy feeling.  Ganten starts to see Abossim as a kind of father figure, which he didn’t have the luxury of having for most of his life.  He quickly becomes his confidante, and a secretive matchmaker of sorts as he finds excuses and situations for Ganten and Rayan to spend time together.  

Rayan starts to slowly warm up to Ganten when she hears about his life and realizes he was more of a brainwashed victim than a fanatical killer that she assumed all Sardaukar were.  Ganten also finds out from Aida and Abossim, and eventually Rayan, about what happened to her husband and how she’s not remarried since due to her not thinking she’d be able to love any other man as she did Eli.  Their interactions grow less formal and suspicious, morphing into them snatching a few moments in secluded parts of the sietch to exchange soft words and a kiss or two as they start to secretly court.  Things escalate when one of the members of the tribe, Drass, tries to pressure Rayan into marrying him.  Ganten intervenes with a fist to Drass’s face, and Drass retaliates by invoking amtal.  Drass is killed in the duel, and Ganten inherits everything that belongs to him, including the man’s wife, Shiffera, who he refuses to take as his own, humiliating her.  Of the things he inherits from Drass, Ganten gains a substantial amount of water rings that he gives to Rayan as a betrothal gift, after having Abossim explain the ritual and the meaning behind it to him.

The wedding takes place a month later, and a month after that, Rayan informs Ganten that she’s expecting.  He’s understandably nervous at first–this being his first child, and so soon after their marriage–but she assures him that it will be fine, she’s been through this before.  Rayan’s excursions into the desert grow less frequent once she starts showing, while Ganten joins Abossim on his trips to other sietches who are interested in learning Sardaukar fighting techniques, or ways to counter them.  After a violent brush with Harkonnens around the seventh month of Rayan’s pregnancy, Ganten agrees to stay closer to the sietch so he won’t worry her and risk getting himself killed.  Their child is born a week before the due date, but still healthy.  Seeing that it’s a boy, and knowing what Rayan does of Ganten’s past, she names him Nasan after the boy who looked after him while he was still training on Salusa Secundus; the gesture is one that touches him more than she initially thought, as it’s a way for the other Nasan to sort of live on.

Exodus

Not four months after Nasan is born, the sietch is attacked by Harkonnen troops, shooting down into the cavern system with lasguns mounted on ornithopters.  No one knows how the sietch was found other than that Harkonnen intelligence must have improved or someone sold them out, but it’s clear who it is when Shiffera is heard at the main entrance escorting the soldiers inside to destroy the place and the people within.  She was still bitter over Drass’s death and Ganten’s refusal to marry her, and her suspicion of the outsider festered enough for her to seek out their enemies to have him and the tribe killed.  As she saw it, they were as much to blame for letting him stay there and “taint” them.

Most are able to make it out through the tunnel systems to the back entrances, the Fedaykin remaining behind to fend off the attackers.  After sending Aida with Nasan and Nalor with the retreating crowd, Ganten joins the warriors in fighting, falling back on his Sardaukar training and switching on that bloodthirsty frame of mind.  His other reason for rushing into the fray was to find Rayan, who was not with them when the tribe started their exodus.  He manages to hack halfway through the tunnel to see Rayan helping an old man along with her.  A lasgun blast that hits the ceiling of the sietch causes it to cave in directly on top of Rayan and the old man.  Ganten can’t do anything but continue his retreat, having to rapidly stow his grief away knowing that there may be more soldiers waiting outside to kill not only him, but his children.

Once he reunites with the kids, he’s stopped by Abossim who says that the tribe is splitting up to make it harder for their enemies to track them all down; he offers for Ganten to come with them, which he can’t turn down since Nasan still needs to be nursed and one of the man’s daughter-in-laws has a newborn too.  It’s pretty clear he recognized Rayan didn’t make it, but knows now isn’t the time to discuss that since they need to flee.  Ganten takes Nalor with him as well since the boy’s mother and baby sister were some of the first casualties.  The stragglers hitch rides on sandworms to safe distances, Ganten setting up camp with Abossim and his family.  He has to break the news to Aida of her mother’s death and does so as gently as possible; to her credit, Aida takes it stoically, having a feeling that things would not end well when the attack started.  That stoicism crumbles when they bed down in the tent, the girl waking up frequently to cry and whimper.  Ganten chooses not to acknowledge his grief since he feels that it wouldn’t help the kids, so he continues to let it build under the surface while putting his focus into their survival.  Friction is prevalent within the little family when Nalor channels his grief into anger and lashing out at others, earning Ganten’s ire and mistrust for a while before things are smoothed over.  Ganten’s ability to try to contain his distress over Rayan’s death ekes out in various forms, from debilitating night terrors to directing his frustration and anger at the first kid to get on his nerves.

Nomads

Ganten and the kids travel with Abossim and his family to other sietches where they are afforded some shelter for short periods.  Ganten also offers to teach fighting techniques to the tribes that take them in, which is used as compensation for them staying there.  The two families split up when Ganten wants to take the kids along a different route to where an out of the way tribe he met before is located, having made a few acquaintances there and wanting to barter for resources.  Abossim opts to stay at the sietch for a while longer but says he’ll catch up with them in a week.

Things go as well as expected until Ganten catches wind of Harkonnen in the Deep Desert on a small transmitter he purchased at one of the larger sietches.  He doesn’t tell the kids, but instead finds shelter, pitches the tent, and tells them to stay put while he goes hunting.  He heads for the coordinates of where the transmissions are coming from, finding a spice harvester deep in a bed of spice several miles away.  Seeing that his grudge against the Harkonnens is stronger now due to them being responsible for his wife’s death, he does what he can to hinder their harvesting attempts or kill those he comes across.  He takes the opportunity to sneak onto the behemoth of a vehicle, intent on damaging it beyond repair and cutting off their communication so that the spotters can’t contact them when a sandworm inevitably comes along to consume the vehicle.  A soldier sees him though, and all hell breaks loose when they converge to attack the saboteur.  Ganten hacks his way out, inflicting a good deal of damage to their equipment, but is caught up in a fight with a fairly skilled soldier who delivers a deep cut to his torso.  He scrambles out of the harvester and uses the approaching worm to get away, riding it until it starts to grow tired before jumping off.  By then, Ganten recognizes that the injury he sustained was more serious than he had thought–the soldier did a pretty good job at nearly disemboweling him–and struggles his way to a rocky island to hastily treat the steady flow of blood and open wound with an adhesive before setting a thumper out and taking a worm to where he left the kids.

He does his best to act as normal as possible during their travels for that day, but by the time evening sets in he’s on the verge of collapse, and does so as soon as they’re settled in their tent.  Nalor has to treat the injury using what resources they have.  The boy is understandably upset at his guardian when Ganten comes to, and Ganten realizes that he shouldn’t have put his life in jeopardy like that for petty revenge.

The family is stuck at their current location for several days before Ganten is strong enough to travel again, heading for a nearby spaceport-based town to lodge at an inn.  Nalor and Aida peel off to find a doctor right after they secure the room, the man working to fix Nalor’s slapdash surgical work through the night, and turning down their money when they try to pay him afterwards.  Ganten is bedridden for a good week, going a little stir crazy by the end when the doctor returns for a check up and removes the stitches.  Soon after, he gets a job at a butcher’s to help grow the money needed to pay for their room and food, wanting to stay for a few more weeks to make sure he’ll be fit for travel when they depart.  The family is able to enjoy a taste of normal life for a while…until an undercover Sardaukar recognizes Ganten as one of their own, interrogating him for his report before preparing to kill him for desertion.  Ganten is escorted to a back alley at knifepoint to make the kill look like a robbery that happened in the dead of night; the soldier makes the mistake of saying that the kids will have to be dealt with too since they’re now collateral, which results in his quick death.  A woman at a window witnesses the murder and starts screaming for the authorities, sending Ganten back to the inn to pack the kids up and flee back into the desert.

Extra

• Still carries around his sword from his time with the Sardaukar.  Says he killed one when people ask where he got it.  No one questions it.
• Had add-ons to the serial number tattoos over his brow to disguise it more.
• Tired Dad Energy 
• Got the sandworm tattoo prior to his wedding with Rayan; wanted something to symbolize when they first met, so the worm that almost swallowed them up seemed like a good idea.
• Extremely blunt
• Has mastered the art of anonymity within a crowd to avoid Sardaukar death squads picking him out for deserting.
• Makes sure to give the kids plenty of attention so they don't feel like he's being distant.  He's compensating for the lack of a family he had when growing up in the Emperor's Army.
• Neglects his own health and needs for his kids; sacrificed sleep and food so that they’re more rested and won’t go hungry while they’re traveling and are short on supplies 
• Doesn’t like to stick around in places for too long since he’s paranoid that, a) the Sardaukar will catch up with him, b) a repeat of the attack on the sietch where Rayan was killed will happen again, and c) has come under the impression that he’s bad luck for people around him.
• Afraid to get involved in another relationship with a woman since he doesn’t want to have experience that kind of loss again.
• He’d leave the kids with Abossim but knows it would create a giant rift among them all.  Plus, having them around is good for his mental health and keeps him going since the people he’s fighting for survival are right there with him.
• Goes feral when the family is threatened.  You can threaten to kill him all you want, he won’t care too much, but threaten his family is signing your death warrant.
• Still learning how to Parent so his techniques come off as brusque and rough at times with the kids.
• Will absolutely punch someone in the face without warning if they get on his nerves or are harassing his family.  Tried to resort to incapacitating people instead of killing since by Fremen custom, one inherits whatever the other person in a duel has—including their family—so he’d rather avoid that awkward inheritance.
• Goes out of his way to attack Harkonnen spice harvesters and smaller outposts as revenge for the decimation of his sietch.
• “Me and my family against the world” mentality 
• Goes by "Kadosh" in towns