Rayan

Family

•  Shorladrim (Father) +  Zhiranni (Mother)
  • Siblings: Three sisters, one brother
• Spouse: Eli (deceased), Ganten
  • Children: Nasan, Aida 

Early Life

Rayan grew up in a moderately-sized sietch with her parents and three siblings.  She was eager to explore and often joined her Uncle Abossim with scouting trips before leaving her home sietch with him to get involved in work involving fighting back against the Harkonnens as she got older.  A strong reason behind this was her younger brother getting killed by Harkonnen soldiers when the latter came across the boy and some of his friends in a town and harassed them into a fight.

Eli

She was with her uncle when they ran into some smugglers who had gotten on the wrong side of some Harkonnens, letting them seek refuge with them for the time being.  Rayan was suspicious at first, as she was wont to be with offworlders, but found one of them, a charismatic young man named Eli, to be fairly endearing.  He stuck around well after the scouts helped the smugglers to a spaceport where they could get offworld and avoid any more trouble with the Harkonnens.  Rayan was clueless to why Eli wanted to remain with them at first, until she saw that he was spending a majority of his time with her when compared to everyone else.  She was surprised by this, and especially more surprised when she discovered that she liked being with him.  Eli was a wellspring of information about life offworld, simply telling her about what it was like on the various worlds he had visited and what they had to offer.

As Eli assimilated into the sietch, Rayan did what she could to help him adjust, the two of them growing even closer.  Eli’s proposal to her a couple months later wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone who knew the two and had seen their interactions.

Rayan became pregnant with their daughter, Aida, a year after the wedding, and was a little more hesitant about Eli going off and getting more involved with the Fedaykin of the tribe now that they had a child on the way who depended on them both.  She also wasn’t too interested in becoming a young widow, and teased him about that as a way to coerce him into staying.  It became clear, though, as the Harkonnen attacks started to ramp up in their violence, that Eli felt his place was with helping the people he now called his own to fight back.  Rayan couldn’t object; she felt the same way and would have joined him if Aida hadn’t been so young.

It was when their daughter was five that Eli went with a small, elite group of Fedaykin to initiate a tricky strike on a Harkonnen outpost.  The attack, as it turned out, was a disaster.  Double the number of Harkonnen soldiers were at the outpost than had been initially reported, and were waiting, bristling to the teeth with weapons.  Rayan had a feeling that something had gone wrong when the warriors’ return was delayed, and only had it confirmed when scouts came back with news that the outpost hadn’t been destroyed, but the bodies of the Harkonnen’s enemies burned outside of it as a warning to anyone who might return.

Eli’s death wrecked Rayan, but she had to remain strong for their young daughter’s sake, not wanting to fall apart and worry the girl.  Though there were several eligible men in the tribe–and many interested in her–Rayan preferred to remain alone, believing that she had lost the only man she would ever love. 

Sardaukar Refugee

When Aida was old enough to be entered into the sietch school, Rayan took up scout work again, and got involved in smaller raids on spice harvesters.  It was during one such raid four years later when her cohorts were met with their own little ambush: Sardaukar soldiers from the Padishah Emperor’s army had been secretly sent to Arrakis to take out pockets of Fremen, especially the ones who were becoming more bold against the planet’s current holders.  Rayan was injured in the fight, doing her best to try to get off the harvester with a bad wound to her side, when one of the Imperial soldiers grabbed her, whisking her away to safety from the doomed harvester.  She blacked out for a while and woke up to see the soldier by her side, having taken refuge in a rock cleft a good distance away from the harvester.  She had been shocked that he had saved her at all, but was more shocked that he tried dressing her wounds.  Regardless, Rayan attacked him just enough to subdue him before taking him to her sietch where the man, Ganten, was essentially taken prisoner until they could figure out what to do with him.  The naib and other important figures of the tribe argue over what to do about this outsider, a lot wanting to kill him, though Rayan spoke up for him claiming that he can’t be as heartless as the Harkonnens since he helped her.  They come to the agreement that 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.

It becomes clear that there’s a lot of friction between him and the adult guards, and continuing to isolate Ganten 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, who becomes his new warden of sorts while her mother is busy.  Rayan distances herself with scout work for the most part, letting Aida help the man grow accustomed to things since their initial meeting didn’t go off so well, but slowly starts to edge into his life around the evenings and mornings when she isn’t away.  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.

The relationship between Ganten and Rayan is also very chilly despite the way they saved each others’ lives.  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, which makes it so that he and Rayan have to work together outside of the sietch.  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.  She doesn’t tell him about Eli at first, but they do touch on her dead husband as they grow more comfortable with each other, so Ganten can see why Rayan puts up a front and has refused to remarry.  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.

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.

Sietch Attack

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.  Rayan hands off Nasan to an escaping member of the tribe when someone notifies her that an elderly man who is hard of hearing and impeded by an old injury isn’t among them.  She uses one of the small side passages to find the man, hobbling his way from the living quarters while the walls shake around him.  Rayan is able to make it past where the fighting broke out, seeing the aftermath of the battle in the form of the bodies of both Fedaykin and Harkonnen sprawled about, getting closer to the main exit tunnel.  She sees Ganten coming back for her when the pounding the lasguns have been giving on the top of the sietch dislodge the roof of the tunnel, collapsing it on Rayan and the man she went back to help.

Extra

• Was a few weeks pregnant at the time of her death; only Ganten knew about this since she planned on telling her friend and family later.
• Typically very reserved with people; likes to feel them out before opening up.  Let Ganten make the first move after she got to know him better and found out about his past since she didn't want him to feel overwhelmed.
  
• Not afraid to voice her opinions, and will try to have the evidence to back it up if need be
  
• Though she denied not wanting to have a big family when Ganten teased her about it, she really wanted one.  They would have had at least five kids if she hadn't died.