I have always loved fantasy and science fiction maps. I enjoyed being able to track the progress of the fellowship as they aided Frodo on his quest to Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings. I also enjoyed keeping besides me a copy of non-canon map of the Star Wars universe while reading the Heir To The Empire trilogy from Timothy Zahn. Dune is another franchise with an official map, little wonder that most prospective franchises create a map, it gives a readers a sense of journey and scale. It also helps to not be confused. So all the available maps of the Dune franchise, canon and non-canon can be found on this page, hopefully with the correct attribution to the artist that made them.
That leads me to the elephant in the room, the fourth novel God-Emperor of Dune. While novels 2 and 3 were good they basically tidied up the story of Paul’s ascension to power and his struggles with his personal demons. The fourth novel ventured into a new direction. While inextricably linked to the Dune Saga (novels 1 through 3) author Frank Herbert was also very bold, and made numerous changes to the physical planet Dune, or Arrakis, through terraforming. Yet God-Emperor of Dune is filled with references to the landscape as titular character remembers the past. I think God-Emperor of Dune needs a map. Yet nobody has made one. So he is my humble attempt. Starting from sketch and using the required references from the novels I hope to create a decent attempt at a fictional map.
As mentioned Dune in novel God-Emperor of Dune has been terraformed. The long-held desire by the Fremen people to see the planet lush with greenery has been accomplished. Of course that also meant the extinction of their way of life, despite some hold-outs that the God-Emperor permits. Terraforming also extinguished the giant worms that roamed the dunes and probably created them. The God-Emperor himself can be said to be the last worm after undergoing a transfiguration that lasted 3500 years after bonding with a sandtrout, a per-worm larvae that has blocked off most water on the planet into underground living cisterns. It is not clear how sandtrout were destroyed and in fact terraforming the planet may be considered somewhat implausible, but we are led to believe Leto II managed it.
All that is left of the desert is the Sareer, the God-Emperor’s personal desert that he needs because his worm body detests water.
