In the 1984, they added weirding modules as weapons used by House Atreides to explain why they were such excellent fighters. These do not exist in the books (and confused my dad so much they he re-read the books because he thought he had missed them).
I was thinking about it this morning while cooking breakfast. Should the weirding modules be good weapons based on the Dune universe?
Here’s what we know.
Weirding modules take certain sounds and convert them into violence! You can shatter rock, crush an enemy, explode their organs, make explosions, set fires, etc.
In the Dune universe, there are also conventional weapons that shoot bullets, and of course, the infamous laser gun. Lasers are interesting in the Dune universe because they also have personal shields that will block all but something moving slowly. If a laser hits a shield though, then both the laser gun and the shield go up in an atomic explosion. This has made melee combat pretty viable in the Dune universe since the slow blade will penetrate the shield. Importantly, shields are not used frequently on Arrakis because they attract sandworms. Meaning, that conventional weapons are actually effective on Arrakis, although seemingly laser weapons are not used much because there’s still a fear of shields (if I recall correctly, the Fremen set up shield traps to encourage the Sarduakar from using lasers).
Weirding Modules Analysis
Pros:
- Unlimited ammo. If you can talk, then you have ammo.
- Explosions. What’s better than killing one enemy with one shot? Killing a bunch of enemies with one shot.
- Versatility. I figure you’d mainly use it to make explosions in war, but having the option to make targeted hits, start fires, explode rock, is great.
Cons:
- Slow rate of fire. Although I would estimate it is probably pretty close to the time to take a well-aimed shot (1.5 seconds maybe), so it isn’t super slow. But there’s no semi-auto or automatic fire with weirding modules.
- Requires fairly specialized training. The Fremen seems to learn it easily, but there’s an implication that a bit of elitism is required, something that the Fremen have in spades.
Unknown:
- Shields?
Laser Guns
Pros:
- Continuous beam. You can literally sweep the battlefield.
- Also has pulse fire and arc fire. It is unclear how deadly arc fire can be relative to the beam modes but it can hit an area.
- Very deadly especially in beam mode.
Cons:
- They do require ammo although it is unclear how long a battery pack lasts. I’ve seen 100 shots per pack but I don’t know if this is canon.
- Shield interaction.
Projectile Weapons
Pros:
- Semi-auto and automatic fire.
- High rate of fire.
- No special training required.
- Family versatility. While one gun has individual pros and cons, as a family of weapons, projectile weapons have access to poison darts, flamethrowers, and explosives.
Cons:
- Ammo. It is unclear how much ammo there is per clip, but they definitely need ammo.
- Lack of individual weapon versatility.
The big question remaining for me is: Do Weirding Modules interact with shields? We know that projectile weapons have fallen out of favour because of shields (although still used because not everybody has a personal shield). And we know there is hesitancy to use laser weapons because of shields.
If weirding modules bypass shields, then is that the critical elements that could turn them into an in-universe super weapon? In a world dominated by melee combat, and short range dart throwers to bypass shields, the weirding module is going to have a tremendous advantage.
So, should they bypass shields? We know the sound can bypass shields because they can talk to each other. But this is low energy vibrations. The weirding modules shots travel through the air at tremendous velocity. So it seems like the air molecules being pushed forward by the module should be blocked as they would be going too fast. Maybe the weirding modules have a shield penetrating firing mode? I.e. a particular sound that makes the air move slow enough to penetrate a shield but still kill the enemy.
Any thoughts?
