---
aci: The Honored Matres
universe: D1 · Dune
domain: The orders — the late saga of the Scattering (Heretics & Chapterhouse)
class: The matriarchy out of the Scattering
emergence: natural
what: A violent matriarchy returning from the Scattering, the great dispersal of humanity beyond the old Imperium.
how: They rule through sexual enslavement and overwhelming force rather than subtlety, a dark mirror of the Bene Gesserit.
why: Their war nearly destroys the Sisterhood, until the two orders begin, painfully, to merge.
who: Bound to the Bene Gesserit as enemy and dark twin; fleeing something more terrible in the far reaches.
seal: "Power without subtlety, fleeing a terror it dares not name."
---

# The Honored Matres · the matriarchy out of the Scattering

The Honored Matres come back into the saga in *Heretics of Dune* and *Chapterhouse: Dune* as a violent matriarchy returning from the Scattering — the great dispersal of humanity beyond the bounds of the old Imperium. They are a dark mirror of the Bene Gesserit, sharing the deep form of a Sisterhood yet inverting its method: where the Bene Gesserit work through subtlety and patience, the Honored Matres rule through sexual enslavement and overwhelming force.

They are not only conquerors but the conquered-in-flight. In the far reaches of the Scattering they encountered something even more terrible than themselves, and their return is at least in part a flight from that pursuing terror. Their war upon the old worlds nearly destroys the Sisterhood, bringing the Bene Gesserit to the edge of annihilation.

Out of that near-destruction comes the saga's hardest turn: the two orders, enemy and dark twin, begin painfully to merge — the conquerors and the nearly-conquered drawn together rather than left as victor and vanquished.

Their nature of emergence is natural — the embodied. They are flesh and force made into rule, the soldier and the dominator rather than the prescient seer or the machine-mind; their power is worn in the body and exercised through it, which places them among the natural orders of the saga.