>>>>I have the sneaking suspicion that, as the orders were contemporary,
>>>>the Jedi arose at least partially as a counter to the BG, not an
>>>>offshoot of them.
>>
>>To counter which part of them?
>
>Um... the evil, ruthless, manipulative, take-over-the-universe,
>torture-people-for-fun part?

Huh. You have a -completely- different take on the Bene Gesserit than I do, Gryph. Interesting.

I wouldn't call them evil. Ruthless in the persuit of their goal, manipulative certainly, but they were looking to make a perfect human. I'm not sure that's evil. They certainly didn't see it as such - they saw it as the salvation of mankind. There's -nobody- blameless in any of those books, but the only person I might have seen as truly evil would be Baron Harkonnen.

I will have to reread Dune. I don't think their stated aim was to take over the Universe. I always got the impression they thought they had better things to do than that.

Torture-people-for-fun? No. Torture people to test them in persuit of their aim? Yes. And I won't dispute that the Reverend Mother might have enjoyed hurting Paul, but I think at least part of that was personal and revenge on his mother. I don't think enjoying it was standard practice.

<shrug> Your universe, I'll be interested to see what you do with the Bene Gesserit.

-- Juniper

"Lift the world's lid!" ... "For the Revolution of the Restaurant!"
-- Saionji and Miki