Sardaukar
The Emperor's legions, bred fanatically loyal and trained under brutal conditions from birth.
Salusa Secundus made the Sardaukar what they were. The Corrino throne kept it a prison planet, quietly and deliberately brutal, purpose-built to harden soldiers past anything an ordinary Imperial world could produce. For thousands of years the result was, by consensus, the single most feared fighting force in known space. Loyalty to the Padishah Emperor ran through them like a religion. Shaddam IV leaned on that loyalty as his final guarantee against the Great Houses. He called the Sardaukar out only when an example needed making or a dispute had moved past what diplomacy could fix. Arrakis ended the myth of invincibility. Fremen fighters, tempered by a planet crueler even than Salusa Secundus, broke Sardaukar lines in open battle. It was the first time that had happened in Imperial history. The loss cost Shaddam his throne, and it did something worse to the Corrinos' image. It showed every House watching that Imperial military supremacy had never been the sure thing the throne wanted the galaxy to believe.
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