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"It was said of Norma Cenva that one could not judge her on the basis of appearances. No matter her physical failings or the classic beauty that eventually replaced them, neither represented the essence of the woman. She was, above all else, a cerebral powerhouse."
Princess Irulan, Biographies of the Butlerian Jihad[src]


Norma Cenva (b. 218 BG), also known as the Oracle, Oracle of Time, Oracle of Infinity or Oracle Infinity, was one of the most important figures in all of human history, as the designer of the first foldspace ship, the first Navigator, and the co-founder of the Spacing Guild. She eventually evolved into an omnipotent Oracle guiding the Guildsmen.

Biography[]

Early life (218-177 BG)[]

On Rossak[]

Norma Cenva was considered a failure by her mother, Zufa Cenva, because she was born a malformed dwarf. This was partially due to the strange chemicals on Rossak, the same reason why Sorceresses like her mother were so powerful.

Norma was almost pitied by her mother while the former lived on Rossak. Meanwhile her adoptive father (and future husband) Aurelius Venport helped her continue her fascination and meddling with higher-order mathematics arranging for her to become an assistant to Tio Holtzman.

Career with Tio Holtzman on Poritirn[]

Realizing her genius from a paper sent by Aurelius Venport, famous Poritrin scientist Tio Holtzman invited her to be his assistant in 203 BG. When Norma became an assistant to Savant Holtzman, she first developed the portable scrambler generator (which emitted a powerful blast of energy to scramble the gel circuitry of Thinking Machines), a concept developed from the scrambler web technology that Tio Holtzman had first designed and used. She thought of the portable scrambler generator invention as her contribution to the Butlerian Jihad war effort.

She cared little that Holtzman took credit for much of her work. Nevertheless, her innovations would prove indispensable to humanity in the war against the thinking machines known as the Butlerian Jihad.

Next, she used the Holtzman effect to invent the suspensor field. Coupled with the common glow strips of the time, this evolved into the glowglobe, the staple light source used throughout the Known Universe.

Later, as she stopped creating new inventions for Lord Niko Bludd to benefit from, Lord Bludd and Savant Tio Holtzman essentially disowned Norma. They did this in return for a portion of the glowglobe profits that Aurelius Venport procured by "illegally" selling and marketing the glowglobe invention. This action had disregarded the contract that Norma had signed to become an assistant of the Savant, which stated that all technologies developed under the guidance of Tio Holtzman were owned by Lord Niko Bludd.

As an independent scientist (177-174 BG)[]

Norma then continued her work on spacefolders which had prevented her from creating any more inventions under the service of Holtzman. She spent a great deal of her life conceiving, designing and testing the spacefolder idea.

Unfortunately, her first prototype was taken from her by Lord Niko Bludd, although Venport's co-founder of VenKee Enterprises, Tuk Keedair took the spacefolder with a ship-load of Poritrin slaves to Arrakis, where some of them evolved into the Fremen.

Reborn life (174-108 BG)[]

While on a spaceflight, the Titan Xerxes captured her and tortured her for hours while many neo-cymeks watched. The event triggered latent mental powers, and caused her soostone pendant to fuse with her. The ultimate result was that she gained amazing powers to control her molecular structure and utilize formidable new prescient abilities. With just a thought, she killed Xerxes and the Neo-cymeks. With massive amounts of mental power at her fingertips, Norma found herself in connection with her maternal bloodline leading off into the far distant past. Using their forms as a template, she then transformed her body from an unappealing dwarf-like being into a woman of great elegance and beauty.

Reunion with Zufa Cenva[]

Norma then went to the planet known as Kolhar where she summoned her mother, the supreme sorceress of the Jihad, Zufa Cenva. Her mother realized she had made a mistake in abandoning her child before and redoubled her efforts to help Norma. Aurelius Venport was also invited and together the three set about transforming Kolhar into the first Junction, a massive construction yard to build ships with Norma's new Holtzman engines. It was during this time that Aurelius and Norma finally consummated their love. The pair eventually produced four children, of which only Adrien had his father's business acumen.

The space travel Problem[]

After many years, Norma still couldn't find a way to fold space safely. One out of every ten flights was lost due to this reason. Because a pilot had no way of knowing exactly where a space folding ship was likely to appear, ships often appeared in the middle of suns to burn or crashing into planets without enough time for a pilot to react. In the years between, her husband had died and Adrien Venport had taken over. The first ships used complicated computers with lightning fast reflexes, but when the Jihad discovered this they insisted on their complete destruction. Norma subsequently devoted all her efforts into finding a solution and consumed ever increasing amounts of melange that gave her prescience and helped her think and concentrate better.

During the final years of the Jihad, Norma noticed slight deformations on her perfect body, like pinkish patches of skin, which she then would heal with a mind gesture. They however persisted until she finally decided to have a medical check, to learn they were allergic reactions to melange overconsumption. Norma however was very disappointed about the starship losses of the Great Purge: a percentage of whole ships would simply perish after each spacefolding jump, and she could not stop seeking for an answer.

As the First Navigator (88 BG - 1 AG)[]

Against the doctor's suggestion, she decided to give an answer to the navigational problem once and for all. She filled her room with extravagant portions of melange in gas form.

While consuming melange, she had an epiphany. Her unique talents, combined with the power of the spice melange, helped her realize the potential for carefully screened and trained humans to fold space safely. When the experience finished, she saw that her body was tragically deformed, resembling her original dwarfish shape, only with an even larger head. For some reason she decided not to revert to her previous form, considering it now an unnecessary expenditure of energy. The whole physical journey to beauty seemed shallow to her, infinitely insignificant.

She realized that for one to obtain such levels of prescience would need full spice immersion, total exposure and complete dependence. Her crews constructed an airtight clearplaz chamber where she would breathe gas form melange, without food and water.

Eventually, she learned to fold space with her mind alone, without the use of a Holtzman generator, which she demonstrated by transporting her clearplaz chamber from Kolhar to Emperor Salvador Corrino's dining room on Salusa Secundus. This ability appeared to be the result of a union of her psychic abilities as a Sorceress of Rossak and her prescient abilities as a Navigator.

Formation of the Spacing Guild[]

By 5 BG, eighty-three years after becoming the first Navigator, her great-great-grandson Josef Venport had taken over VenKee, which had transformed into Venport Holdings or simply VenHold. Around this time, she began to have visions of the creation of the Spacing Guild in a few year's time, and her advice and guidance to Josef were secretly part of machinations which would bring about the Guild's creation. When Josef assassinated Emperor Salvador, VenHold were forced to flee to the planet Denali.

As the new Emperor Roderick Corrino launched the Battle of Denali to destroy VenHold and save his hostage daughter Anna Corrino, Norma appeared on the bridge of the Imperial flagship and negotiated with Roderick on behalf of all Navigators. Roderick agreed to spare all current and future Navigators in exchange for Norma Cenva removing all VenHold ships from Denali orbit, leaving the planet open to attack. Eventually, the battle was won. Norma appeared in Josef's office and offered him a last chance to survive by entering her spice tank and initiating the process of becoming a Navigator, which would force Roderick to spare him as per their agreement. Venport agreds, and Roderick eventually accepted this fate for his enemy.

Roderick used the Navigators saved to form the Independent Spacing Guild with Norma's help, in the year 1 AG.

Transformation after the Guild[]

While remaining sealed in her spice chamber, her body continued to transform, even to the extent that her body no longer existed and she remained nothing less than a disembodied consciousness in a clearplaz globe. This consciousness came to be known as the Oracle of Infinity.

As the Oracle, Cenva took on the role of the protector, guiding force and "patron saint" of the Spacing Guild, especially the Navigators. During the time of the Corrino Empire, Navigators were seen bringing their Clearplaz chambers around a monument on the planet Junction complex dedicated to her.

As the Oracle of Time[]

Searching for the Ultimate Kwisatz Haderach[]

Thousands of years later, as the threat of the Thinking Machines arose again during the time of Kralizec, Norma came to be known amongst the Guild as the Oracle of Time. The Oracle/Cenva again tried to protect humanity against Omnius and the Machines. Through prescience, she realized that the super-human Kwisatz Haderach was on the No-ship, the Ithaca. She helped the ship, piloted by the final ghola of Duncan Idaho, escape from an alternate universe. Idaho had inadvertently stranded the vessel, when he had folded space blindly to escape from the Outside Enemy. She then lost track of the Ithaca, as Idaho sent the ship into fold-space again, without warning or charting course, as he did not know that the Oracle was trying to help the Ithaca's plight.

Meeting with the Navigators[]

Three years after that, Navigator Edrik of the Guild, was called upon by the Oracle to come to an out-in-space meeting that she had arranged. He and the other Steersman asked her advice on the Spice shortage, brought on by the monopoly of melange by the combined Bene Gesserit/Honored Matres group, the New Sisterhood. The Oracle/Norma stated to Edrik that although the melange shortage was a legitimate concern, that finding the new and Ultimate Kwisatz Haderach before the beginning of Kralizec, the great battle at the end of the age, was her paramount concern. She then left the meeting abruptly.

Twenty years later, as the Kralizec was beginning, under the nefarious influence of secretly machine-led Enhanced Face Dancers, the Guild fractured as the Administrator branch, decided to kill and eliminate all Navigators, and replace them with mathematical compilers. Simultaneously, the New Sisterhood rallied humanity to fight the vast armada fleet of Thinking Machines that Omnius had unleashed on humanity.

The Oracle then called all Navigators through prescience to another meeting deep in known space. She announced that the Ithaca had been captured by the Thinking Machines, and that she would be immediately folding space to there. She ordered the Navigators and their fleet to the Machine/Human battlefront line over Chapterhouse, and they engaged the first machine wave of ships destroying all of them

The end on Synchrony[]

The Oracle then ordered the Navigators to bring their Heighliners to the skies of Synchrony, as a show of force to the pivotal beings gathered in Cathedral, the ruling chamber of Omnius and Erasmus. As the events of Kralizec unfolded on Synchrony, the Oracle/Cenva appeared in Cathedral after the duel of Paul Atreides and Paolo. As Paul healed himself, and Paolo found himself in an irreversible trance-coma, Cenva confirmed Paul's death-experience prescient announcement that Duncan Idaho was indeed the Ultimate Kwisatz Haderach.

Then, as Omnius gloated that all efforts to stop him were irrelevant, as humanity would soon be dead as another fleet was approaching Chapterhouse, the Oracle decided to confront Omnius once and for all. The Oracle, through great power, banished all aspects of Omnius to the alternate universe, traveling with him, ridding humanity of the Thinking Machines ruler once and for all.

Relationships[]

Family[]

Zufa Cenva[]

In her early years on Rossak, Norma did not have a good relationship with her mother, Supreme Sorceress Zufa Cenva, who was bitter that she had not produced the perfect daughter she had expected from the culmination of genes she had planned before her birth. Zufa withheld the letter from Tio Holtzman inviting Norma to Poritrin to work with him, not thinking of Norma as worthy of this and because of this suspecting - or perhaps hoping - that Holtzman had misinterpreted Norma's work. When Norma showed success in her innovations on Poritrin, Zufa visited her but thought of the majority of her and Holtzman's inventions as mere toys, calling the glowglobes simply floating lights and showing disdain at her daughter for what she saw as not contributing to the war effort in any meaningful way. The relationship between Zufa and her daughter, however, grew much better following Norma's transformation after torture by the Titan Xerxes and her summoning her mother to Kolhar, Zufa helping Norma and Aurelius, whose relationship with Zufa was also strengthened in this period, with the establishment of the Kolhar shipyards.

Ticia Cenva[]

Despite reconciling her relationship with her mother after her transformation and the revealing of her powers, Norma was ultimately no friend of her younger half-sister Ticia Cenva, the daughter of Zufa with Grand Patriarch Iblis Ginjo, in a similar manner to how she had been bitter with her mother in her youth on Rossak, as Ticia was jealous of her older sister due to most of their mother's attention being given to the latter before her death, and what she knew in her heart were Norma's greater achievments. She also thought of her sister as strange and not worthy of Sorceress powers, although she did not entirely mistrust her, as demonstrating by her almost heeding Norma's warning of the pirahna mites coming to Rossak  after she also showed prescience through her knowledge of the Sorceresses' computers. There was also the matter of the sisters' contrasting  beliefs, Norma holding a more humanitarian view on the universe and Ticia being a more cynical personality.

Adrien Venport[]

Norma was proud of Adrien Venport, the oldest of her five sons with Aurelius Venport, and the only one who truly inherited Aurelius' talent in business and who ultimately mimiced his success. Adrien also had great trust in his mother, as shown by his allowing the completion of her transformation process into the first Guild Navigator, in 88 BG, when he did not truly know what was preceding. At the end, however, Norma held the responsibility as well as a great amount of guilt for Adrien's death, which came when she convinced him to attempt to become a Navigator himself as an extremely old man.

Aurelius Venport[]

On Rossak, shunned by the Sorceresses of Rossak, including her mother, Norma's only real friend was her adoptive father Aurelius Venport. The two had a shared interest in science and mathematics, pursuits which Supreme Sorceress Zufa thought of as both strange and irrelevant. Norma was grateful for the many times in which Aurelius helped her during her early life, most importanlty his revealing to her of Holtzman's letter inviting her to Poritrin, and much later his ironic releasment from his service when she wished to do independent work, followed by his funding of her pursuits to create foldspace technology using the profits of his company, VenKee Enterprises, which he also used later to fund the construction of the Kolhar shipyards. During the period of the construction of the first test foldspace ship on Poritrin, Aurelius proposed to Norma, a proposition which she finally accepted a year later on Kolhar after her tranformation after surviving Xerxes' torture, and they had five children together, of whom Adrien was the most successful and became Directuer of VenKee after Aurelius' death.

Tio Holtzman[]

Norma first met Savant Tio Holtzman, the great Ixian scientist of Poritrin, in 203 BG when he saw her mathematical work and recognised great potential in her, sending a letter to Rossak inviting her to come and work for him. His lack of true sympathy for her was already demonstrated at this early time, however, as he made her sign a contract which made all of her inventions his property. Within a few years, it was shown that the two had vastly different personalities and views, and Holtzman grew jealous of Norma's truly superior scientific talent. Partly because of this, and partly because of his anger at her seclusion in obsession with her new foldspace equations, Holtzman reduced her role in her services and had little regret at her release from her services in 176 BG. While Holtzman viewed his own success above Norma's, as shown by his ousting of Norma and the crew working on the first foldspace ship from Poritrin, he also held no anger or contempt towards her, which he demonstrated by  not keeping but instead protecting the valuable soostone which he discovered she owned while scouring the site of the prototype with his dragoons.

Roderick Corrino[]

Although Norma should have been an enemy of the newly crowned Emperor Roderick Corrino during the later years of the galactic civil war due to his adversity with Directeur Josef Venport, her lack of a down-to-earth personality as well as her having no true loyalty to any one side of the conflict, rather wishing the stability of both the Corrino Empire and Venport Holdings, resulted in her deciding to secretly ally herself with the Emperor during the Battle of Denali by coming to an agreement with Roderick concerning VenHold and the Navigators - although she also did not feel obligated to truly hold up their deal, as shown by her tricking him into sparing Josef through a loophole in their agreement.

Behind the Scenes[]

Frank Herbert originally mentioned Norma in God Emperor of Dune. Her role in the Legends of Dune prequels and later in the Sequels of Dune is increased and she is one of the most pivotal characters in Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's Expanded Dune Universe.

Her entry in The Dune Encyclopedia gives her a different name – Norma Cevna. The reasons for this are unknown.

Appearances[]

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