0 in its auxiliary The Friends of the Order of Mentats CHALLENGES TO THE ORDER As centu nes passed, the scope of the training pro gram changed little But this stability was challenged during the unprecedented econom ic growth of the Impenum particularly un der Avelard II (reigned 1624 1647) Under severe political pressure Avelard came within a whisker of sending tioops to Tleilax to force the Order to expand its training program Proctor Makarfo Bonn resisted the demands to alter the size pace or quality of the Order s training efforts and finally persuaded Avelard that neither Impenum, CHOAM, nor Landsraad would gain from watered-down Mentat training The Tleilaxu claimed part credit for Avelard s forbearance releas mg the news after the crisis that they had threatened to resist the invasion with force this claim has met with uniform skepticism whenever the relative strengths are consid ered of the united Sardaukar and Landsraad on the one hand and the Tleilaxu on the other The Order faced significant problems from MENTATS HISTORY 378 MENTATS HISTORY radical neo-Butierians in whatever form that fanaticism emerged over the centuries Among the most violent were the Pularsaman Leftists, who considered Mentats as traitors who had turned their minds into organic machines The terror of the Pularsamans was directed against the individual Mental, though, and assassination-not mass force-was their favored tactic * The Tleilaxu could not guarantee the security of Mentats scattered in ones and twos over a thousand worlds, die necessity of defending a Mental's person led to the inclusion of martial arts into the Mental curriculum The Gmaz School of Master Swordsmen, for example provided training to Advisor rank Mentats, thus helping to create the specialization of Mentat Assassin By the tenth millennium, Mental Assassins-Thufir Hawat of House Atreides or Piter de Vnes of House Harkonnen, for example-were sine qua non for a major house with higher aspirations Other specializations were appearing at this nexus of powerful political forces the ghola Duocan Idaho presented to Muad'Dib by the Tleilaxu was a Zensunni philosopher-Mental The author of the standard work on the history of the Oder, Dondar Kooreeg, feels mat the ghola's Mentat training was crucial to his unprecedented recovery of his pre-ghota identity The truly regrettable waste m Mentat specialization was the failure to link Mentat training with either the Spacing Guild or Bene Gessent programs All such attempts (and many were extended) met with hostility DECLINE OF THE ORDER One society that welcomed Mentat experience was the Tleilaxu They boasted that through their experiments in controlled mutation, they had combined Mental ability with specially tai lored accorophshments (or perversions) of their own One result was the notorious KMP ("Killer-Mental Program") The founder of the Order, Albans himself, had warned against combining Mentat train mg with any form of s