D-WOLVES D-WOLVES. Specially-bred carnivores, the end product of Leto II's search for the ideal guardians of his Citadel. Since he had no wish to station an entire garrison of Fish Speakers in the Sareer in order to protect his privacy, he decided shortly after the Citadel's construction in 10723 to find an alternative to his female warriors. The system he eventually chose was twofold: Ixian surveillance devices to keep him informed of any unau-thorizes intrusions, and some form of predatory animal to deal with the intruders. The D-wolves were to be those predators. The God Emperor had in mind a specific sort of creature when he began the breeding program: a "more intimidating version" of the Rya Wolves once fouad on Salusa Secundus. Ideally, he would have used breeding pairs of those beasts as his first-generation stock; unfortunately, the "softening" of the former prison planet had rendered the wolves extinct. Leto was forced to begin elsewhere. The earliest ancestors of the D-wolves were wolves imported from a dozen worlds chosen variously for speed, size, endurance and efficiency in hunting. In addition, Gaze Hounds (dogs whose visual acuity had long since made them the most popular watch animals in the Imperium; native to Centraha) were bred with the second-generation hybrids and with several of the later generations. This cross produced wolves that could perform as sight-hunters and were thus less dependent on scent-tracks which their human prey might be-able to disguise or obliterate, Leto had originally chosen some of the largest species of wolves available to him, and he continued to increase the shoulder-height of the average litter by breeding the largest animals back into the mix. By the end of the first half-century of the program, he had succeeded in producing wolves that dwarfed all other known species. 196 In 10819, D-wolves were released in the Forbidden Forest The animals were capable of breeding true to their own kind, and had proven themselves equal to the God Emperor's expectations They stood an average of two meters at the shoulder, could find and follow trails several days old and could bring down prey three times their size As individuals, they were formidable, m a pack, no adver sary could defeat them While they appear to have lacked the speed which characterized the Rya Wolves the D wolves outshone their models m all other respects They controlled the Forest for thousands of years, protecting Lew's Citadel against would-be raiders with terrifying efficiency It was not until 13722-the year in which Siona Atreides led her rebels in the raid which gained them the Stolen Journals-tha\ they failed m their guardianship and were subsequently destroyed Before leaving for their mission, the rebels had injected themselves with large doses of Nyilatm, a poison with devastating effects on the lupine nervous system Whether or not the drug would be effective on the D wolves was not known but the rebels had hypothesized that the wolves's vulner ability to the poison might have been increased by the many generations of iqbreed ing which had taken place since the species was developed The theory, as only Siona lived to discover, was correct, the wolves's conditioning, which kept them within the boundaries of the Forbidden Forest, allowed them to eat whatever they brought down within those boundaries The guardians were poisoned and replaced by what Leto referred to as "human wolves ' Further reference RYA WOLVFS ECAZ.