ant The reserves of the emperor dwarfed those of the Guild and the Bene Gessent From those vast quantities the emperor doled out small amounts m regular audiences, which were awaited with mortal anxiety by the recipients Even the Guild and the Bene Gessent attended and hoped for generosity With the death of Leto II, these balances were permanently altered The stores of the emperor were discovered by Duncan Idaho and Siona Atreides but they were not able to keep them A raid directed by the Guild, clearly long planned for such a contingency as the emperor's death, succeeded in seizing a sizable portion of Leto s spice, enough to maintain the Guild as a power until the development of artificial spice The Bene Gessent were never proven to have been involved in this action, but it is worth remarking that they s>eem to have been less concerned about their spice stores than previously from this point until the develop ment of the artificial substitute The Starvation was not actually caused by a shortage of spice, then Rather, the famines were due to the sociopolitical state of the inhabited planets after the demise of Leto H The passing of the emperor, after over three millennia upon the throne, threw his government into a state of chaos from which it never recovered Since Leto had been the victim of an assassination by plotters who had not planned beyond the death of their enemy, no clear successor to the throne was prepared to step forward Duncan Idaho was able to retain control of the Fish Speakers on Arrakis and in some of the off planet garrisons Siona was able to remain a power on Arrakis by her connections with the resistance move ment her alliance with Duncan Idaho, and her own intelligence and leadership STARVATION THE 475 STILGAR But while Duncan and Siona were able to retain control of Arrahs, the situation through out the galaxy remained fluid In the beginning, the struggle for power took place between two opponents-the Fish Speakers, led by Duncan and Siona, and those supporting the Guild In the process of this lengthy war, many regions whose survival depended on an economy tied to the trading networks of the old Impenum were simply ignored by the combatants Severance of the trade lifeline produced the famines The systems of Essen and* Tolua seem to have been among the first to succumb Both were highly industrialized, dependent upon their wealth of minerals and ores to produce goods which could be traded for foodstuffs from other systems Each of them was also the focus of a relatively small trading network which could be discarded by the Guild at little cost After they were so abandoned, the populations of both systems eventually shrunk to less than ten percent of then- levels under the Impenum The stones of cannibalism told by traders who began to visit these systems after the famines were repeated again and again This collapse of the old oikumene was not relieved with the first uses of the Ixian Navigation Machi