empire, brought about as a reaction to the formation of the Spacing CHOAM 161 CHOAM Guild CHOAM's creation marked the true beginning of the Impenum, and became one of its chief elements CHOAM and the Impen um were inseparable Prior to the Butlenan Jihad, in the absence of a single ruling power among the inhabited worlds, there was no single economic organization Indeed, such an organization would not have been possible As virtually every state had access to interplanetary trade and interstellar travel, none could be excluded from trade 4t Any level Trade between the planets, systems and the stars was essentially anarchic and space piracy was common After the Jihad, trade was almost unknown at interstellar or intersystem levels Without machines to guide ships through hyperspace, trade from system to system or star to star became very slow and extremely expensive The economic forces governing trade of this sort resembled the ancient great caravan routes which had sprung up on various planets with rich, widely separated cultures While many of these routes dealt with different commodities, they had certain aspects m common They dealt only m the most expensive and least bulky items available Thus almost all the trade was in luxury goods Such was also toe case with what trade survived the Butlenan Jihad Spices (not melange as yet), jewelry (the jewelry planet, Hagal, whose deposits were legendary ten millennia later, was worked out in three and one half centimes, and fifty of those years were before the development of CHOAM), luxury clothing materials (ancient silk, modern schlag skm>-these became the stuff of the caravan trading which was all that connected many Vorlds between the Great Revolt and the coming of the Guild' The Guild brought itself to die attention of the Impenum and Emperor Saudir I m 12 B G (see SPACING OLILD, FOUNDATION OF) Swiftly realizing that the only feasible way to deal with the Guild was on a basis of mutual advantage, Saudir called for a Financial Synod to convene on Aeranum IV in 10 B G and include representatives of the Guild, Landsraad and the Imperial House Depending on what arrangements could be agreed upon, each participant had much to gain and/or lose from the existence of the Guild and the advent of swift, easy interstellar travel and trade Through a masterstroke of purposeful misdirection, the Guild was able to keep secret their dependence on the spice-trance for their navigational abilities By leaking the wonder of melange's geriatric properties, they ensured that their co-participants in the Synod would look no more deeply into the spice's workings The news of the age-controlling properties of the spice served only to enhance the feelings of the feudal states of the Landsraad toward the Guild and the return of extensive trade They were aware of their vulnerability to the effects of trade, now they had an added reason to wish to control the Guild It gradually became apparent that the