Twisted Mentat Piter de Vries

Traits: Twisted Mentat, Killer

Talents

• Advisor (Understand): Piter may re-roll a single d20 in the dice pool of an ally he assists.
• Driven: After Piter spends Threat to gain the use of Determination, roll 1d20. If he rolls equal to or under his Discipline rating (by itself), he immediately regains that spent Threat.
• Mentat Discipline: Add two automatic successes on all Understand tests Piter attempts when remembering facts or data.
• Twisted Mentat: Piter gains 1 bonus point of Threat when he adds to Threat on an Understand test. He may only use this to Obtain Information, or to create a trait exploiting an opponent's weakness or causing pain and suffering.

Piter de Vries was a vicious, sadistic, and brilliant Mentat, and perhaps the closest approximation of a friend to Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. A product of Bene Tleilax ‘twisting’, de Vries served as House Harkonnen’s primary Mentat, working to further his master’s ambitions.

Where standard Mentats are meticulously trained and conditioned to act without base emotion, de Vries’ worst tendencies had all been encouraged. While he still possessed the razor-sharp insight of any other Mentat, he was prone to adding cruel flourishes to plans crafted from the output of his computations. This sadism was highly appealing to the Baron, who valued him greatly but never fully trusted him or considered him anything but expendable.

De Vries’ greatest accomplishment was the breaking of Dr. Wellington Yueh’s Suk conditioning in the furtherance of the Baron’s agenda. Just how the Mentat accomplished this seemingly impossible feat remains poorly understood, but it is known he utilized the kidnapping of the doctor’s wife as a psychological fulcrum against which his conditioning was shattered.

De Vries commanded an intelligence network to rival that of any power in the Imperium and schemed ceaselessly on behalf of the Harkonnens, and likely, himself. The extent of the evils he accomplished in his life can only be guessed.