Shattered Kingdoms

Follow the toad.

Argudhun either fleshed out or removed.
Garazul fleshed out and made into a real desert town.

A tribe of desert nomads wandering about the Zhang desert, with maybe a fremen-style encampment built into some rockface (seich)

Dune, like many science fiction books, was something that could have been made much more succinct if someone had posed the question "Why not just bombard from orbit?"

I'm pretty sure they did. And the response was, 'Because we're fighting over resources which we would destroy if we did, stupid.'

The question was addressed in the series own. Orbital bombardment destroyed the resources as mot pointed out. Also, there were certain things like using nukes and planet burners were considered atrocities and should one faction use them, the other factions in the universe would have annihalted them to the man.

I'm sure they could have blown up the cities without harming the spice. And there's nothing wrong with conventional weaponry.

I realized that after I posted, own, but there's a valid and suitably nerdy response to it.

The Guild, who had a monopoly on space-faring vessels, didn't feel like giving anyone too secure a hold over a resource that could cripple them. Orbital bombardment = absolute power over Arrakis. They couldn't do the job themselves because they were pussies and didn't want to fight anybody personally, nor would orbital weaponry have gone over well with any of the people who relied on them to be a 'neutral faction'.

Naturally that screwed them up in the long term when they had no real weaponry of their own and found a bunch of desert-dwelling morons holding them hostage. Pretty stupid for psychics.

Ah, but couldn't a house charter like four fifths of the guild's ships, and then take them over with their troops, threatening the pilot with death if there was no compliance with orders?

The guild would have seen anything that short-term coming. It's long-term planning where they screwed up. I mean, they might be stupid psychics, but they are psychics.

Just don't tell your troops until the time to strike is near