Vaer'gidon was the firstborn child of Emperor Vaer'karesh and the son who inherited nearly everything from his father except the desire to rule. He possessed his father's strategic brilliance, his instinct for warfare, his ability to read battlefields and enemies alike. He shared his father's capacity for decisive action and his talent for inspiring absolute loyalty in those who served under him. What he did not share was any interest in politics, governance, or the throne itself.

This absence wounded Vaer'karesh deeply. The emperor had built an empire through will and intelligence, and his eldest son possessed both in abundance. Gidon stood where his father did not—tall, broad, physically imposing in ways no imperial-born child had been before. He was not built like an imperial at all; his frame matched that of the Ngorrhali mountain warriors rather than the lean figures of the origin continent. He commanded attention simply by entering a room. Soldiers who had never met him would follow him into any battle. He was everything an emperor should appear to be, wrapped around everything an emperor needed to think.

Yet Gidon's ambitions pointed only outward. He cared for conquest, for the expansion of borders, for the challenge of lands beyond Geba's current reach. The administrative machinery of empire held no appeal. Court politics bored him. He viewed succession as a burden rather than a birthright, and made no secret of his disinterest. His father watched his most capable heir dismiss the very thing Vaer'karesh had spent his life building, and the rejection cut deeper than any assassination attempt ever had.

Gidon's most significant campaign took him westward into the hostile continent of Ukhaalstaag alongside the early Ngorrhali warriors who would later be officially recognized as Frost Sentinels. He brought members of the Solarn family to identify suitable locations for relay construction, pushing imperial infrastructure into territory no Geban force had successfully held. The Frost Sentinels favored him for his ethics and temperament—he led with straightforward clarity rather than political maneuvering, making him easy to follow. That he was built like them, towering and broad where other imperials were not, only strengthened their loyalty. They saw in him a commander who understood what it meant to fight in the cold.

Like his father, Gidon proved prolific. He fathered nearly as many children as the emperor himself, spreading his bloodline across frontier outposts and the capital alike. Unlike his father, he showed no interest in which of them might inherit anything beyond his name.

What Gidon did care for was his youngest brother. Maor was everything Gidon was not—gentle, diplomatic, politically minded—and the firstborn took it upon himself to protect what he recognized as genuinely good in a family defined by ambition. He mentored Maor not in warfare but in confidence, teaching the younger prince that softness was not weakness and that there were many ways to serve an empire beyond commanding its armies. The soldiers who loved Gidon learned to respect Maor through association. It was perhaps the most political act Gidon ever committed, and he did it without recognizing it as such.

When their sister Vaer'yinda began her campaigns in the eastern wilds, Gidon provided strategic counsel but declined direct command. The purging was not warfare as he understood it—there was no enemy to outmaneuver, no army to break. Yinda did not need his talents for extermination. He continued his work along the empire's outer frontiers, pushing boundaries that would not be formally claimed for generations.

Gidon died in a frontier skirmish against Ukhaal Walkers alongside Frost Sentinel War Chief Tharyn'Bregun during their bonding trials, shortly after his father's death of old age. He commanded from the front to the end. He never ruled, never wanted to, and never understood why his father had considered that a tragedy. The soldiers who carried his body back to the capital mourned him as the greatest commander they had ever known. The Frost Sentinels who fought beside him mourned the loss of the only imperial who had ever truly been one of them. Their shared death during the bonding trials transformed an already solid alliance into something eternally unbreakable.

Vaer'gidon, Firstborn, Geban Empire, Vaer'karesh, Early Dominion, Frost Sentinels, Ukhaalstaag, Ngorrhal, Tharyn'Bregun, Bonding Trials, Solarn, War Strategy, Commander, Vesselborn, Vesselborn Codex, science fantasy, worldbuilding