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Duststalker — VESSELBORN Codex

Duststalker

Dunarex Macrathor

Origin: Inland Thazvaar (deserts)

Length (Wild): 8 to 12 meters

Weight (Wild): 800 kg to 1.2 tonnes

Length (City Variant): Less than 0.2 meters

Lifespan: 20 to 80 years

The Duststalker is a lean desert predator of Inland Thazvaar's Infinitude Deserts, spanning 8 to 12 meters and weighing 800 kg to 1.2 tonnes in the wild. Camouflaged as large rocks in desert-mountain transitions, it ambushes wanderers and herds with explosive speed, fangs and claws claiming prey in a blur of concealed fury. There is no safe way to bypass one. Simply walk past and hope it does not notice you. Its underbelly fur is popular among Thazvaari due to being thin enough to wear during the day but thick enough to keep warm at night.

A tiny city variant less than 0.2 meters in length exists in major population centers across the planet, having adapted to urban environments over generations of human spread. The city variant retains the predatory instincts of its desert ancestor compressed into a frame small enough to inhabit walls, drainage systems, and the gaps between structures, hunting vermin and small fauna that populate the spaces humans create but do not maintain.

VESSELBORN Codex — Duststalker

About Vesselborn

Vesselborn is the story of Geba — a world that has carried an empire for six thousand years.

It begins with Vaer’karesh, who unites five nations into the first empire and fixes a common language and law. Across the ages, the empire fights and finally breaks Thazvaar, welcomes Jeyrha through engineering and diplomacy, and liberates Berinu by choice. In Ngorrhal, the people of the mountain passes lose their ancestral name and are permanently renamed the Frost Sentinels, whose strength helps secure imperial rule. The Haavu cannon systems cement that dominance.

At its height, the empire spans continents and raises relay towers that bind cities, coasts, and passes into one network. Assassinations and civil wars follow — the Fracture — but the answer is not a vacuum. The Shadow Rule forms from imperial networks and manufactures peace, ending the warlord broadcasts and taking the world back from collapse. They are the empire made quiet: continuity without ceremony.

Today, the Shadow Rulers still govern from the background while the Energy Wars — covert struggles over power grids and relays in uncivilized regions — decide who controls energy, transport, and culture.

Stories range from relay-field defenses and inland recoveries to city governance and frontier resettlement; from rail lines and air programs that stitch regions together to festivals and work crews where culture and politics collide; from Frost Sentinel memory to families choosing the safety of hub clearings or the risk beyond the grid.

This is Geba.
It began in silence.
It has not yet ended.