The Plains Smilohound is a wild pack-dwelling predator of Inland Thazvaar's open plains, descended from domesticated lines that reverted to feral behavior. Intermediate in size between the Greater Smilohound and Lesser Smilohound, its short broad skull, reinforced jaw, and compact musculature are adapted for endurance hunting across sunbaked broken terrain, with a single-layered ochre and stone-gray coat providing camouflage in grassy habitats. It hunts large herbivores in coordinated packs using high-pitched yelps, barks, and long-distance calls, rarely engaging humans unless provoked or territorial.
They are often kept starved and caged by inland pirates who release them during village raids, a practice that exploits the animal's pack aggression without requiring the pirates to risk direct combat. Integral to Thazvaari nomadic life as symbols of unity and strength, the Plains Smilohound's reversion from domesticated origins underscores that even the animals of the inland refuse to stay tamed.
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 greatest warriors of the mountain passes become 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. The last emperor is assassinated and the throne shatters. Civil wars consume the planet. But the answer is not collapse. The Shadow Rule forms from what the empire left behind, ends the warlord broadcasts, and holds the world together without a crown. They are the empire made quiet: continuity without ceremony.
Today, the Shadow Rulers still govern from the background while the Energy Wars decide who controls grids, relays, vehicles, and culture. Nine faiths compete for how the world understands itself. Tour racing draws audiences as large as the Yuvaar Hunting Games. Relaymen carry broadcast rigs into corridors and criminal networks to capture what the governed world is never meant to see. Contractors move through contested territory for manufactory interests. Syndicates operate trafficking networks through grey zones the empire tolerates rather than confronts. The Engineered, once created as instruments of war, now live as citizens, athletes, engineers, and parents.
Stories range from relay field defenses and inland recoveries to city governance and frontier resettlement; from airship crews racing through volcanic caverns to truth seekers embedding in syndicate operations; from arena fighters practicing an ancient faith through combat 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.