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Imperial Guard – Vesselborn Codex

The Imperial Guard

The Imperial Guard is a primary branch of the Geban Empire's military structure, established during the Era of Imperial Conquest to safeguard core territories—capital, major cities, and critical infrastructure—focusing on defense, protection, and stability.

Key characteristics include maintaining internal order, protecting civilians, and fortifying holdings against invasion and unrest. The Guard’s defining edge was the partnership between elite Watch Snipers and disciplined heavy artillery. From elevated kill-lines to overlapping battery arcs, their doctrine made siege lines untenable. Between the snipers and the guns, no imperial city was ever taken from the outside; even in the Warlord Eras, imperial cities remained havens for common citizens. Local relays extended surveillance and targeting, while strict urban discipline kept streets calm and safe. Beloved by civilians, the Guard became the emblem of reassurance during the Empire’s height.

Affiliated elite unit: The Prince’s Directive, jointly with The Emperor’s Embrace, managed post-conquest assimilation and long-term stability in integrated regions through persuasion, advanced imperial education, and the encouragement of intermarriage for loyalty.

After the Era of Fracture, the Guard fragmented into regional defense forces loyal to imperial remnants and fleeing royals, including support of the escort of Auren’s family to Kela. Under Shadow Rule, elements integrated into clandestine networks for quiet stability, emphasizing relay enforcement and discreet policing in regions such as Geba and Ngorrhal. During the Warlord Eras, those outside of major imperial hubs operated as independent militias or undercover Shadow operatives, defending clearings against warlord incursions while blending into fractured societies. In the modern era, no formal Guard exists; its legacy persists in local law enforcement, celebrated urban defenders from the end of the Warlord period, and cultural integration programs shaped by the Prince’s Directive.

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.