The Sky Hammers are an elite unit in the Geban Empire's military structure, established during the Era of Imperial Conquest as part of The Emperor’s Wrath for airborne assaults and rapid dominance, focusing on shock troops via airships to break enemy lines and secure air superiority.
Key characteristics include heavy aerial bombardment and siege tactics using airships for swift conquests in campaigns like Thazvaar, known for overwhelming logistics in major offensives but declining early due to unsustainable costs and piracy vulnerabilities.
Post-Era of Fracture, the unit fragmented as air assets were destroyed in civil wars. In the Era of Shadow Rule, remnants supported relay infrastructure with air and sea elements for covert protection. During the Warlord Eras, its tactics were co-opted by rogue factions for psychological warfare. In the modern era, no formal unit exists; legacies persist in fragmented aerial warfare and Engineered destroyer classes under Shadow Rule.
Flight Doctrine
Low altitude, high speed. Hug ground or sea to stay below sensors and horizons; use ridgelines and wave troughs to cut line-of-sight. By the time watchers see you, you are already crossing their arcs. Batteries cannot traverse or range-find fast enough; locks drop in clutter; return fire lags behind. On land the terrain masks you. At sea the curvature and sea-skimming do the same. Against slower airships this profile is brutal for ground crews: targets appear, flash through the window, and are gone before a coordinated volley can land.
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.