The Continent Before Unification

Five nations occupied the Geba continent before the formation of the Empire.

Garnath and Beithon occupied the northeast coast. Both are thought to be direct descendants of the Rupturans. They had been allies since prehistory until they divided over what strength was for. Garnath believed that strength existed to protect and maintain what one already had. Beithon believed that strength existed to expand outward and to remove whatever stood in the way of that expansion. Beithon had separated from Garnath over this disagreement, and once they began to view Garnath as an obstacle, the war started.

Garnath had ships to traverse the coast and early missile systems. Their culture settled questions of authority through direct physical duels. Their women were working class and kept the nation running while the men fought. They were hard on their children, especially their daughters, and raised them to carry the same weight. Beithon had engineering capability that Garnath lacked. Their women had made a decision generations earlier that not every man could be a warrior if engineering was going to be their advantage. Beithon's women became keepers of knowledge and raised their sons to see engineering as their form of combat, passing this approach to their daughters, which freed the men to specialize entirely in war or technical work. This gave Beithon the capability to master flight first, building primitive airships that could carry and drop explosives. They were known to fight in low light conditions to take full advantage of early phosphor screen technology used on their vehicle instruments and individual visors. Their pursuit was also driven by the Rupturan ruins in their territory, which referenced the Velcrith countless times. Beithon was not simply expanding. They were chasing something they had found in those ruins.

The war between these two nations was destroying the continent and everything between them.

Thaloryn was the continent's economic power. They controlled its financial systems and had created the first spectacle market. They were scholars and compulsive systems builders who carried an understanding of He Who Allows that predated everything else on the continent. But they had no military capability and no population willing to fight. Their culture extended the courting process far beyond what the other nations practiced, pushing their reproductive age older and keeping their population small. Thaloryn could see that the war between Garnath and Beithon was unsustainable, but they could not stop it alone.

Varena possessed the most land on the continent and had the most people, but no established capital. Their men built roads, bridges, and structures of such quality that other nations accepted them within their borders specifically to work. Varenan bridges survived the wars. Their routes connected the continent. Their women produced large families while maintaining animals, managing fields, and running markets. They were known as peaceful, adaptable, steady, and strong people. The currency name Varen comes directly from them. Thaloryn and Varena had always shared a close relationship. Thaloryn financed. Varena built.

Therik occupied the far south. They were nomadic, had no centralized leadership, and were universally hated. The average Therikan couple produced twenty children over their lifetime, with courting beginning in childhood between families that had known each other for generations. They were known for theft, fraud, and disruption. They stole goods and resold them, then stole the same goods back. They exploited gaps in Thaloryn's financial systems. They spread rumors and intentionally spread lies wherever they went. They stole burial clothing and jewels from the dead. They raided ships that came too close to the southern coast. Garnath tried to ban them outright but could never keep them out. Beithon created laws specifically targeting false speech, misrepresentation of one's standing and finances, and the intentional spreading of verifiable lies, all written in direct response to Therikan behavior. Even Varena, the most accepting population on the continent, did not trust them because Varenans were the primary victims of their raids. Therik is said to have started the conflict between Garnath and Beithon.

Arrival

Vaer'karesh arrived at Thaloryn with a small party of people who clearly did not come from one place. Their clothing suggested origins in different regions, and some of their garments appeared to not even be from the continent. Their sizes and skin tones indicated origins across multiple nations, meaning they did not all come from the same population. One member of the party was over seven feet tall with hair so silver it shone in the light. Another was a short woman with brown skin wearing robes made of various animal furs, carrying books that no one in Thaloryn had ever seen. Their followers carried various weapons and equipment but nothing uniform. These were people who had explored far beyond the continent. It is unknown how many followers Vaer'karesh brought with him. It could have been fifty or a thousand. What is known is that his inner circle numbered only seven, including himself, and only three of them were known as warriors.

Where Vaer'karesh came from is unknown. His strategy and tactics suggest Garnath origins. The circumstances of his appearance suggest Varena. Physically he was nowhere near as large as most Varenans, but no other nation could have provided him the initial numbers to begin with. He fit neither cleanly. What made his party effective was that they were outsiders from nowhere. They had no allegiance to any of the five nations, no history with them, no grudge, and no debt. Every nation on the continent had reasons to distrust every other nation. Vaer'karesh and his companions were the only people who could walk into all of them without carrying that weight. They were the perfect third party, capable of serving everyone because they belonged to no one.

He presented his case to Thaloryn. They were receptive because they already wanted unification, but they had no leverage to achieve it. Varena would not commit their population to a war against nations that were generations ahead of them in weapons and technology. Therik had no centralized leadership to approach.

First Approaches

Vaer'karesh went to Garnath. They told him to leave. He went immediately to Beithon, who attempted to kill him. He and his party barely escaped.

While Vaer'karesh made his diplomatic approaches, his companions were doing something else entirely. They began embedding themselves inside the nations. Some entered the courts of Thaloryn and Garnath, building relationships and learning how authority moved through each population. Others traveled to Varena and became laborers, working alongside the people, learning the rhythms of a nation that had no desire for war but possessed the largest workforce on the continent. Some even embedded in Beithon, entering their academic and engineering circles to understand the most technically advanced nation from within. Because the party belonged to no nation and carried no allegiance, they could assimilate anywhere without being identified as enemies. By the time Vaer'karesh returned to any nation for a second visit, his people were already inside, and they understood things about these populations that no outsider could have known from a single diplomatic meeting.

He traveled to Varena. He explained to them that all of their structures, roads, buildings, monuments, and the systems they had built to connect the continent would be destroyed if they did not act. Varena was convinced. They began developing vehicles, weapons, and armor designed to make use of their physical size, because they were not a fighting people and their size and numbers were the only advantages they had.

He returned to Garnath without revealing that he had visited Beithon. In response to his return, three Garnath generals challenged him directly to duels, as their culture demanded for resolving disputes of authority. Vaer'karesh was not a large man. He did not descend from any recognized bloodline. It remains unknown how he defeated three men far larger and more experienced than himself, but he did. After the duels, the leaders of Garnath traveled with him to Thaloryn's capital.

The Warning

At Thaloryn's capital, Thaloryn made the case to Garnath that the war could not continue. Garnath's response was that they should simply destroy Beithon. Vaer'karesh said no. Beithon held air superiority. They could drop explosives from the sky, and they were known to fight in low light conditions to take full advantage of early phosphor screen technology used on their vehicle instruments and individual visors. Any attempt to destroy them outright would fail against a nation that controlled the air and could strike at night, and the effort would only produce a longer war.

Beithon then arrived at Thaloryn's capital in airships, accompanied by a band from Therik. It appeared to be an act of aggression. It was not. Beithon had flown east several times and discovered a massive foreign power with enormous ships carrying weapons and cannons unlike anything any of the five nations possessed. They had come to warn everyone. Everything was diplomatic until they saw that representatives of Garnath were present. Fighting broke out immediately in the court districts of Thaloryn's capital. Civilians were killed. Vaer'karesh and his inner circle intervened to stop the violence.

The Foreigners

Therik disappeared again shortly after, contributing nothing. They returned having crossed two oceans. From the south they brought people who spoke the common language but with heavy, thick accents. They were shorter, had unusual names with long vowel sounds, and were extraordinarily intelligent. From the west they brought very large people who did not speak the language at all. Therik brought both groups to the continent, left them there, and disappeared again.

The southern people settled into Varena, who accepted them openly. These immigrants are the direct ancestors of those who would eventually produce the planetary relay system. Garnath took in the large westerners. Over the following generations, their children and descendants grew larger and physically stronger as the two populations merged.

The Radical Factions

The nations were not yet unified. Most of Garnath and Beithon were ready to stop fighting. Their civilians and generals had seen the cost. But radical factions within each nation refused to let the conflict end. The ideological dispute between the two had become an identity issue. If the radicals let it go, they would lose what defined them. Although the main bodies of both nations were able to make peace, the factions continued fighting. Thaloryn's capital was half burned down in the violence.

Therik took complete advantage of the chaos. When convoys were attacked, they waited until one side was weakened from fighting and then finished them off to steal all of the vehicles and weapons. They raided supply lines, looted battlefields, and are known to have stolen airships during this period. They contributed nothing to the unification effort, cared nothing about the politics or the threat to the east, and disappeared again for years.

The fighting continued until the radicals were defeated and exterminated.

Beithon's Conquest

Beithon, the nation that had warned everyone about the foreign power to the east, then forgot its own warning. After several failed attempts at cooperation, they decided they did not want to be part of any unified nation and attempted to conquer the continent. They forced Thaloryn into siding with them temporarily before Vaer'karesh managed to pull Thaloryn out. By then, Thaloryn's capital was half destroyed again and all of their meaningful leadership had been killed by unknown agents suspected to be connected to Therik.

Vaer'karesh had saved Thaloryn. They accepted him as their leader, giving him and his inner circle control of an entire nation. This was the true start of the unification. From Thaloryn he had economic power and infrastructure. From Varena he already had numbers and a labor force building weapons. He now had a base.

Vaer'gidon was born during this period. His mother was Varenan.

The War for the Continent

A full invasion of Beithon was launched. Beithon retaliated with air raids that devastated the countrysides of Varena, causing food shortages across the entire continent and disrupting transportation. Thaloryn officially declared Vaer'karesh Emperor, the first in history.

His companions returned after studying the internal structure of Therik. They found that Therik's leadership system, while hidden and appearing chaotic on the surface, was in fact a complex structure built on family ties and a cultural system entirely their own. Therik's values operated on a completely different set of principles than the rest of the continent. What every other nation considered criminal behavior, Therik considered normal and acceptable. Vaer'karesh worked with Therik to sabotage Beithon's fuel depots, giving Varena relief from the air raids and bombing. Varena officially accepted him as Emperor.

The leaders of Garnath were mysteriously assassinated. Vaer'karesh found enough remaining support within Garnath for them to accept him. Garnath and Varena marched on Beithon. Beithon surrendered. It was discovered that Beithon's actual leaders had been dead long before the surrender. The factions that had kept the war going were in control, not the legitimate leadership. The civilians of Beithon accepted Vaer'karesh quickly once those factions were removed.

Rupturan ruins were discovered in Beithon's territory. The technology found there would become the foundation for what eventually became the planetary relay system.

Therik and the Final Decades

The official unification took close to three more decades beyond the military victory. Therik held out the longest. They did not want to live under any true structure, and there was no centralized leadership to negotiate with. They eventually accepted because the Empire's infrastructure gave them better capability to do what they had always wanted to do: leave the continent and stay away for longer periods. Their acceptance was not loyalty. It was utility.

What the Nations Built

It was Varenan resources that made the ships, airships, and weapons possible. It was Varenan descendants who put the labor into building the relay network. It was Varena who built the imperial capital. Therik's ocean crossings brought the people and the knowledge that changed the continent permanently. Garnath's weapon culture survived in the arms that bear their name thousands of years later. Beithon's engineering knowledge and the Rupturan technology found in their territory became the foundation for relay infrastructure and propulsion. Thaloryn's financial systems became the Empire's economic structure, and their spectacle market would echo in the entertainment economy for millennia.

The names of Vaer'karesh's companions were erased by design. After the formation of the Empire there is no history of them outside of what they accomplished. In the capital founded by Vaer'yinda, their faces were carved above every gate. Their names are nowhere. Monuments in their likeness stand throughout the oldest imperial districts, but no record identifies who they were, where they came from, or what became of them after unification was complete. This was deliberate. The Empire would have one founder, one origin, one name. The people who made it possible were written out so thoroughly that even imperial historians in later eras could not recover their identities. The mystery of where Vaer'karesh came from is preserved in part because every person who could have answered that question was anonymized alongside him.