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Varethis’Auren Kel’varesh

Alias: Auren, The Last Emperor, The Dreamer of Ascension
Era: Late Conquest → Fracture (~2,200–1,500 Years Before Modern Geba)
Affiliation: Geban Empire

From a young age, it was clear to Emperor Ashan’Kael Varethis that Auren would ascend. He was not chosen out of convenience, but because his mind carried a clarity and conviction the Empire had never seen before. His brother, Prince Varethis’Daer Venar, stood beside him—not in rivalry, but in reverence—possessing the technical brilliance needed to manifest Auren’s ideals. Together, they forged the closest Geba ever came to true, lasting stability. Auren’s reforms sought to elevate the Engineered not as instruments, but as citizens—granting them names, rights, and futures. He dreamed of spacefaring advancement, biological evolution, and a post-imperial world bound by peace. But the Empire, unwilling to change, turned against him. Betrayed from within, Auren was assassinated. His death shattered the throne and ignited the Fracture.

Notable Companions

  • Prince Varethis’Daer Venar — younger brother, technical genius, the originator of the Engineered.
  • Emperor Ashan’Kael Varethis — father, recognized Auren’s clarity and ensured his succession.

Defining Observations

  • Codified the 8-Year Rule and legitimized Engineered citizenship, granting them rights beyond military service.
  • Envisioned a post-conquest era of technology, peace, and self-directed society.
  • Forged the closest Geba ever came to lasting stability, with his brother Daer Venar.
  • Assassinated in betrayal; his death shattered the throne and ignited the Fracture.
  • Remembered as the last sovereign who believed in something greater than dominion.

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.