VESSELBORN Original Music
Music by Samuel Shandley
Creative direction by Christopher Jaepheth Cuby
1:46 · Released October 10, 2026
Streaming release and physical edition coming soon.
For Venar'Tal Kareth, the greatest conqueror in Geban history, whose life starts with pain and ends with pain.
Behind the music
Venar'Tal Kareth took the throne as a small child after his father died in northern Thazvaar, inheriting a war declared four generations earlier. The generals placed him in the Sentinel district to train beside poor but talented boys, the smallest in a cohort of Ngorrhali boys who were larger at every stage. He built density instead of height and learned to fight at contact range, where size stopped deciding the outcome.
He finished his father's war and brought every habitable region under imperial control, and he is the only emperor recorded fighting on the front line. He ended the siege of Kharan's Gulf, executed King Hies and took Queen Nethelys as his wife. His reign made total war and forced assimilation the standing method of the Empire, and the executions it instituted began the male population deficit that shaped every era after.
Read more in the Codex: Venar'Tal Kareth
VESSELBORN Original Music
Music by Juan Agustin Magariños
2:11
The theme for Geba, the imperial heartland, where Vaer'karesh forged the first empire and where civilization has been centered for six thousand years.
Geba is the origin continent and the smallest inhabited landmass on the planet. Vaer'karesh united the five nations that once divided it, Thaloryn, Garnath, Beithon, Varena and Therik, into the first empire, and for six thousand years everything has turned around it. The capital, Karesh, was founded by Empress Vaer'yinda on wilderness she purged as a gift to her father, and the imperial day still begins and ends when Izhara passes over the continent.
It is the most lawful place on Geba, at least on the surface. Thaloryn stands half in ruins, never rebuilt so the wars that forged the Empire are not forgotten, and it remains the center of art and ethics. Beneath relay coverage the Jerhit Syndicate has embedded itself in the legitimate economy, and imperial officials take syndicate varens to look away.
Read more in the Codex: Geba
VESSELBORN Original Music
Music by Juan Agustin Magariños
1:49
The theme for Jeyrha, the Green Jewel of the south and the one continent that joined the Empire without ever being conquered.
Jeyrha is the Green Jewel of the south. It joined the Empire during the Imperial Conquest without a battle, through the Haavu Cannon Systems designed by Xerik Haavu, so it was never conquered, its names were never replaced and its people were never culled. The Haavu rose with it to become the most prominent non-imperial family on the planet.
It leads the world in biological science and ecological engineering, and the academies of Reykhaal train elite bioengineers and artists side by side. The south catches the fixed light of Saethern, and fungal forests grow there that exist nowhere else outside Saethera. The entire relay network traces back to a Jeyrhan descendant, Architect Varenth Solarn.
Read more in the Codex: Jeyrha
VESSELBORN Original Music
Music by Guilherme Alexander Gagliardo de Freitas
2:18
The theme for Ngorrhal, the western continent of stratospheric peaks and mountain passes, home to the oldest relay infrastructure still working on the planet.
Ngorrhal is the western continent of stratospheric peaks and mountain passes. In the Early Dominion, War Chief Tharyn'Bregun allied with Prince Vaer'gidon to end the civil war between the passes, and when the two died together fighting Ukhaal Walkers, the bond between the Ngorrhali and the Empire became unbreakable. Northern Pass children were raised in the capital as the Emperor's bodyguards, and their greatest warriors became the Frost Sentinels.
Only about 150 million people remain on the continent, yet its mountains hold the largest and oldest working relay infrastructure on the planet, built higher and larger than anywhere else. The Ngorrhali still return for their rite of passage: cross the ocean, kill a Greater Smilohound with bare hands, and haul the four tonne carcass home.
Read more in the Codex: Ngorrhal
VESSELBORN Original Music
Music by Juan Agustin Magariños
1:38
The first of three themes for the Thazvaar continent, set at the far edge of the coast in the inlet named for the pirate warlord Kharan Khatan. It carries the Gulf as it is now and the history underneath it.
Kharan Khatan was the most feared pirate warlord of pre-relay Geba, some eight thousand years ago in the Middle Dominion Age. When the Thazvaari Dominion drove the last pirate fleets toward extinction, his was the only plan that could delay the end, and they followed him into the inlet that now carries his name. He fortified it and held it long enough that the place became synonymous with him. There is no account of his death.
Thousands of years later the Gulf was the Dominion's last position in the Geban-Thazvaari War. King Hies held it through a siege that lasted decades until Emperor Venar'Tal Kareth ended it. Today it sits at the far edge of Coastal Thazvaar, and the Children of Kharan, the largest pirate confederation on Geba, still carry his name.
Read more in the Codex: Kharan Khatan