From orbit, Vesk-3 looks like a sparkling jewel thanks to its expansive forests, shallow oceans, and the distinctive pink Vermilion Sea that cradled its earliest civilizations. Constant volcanic activity fills the land and sea with abundant nutrients, and warm oceans churn out dense rainclouds that shroud half the planet. Combined with almost no axial tilt, Vesk-3 is a garden world saturated in constant rainy spring and lush with plant life. Home to the ever-helpful skittermanders who still call their world Oeddertchonk, the planet's relative comfort came at great price — millions of years ago, a massive asteroid realigned the planet's axis. Skittermander myths tell of an ancient civilization called the Forerunners that perished in the catastrophe. Vesk-3 is a dense terrestrial world rich in heavy metals including gold, iridium, mercury, and uranium. Two primary continents define the surface: sprawling Aberanderen stretching almost pole to pole, and smaller Kavarit cracked in half by the Basin Sea. Aberanderen hosts the majority of the skittermander population and contains huge mega-farms feeding the Veskarium, while Kavarit houses the vesk-built planetary capital and mines. Beneath the surface lies Gadraveech, an extensive network of tunnels and caverns harboring a dangerous ecosystem including the feared stridermanders. Although Vesk-3 was the third planet conquered, it remains one of the most difficult to rule. Over half a billion vesk live here, mostly around Command 3, but skittermanders far outnumber them. The current ruler, High Despot Teret Cahan, is the only non-vesk (a pahtra) high despot in the empire. Skittermanders' cooperative instincts make them compliant vassals, but the Veskarium exploits this by suppressing their native language and imposing strict work quotas. If skittermanders ever collectively perceived their service as unfair, they could become a formidable insurgent population.