Vermax hatched from the egg that King Viserys I decreed be laid in the cradle of Prince Jacaerys Velaryon, eldest son of Rhaenyra, an answer to the whispers that the boy was no dragon's blood at all. The books give him no color, though every illustration makes him green. By 129 AC he was thriving, growing larger with every year, and strong for his youth, though snow and cold made him ill-tempered.
Jacaerys flew him north at the outbreak of the Dance of the Dragons to win the Vale, White Harbor, and Winterfell for his mother, and won all three; Mushroom's tale that Vermax laid a clutch of eggs in the crypts of Winterfell is dismissed by Archmaester Gyldayn as a fool's story. Prince and dragon flew with the dragonseeds against the fleet of the Three Daughters in the Battle in the Gullet in 130 AC, and there, with victory seemingly at hand, Vermax flew too low, whether wounded by a bolt to the eye or dragged down by a grapnel, and crashed into a burning galley; neither dragon nor prince came out of the fire.