Welcome to the third entry of Crafting the Celestial Saga where I give you a behind-the-scenes look at the series. The fourth episode is all about chapter three of Dawn of the Seekers, Ithaca. I am someone who hates spoilers so I would like to warn you that spoilers for Dawn of the Seekers follow in this episode. If you have not finished reading Dawn of the Seekers or plan on reading it in the future, you may want to avoid reading Crafting the Celestial Saga until you do.
In this chapter of the book, we meet a new special forces team, Ithaca Team, and the events of the chapter set off the events for the rest of the book. We are also introduced to a planet that differs greatly from other worlds that the United Celestial Alliance has colonized.
- Section One: Ithaca’s original opening -
This chapter originally was not in the second draft. I had the idea for Ithaca Team for a while and wanted to use them at some point in the Celestial Saga, I just didn’t have the exact spot to use them. This later changed when I was writing the book. Ithaca Team ended up having a proper spot as a recon team who was present on the planet Gra Ingra keeping an eye on the Coalition of Free Species. I’ll talk about them in a moment.
The original opening for Ithaca Team was the beginning of chapter five where I had Ithaca Team storming the Kaltari weapons facility on their own. This didn’t seem like a good way to introduce a team who specializes in stealth and reconnaissance. Knowing that I was going to be destroying a planet at the end of the book, I also wanted to establish the planet that was going to be destroyed so it wouldn’t feel random at the end.
Ithaca Team ended up being introduced on Gra Ingra where we get to learn about the planet, its culture, and that makes it more impactful when it gets destroyed. I did take the liberty of adding some humorous moments in this chapter such as the mirror giving away the fact that Troy and Phyfe were following the electrician. It was my way of showing how you can be the best at what you do, but things can and will go wrong.
I did give a little bit of backstory for Ithaca Team in this chapter. I didn’t spend too much time on it though as they are not the main characters and have a minor role, despite the fact that this chapter sets up the events of the book. Which brings me to the next topic of this episode, Gra Ingra and the Coalition of Free Species.
- Section Two: Gra Ingra and the Coalition of Free Species -
Gra Ingra is a planet unlike any other colonized world in the Milky Way. The other planets are either inhabited by the United Celestial Alliance or the Kaltari Empire. Here on Gra Ingra, it is filled with refugees and others who want to escape the war. It also has its fair share of pirates and other criminal elements who believe they are outside of the UCA’s reach on Gra Ingra.
Those who live on Gra Ingra have developed a community who help one another and there is no trace of the war being fought on the planet. In fact, everyone there actively tries to stay away from the war. The Coalition of Free Species is the governing organization who was formed by those looking to not only escape the war but live separately from the United Celestial Alliance. As good as the UCA is, there will always be those who want to live outside of its rules. This ended up attracting those who may want to harm the UCA, and rumors had spread about an insurrection growing from the CFS. This is why Ithaca Team had been sent to Gra Ingra. The CFS didn’t think that the UCA had interest in them at that time, but they were wrong.
Malaton, however, had been aware of the tension building between the two sides and ended up using this to his advantage. A member of the CFS, Ryden Klauss, had a spy on the UCA research facility Jumper 9. Malaton had one of his troopers meet with this spy to obtain a layout of Jumper 9. Knowing that there would also be UCA spies present, Malaton had his trooper set a trap that caused a bomb to go off. This escalated the tension between the UCA and CFS which brought them together for the destruction of Gra Ingra later on. The Dusk Till Dawn, which is the ship that Ithaca Team is stationed on, was able to place a tracker on the Kaltari ship that led them to the weapons facility. So, we see here how the events of chapter three ended up setting up the entire rest of the story.
The majority of those living on Gra Ingra wanted nothing but peace and that all ended up getting shattered when the bomb exploded, and the war arrived to Gra Ingra. That of course will be covered in a future entry.
- Section Three: The Split Dynamic -
One of the things that was most fun to write with this chapter is the two perspectives when Ithaca Team splits up. Lilly and Dom follow the Kaltari trooper while the rest of the team follows the electrician from Jumper 9. Switching between the two allowed for the dynamic of this pivotal event to be viewed in a different way.
Lilly and Dom get the brunt of it as they followed the Kaltari trooper to the trap that he had set. There are a few things that are represented here. The first is showing how a soldier, in this case Lilly, will put themselves in harms way to save others. Lilly had been talking to a little girl right before the bomb went off and uses her body to shield the girl. She doesn’t know if either one of them will survive, but she was going to do what she could to save the little girl.
The second thing is that I wanted to show that no one is invincible. Although the explosion doesn’t kill him, Dom is severely injured. This is the first time in the book that a member of a special forces team had been injured. It was important to me to set the stage that anyone, regardless of rank, faction, or importance to the story, is not above the Grim Reaper when he comes knocking.
A third thing is that you see the Kaltari in a negative light that you may not have already. Here the Kaltari Empire is willing to risk civilian lives to clip at the tension that is growing between the UCA and CFS. The UCA may not be completely spotless in how they operate, but they would never intentionally put civilians in harm’s way.
In addition to the first point about the soldiers being selfless, the first thing that Lilly does once she realizes she is alive is to check and make sure that the little girl is safe.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the area, Troy and Phyfe were chasing the electrician from Jumper 9 before Clay puts an end to his escape. The three are completely unaware of what is going on with the other two until the explosion. It’s a great moment where you see Troy go from the calm, cool, and collected leader to someone filled with worry about knowing his wife would be near the explosion and not getting a response from her immediately. Troy speaking into the comm repeatedly was to show how Lilly was dealing with the ringing in her ears. Troy then continues to be a bit riled up as he forcefully interacts with the electrician afterwards.
As I’ve stated in Crafting the Celestial Saga, exploring the emotions of the characters throughout the Celestial Saga is an important aspect of the story to me. Here the reader gets to see a good example of that seeing how Troy is reacting to the situation.
Since this is the first time in the book where multiple points of view are shown within the same chapter, I decided to use a double paragraph space to separate the points of view. I had considered using a solid line, like you see here in this entry separating the introduction and the conclusion from the content sections. I ultimately decided that a double space between the paragraphs was a cleaner look to the presentation. I also thought that it presented a softer break in perspective versus a solid line that I would consider a hard break.
- Section Four: More on Special Forces Teams -
My mother was reading Celestial Saga: Dawn of the Seekers after its release and she brought up the fact that she didn’t think that the military would allow a husband and wife to be on the same team. This was a perfect example of how I wanted to change things for the future. As I mention in the book and a previous entry of Crafting the Celestial Saga, special forces teams can recruit whoever they want to their team. It is also the distant future and rules have changed.
While in the modern-day military this may not be a possibility, with the military of the Celestial Saga, it is! This presents multiple questions for how a team dynamic may operate if members of the team are in a relationship with each other. Will the couple look out for each other more than the others? Will there be favoritism? Will the leader keep the other from taking risks? What happens if they have children?
These are all questions that will be answered as the series progresses. We will see these dynamics play out in multiple ways. There are many special forces teams throughout the UCA, such as Ithaca Team and Nova Team, that have couples on the team. It is not frowned upon as long as it does not interfere with the mission at hand.
- Section Five: A Question I get Asked the Most –
One question that I have been asked the most since the book’s launch is why the electrician from this chapter says thank you in French. The simplest answer is that he is French.
While humanity operates under one banner now, you still have a mixture of different cultures. I wanted those individual cultures to still be represented in the world of the Celestial Saga. An easy way to do that can be with a name, someone bringing up their heritage, or by saying thank you.
The moment just adds a little more character to the story and it was what I thought fit best while writing it.
While it wasn’t a long chapter, I did have fun writing this one and it does have big implications on the story as a whole. This chapter allowed me to introduce some characters I had wanted to use for a while, and it ended up working out that I was able to use them again in the two following chapters. I know this entry is on the shorter side as this was mostly a stagging chapter for later events. I briefly talked about Malaton’s plan that gets revealed in a later chapter. It was fun leading up to that and how it tied back into the previous chapters to show Malaton, who at this point in the book had not been introduced yet, had been pulling the strings.
That will wrap things up for the fourth entry. Next week’s entry will be about chapter four from the book, the Briefing. I hope you enjoyed the fourth entry, and I hope you will return for entry five next week. If you have any questions, please feel free to use my website’s contact form and I will address them in a future entry. Until then, I hope you have a lovely week!