Crafting the Celestial Saga: Dawn of the Seekers
- Alex O'Connor
- Jul 12
- 8 min read
Welcome to this entry of Crafting the Celestial Saga where I give you a behind-the-scenes look at the series. This entry is all about the title chapter of Dawn of the Seekers. I am someone who hates spoilers so I would like to warn you that spoilers for Dawn of the Seekers follow. 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 the title chapter of the first book in the Celestial Saga, Nova Team meets visitors from another galaxy, learns of a threat heading for the Milky Way, and the chapter essentially sets up the overall conflict for the rest of the series.
- Section One: Differences from the Unfinished First Draft -
As it would happen, Dawn of the Seekers is where I left off in the unfinished first draft. There are some drastic differences between the original intention and what the final version was. To start, Julal Tuquay and Bala Vitorin are the only two Leoan/Seekers that are mentioned in the story. I did make a mention of Julal’s team, but I don’t think I went into much detail with that. In this version of the story, Nova Team had previously found an outpost where Ethan interacted with a biometric scanner. Julal brings them back to this outpost to find the vault within. Once Julal opens the door to the vault, everything including the bomb that was in there is missing. They determined that the Kaltari must have taken the vault’s contents. Julal states it would have been impossible for any species in the Milky Way to access the vault, and if that did happen, the bomb would have detonated.
At that point, Bala Vitorin enters the scene as he discovers that Julal survived the events that took place in the Inaris Galaxy. The two have a short exchange before the main change of the chapter takes place. I have mentioned this story change before, and I will be forever grateful that I made it. In the unfinished first draft, the Seekers are a race who seek out corrupt members of a species to take over the galaxy they live in. It first starts with taking over their own race before they set their sights on the galaxy. The Seekers in the unfinished first draft are what the Muerte became. The Leoan, such as Julal and Bala, of course became the Seekers as they are known today.
Bala being the traitor among the Leoan was a story element that stayed going into the final version of Dawn of the Seekers. The Muerte not only underwent a name change, but a change in how they fight. In the unfinished first draft, they wore armor and had guns of their own. The Muerte, which were officially introduced in the sequel to Dawn of the Seekers, Shadow of the Emperor, use their claws to fight primarily. Some of them have personal weapons and they have larger scale weapons that they use as well. I wanted them to be the fear factor for the series so having an enemy that runs at you with nothing but razor-sharp claws and teeth brought that element.
Before Bala became the leader of the Seekers in the unfinished first draft, a member of the Arashi species was the leader. Bala ended up killing this leader and taking their place. This was also something that I didn’t want to happen in the story. I wanted the Arashi to be that truly incorruptible race, the best that the universe has to offer. I did not want them to fall to darkness or be seen in a negative light like that.
Overall, these story changes made for a more enjoyable story in my opinion. The Seekers being the Leoan species from the Inaris Galaxy who were sent to the Milky Way seek out the Arashi vaults made for a more compelling narrative. I did keep the corrupted member of a species in a way where Malaton is concerned. The Conclave first makes the deal with Malaton’s father, Taufin, before Malaton steps up and takes control of the Kaltari. Malaton is the one who believes in the Conclave’s mission. He is the one that wants total control. He was the prime candidate for who the Conclave would seek out in the Milky Way to lead them.
The first draft went unfinished because I wasn’t having fun with it. I had set out with a goal to tell a dark war story, and I had constantly found that I was writing myself into a hole or feeling depressed with how the story was going. It was later on that I realized the events, at least concerning the Muerte, made for a better fit in the sequel versus the introduction to the Celestial Saga. The second draft found the injection of well-placed lighthearted humor that you would expect to find in sci-fi stories such as Star Wars, Mass Effect, or Star Trek. While those series can tell a dark or tragic story overall, there are still moments where you can’t help but smile at the joke that was cracked on screen.
- Section Two: The Second Draft -
In the second draft, or finished script as I call it, I started what became the final version of the story. The Leoan arrive after the events that take place at Jumper 9, Nova Team is introduced to them, and they set off to find the Arashi vault. There are some differences, mainly the length of the chapter and how Nova Team sets off to help the Seekers. In the finished script, this chapter does not go into the conversation that Nova Team has with the Leoan about why they are in the Milky Way. In fact, that conversation actually ended up happening in the next chapter while they were on the way to the vault. I felt like that was important information to have and went a long way with the Leoan beginning to gain Nova Team’s trust.
In the finished script, the Leoan basically tell Nova Team and Captain Stanton that they’re coming with them to the vault. In the finished version, Julal gives them the choice and Nova Team talks it over to join forces with them. I myself like the final version of how this interaction took place of course. I thought that was a better route to start building the relationship between the two teams.
Something that carried over to the second draft from the first, but not into the final, was the biometric scanner. In the second draft, Nova Team is scanned when they step foot on the Leoan’s ship. This scan registered what species they were, the ship linked to the Milky Way’s data network and downloaded humanity’s history, language, basically everything including memes. This information was sent to the Leoan’s neural network where they learned English. For the final version of the story, I decided to have the Leoan learn the languages of the Milky Way during their travel from the Inaris Galaxy to the Milky Way. I decided to drop the concept of biometric scanners and neural networks as a whole.
Another change from both of the previous versions of the story to the final version is that of the Leoan’s ship. In the first and second drafts, it is a full-blown frigate while in the final version of the story, it is a smaller vessel that fits the Seeker team comfortably. I made this change so that it would seem like the events in the Inaris Galaxy happened quickly, which they did, so the Arashi did not have time to develop an intergalactic engine for a larger ship.
- Section Three: Not Warriors -
One of the things that I wanted to do with the Seekers is to not have all of them be warriors. Out of the seven that arrived in the Milky Way, only Julal and Bala are warriors. The rest are scientist, engineers, or another profession that warranted their ticket out of the Inaris Galaxy. There are a couple of reasons why I did this. One is that I again wanted to show that things happened quickly in the Inaris Galaxy when the Conclave started igniting the stars. They didn’t have time to necessarily fill their ship with warriors, the Seekers grabbed who they could out of their group, whoever had survived, and left.
Another reason is that I didn’t want to have a whole group of soldiers to be able to aid Nova Team. I wanted the Milky Way to be at a disadvantage when fighting the Conclave. If I had a full team of Seekers who were capable of fighting an enemy that they had already battled, I felt like that would mean the Milky Way had a higher chance of winning. I wanted the species of the Milky Way to rally behind the UCA and find a way to win, if they win that is. They would have to fight with everything that they had, seek out the vaults, and hope that something inside could help them win a fight.
This is also something that makes the story feel more human. The characters in the book have to rely on those around them, on their skills, their knowledge to win a fight. They can’t rely on technology from an advanced alien race or on the fighting prowess of an alien species who has fought the larger adversary before. In their minds they know they are outnumbered, outgunned, and will have to do what humanity does best when their backs are against the wall. Find a way to get the job done.
Not to mention I knew what I was planning to do to the Seekers in a couple of chapters. We’ll get to that though in the entry about the Tower.
- Section Four: A More Traditional Alien -
In the last entry I talked about the appearances of the various species within the Milky Way Galaxy. Now that we have a new alien race that is introduced in the Celestial Saga, I got to do it again. With the Leoan, I decided to go with a more traditional look to their appearance. They are small, with oval shaped heads, and large oval shaped eyes. This along with the “little green man” I feel is more of a traditional appearance for an alien. While I wanted to go with whimsical and something that may not have been seen before with the other species, I also wanted something that aligned with those traditional appearances. The Leoan provided that opportunity.
- Section Five: Setting up the Saga -
Nova Team is not only introduced to the Seekers in this chapter, they are introduced to the larger conflict that will be present throughout the Celestial Saga. Julal Tuquay tells Nova Team about the Arashi, how they built their forges in the stars, and how the Conclave created a weapon that could cause a star to go supernova. Julal informs Nova Team that the Conclave travels throughout the universe to conquer galaxies. The Conclave takes resources, enslaves those who live there, or burns it all if they defy.
While the Conclave works in the background in Dawn of the Seekers, you can see the web they are weaving throughout the book. From the deal that the Child of the Stars made with Malaton to how Bala betrays his own species later on. Nova Team learns that this threat is very real and not as far off as they would like to think. This is the conflict that is even bigger than the Kaltari Empire’s war against the United Celestial Alliance. This is the war to end all wars in the Milky Way Galaxy. It’s essentially you win, or your galaxy burns. No pressure.
Including the title of the book as a chapter was a fun idea that I had and it was a theme that I unexpectedly ended up carrying on at the end of the book. A lot of times sci-fi in the Milky Way Galaxy tends to stay in the Milky Way Galaxy. For the Celestial Saga, I didn’t want it to be just about the Milky Way, I wanted it to be about the entire universe. It’s a whole new world out there, a brave new galaxy, if you will, and the story is just getting started.
That will wrap things up for this entry. The next entry will be about chapter nine in the book, An Uneasy Feeling. I hope you enjoyed this entry of Crafting the Celestial Saga, and I hope you will return for the next. If you have any questions, please feel free to use my website’s contact form and I will address them in a future entry.
