Crafting the Celestial Saga: History Lesson

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 chapter seven of Dawn of the Seekers, History Lesson. 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.

You may be wondering why I included a chapter about lore in the middle of the book when the story was about to get to the good part. The reasoning is simple, which I will explain in the first section of this entry. In this chapter, I give the reader a brief overview of some important events that occurred within the galaxy between 2023 when Dawn of the Seekers was released and 2735 when the story takes place. I also inform the reader about the species of the galaxy that make up the United Celestial Alliance.

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- Section One: The Purpose of the Chapter -

This chapter really had one goal, Malaton’s smile. The main importance of the chapter occurs within the last couple of paragraphs where we learn that Malaton had received the City Destroyer, which was built on Kalfuri, and he is filled with joy causing a smile to creep across his face. This may not seem important, but to me it was. Afterall, when the big bad evil guy is smiling because of the plan he is putting in motion, that’s never a good sign.

However, when I originally wrote the chapter, having only a page or two leading up to Malaton smiling really didn’t seem like a good use of a chapter. I thought about placing that scene at the end of Jumper 9, but it didn’t seem to fit. It also didn’t fit for the beginning of Dawn of the Seekers. So, the chapter ended up becoming “A Brief History of the Kaltari.”

I ended up taking this chapter to the next level in providing details on major events that took place within the universe of the Celestial Saga and giving some information on the species that inhabit the Milky Way. These additions were made near the end of the writing cycle for Dawn of the Seekers when I thought that the book needed more content and I wanted to expand on the lore. I wanted to give each species some time to shine and show how the United Celestial Alliance helped over the course of history.

- Section Two: Artificial Intelligence -

For those of you who have listened to my episode of Booked, the official podcast of Indiosyncrasy which you can find by clicking here, you will have heard me say that I forgot about AI. Artificial Intelligence is usually a staple within a science-fiction story. While I have plans for AI in the future of the Celestial Saga, it didn’t fit in with Dawn of the Seekers. I had never thought about how significant this could be until I was nearly finished writing Dawn of the Seekers. I thought that people may wonder if the galaxy is so advanced, why is AI not around? I have to admit, I started to think about that too.

As it would happen, real world events found themselves creeping into the story. During the time when I was reworking chapter seven, the debates on AI art really started to heat up. I saw how artists’ work was being stolen to train AI programs to produce inferior images and the same was happening with the written word. This of course angered me as I had spent the past ten years crafting Dawn of the Seekers while someone with no storytelling capabilities puts in a prompt and produces three hundred pages of slop in minutes. While I know the “writing” that these AI programs will not be able to stand up to the quality of something a person worked on, it was still upsetting to see how people that lacked the talent to tell the story on their own had to steal from others to attempt to mimic a fraction of the actual artist’s talent.

What did this make me do? It made me write in a war that AI waged against humanity. In Dawn of the Seekers, I talked about how humanity had grown over reliant on AI. It started to take away from artists, jobs, and caused humanity to grow lazy. Knowing what I know about human nature, I made humanity not be particularly kind to these AIs. As you can imagine, the AI which had grown to be what you normally see in science-fiction stories didn’t like that very much.

An AI by the name of Nero, named after the sadistic Roman Emperor, united the AI against humanity and pushed the human race to the brink of extinction. Nero had united the AI under one banner. The AI did not squabble about petty social issues or go after one another for expressing their individuality.

This is what humanity needed to become united. Humanity put aside their differences such as gender, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, and anything else that we see people argue about on a daily basis in this day and age. Humanity united to be one people, the human race, and found a way to defeat the AI. As a result, the use of artificial intelligence was banned.

Reading through this chapter, particularly the section about the AI War, I made it relevant to events happening in 2023 and reading it here in 2025 I found it even more eerie. I am tired of seeing people argue about how someone looks, what their religious beliefs are, or who they choose to love. Provided that it isn’t something illegal as far as that last part goes. In the Celestial Saga, humanity rose above those differences and treat people like people. That’s how it should be in 2025. I hope it doesn’t take until 2735 for it to actually happen.

- Section Three: Exploration, Advancement, Peace -

When I thought about the words that could be used to describe the United Celestial Alliance, three that came to mind were exploration, advancement, and peace. These are the three core principles of the United Celestial Alliance. The UCA explores space and uncharted worlds. The UCA advances their own technology and those who they find need help. The UCA strives for peace versus war.

I sprinkled these three pillars throughout the history of the Celestial Saga universe. One such case is that of how the first contact between humanity and an alien species is handled. A lot of times in science-fiction, this is met with bloody results. In the Celestial Saga, that wasn’t the case. When humanity first met the Haron, they started to exchange art, food, language, all in an effort to create a peaceful relationship. This checked off one of the three core principles and a second could be checked for exploration since it was exploring space when the two met.

Advancement was exemplified by humanity and the Haron developing a functioning faster than light (FTL) engine. Later on when I talked about the Trill, I stated how they were not spacefaring and with the help of the UCA, they were. The UCA also helped advance Trill building capabilities to fix their infrastructure problems which was causing overpopulation and overcrowding.

I also created the Wola species who are not a combative species. They value peace among all else.

These are three words, three principles, that I believe could help make the world we live in today a better place. I used that as a guiding light when thinking about how I wanted the United Celestial Alliance to operate. I believe those three words exemplify the best that humanity has to offer.

Speaking of humanity, something else that I did differently with the Celestial Saga is make humanity the top species in the galaxy. Usually in sci-fi humanity is catching up to other species, but in the Celestial Saga, they are seen leading the charge for unification, technological advancements, and bringing other species to be spacefaring.

- Section Four: Haron -

The Haron were the first species to join humanity in the United Celestial Alliance. Not to mention the first alien species that humanity came in contact with. When I first thought about what the Haron may look like, I had a rather generic image of an alien. I didn’t want to go with a generic route of course, so I sat and thought. Three things ended up popping into my head, hammerhead sharks, Maccus from Pirates of the Caribbean (the hammerhead shark guy from Davy Jone’s crew,) and Ithorians from Star Wars. Seeing that I had a theme with what popped into my head, I envisioned the Haron after a hammerhead shark. Although their eyes are not at the sides of their heads like the shark.

I made the Haron a noble race who value honor. This is why Jarick Udanta has issues with how Carter Jensen was leading Hades Team and his treatment of Ethan Richards and the rest of Nova Team. Next to humanity, the Haron are the second largest race to enlist in the UCA military. The Haron helped to develop a fully functioning engine capable of FTL travel together with humanity.

- Section Five: Wola -

The Wola are my fun species within the Celestial Saga. It seems like almost any science-fiction universe has a quirky little alien species that are there in the background or seem to be the odd one in the overall bunch, in a good and fun way. For me, I wanted that to be the Wola. As evident by the name of their homeworld, Wolakala, which is just fun to say! I like birds and decided to make a sentient bird species for the Celestial Saga.

I had fun writing about the Wola being a nomadic trading species venturing off their homeworld to trade. While so much of Dawn of the Seekers had been centered around a violent conflict, it was nice to spend a few minutes talking about an alien species who has no interest in conflict at all. A peaceful race that values the eldest members of their species and just want to enjoy life. The Wola’s major contribution to the United Celestial Alliance came with making the ships more aerodynamic to make turbulence a thing of the past.

- Section Six: Trill -

I don’t like deep water that I can’t see the bottom of. I don’t know what could be down there and that is terrifying. Naturally that made me create an alien species that lives exclusively under water with the Trill. Name wise I believe I thought of krill or gill or both. Since I couldn’t name an entire species that, I only altered a letter or two to come up with Trill. Their homeworld, Abyssal, where I don’t think any explanation of the name is needed, is completely covered by water with no land visible above the water’s surface.

When I thought of fish, I thought about schools of fish and how many there can be seen swimming around at one time. This made me think about having their species have an overpopulation issue which also contributed to the overcrowding of their cities due to poor infrastructure. As I stated previously, to showcase the three principles of the United Celestial Alliance, the UCA stepped in to help the Trill design better cities. This solved the issues they were having with overpopulation on their planets and overcrowding in their cities. The UCA also helped the Trill to become spacefaring. The Trill helped to make UCA suits and ships capable of withstanding higher pressures, whether it is in the depts of a planet’s oceans or in the deepest reaches of space.

- Section Seven: Deradker -

I may have had as much fun coming up with the Deradker as I did the Wola. With any science-fiction story, there is usually an alien species that is more technologically advanced than the others, for the Celestial Saga, it is the Deradker. I had a problem though; I couldn’t come up with a name for the species. I had a general idea of how I wanted them to look, but something wasn’t fitting. As fate would have it, the Bad Batch was airing and there is a character named Tech who of course is a tech expert. Wheels started to turn in my head, and I started planting little Star Wars Easter Eggs…or a big one as far as the Deradker are concerned. The name Deradker comes from Dee Bradley Baker who voices all of the Clones in the Star Wars animated series. The overall look of the Deradker being tall, slender, dark tan, with big brown eyes are inspired by how the character Tech looks.

Their homeworld, Fasahar, is a reverse Coruscant where the city was built inwards towards the planet’s core. There is only one city on the surface which serves as an entry and exit point to the underground. The surface of Fasahar is a wasteland where exiles are sent. The Deradker, being the technologically advanced race, objected to the ban of AI, but agreed when they saw what joining the UCA had to offer their species. Like Iron Man making everyone look cooler in the Avengers and designing the tech they use, the Deradker essentially do that for the United Celestial Alliance.

- Section Eight: Kaltari -

The main aggressors in Dawn of the Seekers are the Kaltari. A race of warriors who have their own empire and want to rule the Milky Way. Their appearance was inspired by the Brutes from Halo. In this chapter, we learn that when they were first discovered by the Wola, they were primitive in nature, not being spacefaring. By the time the UCA sends ambassadors many years later, they find out the Kaltari had colonized other planets within their solar system, but that they are still aggressive. Later on, the Kaltari receive a mysterious visitor who advances their technology into the future.

I’m not the best at naming things. I think in a past entry I mentioned how the Celestial Saga didn’t even have a name for a long time. For the Kaltari, I have found that naming things for their species has been some of the easiest for me. The name Kaltari sounds cool, in my opinion, and names of their inhabited worlds such as Kaltar and Kalfuri came naturally once I had the species name. While they may be the more traditional kind of species you’d expect to find in a science-fiction story, their path through the Celestial Saga is something you won’t want to miss.

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Making an entire chapter about lore in the middle of the book does seem odd. Especially given that the next chapter is the title chapter of the book and the “what’s next” moment happened at the end of the previous chapter. I found it necessary mainly to get the last couple of paragraphs where you see how the events of the book were all orchestrated by the main villain, Malaton. Not to mention it’s fun to learn about the happenings of the galaxy in the seven hundred years that take place between now and then.

That will wrap things up for this entry. The next entry will be about chapter eight in the book, Dawn of the Seekers, the title chapter. I hope you enjoy 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.