Crafting the Celestial Saga: Ship a hoy, Nova Team!

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 eleven of Dawn of the Seekers, Ship a hoy, Nova Team! 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 this chapter of the book, Nova Team makes their way through a Kaltari cruiser to join the fight on Gra Ingra. We get a John Wick inspired action sequence, a moment to mourn the loss of Jamie Harper, and learn about something that is troubling a member of Nova Team.

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- Section One: The Second Draft -

This chapter was titled “Assault on the Vrenner” in the second draft or finished script as I like to call it. I changed the title for the finished book to “Ship a hoy, Nova Team!” as an Easter Egg to a track from the season two soundtrack of the Mandalorian titled, “Ship o hoj, Mandalorians!” The funny thing about the finished script is that this chapter was only three pages long. In the final book, the chapter is thirty-three pages long.

In the second draft, only Nova Team boards the Vrenner after the events at the tower. They make their way through the Vrenner, almost running out of ammo, and have to start using the Kaltari’s guns against them. They make it to the bridge of the Vrenner where they take out all of the Kaltari except for the captain. Ethan questions the captain about what Malaton is planning while Jennifer checks the consoles to find out where Malaton was going. The Kaltari captain tells Ethan that Malaton has created a weapon that will end the war and that everyone would revere him as a god. Jennifer finds coordinates to Italia, a tourist destination that I mentioned in the last entry of Crafting the Celestial Saga, so they decide that must be where Malaton is going. Ethan kills the captain, they take the escape pods, and that’s the end of the chapter.

If you’ve read the book, you will recognize that the overall blueprint for the chapter is still there, but there are quite a few differences and additions that were made. For one, Nova Team isn’t the only UCA soldiers that boarded the Vrenner. They have a handful of others that had gone with Jennifer to rescue Nova Team at the tower. This was done to give Nova Team a bit of a helping hand, and to show what effect they have on soldiers around them. I mention how Nova Team inspires those around them, so here they are inspiring the UCA soldiers to storm a Kaltari cruiser and help them commandeer it.

In a previous entry I mentioned how I shifted away from ammunition of any kind for the weapons in the Celestial Saga. They all have a cooldown feature like the guns in the first Mass Effect. In the second draft, Nova Team had an issue where they had limited resources with them, so they were running low on ammo. They had to start using Kaltari weapons as they made their way through the Vrenner. Since this story takes place seven hundred and ten years into the future, I scraped the concept of guns still using ammunition of any kind.

Nova Team still makes it to the bridge in the final version of Dawn of the Seekers where they take out the Kaltari bridge crew except for the captain. Jennifer uses the consoles on the bridge, except in the finished book, she is using them to set a collision course instead of looking for where Malaton is going. In the second draft, she sets the Vrenner to self-destruct while having it fly between a few Kaltari ships. In the book, it collides with another Kaltari cruiser that damages surrounding ships as well. The UCA takes advantage of this opportunity in both the second draft and final version.

One big change that I made for this chapter is how Ethan handles the Kaltari captain. In the second draft, Ethan questions the Captain of the Vrenner about what Malaton’s plan is. In the book, he questions the captain and learns Malaton’s name along with the name of the Kaltari carrier, the Doom’s Prophet. In the second draft, Ethan kills the captain as Nova Team makes their way to the escape pods. In the final version of the story, Ethan tells the captain that he would let him live if the captain cooperates, which he does. Nova Team enters the escape pods, the captain said that he thought Ethan would allow him to live. Ethan says that he would, but he never said for how long. The Kaltari captain tries to get off the ship but is ultimately unsuccessful. I didn’t like how in the second draft it portrayed Ethan as a coldblooded killer. In the final version of the story, Ethan keeps his word allowing the Kaltari captain to live and giving him a fair chance of finding an escape pod to get off the ship. Ethan also ordered the captain to evacuate the ship so that every Kaltari aboard had a fair chance of getting off the ship before it collided with another.

I also dropped the god complex that I gave Malaton in the second draft. I thought the whole bad guy who revered himself as a god had shown up in enough stories. In the second draft, after the Kaltari captain tells Ethan that Malaton would be a god to them, Ethan tells the Kaltari captain, “I only believe in one God…and it isn’t him.” It was a little nod to Captain America’s quote in the first Avengers movie as well as my own faith. Malaton thinking himself a god, or even the Kaltari thinking that he is a god, was something I no longer wanted to do once I got to the final book. Instead Malaton is referred to by what he is, a strong military leader.

Keeping with the changes that made sense from the Tower, I focus more on Daniel’s reaction to Jamie’s death. In the Tower I had mentioned how I originally had Ethan interact with Jamie in his final moments but changed it to Daniel since the two characters are best friends. In the second draft, this chapter is filled with how Ethan is hellbent on revenge against Malaton. For the book, I had the characters act like adults in that while they still want revenge, they are not driven by it and will try the diplomatic route first. Daniel is troubled by the death of Jamie, although its in a way that the rest of Nova Team don’t fully understand. Daniel blames himself for Jamie’s death, Ethan assures him that it wasn’t his fault, but then we learn that it may have been. Daniel had falsified a medical report, taken stimulants that he had a negative reaction to, and was having issues in the field. The delays this caused him in getting the elevator working caused Jamie to take matters into his own hands which ultimately resulted in his death. Daniel’s struggle with the knowledge of what he did is something that he carries throughout the Nova Team Trilogy.

- Section Two: Pilots -

In a lot of movies, when there is a crash landing of some kind, the pilots die. It’s almost a guarantee that this is going to happen. Something that I did when the UCA transport crash lands in the hangar of the Vrenner is have the pilot live! If only for a minute longer…

It was sort of a dual concept in my head as the pilot survives the crash only to be gunned down by a turret while exiting the transport. So, the pilot still ends up dying, just not from the crash.

- Section Three: The Baba Yaga -

Wanting to give a future member of Nova Team a moment to shine, I gave Ciro Ruiz a little action sequence along with a character introduced in this chapter, Niesha Smith. The two have smaller builds than the rest of the UCA soldiers that boarded the Vrenner which made them the ideal candidates to crawl through the ventilation system. The two drop down into a room, some Kaltari troopers enter, and then the fight begins. They use their knives and pistols since the hallway is close quarters as they make their way back to the room where the others are.

I took the John Wick films into consideration for this scene. Having fast, frantic action that takes place in a small space over a short distance. I made sure to include a few details such as Ciro or Niesha retrieving a weapon or a Kaltari trooper falling at a particular point to show how quickly the fight scene was moving. I also mentioned how the two were working in sync with each other as if they were old friends or partners. I wanted to imply a connection between the two, not a romantic one, but a friendly one that goes to a deeper level.

One of the funny things when it comes to fight scenes is that I often act them out myself while I write them. I think of the movements that I want a character to do, I then act those movements out to see if it flows naturally. This allows me to make sure what I am describing is actually possible and to make sure I’m not putting a character in a precarious position. Often times my dog is in the room while I am doing this, and she stares at me like there are no signs of intelligent life anywhere.

- Section Four: Adding some Depth -

As I had mentioned in section one, I gave Nova Team some time to breathe and reflect on the loss of Jamie Harper. Giving them a few minutes to do this in a safe environment, away from enemies, allowed for a couple of things. It allowed me to keep to my rule of “run now, hug later,” in that characters aren’t stopping to have a moment when they should be running from danger or doing something important. In this case, Nova Team has already gotten away from the danger, they are working on doing something important, but they have a legitimate moment to take a breather and think.

Which is the other thing that Nova Team having this moment allows for. It gives them a chance to take a small break to catch their breath. They just went through some pretty intense events so allowing them to have a moment to breathe was nice. It also allowed them to reflect on their teammate and friend, Jamie Harper. The three original members of Nova Team share a few memories about Jamie. This was also something that I found important to do since one of the things I set out to do with this story is show the human side of the characters. Having them regale in these stories and remember their friend allowed me to show their humanity.

I also used this conversation to drop the revenge plot from the second draft. As I also mentioned in section one, the second draft at this point was filled with Ethan wanting to get revenge on Malaton for killing Jamie. Revenge is not a path that people should be set upon, it often leads them to becoming what they hate the most. I also thought that these grown adults would know better. Due to the fact that Jamie was Daniel’s best friend, it would have made more sense for Daniel to be the one who wanted revenge anyway. This is something that Daniel mentions that he wants if they cannot solve things diplomatically.

- Section Five: The Passage of Time -

Reading through this chapter in the final book as well as how it was in the second draft has allowed some time for me to reflect. I often think about how it was ten years from the time I first started writing Celestial Saga: Dawn of the Seekers to when I published the book. Sometimes I feel bad since it took me so long to write it, but I had life events to live through, not to mention I needed to find out the best route to tell the story as well.

When I look at this chapter in particular, I realize the greatest thing to happen to this story was the passage of time. I started writing Dawn of the Seekers in 2013, I finished the second draft in 2016. Having finished writing and publishing the book in 2023, that means I gained ten years of life experiences since starting and seven years of experience since finishing the second draft. Seeing how much I grew and matured in that period of time is evident in the writing.

The passage of time allowed me to learn how to craft a better story and learn how to add some depth to the characters in a more personal way. I learned a lot about myself over those ten years and I went through a lot. This allowed me to connect with my characters on a deeper, more emotional level, which I think shows throughout the story. To me, when I read the finished book compared to the second draft, I see characters behaving like actual people instead of what I thought people would behave like in these situations.

That’s character progression as I like to call it. The kind that you see in a real person instead of the ones on the page. So, while I can kick myself at times for taking so long to write the story, the truth of the matter is that the passage of time allowed for the story to become what it is today. I’m happy about that.

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While this chapter offered Nova Team and the UCA soldiers with them plenty of action, it also allowed some time for them to breathe and reflect. This chapter also offered the author some time to reflect on his own progression through life and writing the Celestial Saga.

That will wrap things up for this entry. The next entry will be about chapter thirteen in the book, the City Destroyer. 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.