Dawn’s Story So Far
Some of this is adapted from other essays, some is brand new. Enjoy!
Introduced as an orphaned, frightened teenager with a terrifying natural ability for the Craft, Dawn melds with a Craft-god to save her mentor Tara, and then travels the world to build her power and her congregation. Viewed by most characters as a bad guy, Dawn genuinely believes she is doing the right thing to save her friends and change the world for the better. But is she being used?
As we approach the publication of Dead Hand Rule, let’s take a look at Dawn’s story so far.
Dawn before the series
Note: I theorised about a secret history to Dawn after Dead Country, but have since concluded I was incorrect. If you want to read that for fun anyway, it’s right here.
Dawn spent her childhood criss-crossing the continent of Northern Kath with her father in a semi-nomadic existence. It seems they didn’t have much but each other, and were extremely close. We read that she “had grown up on the road, a season here, a season there, sometimes in day-labourers’ camps and caravans, sometimes just her and her dad. Dusty work.”
We already knew such caravans existed, as Tara joined one when she ran away from home as a teenager, but as the books have been largely urban we have never focused much on this way of life. While Northern Kath is a cognate for North America, it doesn’t have anywhere near the level of urbanisation or population of North America. The Badlands (Great Plains vibes) seem to have no cities, just small settlements popping up and eking out a meagre existence. It’s not just the Badlands, actually; the populated coasts, despite Alt Coulumb and Dresediel Lex, don’t seem to have nearly the population of the US coasts.
Geography aside, back to Dawn.
Dawn is close-lipped about her past, but when we get her POV in Wicked Problems we learn a little more. We get dribs and drabs about the father she admired, such as the fact that his life choices were explained by a fervent desire to stay away from gods and mercenaries. We don’t know how old he was, but there’s a good chance he saw the last years of the God Wars, or the chaos that invariably follows the declaration of peace.
Dawn didn’t have formal training - or, frankly, much informal training - in the Craft prior to Tara, but she did pick up tips and tricks along the way. She recalls listening in to conversations while on the road, “turning half-heard sentences uttered by all those hedge witches and mountebanks over in her mind like puzzle pieces until they fit with other half-heard sentences from months ago and hundreds of miles back.” Dawn has raw power and talent, but until Tara only knew the very surface levels of controlling and channelling her Craft.
We know that the final place they settled was Blake’s Rest, a small settlement like Edgemont, and it was here that her father sickened and died. Dawn remembers that the locals brought in a shaman to help him, but there was nothing he could do. She tried to hide the cruelty of other young people around them and how they got at her, in order to protect her father, as he tried to protect her in turn. After he died, Dawn was taken in by a family at Blake’s Rest, but they didn’t seem to treat her well.
Raiders from the Badlands increased their attacks. Many at Blake’s Rest were killed. And then, as Dawn is being dragged away, a saviour appears: Tara Abernathy.
And we reach Dead Country.
Dead Country
The farm at Blake’s Rest has been attacked, and is aflame. A Raider drags Dawn by her hair from the barn, and it seems she will die like everyone else around her, until a mysterious figure in a suit appears from nowhere. She shoots the Raider - through Dawn. The Raider is killed, and Dawn is badly injured.
The strange figure, Tara Abernathy, tries to heal her. But Dawn, powerful in the Craft yet untrained, instinctively reacts by blasting Craft out from her, decimating everything nearby.
Tara helps her to her feet, and together they limp to Edgemont, Tara’s hometown.
Dawn is taken to Tara’s childhood home, where Tara heals her as best she can. It’s painful, but it works. Now waiting for Tara’s father’s funeral, Tara begins to teach Dawn the fundamentals of the Craft. She’s an eager student, and starts to idolise her mentor.
At John Abernathy’s wake, they are interrupted by the arrival of a young man from Blake’s Rest - someone who had been cruel to Dawn, and she recoils as he tries to grab her. He’s infected by the Raiders’ curse, which bubbles out from him to attack Dawn. Tara intervenes, and ends up wounding herself and becoming cursed as she saves Dawn. They are thrown into battle, and Dawn watches her hero, who has now saved her life twice, save a town that she hates. Tara is glorious in the Craft, and Dawn adores.
She doesn’t, however, understand why Tara chooses to stay in Edgemont to sure up their defenses and battle against the Raiders and their leader, the Seer. Dawn continues to learn from Tara and develop her skill in the Craft, and joins her on practical lessons to chart Edgemont and rebuild its wards. Through stories of the land and its people, Tara can translate the town, its people and its stories into Craftwork and claims it as hers, no matter her historic dislike of the place. She brings Dawn in, teaching her how to put theory into practice. Tara’s a conflicted teacher, but she tries her best, and Dawn loves her for it.
Dawn knows Tara is keeping something from her, though. And one night, Tara finally shares it: information Tara has collected over the past few years about a threat from beyond the stars. The skazzerai. Tara has gathered as much information as humanly (or inhumanly) possible and still knows next to nothing.
And then, the battle. Raiders arrive with a storm on their heels, and the Seer at their helm. Tara uses all her work learning the town, the glyphs she carved into the glass canyon, and the strength she built by night to channel through the Pastor, and fights. Dawn watches in awe.
The Craft is clear on property rights: Tara named Edgemont in the Craft, its places and people, flora and fauna, and the Raiders have no place here. But, after saving Dawn, the curse is inside her. If she is part of Edgemont, so is it - and thus the Raiders. Her defence weakens, but Edgemont guards join the fight. In doing so, they leave the wards that mark Edgemont’s boundaries, and some of the power is broken. The Raiders leave, but they have Pastor Merrott. Dawn wants Tara to leave the Pastor to his fate and leave Edgemont. But Tara won’t. She can’t. This is her father’s town, and whether she likes it or not it’s hers.
And so Tara, Dawn, and Tara’s new lover Connor make their way through the Badlands to the Raiders’ camp. Connor knows the Badlands like Tara knows the Craft, and can tell them how to find both invisible dangers and hidden oases. The Badlands are far from the dead country they seem at first glance. Gods died out there, and the land sucked up their power.
The trio walk through an edge storm and see the only possible future, one where the world ends at the maw of the skazzerai. Connor is injured, but Tara and Dawn make their way to the Raiders’ camp by the Crack in the World.
It’s not what you’d expect. An office park, painfully normal looking - and the planetside annexe of Alexander Denovo’s journal. In the building, Tara and Dawn discover that Denovo somehow managed to trap a godlike being of the Craft. It kept trying to grow a body, and he kept cutting it up. It hangs suspended in wires, seemingly dead.
This being and its power changed the Raiders’ curse, made them act differently.
Tara and Dawn fight to save Pastor Merrott, and the Craft-god wakes. It tries to eat Tara, but Dawn saves her.
She tries to hide exactly what happened, but back in Edgemont Tara confronts her. Dawn stopped the Craft-god by melding with her, offering herself in Tara’s place. And now all that power is free in the world, inside Dawn.
“Dawn stood before his plot, head bowed, and glowing. She was so pale that an uneducated observer might have confused her gentle radiance for a reflection of the sky. But it came from within.
“Why,” Tara asked, “am I alive?”
Dawn looked away, then back, and did not try to hide the guilt that answered too many of Tara’s questions at once, too fast. “Because I saved you.”
“Who are you?” Tara asked.
“Me,” she said. “Dawn. Still.” She hugged herself. As she moved, the light inside her rippled—thsoe threads that were not quite a curse shifting under the shell of her skin. “There’s more. I don’t know it yet. I don’t remember. I can’t remember. Human minds don’t work the way hers does. Or, did. We’re still…I’m still figuring this out.”
“What are you now.”
She waited for Dawn’s smile to mock her, but it was only sad. “I don’t know.”
Tara nearly convinces Dawn to come with her, but Dawn-slash-the-Craft-god sees through her. Tara confirms her suspicion: the Craft god killed her father to try and reel in Tara.
Once again, the Craft-god tries to eat her, through Dawn. Yet, with the curse now gone, Tara can pray and Seril opens the moon road. Dawn flees.
Wicked Problems
Wicked Problems picks up immediately after this fight. Dawn runs from the might of Alt Coulumb’s gods and hides from the moon. She finds herself talking to a serpent, who is of questionable ‘realness’ and may be a figment of Dawn’s imagination, or an embodiment of the Craft-god powers she absorbed at the Tellurian Annex. Dawn names the serpent Sybil, and the two of them agree on at least the next step forward: they have to keep moving, they have to hide from the moon and Tara, and they need to go south.
An indeterminate amount of time later, between a few weeks and a few months, Dawn has reached her goal: the spirecliffs off the coast of Southern Kath. She makes her way into a Two Serpents Group site by blending in with a group of journalists awaiting billionaire Eberhardt Jax’s arrival. Dawn sneaks in to the heart of the damage with Caleb Altemoc and Jax to find a shard of metal with an unbloomed rose at its centre. This is what Sybil sensed, and why they’ve come. There are considerable wards and protections, but Dawn is able to reach past and take the shard and rose in her palm. Everything goes wrong and Dawn passes out.
She awakes in a cell on a ship, with an ankle cuff that stops her speaking to Sybil or using Craft. The ship is attacked by a kraken, and in the chaos Dawn picks the lock on her cuff - she can speak to Sybil again, but the rose and metal shard in her hand try to eat her from the inside. Lovely Crafty visual there.
Dawn is rescued by a mysterious pirate with a silver and clockwork arm. As they row away, Dawn realises the pirate (who calls herself a courier) can see Sybil - who, of course, tries to eat her. The rose moves in Dawn’s palm, and tries to eat her in return. There’s a lot of trying to eat people and their souls going on. The pirate has a magical bag, which she uses as a glove to protect Dawn’s hand and stop said rose eating her. The pirate introduces herself as Mal, who we know, but Dawn doesn’t, is Caleb’s ex who tried to destroy Dresediel Lex with Serpents of Mass Destruction, and who was assumed dead a decade or so ago.
Mal takes Dawn to a place called The Arsenal, an old mining facility (mining the remains of a dead god, Ixzayotl, who is still visible under the sea) that is now a place for mercenaries for hire to hang out. We meet a bunch of mercenaries, and a client known as Mr Brown - who, naturally, springs a trap of Dawn and Mal. He - or whatever weird spiralling steel creature inhabits his meatsuit - paid Mal for the rose / shard, which is now in Dawn’s hand. A fight breaks out, and Dawn manages to raise the dead god Ixzayotl to defeat Mr Brown.
A group of mercenaries, collectively known as the Arsenals, having witnessed Dawn’s stupendous power, sign a contract to support her. They need an expert in gods to help deal with the rose/shard situation - Mal says she knows a guy. With Ixzayotl’s corpse as their vehicle, they fly off to go break into a prison in the Shining Empire.
Shenshan prison is built into a god-mountain, and its captives imprisoned in living rock. They are here to rescue Temoc Almotil, who knows more about gods than anyone else in the narrative. Realising Mal is his saviour, he immediately tries to kill her until she tells him the stars are wrong, an old Quechal prophecy. Dawn and Sybil are watching from outside, and see the escape going wrong. Despite an epic battle, Temoc, Mal and the Arsenals are still very nearly caught - until Dawn flies in on Ixzayotl to save them. All seems well until the clouds part, and the moon emerges, bringing Seril’s wrath upon Dawn. Temoc prays and saves her just in time. They need to get her more power.
Dawn and the Arsenals convene at a facility where people have been held in a not-quite-dead state for decades to extract soulstuff from them. The facility appears to have been forgotten by those who set it up. Dawn offers the victims mercy, ending their lives and taking thirty thousand souls to bring herself back from the brink. They need more.
On a lighter note, she overhears Mal and Temoc discussing The-Whole-Serpents-Over-Dresediel-Lex-Thing, and we learn that Mal and Caleb are religiously married, which leads to some great banter throughout the book. Temoc also explains more about the flower and the shard in Dawn’s palm: the flower is the goddess Ajaia’s heart, fighting against the shard.
The souls in the facility aren’t enough to fully heal Dawn or allow her to overpower the shard. Where to get more power than the Serpents? Shockingly this is Temoc’s idea, and Mal is the one arguing against it. They don’t need to approach Aquel and Achal themselves, however. Blood from the Serpents is stored in a research facility called Tlaloc Observatory. There’s no way this can go wrong, right?
Dawn and her Arsenals have snuck into the city on a container ship, helmed by a Scottish captain. That detail is irrelevant, but as a Scot myself I must include it. In hiding with some of Temoc’s contacts, he outlines the plan to get into Tlaloc Observatory and steal the blood. He will need around 30 minutes to sing some prayers, at which point Dawn will enter the dream of gods, face foes there and defeat them. They are not planning on a fight.
As anyone with a basic grasp of literary convention will know, this statement will come back to bite them. Of course there will be a fight.
Various religio-magic things happen to get them in to where the Serpents’ blood is held, and it all goes fine at first. Dawn is about to enter the dream of gods when a Mr Brown appears and attacks. She seizes the power of the blood to fight, and sets the Observatory on fire. Back at the safehouse, many of the Arsenals are badly injured. Dawn is connected to them as a proto-Goddess, giving them strength and taking it in return. She channels power through Temoc to heal them, and passes out. When she awakes, she says she must wake the actual Serpents and not just take some of their blood. They need to go to Heartstone.
On the morning of the trip to the Serpents, Dawn sneaks out to see Dresediel Lex, acting like the young girl she will never be again. She meets Elayne Kevarian on the beach, and they have a veiled conversation. It is revealed that all the Arsenals have been following her, and are hiding in plain sight around her on the beach; they are worried about Elayne, and get Dawn away.
Later, Dawn and the Arsenals are in the tunnels under Heartstone to find the Serpents. Temoc and Mal pray, and Dawn is able to enter the Serpents’ dreams and speak with them. She claims all Arsenals, including Mal, as her own, despite the Serpents having a prior claim. Then shit starts to go down as the King in Red arrives. There is a mighty battle, but Dawn isn’t really there any more so can’t help her people. She can’t really help herself, either, and is losing her spiritual battle, and Mal offers herself to the Serpents as a sacrifice to allow Dawn to enter the time of gods. Dawn finds herself in a nightmare forest, stuck in the fight between Ajaia and the skazzerai shard.
“Dawn fled through the haunted wood.
Hunger followed.
Somewhere, the others fought. Somewhere, Mal burned through the skies, a holy filament. Any moment, she might snap. Dawn had to be worthy of her sacrifice.
But she was alone and afraid.
A dead willow wrapped her in whiplike branches that wept foul amber sap. The sap hardened around her limbs, crept toward her eyes and mouth. Dawn clawed free, leaving behind bits of skin and hair, as behind her through the wood the hunger came.
…
The goddess was made of wood and rock and stream, and she was dying.
She had no real body—the swamp shifted to lend her form as she advanced. The cragged thorns that were her face became her hair, and now the bloodied pinprick of a flower was her eye. Even ruined, she was majesty.
Black iron stitched her through. Her vines split with iron rot. Her sores bristled with the teeth of gears.
She descended toward Dawn. One long creaking hand stretched out.
Dawn tried to pull away, but a thin rootlike finger touched her chest and burrowed into her.
She screamed.
”
Teo and Abelard, who are now here, save Dawn’s body from the battle while she fights skazzerai metal and a dying goddess in the nightmare forest. Eventually, Dawn manages to speak to what is left as Ajaia and convince her to join as one - which essentially means Ajaia sacrificing herself to give all her power and responsibilities to Dawn. Sybil appears and eats the shard.
Now with the powers of a god, Dawn rises in the cavern. She and the Arsenals escape with Ixzayotl, but Kopil traps Mal before she can escape. Dawn tries to save her, but Mal sees that would doom Dawn and cuts the ties between them. Dawn collapses as Ixzayotl flies away.
Now in the Badlands, Dawn kneels by the Crack in the World and raises the War-scarred landscape as her own.
And that is Dawn’s story so far.
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