[SPOILER] The Dawn Star

I think this has probably been discussed a dozen times by now, but I haven't found a single thread about this since the release, so here it is:

Afaik there were many, many discussions about surviving spaceships, and almost all (some even by intervention of MWW, I think?) ended with "They are all gone".

But... in HFQ, it is stated that the "Dawn Star" (or TFNS Hamilcar) was still around during the conclusion of the War of the Fallen.

And it hasn't been disposed of until then, I'm fairly sure it hasn't been disposed of afterwards either. So... it's still around. Somewhere.

Couple of unfounded assumptions here: first that the 'Dawn Star' was Hamilcar; second that the last survivors of the command crew wouldn't have disposed of something they regarded as inherently dangerous once they were done with it - since no one else on Safehold could use it after they were gone, what would be the point of leaving it as a signpost to a formerly high-tech culture?

I have to admit that my first thought on reading of the Servitors withdrawing to the Dawn Star was the ship, but that equation is untenable: while it isn't impossible that Hamilcar was big enough to be that noticeable from a synchronous orbit [although we're talking a pretty damned big object here], any object that would be a 'dawn star' for some locations on Safehold would be an _evening_ star from others and a day star, at least for people with good-enough eyesight, in yet others. And not visible at all for many, many other people. IOW, the designation would be rather meaningless. A true artificial Dawn Star would have to be something in solar orbit - and far enough from Safehold that pretty damned big becomes Death Star-sized. And if the TF was building Death Stars and still losing, the Gbaba are very scary indeed.

clancy688 wrote:I think this has probably been discussed a dozen times by now, but I haven't found a single thread about this since the release, so here it is:

Afaik there were many, many discussions about surviving spaceships, and almost all (some even by intervention of MWW, I think?) ended with "They are all gone".

But... in HFQ, it is stated that the "Dawn Star" (or TFNS Hamilcar) was still around during the conclusion of the War of the Fallen.

And it hasn't been disposed of until then, I'm fairly sure it hasn't been disposed of afterwards either. So... it's still around. Somewhere.

Have you read HFQ?

Merlin himself said that Dawn Star is TFNS Hamilcar.

Louis R wrote:Couple of unfounded assumptions here: first that the 'Dawn Star' was Hamilcar; second that the last survivors of the command crew wouldn't have disposed of something they regarded as inherently dangerous once they were done with it - since no one else on Safehold could use it after they were gone, what would be the point of leaving it as a signpost to a formerly high-tech culture?

I have to admit that my first thought on reading of the Servitors withdrawing to the Dawn Star was the ship, but that equation is untenable: while it isn't impossible that Hamilcar was big enough to be that noticeable from a synchronous orbit [although we're talking a pretty damned big object here], any object that would be a 'dawn star' for some locations on Safehold would be an _evening_ star from others and a day star, at least for people with good-enough eyesight, in yet others. And not visible at all for many, many other people. IOW, the designation would be rather meaningless. A true artificial Dawn Star would have to be something in solar orbit - and far enough from Safehold that pretty damned big becomes Death Star-sized. And if the TF was building Death Stars and still losing, the Gbaba are very scary indeed.

This conundrum is avoided if "the Dawn Star" was simply the name of the ship (or other site), without actually being in any apparent sense a dawn star from much of anywhere. Sometimes a name is just a name.

Mmmmm Lucifer.

JeffEngel wrote:This conundrum is avoided if "the Dawn Star" was simply the name of the ship (or other site), without actually being in any apparent sense a dawn star from much of anywhere. Sometimes a name is just a name.

Pretty much this. "Dawn Star" isn't exactly unreasonable for the name of a ship.

Edit: And even if the colonists thought the Dawn Star was a literal star, if the ship held position over the dawn terminus of the planet (Fed tech includes antigravity remember) or anywhere near it, then it would be VERY visible at dawn time but never during dusk... because the planet would be in the way.

Where?

And why is it never discussed during the start-up briefings in OAR?

clancy688 wrote:Have you read HFQ?

Merlin himself said that Dawn Star is TFNS Hamilcar.