Radiant Dawn

Radiant Dawn is the first novel by Cody Goodfellow, published in 2000 by Perilous Press. Goodfellow has described it, along with its sequel Ravenous Dusk, as "a two-part modern epic based upon Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness."Rapture of the Deep and Other Lovecraftian Tales, Cody Goodfellow, "Introduction".
Goodfellow's short story "In the Shadow of Swords", anthologized in the collection A Mountain Walked, serves as a prequel to Radiant Dawn.
The novel describes a secret war between a renegade special forces team and a new age cult over the future of humanity.
== Organizations ==
Radiant Dawn: Once a New Age utopian commune in the California desert two miles south of Convict Lake; later reorganized as the Radiant Dawn Hospice Village. Dedicated to a radical advancement of trans-human evolution.
Spike Team Texas: A trio of mutant ex-Special Forces operatives affiliated with Radiant Dawn. They were defectors from Special Forces in Vietnam, who "radioed our boys into ambushes in the jungle.... The things they supposedly did over there made the Khmer Rouge look like the Salvation Army." They were captured by the Pentagon in 1978, and subjected to a test of the RADIANT SDI system in 1984 that was supposed to kill them, but instead turned them into nearly indestructible, shoggoth-like supersoldiers.
The Mission: Renegade military personnel and DARPA scientists dedicated to wiping out Radiant Dawn before it can replace humanity. They describe themselves as "a militia of human beings fighting a holy war against eugenic terrorists."
School Of Night: A cult based in Colma, California, that worships Mana Yood Sushai, the dreaming god. Serves as a surveillance network for The Mission.
== Characters ==
Stella Orozco, 29-year-old registered nurse with terminal liver cancer. After being rejected by Radiant Dawn, becomes a combination hostage/guinea pig/lab technician for The Mission. Described as having "bronze skin and ebony hair...with angular brow and cheekbones, deepset black eyes, an aquiline nose and an almost too-wide, generously lipped mouth".
=== Thermopylae ===
Zane Ezekiel Storch, Gulf War veteran suffering from Gulf War Syndrome. Born in 1966, Storch enlisted in the Airborne Rangers in 1983; promoted to sergeant, he transferred to Special Forces. He saw combat in Desert Storm, lost a thumb and was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart; he has repressed memories of an encounter with Spike Team Texas in the Tigris Valley that altered his physiology. Runs Sgt. Storch's Quartermaster Supply in Thermopylae, California.
Harley John Pettigrew, Sgt. Storch's assistant manager. Described by the FBI as "a convicted illegal firearms dealer with associates in both militant anti-government and organized crime circles." Secretly an agent of The Mission, codenamed Serapion.
Ely Buggs, computer programmer and conspiracy theorist who works as a cashier for Storch. Also does IT work for the School Of Night.
Hiram Hansen, Thermopylae's coroner/taxidermist/librarian. Lives in an elaborately boobytrapped former Borax mine in the desert. "He had an enormous, bloated sac for a torso, with a belly like a flaccid tongue and pendulous teats that sometimes wept blue-gray milk. His knurled limbs resembled prostheses sculpted of sinewy leather."
George Gorman Storch, Zane Storch's father and the founder of the military surplus store. In an asylum in Norwalk since 1992, since he tried to shut down a presidential debate between George Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot.
Pop Sickle: "An albino giant with a beluga whale’s torso and pipestem limbs," he "had horrible weeping lesions and gigantic bruises on nearly every exposed inch of moonstone skin." Killed in a raid by fake federal agents on Sgt. Storch's Quartermaster Supply.
=== Radiant Dawn ===
Dr. Cyril Keogh, transhuman. Called himself Keitel when he brought the RADIANT program to DARPA. Later, using the name Quesada, founded the Radiant Dawn cult. He is described as "an older man in a charcoal suit and white labcoat, with silver hair fluttering like cold fire round his skull, and black wraparound sunglasses of the kind vampires might favor." 
Stephen, train accident victim whose miraculous survival brings Radiant Dawn to the attention of Stella Orozco.
Sidra Marie Sperling, missing person. Died giving birth to Keogh's mutant child; her body was found by Zane Storch and taken to Hiram Hansen.
Donald Sperling, Sidra's father and a former member of the Radiant Dawn cult.
=== Spike Team Texas ===
Brutus Dyson: He "stood seven feet and change, every inch of it rawboned angles and knobby muscle, with a weatherbeaten, scar-torn hide stretched so taut over it that it creaked like the rigging of a ship when he moved." Has a tattoo on his forearm that reads "Don't Mess With Texas".
Gibby Holroyd: He "could be charitably described as morbidly obese, but he looked like he ate morbidly obese people for breakfast.
Avery Tucker: "Whipcord muscles rippled in his arms like elevator cables."
=== The Mission ===
Major Bangs: Military leader of the Mission. Described as "a black man in his middle fifties, close to two hundred pounds and in excellent shape."
Dr. Cornelius Darwin Armitage: Taught at MIT and worked at DARPA with Angell. A researcher on the RADIANT project, he supposedly died shortly thereafter in an explosion at his house, but he actually went underground with the Mission.
Dr. Calvin Wittrock: A physicist attached to Livermore Labs, he worked on the RADIANT project and a year later was supposedly "abducted and executed in Bogota, Colombia, allegedly by narcoguerrilas"--a cover story for his disappearance into the Mission.
Major Delores Mrachek, MD: A cellular biologist from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. "Nothing in her public record shows anything less than a passionate dedication to the preservation of human life," the FBI noted.
Seth Napier
=== School Of Night ===
Charles Walter Angell: Taught with Armitage at MIT and worked with him on directed energy projects at DARPA. Had a breakdown in 1980 and took a lecturer's post at Stanford.
=== FBI ===
Martin Cundieffe, special agent who bears "an uncanny resemblance to the nerdy, bespectacled character actor Wally Cox, if Wally Cox had gone bald before age twenty-five." Hyperintellectual and almost sexless.
Wendell Wyler, special assistant director for counterterrorism; Cundieffe's boss and mentor. Like Cundieffe, he has virtually no sexual characteristics whatsoever.
Lane Willard Hunt, special agent in charge of the LA field office’s counterterrorism squad. A doorbuster who relies on Cundieffe's intel.
=== US Military ===
Lt. Col. Mort Greenaway of Delta Force
=== Furnace Creek ===
Sheriff Jim Twombley
Deputy Kenny Landis
==External Link==
"Cody Goodfellow's Radiant Dawn Trilogy! Complete review" at Postcards From a Dying World
==References==
Category:Expanded Mythos Works
Category:Cody Goodfellow works
Category:Novels