Name: Порядок рассвета (“the Order of the Breaking Dawn”)

Location: Eastern Siberia, specifically Yakutsk and much of the territory to the north and east.

History: When Russia fell, few places were hit harder than Siberia. Reliant on the industries of the western empire to generate demand for the region’s abundant natural resources, the economy quickly entered a deep depression that it has yet to start recovering from. The tens of thousands of miners, loggers and oilmen that had come from Moscow and St. Petersburg to seek their fortunes in the gold found themselves stranded in the taiga, with no easy way home. Along with the loss in demand came a loss of the food imports that sustained these Siberian industrial towns. This strained the region’s agricultural base, leading to severe food shortages for a few years while what was left of the economy shifted from mineral exploitation back to farming.

Amid the confusion and panic immediately following the death of the Tsar, a new sect of Russian Orthodoxy was born, one tailored to the harsh realities of life in one of the coldest and darkest regions of the world. The orthodox priests brought to the region by the industrial workers began to preach of a time when, through the ministry of the church and the grace of God, the long, hard winters would end, the sun would shine year-round and there would be so much food that no one would ever be hungry again. This movement eventually solidified into a group calling themselves the Monastic Order of the Breaking Dawn (sometimes abbreviated to simply “the Dawn”). At first just a loose confederation of regional priests and former military chaplains that met every few months in Yakutsk to discuss the region’s spiritual health, they quickly started traveling far and wide throughout Siberia to distribute food and medical supplies to those who had none, teach farming to city-born industrial workers and spread the word of God’s light.

Eventually, the Order’s unique brand of Christianity became the dominant religion in the northern Lena River basin and the Yakutsk Oblast. Though by no means a political power in the region, its members have come to be greatly respected by the populace and there is talk of establishing a religious council in charge of the northern villages to better coordinate the sharing of resources and possibly begin the task of restarting the regional economy.

Other information: The Dawn is a cenobitic monastic order headquartered in a compound at the convergence of the Lena and Aldan Rivers. It has roughly 200 members who live full-time in the monastery, plus a corps of traveling priests numbering in the low hundreds who serve the northeastern reaches of the Oblast by providing medical and agricultural knowledge and religious services. Its followers number in the high tens of thousands, if not low hundreds of thousands, comprised of almost the entire rural population of the Oblast and a sizable portion of the population of Yakutsk itself.

Their differences with conventional Christianity revolve mostly around a unique interpretation of the idea of “God’s light”, with their monks teaching that God will literally bring light to their followers, allowing them to grow food year-round, raise the temperature of the land above freezing, and live free of the extremely depressing effects of the long Siberian winter. Their holy places are brightly lit twenty-four hours a day and intense light, artificial or natural, features prominently in their rituals. Other common motifs of their worship are gold, candles, mirrors, fire and, obviously, the Sun.

Name: Порядок рассвета (“the Order of the Breaking Dawn”)

Location: Eastern Siberia, specifically Yakutsk and much of the territory to the north and east.

History: When Russia fell, few places were hit harder than Siberia. Reliant on the industries of the western empire to generate demand for the region’s abundant natural resources, the economy quickly entered a deep depression that it has yet to start recovering from. The tens of thousands of miners, loggers and oilmen that had come from Moscow and St. Petersburg to seek their fortunes in the gold found themselves stranded in the taiga, with no easy way home. Along with the loss in demand came a loss of the food imports that sustained these Siberian industrial towns. This strained the region’s agricultural base, leading to severe food shortages for a few years while what was left of the economy shifted from mineral exploitation back to farming.

Amid the confusion and panic immediately following the death of the Tsar, a new sect of Russian Orthodoxy was born, one tailored to the harsh realities of life in one of the coldest and darkest regions of the world. The orthodox priests brought to the region by the industrial workers began to preach of a time when, through the ministry of the church and the grace of God, the long, hard winters would end, the sun would shine year-round and there would be so much food that no one would ever be hungry again. This movement eventually solidified into a group calling themselves the Monastic Order of the Breaking Dawn (sometimes abbreviated to simply “the Dawn”). At first just a loose confederation of regional priests and former military chaplains that met every few months in Yakutsk to discuss the region’s spiritual health, they quickly started traveling far and wide throughout Siberia to distribute food and medical supplies to those who had none, teach farming to city-born industrial workers and spread the word of God’s light.

Eventually, the Order’s unique brand of Christianity became the dominant religion in the northern Lena River basin and the Yakutsk Oblast, and their congregation’s offerings accumulated enough that they were able to finance the construction of their own monastery to the north of Yakutsk. This rapid growth has somewhat drawn the ire of the ruling Siberian Cossacks, though with so few members and little in the way of institutional wealth apart from the monastery buildings themselves, retribution from the Cossacks has thus far been limited to occasional demands of food and currency, which to date the monks have complied with.

Though by no means a political power in the Oblast, its members have come to be greatly respected by the populace and there is talk of establishing a religious council in charge of the northern villages to better coordinate the sharing of resources and possibly begin the task of restarting the regional economy.

Other information: The Dawn is a cenobitic monastic order headquartered in a compound at the convergence of the Lena and Aldan Rivers. It has roughly 200 members who live full-time in the monastery, plus a corps of traveling priests numbering in the low hundreds who serve the northeastern reaches of the Oblast by providing medical and agricultural knowledge and religious services. Its followers number in the high tens of thousands, if not low hundreds of thousands, comprised of almost the entire rural population of the Oblast and a sizable portion of the population of Yakutsk itself.

Their differences with conventional Christianity revolve mostly around a unique interpretation of the idea of “God’s light”, with their monks teaching that God will literally bring light to their followers, allowing them to grow food year-round, raise the temperature of the land above freezing, and live free of the extremely depressing effects of the long Siberian winter. Their holy places are brightly lit twenty-four hours a day and intense light, artificial or natural, features prominently in their rituals. Other common motifs of their worship are gold, candles, mirrors, fire and, obviously, the Sun.