Dawn is the name given to a wave of migration from the Western Dantrian Civilization to the central and eastern parts of the Continent that happened in the course of several centuries, beginning in the middle of the first revolution. Travelers would cross the arid planes of Nari into what later would become Gantolia and Yammoe.
The Dawn is contrasted to the New Dawn, a migration wave from Central Dantria that occurred in the second half of the second revolution across the Ouna desert.
Reasons for the Dawn are unknown and somewhat mysterious due to the development of original languages, religions and cultures of the migrants. These cultures ended up having little in common with one another, while the expectation is that migrants from Western Dantria would have a relatively common cultural background. For instance, Lolion, which was the main religion in Dantria, seemed to be virtually unknown to the Dawn settlers. Instead, Lolion was later exported by its monks through Gantolia almost 10 centuries later.
This could be explained by an extreme diversity of Western Dantria, although it begs the question of what prompted such different peoples to embark on a dangerous and faraway journey. Hypotheses include famine, war, disease and cultural prosecution, but none of these ideas explain features of the Dawn to full satisfaction.
In contrast, the migrants of the New Dawn clearly had a common cultural background and spoke a closely related set of Thonthal-like languages.