Editing Horizon Zero Dawn (section)

==Characters==

===Aloy===

You know how [[Exalted]] are good at everything they do, but they tend to be selfish loners who care more about their childhood angst than saving the world? Aloy is like that, except instead of being a reincarnation of someone awesome, she's a clone of someone awesome, a woman who was so brilliant that GAIA said, "You know, I can't envision an Earth that would not need you to save it. Go forth and stab a [[Metal Gear]] in the eye." And Aloy did, because fucking anything was better than staying home and pretending to mourn the kid who threw rocks at her.

Personality-wise, Aloy plays the bitter snarker to cover up how angry she is at humanity. She is intensely curious, which is why a game mechanic revolves around her climbing up moving sauropods to hack into their brains. At the age of 6, she took an iPhone (or "Focus") off of the dead guy who owned it, thereby adding infrared vision and Old One records to her already expert hunting skills. Like her prepper father, Aloy is most comfortable sleeping on the dirt and killing animals for dinner. Her nomadic lifestyle also prevents cults to her from springing up...or so she'd like to believe, anyway. So far she has usurped one werak chieftain, turned seven bandit camps into peaceful villages, rejected the affections of a Sun-King, saved the Carja capital, foiled about half a dozen plots to destabilize tribal relations, and somehow become the Nora's messiah. Yet her hero complex only grows, which is helpful when she stumbles upon the genre-mandated "save the world" plot. The second game winds up deconstructing her hero complex by way of the plot repeatedly hammering it into her skull that she can't do everything alone and needs to rely on her friends to help her.

===Erend===

An alcoholic Oseram mercenary who put his warhammer to good use helping Avad take the throne. After that, Avad sent him on a diplomatic mission to the Nora, partly to protect the other ambassadors and partly because he knew Erend's forthright, plain-speaking ways would appeal to the barbarians more than a Carja's fancy eddy-cated talk. On the trip, Erend met Aloy and tried to chat her up, after which they became detective buddies in Meridian. His character arc is about overcoming the death of his sister/military leader to take her place in the Vanguard and start getting over his inferiority complex. He's justifiably pissy with Aloy in the second game because she ran off to keep saving the world without saying goodbye, but they reconcile and he gets a Focus of his own, which lets him discover heavy metal, to his joy and everyone else's horror. 

===Avad===

The 14th Sun-King of Meridian, Avad is an ideal ruler: compassionate, just, and yet passive enough that his kingdom provides plenty of heroic opportunities for the PC. One prejudice he hasn't managed to erase is its stigma against marrying foreign women, which prevented him from openly acknowledging Ersa (an Oseram ex-slave and the captain of his bodyguards) as the love of his life. But even though his people are too primitive to appreciate waifus, he does his best for them and plays a greater role than any other leader in preventing the apocalypse MK. 2. Is desperately thirsty for Aloy because she reminds him of Ersa's badassery, but she's not interested. 

===Teersa===

A wise old lady who's one of the three "High Matriarchs" that lead the Nora. Unlike the others, she cares about her goddess's creations and strives to understand the world instead of shutting it out.

She does worship a door, but that's not her fault.

===Sylens===

An obsessed scholar of the Old Ones who is too awesome to appear in the first two-thirds of the game. While tomb-raiding, he accidentally discovered a superweapon A.I, which (less accidentally) he would form a cult around. This cult was called Eclipse, and consisted mostly of exiled Carja who thought Jiran had the right idea. Despite all the murders and superweapon-resurrecting that the A.I (called HADES) demanded in exchange for giving Sylens knowledge, Sylens was still surprised when the machine betrayed him and forced him into hiding. Luckily, there was another loose end that HADES wanted to kill: Aloy, the only person with Old One genetics that could shut it down. Sylens, who had learned nothing about morality or basic pattern recognition, promptly set off to use Aloy like he had used everyone else. 

In ''Forbidden West'', Sylens has returned to doing what he does best: organizing foreign rebels into a terrorist army to take down Far Zenith since he knew they were coming. He also leads Aloy into the West so that she can kill HADES (permanently, this time) for him. This is one of two reasons Aloy swears to kill him, the other being that he wants her kidnapped by Far Zenith (he assumed they'd need her genetic code and so would capture her, which would prevent her from messing with his plan. Unfortunately, Beta exists and so Far Zenith tries to kill Aloy). Unfortunately, their sabotage of each other's plans leaves them in a mutually weak situation where teaming up with each other is the only way for anyone to survive Far Zenith's attempt at genocide. Pour one out for Lance Reddick. 

===Varl===

A Nora warrior who isn't an asshole, and...yeah, his characterization basically ends there. He takes a flexible approach to his tribe's religion, prioritizing heroism and proactiveness over xenophobia. This led him to think, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't be leaving our eighteen-year-old messiah to do everything by herself," and so he followed Aloy on her quest to save the world, even as she ditched him several times because of her trust issues. After a few hundred miles, she realized he wasn't going away and accepted him as her first real teammate. Varl fell in love with their next recruit, Zo, very quickly and spends most of ''Forbidden West'' studying the Old Ones with her.

===Zo===

An Utaru "Gravesinger", who presides over funerals and caused more than a few for the Carja who invaded her land. After the war, she advocated that Utaru leaders do something about the Derangement, but was unsuccessful...until two foreigners washed into her village. One of these two was Varl, her future husband. The other was Aloy, who healed a sacred machine with knowledge that seemed impossible. Zo saw an opportunity to make a difference, and led them to the protected cave where MINERVA was hiding...a cave Zo never really left, since Zero Dawn's goal seemed more important than anything she'd done in her old life. Going forward, Zo was instrumental in fixing the "Blight" starving her tribe and furnishing the team's base.

===Kotallo===

An experienced Tenakth "Marshal" who guards and enforces the will of their chief. When he was young, Kotallo's combat prowess attracted the envy and paranoia of Tekotteh, his clan leader, who forced him to become a Marshal so that he wouldn't threaten Tekotteh's power. The joke was on Tekotteh, however: Kotallo  served with distinction for years and was now in a position to smack down Tekotteh's attempts at insubordination. It was an unexpected life, but a happy one...

...until a machine sliced off his arm. The Tenakth do not accept crippled people, so Kotallo's injury sent him into something of an existential crisis. Hekarro broke tradition to keep him as a Marshal, but this was little comfort when even Kotallo believed he was worthless. 

It was during this time that Hekarro allied with Aloy, a strange yet talented outlander who was willing to fight rebels against his authority. Hekarro sent Kotallo to guide her through Tenakth territory, a task he performed adeptly despite his mutilation. The two had adventures (including humiliating Tekotteh) and Kotallo began to believe he still had worth. When Aloy left to go save the world, he found that he wanted to follow her. Now he serves as the team's military expert, linking them with Hekarro's government and studying Old One battles. This role makes him feel fulfilled...

...Or so Kotallo says. Emotional expression is ''not'' his strong point.

===Alva===

A historian from a [[China|distant fantasy land where scholars are cool and get girlfriends]]. She joined her people's great crusade overseas in the hope she could dig up helpful technology, and accomplished this goal by virtue of being the only Quen who tried talking with the locals instead of killing them. She quickly bonded with Aloy over their shared nerdery, and joined her quest after certain things they discovered made Alva a threat to her nation's stability.

Despite being a fangirl, Alva is surprisingly chad, being skilled at archery, attracting girls, and fiercely devoted to the Quen's ancestor cult- so devoted that she sailed for months in a medieval, disease-ridden ship rather than give up hope for her homeland. In her opinion, fighting alien robots is a small price to pay for the honor of working with the "Living Ancestor" that is Aloy.

===Beta===
{{spoilers}} 
''Another'' clone of Sobeck, made by Far Zenith to access Old Earth's data centers. She's smart enough to know that the Zeniths regard her as little better than a disposable tool, so she flees from them as soon as she can and joins Aloy to be free. Has a ''massive'' inferiority complex due to knowing who Sobeck was, being directly compared to her by the Zeniths, and feeling like Aloy has managed to live up to their original, making Beta wonder what her "defect" is for failing to compare to either of them. Even sadder, it turns out that Tilda was the only human contact she ever had growing up, and that only because Tilda was trying to mold her into a perfect waifu. Really needs a hug. Aloy's kind of a bitch to her for most of the second game until she finally realizes what's causing Beta's emotional hangups. By the end of the story they're developing a much healthier relationship and are both happy to have a sister.

===Tilda===

A surviving Old One from Far Zenith's space colony. When she lived on Earth, she worked as an art expert and information broker; before even that, she was a isolated nerd traumatized by the death of her parents. She still is that nerd in a way, ignoring her loneliness by obsessing over two things: art and her terminal case of oneitis towards Elisabet Sobeck.

Unfortunately for everyone- including herself- Tilda is ''not'' a hero. Over the decades she remade herself into a cutthroat billionaire, making money off of stealing private data and selling it to the highest bidder. These tactics seemed to pay off when Far Zenith offered her a ticket on their spaceship: a way to escape the apocalypse ravaging Earth, an Earth that Tilda blamed for taking her loved ones from her. When Far Zenith asked her to steal Elisabet's work- a brilliant terraforming AI named GAIA- she did so unashamedly. Unfortunately, the theft failed, and showed Elisabet what a monster Tilda was. The two would never see each other again.

Once Tilda reached Far Zenith's colony, she almost came to regret her decision. Her new neighbors were almost uniformly sadists and narcissists, glorified criminals responsible for many of humanity's problems in the first place. The invention of a gene therapy that granted immortality only prolonged Tilda's isolation. Centuries of meaningless decadence passed, ended only by an even worse horror; the [[Marathon|rampant]] AI NEMESIS, who destroyed the colony and forced its few survivors to flee back to Earth.

It was there that Tilda met someone very ''interesting''; a young, beautiful clone of Elisabet. A clone with none of Far Zenith's godlike technology, a clone who was both strong and vulnerable in ways that Sobeck had never been. In other words, a perfect concubine...if only Tilda could force her off Earth.

Fortunately for everyone else, this clone was Aloy, who had spent her entire life shanking oppressors and assholes and wasn't about to stop now. Cue final boss battle.

===Seyka===

A Quen Marine introduced in ''The Burning Shores''. She's basically a carbon copy of Aloy, as she's an intelligent, badass, resourceful machine-hunter who questions the Quen Empire's beliefs and doesn't hesitate to violate their taboos if it'll help her achieve her goals. Steals a Focus from a dead Diviner, which gets her into shit with the rest of the Quen until she proves that she can get results with it. Spends the DLC searching for her missing sister and developing sexual tension with Aloy until the finale, when she confesses her feelings for everyone's favorite redheaded Nora. Aloy has the option to return her affections or tell her she ain't got time for this romance shit.

===Walter Londra===

The main antagonist of ''The Burning Shores''. Another Far Zenith member and former industrialist who took off for Los Angeles before Aloy and her crew fucked up the others in the finale of ''Forbidden West''. Once there, he finds some Quen who got separated from the others, including Seyka's sister, and exploits their reverence for the Old Ones to turn them into a cult of personality, then uses good old-fashioned ''1984''-style brainwashing to warp them into hyper-aggressive berserkers or submissive sheeple who will worship him without question. Is planning to flee the planet using a spaceship outfitted with a prototype engine that will fatally irradiate everything within a thousand kilometers, giving Aloy even more reason to put his mustachioed ass in the dirt beyond him being a narcissistic dickhead with a god complex. He sets up his supervillain base in a Disneyland knockoff themed around a movie series that is a mashup of ''Jurassic Park'' and ''Stargate'', which is admittedly pretty cool. Is voiced by Sam "Starkiller/Darth Maul" Witwer, so he sounds appropriately gruff and evil.