#hzd ahsis

[foibles-fables]

Just realized that I've got a Talanah headcanon/analysis I've only ever put on discord--now's as good a time as any to toss it here as well!

Hmm--character ages. The ultimate redacted space in the Horizon universe.

I want to stress that we only have (and, according to Mr. McCaw, likely only ever will have) canon ages for two characters: Aloy (20-21 by HFW/HBS) and Varl (25-26 in HZD-HFW). Ben himself has confirmed the first, and the latter is noted in the HZD Complete Guide. (The Complete Guide also gives an approximation for Avad, but it's not exact, so I'm not counting it among these two.) For the rest, all we can work by is fan speculation based on pieced-together info from datapoints, conversation references, and other Horizon media.

So. How old is Talanah?

There are three sources I've used to glean an approximate age range for her: a few of the Carja glyph datapoints from HZD, her conversation with Aloy re: The Sun-Ring Massacre, and her brief flashback in the Sunhawk comic.

First and foremost, to determine her age, we need to figure out how long before HZD the Massacre of Hawks in the Sun-Ring occurred. Luckily, if one goes a little insane and digs for info (like ya clown here), we can find some relevance in the Legendary Hunts glyph. This glyph states that Ahsis defeated a Thunderjaw to become the Sunhawk in the thirteenth year of Jiran's reign--one must assume that this occurred not long after the Massacre itself.

Meanwhile, The Liberation was both sparked and likely completed in the twenty-first year of Jiran's reign.

So!!! Math! The Massacre occurred ~8 years before the Liberation, and therefore ~11 years before the beginning of HZD.

What does this mean for Talanah's age?

LOOK at this itty-bitty left alone on the day of the Massacre in the Sunhawk comic. That's a whole child right there, y'all. I'd put her at, like, 13 (or even younger), as depicted here?

BUT. Here's where I somewhat veer away from the comic's visual interpretation. Talanah's words to Aloy during their post-Hunter's Blind ("so I fled when I should have fought by his side") make me want to place her slightly older than that, on the day of the massacre...later teens, 15-17 ish. Makes the context of that conversation make more sense.

So where does this put us? Given the above, one could scrobble together headcanon a range of 24-27 ish for Talanah as of the beginning of HZD, depending on the face-value you give the depiction from the comic.

[h0riz0nstuff]

HORIZON ZERO DAWN’s ASSHOLE BEARD AGENDA … An essay with a lot of words.

Come, dear reader, let me take you on a short trip around hzd’s Gallery of the Bearded Asses. Let us start with the Astoundingly Terrible Very Bad.

Mad Sun King Jiran : I guess no explanations are necessary, here. I had a theory about those beards, but it was only complete when I saw in the comics that Jiran also had it. xD

Ahsis : The highest ranking assho… I mean member ! of the Lodge (quote Talanah xD) So many studs ! Can you bet he liked that style so much on Jiran that he decided to emulate it ? Or just to suck up. That’s possible too ! Who next is in the Beard Team ? A healer with dubious ethics, that’s who ! Ah Ghaliv, your beard is salty, but not as salty as you, you exploitative piece of trash.

Next in line… Oh look, it’s history’s dumbest murderer, Ranaman ! … I bet he doesn’t have as many studs because he had to sell some of them to pay his gambling debts. (Did you know you can fail/finish that quest by not freeing his sister and he gets off scot-free ?? That’s unacceptable, Guerrilla. I do not accept this.)

Moving on, there’s this guy, Vashad, who really lets you know he doesn’t care who his snapmaw hunting business kills as long as he gets his shards. Sure you can make a deal with him. But you can also kill him, and when you do, Talanah tells you she approves !

And then there’s this rando named Bashad at the Hunter’s Lodge, who hogs the bar and insults you if you address him. Charming. (I’m not entirely sure, but for a while i thought he was one of the hunters who went after Talanah later on ? I’m probably wrong, but I wouldn’t put it past him.) EDIT : I’ve found one more !! In the first comics, there’s Gediah Kho Veriv, the asshole General who Amadis served under (and killed, ultimately) ! He’s sporting a variant with just two studded prongs on the front ! (VARIETY xD) Alas, I have reached the limit of pictures on this post so you’ll just have to trust me on that. So far so good. Who else among the Carja features a face full of stupid beard ? NOBLES, that’s who ! Eat the rich ! And Marad does tell you that the ones queuing to see Avad are all a bunch of whiny babies. Literally a third of them or so feature The Beard xD (They’re always a bit different each time, but there seems to always be the same ratio of Stupid Beard). I found one of them at the Carja camp in The Cut, and like, they’re all asses there, so… (have you looked at the trophies on their tents ? They’re all watchers heads. They come to the Cut to hunt WATCHERS. Outstanding xD) So, here we are. But I hear you telling me “yeah, but I’m sure some  random NPCs also feature the beard, you know how these things work”, and to that I answer : Yes ! they do (not much, tho). And I’m sure they’re all some cousin twice removed of Ahsis and fully deserve to be identified as being Part of The Terrible Team xD In short, here is my conclusion. The beard exists solely on asshole characters, even if not ALL terrible characters feature the beard. … I need you all to know that I worked very hard on this ! I did a lot of research and I had to look at despicable faces. I suffered for science ! ಠ.ಠ FOR SCIENCE ! … look, it’s 10 days to Forbidden West and I just finished a huge piece of work and I just had to blow out steam xD And if I suffered in my boredom/steam outing, you must suffer too !

[c-grace]

Talanah Eye study

And here it is :D

I had a lot to say as you can see, you may ignore the writing but oh my lord, this was so much fun!!

Talanah's eyes are so pretty, I don't think I did her justice.

[tjerra14]

Sunhawk September, Day 22.

[dresspheres]

27 Icons | Ahsis | Horizon Zero Dawn

27 Icons for Ahsis from Horizon Zero Dawn.

Please like or reblog this post if you plan on using the icons.

Credit me if you edit them! Otherwise, credit’s very much appreciated.

Download Link

Preview

[cthoniccompanion]

fuck ahsis and FUCK REDMAW

[all-pacas]

okay one more hzd post for the road:

one of the things i love about horizon is that it is a game about grief. there isn’t a single character who hasn’t lost someone and isn’t struggling with that fact. aloy lost her father and is coping by searching for her mother. varl lost a sister and grieves the relationship they never had; erend lost a sister and grieves the relationship they did. avad is paralyzed into inactivity because of the people he’s lost and the things he’s done. talanah is driven to take over the hunter’s lodge in part because her father was the sun hawk before ahsis and died; elida has to go on without her lover.

nor is it just the protagonists. helis in a large way is grieving jiran and his loss of purpose and power, seeking someone new to follow. dervhal’s grief turned him from an ally of avad’s into an enemy, and erend refusing to let his own sadness for ersa turn into a desperation for vengeance is all that spares his life. zero dawn was desperation covering grief. log after log: people dying. animals dying. charles tries to save some birds and his lover dies while he’s away and he can’t even get to the birds on time. a shrine to elisabet remains a thousand years later. GAIA’s grief for animals becomes striders and grazers and lancehorns; GAIA’s longing for elisabet leads to… well, aloy.

everyone in the damn game is dealing with loss and trying to find ways to push forward and build something new. not everyone succeeds. avad is trying to be a new kind of leader, but varl is chasing his mother’s love now that vala isn’t his competition. erend collapses in on himself, and elida is deeply depressed. aloy pushes herself so far into denial that two, three times sylens has to tell her what she already knows. she needs elisabet to be alive, even though she knows elisabet lived a thousand years ago, because it means that she doesn’t need to grieve another parent.

in the final scene of the game, elisabet tells a story about a time she accidentally killed some baby birds as a young child. upset at the damage she’d tried to stop her mother’s lecture by saying she didn’t care, only for her mother to say: wrong. you need to care. when something dies, you care and you try your hardest to fix the world. you always, always care.

it’s a game about grief.

[brookietf]

Aloy and Talanah, just succeeded in felling the dreaded Redmaw.

[theherocomplex]

Another List of Random and Wonderful HZD Things

That’s right I’m in this pit again

The fire-eaters throughout Meridian 

Coming around the bend and seeing Meridian for the first time 

That melancholy violin ambient music that plays as you wander through the world 

Concrete Beach Party!

Absolutely wrecking a Thunderjaw with its own disc launchers

Mournful Namman being kind and progressive and trying to heal the wounds left by Jiran 

The way petals and leaves spray through the air when you gather supplies

Avad’s general existence 

How Aloy’s hand shakes if you hold an arrow drawn too long

That Carja noblewoman with the best self-own of all time: “You wouldn’t be so eager to speak with me if you knew me” 

Kindiv’s ready to eat the rich and believe me that is a MOOD 

Talanah’s everything 

The notes about how Ahsis died 

Erend’s constant feuding with doors 

Aloy getting melted by the kids in Meridian: “I don’t need a friend” 

That one Oseram merchant who sounds like a cowboy

“tiny meat”

Every single one of Ikrie’s freckles

[foibles-fables]

Alexa, play “Bodies” by Drowning Pool

[foibles-fables]

What is with the Carja timelines? I left HFW with a vague sense that I no longer knew when the Red Raids happened, but never paid attention enough to whether there was actually a change

[cracks knuckles] my favorite Horizon topic, LET'S GOOOO.

So, the Carja timeline is patchy (and somewhat internally inconsistent)--some events are specifically placed, and a whole lot more are not.

I totally understand what you're saying re: leaving HFW with a weird tenuous sense of when the past events of the Red Raids happened. And I think that's because, given the glyphs provided in HZD, the Red Raids spanned a really long period, probably approaching a decade. And there's no indication of which "era" of the Red Raids anyone is referring to at any given time.

Most of my nitpicking and piecing-together has centered around Hunters Lodge lore (quelle surprise), and a lot of it gives context to the Liberation and the Red Raids. I'm using HZD Carja Glyphs to outline this, since the HFW stuff isn't as readily-available (and doesn't really go into this stuff with much specificity).

Here's what we know:

The events of HZD take place ~3 years after the Liberation, per the Record of Redmaw datapoints ("...the third year of the reign of the Sun-King Avad")

Per the glyph on the Liberation, Kadaman was put to death in the 21st year of Jiran's reign. We can assume the Liberation took place in the same general time frame, the 21st or 22nd year of his reign (after "months of preparation," so definitely a gap, but not TOO long).

Here's where we have to start bringing in a little bit of inference. In the Legendary Hunts glyph, Ahsis became the Sunhawk of the Lodge, after being the first to take down a Thunderjaw, in the 13th year of Jiran's reign. One must assume that the Massacre of the Hawks in the Sun-Ring took place very shortly before this, as the Lodge would likely only be without a Sunhawk for the amount of time it would take to bring down the biggest machine--and we know Ahsis directly succeeded Talavad.

This leaves a period of 8-9 years of raiding and slaughter between the Massacre and the Liberation. It'd probably been going on for a while before the Massacre, too, before the Lodge members spoke out against the violence. So that could imply 10 or so years of other tribes were being raided.

The rest of the Red Raids info we get in The Frozen Wilds, HFW, and the comics (specifically Amadis's flashbacks in The Sunhawk) are pretty ambiguously-timed. I would imagine this heavier Tenakth and Utaru raiding probably happened after the Massacre. This makes sense since the Battle of Burning Blooms was five years ago, with the Battle of Barren Light probably shortly thereafter (thanks to @61wisampa for that Burning Blooms call, I forgot it for some reason)

We're definitely left wondering, though. If I'm missing any specific information regarding HFW, please feel free to let me know and I'll amend. I just know I zeroed in pretty well on this stuff in HZD, but I guarantee there could be more specific context I'm missing from conversations with Zo and Kotallo during HFW.