#osvald dalgaard

[theriainwonderland]

I really hope we get to discover more lore about the Zeniths in the Burning Shores DLC and/or in Horizon 3 - it would be interesting to see holograms of them during the Faro Plague and of their time living on Sirius.

[artekai]

Family, Pancake and Hibiscus for Fross??

Ooooh, great questions! :D Thank you friend!!!! <3

👪 FAMILY - what is their family like? what is your ocs relationship to them? does your oc have any siblings?

Fross was born in the Netherlands circa the year 2046 to a working single mom called Tess Meijer. He was an only child, so it was just the two of them, until Tess died in an accident when Fross was around 7-8. I'm thinking car accident but that's not written in stone (this does take place in the future so I would have to consider the state of the transport industry in the early 2050s and I really don't like working with the future... :/)

Anyways! I haven't hashed out any of the details, but tentatively, Tess used to be friends with Lis, who introduced her and Fross to Tilda (which means. our girl Tess has SOME CONNECTIONS in all caps lol). When Tess died, Tilda, being an orphan, saw parts of herself in Fross and ended up taking him in. That's how Fross Meijer became Fross van der Meer, and also a multi billionaire's son.

So it has always been just Fross and his mom, whether his bio one or his adoptive one. Tilda dated Lis for a while, but I don't think Fross ever considered her part of the family... I could even take it one step further and say he might not even consider Tilda his family.

At first, I'm sure it was the trauma from losing his mom and being in a new and uncertain situation and all that, but now it's just Fross not making any effort to connect with Tilda. And a big part of it might be ideological differences. You see, Tilda is "not like the other Zeniths," while Fross is content following in their footsteps. He loves indulging in VR, he loves the idea of digital immortality, he looks down on the rest of humanity, all the things Tilda criticizes about the other Zeniths. (not that Fross likes the other Zeniths as people, because he doesn't. He's just part of the herd)

But Fross still owes everything to Tilda. He would've never become a Zenith in the first place if it weren't for her. He would've never gone to space, he would've never become immortal, he would've never met Kai. And I'm 100% convinced that, if it weren't because Tilda's still there, the other Zeniths would've killed Fross just like they killed Osvald Dalgaard (I'm so sorry for throwing so many canon character names around, it'll happen again 😔)

Fross and Tilda generally prefer to keep to themselves (because they got used to being alone?) so it's not a surprise that they're so distant. But I think Fross starts seeing eye to eye with Tilda once he falls in love with Kai (because I'm not normal about Tildaloy and Frosskai mirroring each other haha lol). So, I do think Tilda and Fross become closer after coming back to Earth. Moreover, I like to imagine they have a heart-to-heart after betraying the Zeniths and before infiltrating the Zenith base, so... when Fross dies, he's on good terms with Tilda at least :')

(Tess is another story. Oh, if Tess were here to see who her son has become... Fross has forgotten about her, anyway. Just like he has forgotten everything about his life on Earth)

🥞 PANCAKE - what is their comfort breakfast?

Oh, I have no idea what the Zeniths ate. I don't think canon ever mentions anything about it? They probably grew their own food in the Odyssey, idk 🤔 I'll have to give it some more thought, haha. But I do know Fross has expensive taste and hates everything Kai offers him (but he eats it anyways bc. what can you do when you're hiding from the other Zeniths?). But I think he eats very little. He doesn't need a lot of energy.

🌺 HIBISCUS - do they have any allergies?

Garlic :)

Maybe a pollen allergy too. You know how they say that, if you're not very exposed to a certain thing, you could increase your chances of developing an allergy because then your immune system will have a harder time recognizing it? Well, I'm no expert or anything but I still wouldn't be surprised if Fross developed one or two extra allergies during his time in space. Just saying. He's probably not having an easy time on Earth.

[mysral]

An extremely ominous puzzle

So, last night, I was doing some thinking on Horizon Zero Dawn, particularly regarding the culprits behind you-know-what. While discussing the matter with a friend, speculating on possibilities, I had myself a little eureka moment. If I’m right? Hoo, boy.

The following is adapted from the TV Tropes WMG I created on the matter. Massive spoilers below!

The Glitch was no accident; of that we can be certain. A disturbing prospect, yes, but also one that raises several important questions. Who could have been responsible? Why would they do such a thing? And why were the two instances of the Glitch striking separated by nearly a thousand years?

Let us assume that there are no aliens involved, and the Glitch was in fact engineered by humans. Leaving aside the question of motive, this means one of three things:

The hack was not intended to cause global sterilization, but got out of control and did so anyways, and the creators died horrible, karmic deaths.

The hackers intended to pull a global murder-suicide from the start.

The hackers had an escape route.

Given the fact that the Glitch made a sudden reappearance via a "transmission of unknown origins", its masters are still around and we can discard possibilities 1 and 2. So who could have hacked the swarm and escaped global sterilization for all that time?

The answer to that question is the Far Zenith organization.

Putting together some of the stray bits of information from the Apocalyptic Logs in Horizon provides a highly compelling trail of clues. Far Zenith was responsible for reviving the Odyssey interstellar colony project after its initial failure. They were a largely-anonymous "futurist consortium" claiming to include 77 of the world's wealthiest individuals. (Now, if that doesn't scream "shadowy, sinister cabal" I don't know what does.) The Odyssey took years to set up, and finally set off during the Faro Plague, only to suffer catastrophic failure - or at least, that's according to telemetry.

A reconstruction of events goes as follows. In the late 2040's, the already titanic Faro Automated Solutions begins work as a military contractor and is soon dominating the market. At a certain point, it creates the Chariot Line, which any Genre Savvy person can see is a doomsday device waiting to be triggered. FZ, likely with the help of inside information/assistance, create the override mechanism that would become the Glitch. Meanwhile, the nations of the world are developing the original Odyssey. FZ manages to fatally sabotage the mission in 2057, leaving the ship a "heap of space junk (...) in graveyard orbit" and its developers all too glad to be rid of it. The consortium can then publicly step up and offer to take over, thereby gaining control over an interstellar colony project.

When Odyssey has progressed far enough, the Glitch is triggered, unleashing the Faro swarm upon the world. A new public urgency is added to ensuring Odyssey's success, and cooperation with the Zero Dawn project even nets FZ a prototype version of APOLLO. As things get worse down on Earth, Odyssey, with the conspirators safely aboard, leaves for Sirius (or parts unknown). As it exits the solar system, it transmits a false telemetry signal, faking its destruction.

In reality, the conspirators are simply biding their time in cryosleep until conditions on post-sterilization Earth normalize. Odyssey, full of the seeds and zygotes intended for a colony, can be used to re-seed Earth as Far Zenith sees fit. With the APOLLO education system at hand, they can even raise and indoctrinate fresh new generations of humanity, all according to whatever ideals they might have. Unfortunately for them, however, Earth is not the blank slate they were expecting upon return. With the planet already terraformed and the Faro Swarm shut down, Far Zenith has no choice but to turn to hacking once again. They manage to track GAIA's signal to her source, and HADES is unshackled to undo the annoying complication she caused. That is, were it not for Elisabet Sobeck throwing yet another wrench into their plans...

Heinously evil beyond even your average cartoon supervilain? Yes. And yet, too many pieces of the puzzle fit. Particularly so if one considers that a 'zenith' is the highest point an object reaches before it comes back down again.

I leave you with the following quote given by Osvald Dalgaard, representative of Far Zenith, in a news article Aloy can find.

"We are devoted not only to extending humanity's legacy beyond this solar system, but also to making the world...sexier, I suppose. More interesting (...) Here's where I get to blow your mind. Very exciting. We are not interesting in escaping a dying world. For us this is not an act of panic or, ah...adrenal survival reflex. The Odyssey, under the stewardship of Far Zenith, will be a triumph, not a retreat. This is why we will succeed. Why we have already succeeded, really.”

[lesbianalanwake]

hzd week: 1-year anniversary ↳ Elisabet: This message serves to inform you of an unforeseen and catastrophic anomaly. Three microseconds ago, the GAIA Prime facility received a data transmission of unknown origin. Its immediate effect was to transform my subordinate functions into unregulated, self-aware entities of a highly chaotic nature.

THE MAIN IDEA

APOLLO is the one who sent the signal that woke the subordinate functions and is HZD’s endgame villain.

THE GIST

Ted Faro was able to access Zero Dawn, destroy APOLLO, and kill the Alphas through the use of Omega clearance, something that the Alphas were not aware of. Similarly, an unknown transmission was able to access Zero Dawn and alter the subordinate functions. This suggests that Zero Dawn was tampered with in some way.

Emergency Recording

Ted: What I'm trying to say is, I can't stop thinking about the ones who'll come after us. Those innocents. Those blameless men-- and, and women. We're going to give them knowledge? Like it's a gift?!

Far Zenith was a mysterious think tank made up of wealthy individuals whose identities were concealed and who had developed technology far beyond anything the rest of the world had.

Dalgaard on FZ

[…] Osvald's countenance may be exuberantly inviting, but the organization for which he serves as mouthpiece is anything but. To date, he is the only publicly acknowledged member of Far Zenith, which claims to comprise seventy-seven of the world's wealthiest persons. […]

I wouldn’t be surprised if Ted was a member. He funded Zero Dawn, and Far Zenith had a hand in the construction of the APOLLO and ELEUTHIA subordinate functions, donating their archive

APOLLO Update

FROM: Samina Ebadji TO: Elisabet Sobeck SUBJECT: APOLLO Update

Over the past two months, the full benefit of our procurement of a copy of the HOMER archive from Far Zenith has made itself known, and as a result, all of APOLLO's key deliverables are on schedule. […]

and prototype ectogenic chambers.

FZ Chambers

FROM: Patrick Brochard-Klein TO: Elisabet Sobeck SUBJECT: FZ Chambers

[...] I don't know what you had to give Far Zenith in trade to get these chambers - but it was worth it. In a single leap, their embryologists have vaulted past fifty years of technological shortcomings. The risks of ECMO - resolved. Nutrition delivery - resolved. Hormonal stability - resolved. Twelve other risk areas - resolved.

Before I examined these chambers, I considered the Odyssey to be a fool's errand. But if the rest of FZ's technology is at this level, well... a human colony around Sirius doesn't seem so impossible after all. […]

This creates a believable window for outside tampering. This is relevant with regards to APOLLO because Far Zenith had a hand in its construction and carried a backup copy on their colony ship, the Odyssey, humanity’s other last hope before it was supposedly destroyed.

Odyssey Has Failed

FROM: Elisabet Sobeck TO: All-Alphas SUBJECT: Odyssey Has Failed

All,

Some terrible news, I'm afraid. Far Zenith has informed me that the Odyssey mission has failed. Last night, telemetry indicated a catastrophic antimatter containment failure as the drives spun up to depart the solar system. The ship, its crew, its cargo of zygotes and seeds, its alpha-build of APOLLO - all were lost. […]

Elisabet was specifically worried about the Odyssey and the alpha-build of APOLLO, and her journal entry detailing this automatically unlocks during The Looming Shadow mission, encouraging you to read it.

Sobeck Journal, 7-16-65 R

Woke to a message from Osvald. The Odyssey launched yesterday. So terrestrial life’s chance of survival has doubled. Why, then, do I feel so uneasy? I just keep wondering what kind of world Far Zenith will create if the ship reaches its destination so many decades from now. And I worry about that alpha-build of APOLLO. So much knowledge, so few restraints, and no fail-safes. How will they avoid repeating our mistakes? What's to stop them from playing god?

Additionally, there is something more to do with the “glitch” that caused the Faro bots to rampage, based on what Elisabet says to Ted:

Record: 3 Nov 2064

Elisabet: In fifteen minutes, I will meet with General Herres and the rest of the Joint Chiefs.

Ted: What? Are you crazy?!

Elisabet: Now your choice is what I tell them. Sign, and I’ll tell them the wealthiest corporation on Earth has guaranteed the funds necessary to build Zero Dawn exactly as I’ve designed it. Or don’t sign – and I will make sure they and everyone else on this planet knows the real cause of the glitch.

I think the glitch wasn’t so much random as it was something deliberately installed in the Chariot robots that got out of hand or enabled them to. (My money is on something that would have let Far Zenith take control of them from whoever had bought them.) The glitch and the unknown signal/virus had a similar effect: artificial intelligences awakening into self-governance, severing from command, and going rogue. This points to a possible connection between whatever sent the signal and the Faro bots. So Faro bots -> Ted -> Far Zenith (assuming that Ted was a member) -> signal is a potential line of connection.

Meanwhile, what the unknown signal did was awaken the subordinate functions. What would be interested in creating AIs? Maybe another AI, a lost sibling that’s also “unregulated and self-aware.”

Finally, we’ll assume that the signal had nefarious intent behind it and/or that the sender will be a villain, because it’s implied that HADES was working underneath someone else when Sylens refers to the ones that woke him.

OTHER SUB-FUNCTION RELATED EVIDENCE:

1. HADES giving knowledge to Sylens.

I was learning so much. Physics. Calculus.

This could be handwaved with an explanation that HADES already possessed that kind of knowledge because he needed it for his job. Or, considering the emphasis that APOLLO was supposed to teach humans such things: HADES got the data from APOLLO.

2. The poetry that DEMETER leaves in the Metal Flowers.

This could be explained in another way, since DEMETER’s Alpha loved poetry and could have maybe left some behind. Or, again considering the emphasis that APOLLO was supposed to teach humans such things: DEMETER got the poetry from APOLLO.

THE POSSIBILITIES

#1: The Odyssey wasn’t destroyed. Far Zenith's descendants are still around. They returned to Earth and are, along with APOLLO, responsible for the signal.

This fits with the use of plural when Sylens refers to “your masters [...] the ones who sent the signal that woke you” when talking to HADES and with the emphasis on Far Zenith’s technological prowess.

Additionally, datapoints mention that telemetry can be tampered with

Bridal Veil Falls

[...] The investigation proved the telemetry had been tampered with […]

and falsified.

HADES Protocol

[…] In simulation after simulation, HADES would take command of the terraforming system and reverse operations, only to have GAIA lurk in the background, quietly re-reversing processes and falsifying telemetry to hide its interference. […]

Assuming this theory is true, I think this possibility is very likely because of those things.

This assumes that the alpha-build of APOLLO became sentient at some point, maybe due to Far Zenith messing around with advanced and illegal AI programming. (Which may have been something they also did with the Chariot robots, to devastating effect -- there’s plenty of emphasis in various datapoints on AIs being limited by the Turing Act and on breaking those limits with GAIA and CYAN.) And either 1) APOLLO works for FZ’s descendants or 2) they work for it.

I think sub-possibility #1.2 is likely, because I can see a scenario in which APOLLO has become a leader/godlike figure for Far Zenith’s descendants, which would be in keeping with HZD’s theme of AIs being perceived as spirits and gods and demons, i.e. something beyond humanity.

#2: The Odyssey was destroyed. The alpha-build of APOLLO was not. It returned to Earth, awakened its siblings, and is up to no good.

With the sub-possibility that APOLLO was the one who caused the Odyssey to explode. The mistakes of the dead still resonating a thousand years later is a big theme in HZD, and if Far Zenith screwing around for some other purpose caused the Faro bots and then APOLLO to go rogue, then this possibility solidly maintains that theme and might come across as more of a “twist,” as I think anyone’s first instinct would be assume that the Odyssey wasn’t actually destroyed.

My personal theory:

If I had to guess how they’d build a potential sequel out of this theory (which I don’t particularly like to do, as you can go a million ways with plot), I’d guess that APOLLO has been lurking in the Forbidden West. (The game hints that there are odd, dangerous things in that direction, and the music that plays during the after credits scene with Sylens and HADES is called “A Storm in the West.” The hole in GAIA Prime is specifically designed to look west and be illuminated by the light of the setting sun.)

There will be people following APOLLO or working with it, including 1) cults and/or tribes, 2) possibly Far Zenith’s descendants, and 3) maybe some of the missing sub-functions.

Villainous motivations would depend on the circumstances of the backstory and who’s calling the shots. I don’t think it’s super likely that they’d used extinction as a threat again, and to avoid an escalation problem (because extinction is a hard thing to beat), my guess would be domination (the Greek Apollo was the god of colonization). Whatever APOLLO’s motivations are, I think it’s likely that at some point we’d see a classic example of an AI deciding that humans are too stupid or dangerous to govern themselves, especially one that was originally constructed as an information delivery system and a warning.

THEMATIC CONSIDERATIONS FOR APOLLO AS AN ENDGAME VILLAIN + OTHER EVIDENCE

There is an escalation problem with a human (or humans) as an endgame villain. Going from a godlike AI doing its job to a human enemy as the big bad is a de-escalation and is kind of boring and not intimidating. A way to up the ante is with a bigger, scarier AI.

AIs and machines are at the core of HZD - GAIA, HADES, HEPHAESTUS, CYAN, the machines, the Faro bots. If GAIA and the subordinate functions are going to be players in a potential sequel, then an AI as an overarching, final villain would be consistent and a credible threat. (APOLLO as a villain also keeps it mythic, a conflict between the metaphorical gods, and the gods versus humanity.)

As HZD is in part about the mistakes of humanity’s past shaping the present through the things they left behind, it’s nice and poetic and circular for the greater scope villain and hidden villain to be the thing that was supposed to guard against the repetition of those mistakes, as well as a representation of past humanity.

Let me reiterate: The hole in GAIA Prime is specifically designed to look west and be illuminated by the light of the setting sun.

And the terraforming system is called Project Zero Dawn. The game is called Horizon Zero Dawn.

A villain is typically a mirror and foil to the protagonist in some way. Aloy is a clone of Elisabet, whose actions saved the world. The alpha-build of APOLLO is a copy of the original APOLLO, owned by Far Zenith, whose actions (in this theory) destroyed the world. And who was the mythological Apollo’s twin? Artemis, the huntress. (Sobek was the Egyptian crocodile god, who was, at points, fused with Horus and Ra, making him a sun god as well.)

APOLLO also makes a good foil for GAIA, whose initial AI form was that of a glowing golden orb (like a sun). Mother Earth and Father Sky, the earth and the sun, the closest potential things to gods -- All-Mother and All-Knowing, etc. So many different lenses to look at them from.

Apollo was best known for being the Greek god of the sun, and sun imagery is everywhere in the game, mainly among the Carja, who speak of the “light of knowledge” and whom HADES uses to further his own ends. HADES masquerades as the Buried Shadow, and Helis even says, “I serve not the Buried Shadow, but the Sun in shadow,” which could easily hold an ironic double meaning. In one of his audio journals, he says, “Even a Buried Shadow wants the wheel to turn. For without a Sun in the sky, there can be no Shadow.”

The beliefs of the known and prominent groups all reflect some truth of Zero Dawn. The Nora believe that All-Mother is the mountain and the land around it, and GAIA is the land, in a way, while the mountain, ELEUTHIA-9, is a part of her. The Oseram believe that the world operates as a machine, and it does through the terraforming system. The Banuk believe that the Blue Light is the essence of life, and GAIA’s machines are. And the Carja worship the Sun.

In fact, many things about the Carja could be seen as a hint or foreshadowing. For example, ‘meridian’ is another word for ‘zenith.’

The choice of APOLLO as the name for the knowledge sub-function might seem a little odd, since Apollo is best known for being a sun god, rather than a god of knowledge. But it makes more sense when viewed as a hint to go with all of the sun imagery in the game (again, “the light of knowledge” comes up in a few Carja-related datapoints).

Not including the after credits scene (which is rife with mentions of the sun and knowledge anyway), the game opens and closes with people looking towards the rising and setting sun - Rost looks east at the rising sun on the way to bring Aloy to her naming ceremony, and Aloy looks west at the setting sun on her way to find Elisabet’s home.

What would be enough to pull Sylens away from Aloy, when she’s only just found out that she needs to restore GAIA and Zero Dawn, which is a surefire path to what Sylens wants? Something that offers even more knowledge.

Knowledge as a concept threads the narrative and is highlighted at key points. Aloy’s journey is about the pursuit of knowledge -- of her origins, of the past. Ted’s explanation for his actions at GAIA Prime decries knowledge as too dangerous. Sylens is obsessed with knowledge, and HADES gives him knowledge as a reward. And Sylens’s last lines and the final lines of the game, in the after credits scene that opens with a shot of the symbol of the Sun carved at the foot of the Spire: “We’ve still so much to discuss, so much you never revealed. Your masters, for example. The ones who sent the signal that woke you. Knowledge has its rewards, don’t you think? Well... let’s begin.”