Sylens/Synopsis

The story of Sylens from the Horizon series.
==Before Horizon Zero Dawn==
===Past===
Sylens' past is shrouded in secrecy and marred by treachery. All that is definite is that he has been captivated by the Old Ones since he was a boy, and that he has committed his life to discovering their mysteries, especially what happened to them.
===The "Banuk Shaman" of Owl's Watch===
At some point, Sylens arrived to Ban-Ur in his early age, claiming to be the shaman of Owl's Watch, a secluded werak. With his unparalleled understanding of machines, he rapidly acquired the Conclave's trust, and was given access to Malmstrom, their most hallowed gathering site. The Conclave last saw Sylens in Malmstrom at their annual conference in the dead of winter. The Conclave discovered the caverns ransacked and Sylens vanished when they arrived for their next meeting.
None of the trackers sent after him returned, and the Owl's Watch members who claimed Sylens as their shaman had gone, leaving no evidence of his presence. The Conclave members including Ourea issued an oath of secrecy surrounding any information about Sylens, considering his deeds blasphemous and doubting that he was even Banuk to begin with.
===GAIA Prime===
At some unknown point in time after ransacking the Banuk, Sylens would later come across another event, but this time he later saw the Old Ones' ruins of GAIA Prime, the permanent place of the terraforming AI known as GAIA suddenly self-destructing in 26 August 3020, months before the Elisabet Sobeck clone known as Aloy was born in 3021.
Sylens was the first to investigate the GAIA Prime ruins after it self-destructed. However, due to lacking Alpha privileges, he was unable to venture further into the inner areas of the facility, and had to settle for setting up a workshop on the edge of the destroyed facility.
===HADES, the Rogue AI===
When he discovered a badly damaged Focus in an ancient ruin, it was a watershed moment. Sylens noticed a tiny signal after spending weeks mending it. Sylens was intrigued by the signal and followed it to the Jewel's jungles, where he discovered a buried and broken Titan holding the corrupted AI HADES.
Sylens repaired HADES to the point where it could speak, and the two made a deal: Sylens would serve HADES and teach it everything he knew about the new world (especially the Spire), and in exchange, Sylens would learn about a variety of academic fields, including physics, calculus, and computer science, making him the only known polymath in the entire new World with Old World knowledge.
===Foundation of the Eclipse===
Sylens took advantage of the Liberation and ensuing Carja Civil War by setting up a meeting with High Priest Bahavas and the Kestrel known as Helis, the Shadow Carja's commanders and the former Sun-King Jiran's champions. Sylens tricked the Shadow Carja into founding the Eclipse, a cult to serve HADES and reclaim Meridian by presenting HADES as the Buried Shadow of Carja mythology. Sylens identified and restored dozens more Focuses for the Eclipse army on HADES' commands, and began building a Focus network to the AI's requirements.
While Sylens had never trusted HADES, he had no doubts about its intentions until it began resurrecting old robots. Sylens, suspicious of its motives, installed a backdoor in the Focus network, allowing him to listen in on all communications.
HADES concluded that Sylens had outlived his usefulness and ordered his execution when he completed the Focus Network. Sylens, on the other hand, was able to flee after hearing the kill order via the backdoor. Sylens was compelled to go into hiding and observe the Eclipse in the shadows as a fugitive of the cult he helped form.
==Horizon Zero Dawn==
===Meeting Aloy===
On the Eclipse Focus network one night, Sylens discovered something strange: HADES was issuing a murder order on a Nora girl named Aloy. Sylens was surprised at first as to why HADES considered a Nora savag a threat, but then he observed Aloy's Focus and her remarkable similarity to Dr. Elisabet Sobeck, a prominent Old World scientist. Sylens began studying Aloy through her Focus after ascertaining that she had survived the Proving Massacre. The more he observed, the more he believed Aloy was the key to finally understanding the Old Ones' mysteries.
Sylens originally met Aloy by contacting her Focus, but he did not reveal his identity, and he assisted her in disabling Eclipse Focuses while she attempted to face Olin. When she was taken to the ruins of Faro Automated Solutions' corporate headquarters, Sylens contacted her again, offering her with a supply crate and several datapoints to help her better analyse the structure. Sylens learnt about the Faro Plague from Aloy, validating his assumptions that Faro robots destroyed the Old Ones' society, as well as Project Zero Dawn, Sobeck's ultimate plan.
When Aloy expressed her dissatisfaction at not being able to get the answers she needed, Sylens chastised her for moaning when she had learned more in minutes than he had in decades of research. He gave Aloy a thorough introduction via hologram and guided her in the right direction, claiming that her individual mystery was part of a bigger web of mysteries all connected to Aloy's genetic connection with Sobeck. After grudgingly answering Aloy's queries, Sylens guided her to Sobeck's final known location: the headquarters of US Robot Command, now known as the Grave-Hoard.
Aloy discovered the site of the Zero Dawn Project Facility within the Grave-Hoard. Sylens double-checked his data and determined that the facility was located right beneath the Citadel at Sunfall. The quantity of Eclipse operatives with Focuses in the Citadel would very certainly lead to HADES locating Aloy, at which time the Eclipse and Shadow Carja militaries would be dispatched to pursue her. Sylens led the Nora Brave to a weak area in the Focus network at Aloy's advice, allowing her to crash it, significantly slowing down the Eclipse.
When Aloy arrived, Sylens briefed her on the mission's details, including the fact that the weak spot was located within the Eclipse's base. Sylens had been a member of the Eclipse, Aloy deduced swiftly. Sylens acknowledged to "assisting" the Eclipse, but he wouldn't go into detail. After destroying the network's power source, as well as avoiding HADES's wrath, Aloy questioned Sylens about his failure to mention that HADES would be present at the Eclipse base.
===Zero Dawn and the Alpha Registry Master File===
Aloy and Sylens heard about the project and its objective of remaking the planet after the Faro Plague at the Zero Dawn facility. Aloy eventually arrived at Sobeck's office and downloaded the Alpha Registry required to enter the All-Mother facility. Sylens, meanwhile, chastises Aloy regarding her origins, noting that she was made by a "who" but a "what". The Shadow Carja and later the Eclipse, on the other hand, broke inside the facility, and Aloy was kidnapped by their commander, Helis, waiting to be sent to the Sun-Ring at high noon.
===Saving Aloy===
Sylens chose to save Aloy since he knew he'd never understand the mountain's mysteries without her. He rushed the Sun-Ring after overriding two Striders and three Ravagers, having predicted that Helis would sacrifice Aloy in the Sun-Ring at high noon. While the Ravagers attacked a pair of Corruptors who Helis ordered to murder the Nora Brave, Sylens and Aloy escaped on the Striders. Helis labelled Sylens a traitor in the process, disclosing his ties to the Eclipse. Sylens gave Aloy a new Focus to replace the one Helis destroyed, replete with duplicates of every datafile she scanned, including the Alpha Registry, after they were safely away from Sunfall.
Helis had sent emissaries to the Eclipse in the Sacred Land to massacre the Nora tribe, and Aloy appealed for his assistance in stopping it. Sylens declined, stating that he was preoccupied with other problems. He then gave Aloy a set of Shadow Carja armour to help her hide her true identity if she ever returned to Sunfall. Sylens apologised for being unnecessarily rude about her background before leaving.
After fending off the Eclipse's attack on the Nora, Aloy was able to gain access to the mountain, where she discovered a message from GAIA explaining that an unknown data transmission had turned GAIA's Subordinate Functions, including HADES, into self-aware entities before her birth, and that she had to destroy herself to prevent HADES from wiping out all life.
Aloy was also revealed to be a clone of Elisabet Sobeck created for the express goal of reconstructing GAIA, and she was given the task of finding the Master Override among the remains of GAIA Prime in order to destroy HADES permanently from Zero Dawn. While Sylens was astounded to learn that the red-haired Nora was far more significant than he had suspected, Aloy was appalled to learn that she wasn't a real person. Sylens chastised her for wallowing in self-pity, telling her to fulfil her destiny by meeting him at the Bitter Climb.
===Re-Visiting GAIA Prime===
Sylens reappeared among the wreckage of the GAIA Prime facility, stating that he had tried to penetrate the complex for years but had never been successful. Aloy, on the other hand, is allowed to enter and learns about Sobeck's sacrifice to preserve GAIA Prime from destruction, as well as Ted Faro's destruction of the APOLLO database and murder of the Zero Dawn Alphas. When Sylens learned of Faro's activities, he expressed his displeasure and regretted the loss of unfathomable old wisdom, as well as his anger at Faro's foolish idea that he was spare future generations, retorting that Faro never witnessed the unrelenting cruelty of the Sun-Ring.
As Aloy was leaving the facility, Sylens came in person, disclosing his history with HADES and the Eclipse. He mentioned HADES' questions about the Spire, which prompted Aloy to believe that HADES wanted to use it to resurrect the Faro Plague and wipe out all life on Earth. He left Aloy with a lance that would be used to inject the Master Override into HADES, and wished her luck.
===Capturing HADES===
This seeming gesture of kindness, however, was a premeditated deception: Sylens knew HADES was the only source of information on the signal that awoke it, and it needed it intact. He fixed the lance in such a way that it would hide HADES from the Master Override. The lance sent HADES to Sylens following the Battle of the Alight, who caught it in a mysterious lantern-like apparatus. Sylens began his next steps of research with HADES as his prisoner.
==Horizon Forbidden West==
===Venturing into the West===
Sylens placed the subordinate function in the derelict Horus's detachable processing orb in No Man's Land and questioned it for two weeks. Sylens learned more about GAIA's inner workings by torturing HADES (using holograms of living organisms), including her heuristic matrix, LATOPOLIS, the only Zero Dawn facility still housing intact GAIA backups, and the origin of the Signal: the rogue AI Nemesis, a failed experiment of the Far Zenith colony within the Sirius system, activated HADES to destroy Earth as part of its agenda against its creators. HADES paid a high price for the torture utilised in the questioning; by the time Sylens was through, the subordinate function was virtually a broken shell.
Sylens came to the conclusion that Earth and its population had no chance against Nemesis, and that Far Zenith was the only one who could save himself. During the months that followed, the travelling sage devised a scheme to gain access to their base, spacecraft, and copy of APOLLO.
Sylens proceeds to initiate the creation of an army capable of succeeding in this plan. He teamed up with Asera, a former ally of the warlord Dervahl who was seeking vengeance on the Carja. Using the secret of overriding machines to buy Asera's assistance, Sylens had her join the Sons of Prometheus and make an alliance with Regalla, assisting the disgraced Tenakth Marshal in forming an army capable of overthrowing the tribe's Chief Hekarro. Regalla would lead the whole Tenakth tribe, the Sons of Prometheus, and an army of machines capable of razing Meridian and decimating the Carja when this stage was completed; in response, Regalla would lead an assault on the Zenith base before invading the Sundom.
Sylens was well aware that such an invasion would never happen: he fully expected Regalla's men and the Zenith to massacre each other while he crept into the base and stole the Zenith's spaceship and their copy of APOLLO. Meanwhile, Sylens was working on a weapon that might deactivate Far Zenith's energy shields, improving its design over months using data from HADES. Sylens never engaged directly with Regalla or the Tenakth, instead employing the Sons of Prometheus as proxies and conversing via Asera, as he had learnt from his time with the Eclipse.
Last but not least, there was Aloy, who he knew would never approve of such a Machiavellian scheme. Far Zenith was looking for a clone of the terraforming system to take with them before fleeing Earth, and Sylens correctly predicted that they'd need a clone of Elisabet Sobeck to get it, later in the form of Beta.
As a result, Sylens intended to have Aloy kidnapped by Far Zenith, believing that this would keep her secure while also preventing her from meddling (this was the first flaw in his plan, as he had no way of knowing that Far Zenith had predictably Beta). Sylens brought HADES to the entrance of LATOPOLIS for Aloy to find, using an overridden Plowhorn, and waited for her to discover his lie. He'd transmit an anonymous data pulse indicating the location to anyone trying to reconstruct GAIA once she obtained an intact backup.
===LATOPOLIS and Far Zenith===
Six months after the Battle of the Alight, Aloy would learn Sylens' deceit. Sylens presented her with the location of HADES' questioning site and urged her to join him in the Forbidden West, disregarding her outrage at his deception.
After Aloy arrived at LATOPOLIS and defeated HADES once and for all, Sylens reappeared and lead her to the facility. The huntress was irritated by his lack of physical presence, and much more so by the fact that he was using the same malware on her Focus, and she vowed to kill him if he tried any additional trickery. Aloy discovered that the inner hatch was blocked by Firegleam when she used her gene print to unlock the hatch, so he showed her how to make an Igniter for her spear.
Aloy discovered two GAIA backups after she reached the vault's centre, much to their relief. Unfortunately, these were only root kernels, or GAIA versions without sub-functions. Sylens reassured her that she had done everything she could and that she couldn't rescue the planet on her alone, before sending the anonymous pulse to warn Far Zenith. Aloy, on the other hand, responded swiftly, devising a strategy to reconstruct GAIA utilising the original sub-functions.
An intruder alert went off seconds after Sylens found MINERVA in the highlands west of Plainsong, compelling her to confess. Sylens informed her the invaders had similar intentions and encouraged her to open the hatch without exposing who they were. Instead, Aloy exploded, threatening to Sylens that whenever GAIA was reconstructed, she would find him down and murder him. Aloy destroyed her Focus and fitted a new one free of his malware before Sylens could persuade her differently, thereby shutting off contact between the two.
What happened at LATOPOLIS proved to be the first stumbling block in Sylens' meticulously devised plans: rather than capturing Aloy, Far Zenith regarded her as a needless complication and attempted to murder her, with Aloy narrowly escaping with her life.
===The Shadowy Agent===
After the Tenakth rebel camps were annihilated, Sylens determined that Aloy had escaped. When he discovered she was in possession of a Sons of Prometheus operative's Focus, he returned to her via hologram. He advised against meddling with rebel activities, but she instead pledged to resolve yet another tribal civil war that he helped spark.
Sylens warned her that the Sons of Prometheus would seek retribution for her involvement and that he couldn't protect her any longer because of her arrogance. He then self-destructed the Focus she was holding, shutting off their contact, subtly implying that he knew more than she did.
Sylens resumed working on the anti-Zenith weapon without attempting to re-establish communication. He had the Sons of Prometheus ambush a Zenith, Verbena Sutter, and use the weapon to test its operation. The test was successful, and a Tenakth rebel was able to assassinate the Zenith.
During the conflict, the two Oseram who shot the weapon were killed, but the Focus one of them was wearing relayed data back to Sylens so he could refine his weapon. Aloy happened to be there during the fight and was able to collect the weapon's core, however GAIA discovered the data had been wiped clean, leading her to believe Sylens was involved.
While Sylens was cautious about allowing others to monitor him, the Sons of Prometheus were less cautious. Tilda van der Meer, a Zenith, utilised malware to breach the Sons' Focuses, allowing her to understand Sylens' intentions and foreseeing his plans collapsing totally.
===Changing Sides===
Tilda eventually revealed the truth about Sylens' deception to Aloy. Refusing to let Sylens sacrifice the Tenakth, Aloy overcame Regalla in fight and put an end to her rebellion against Hekarro, putting an end to Sylens' scheme and ultimately collapsing what left of his plans.
Sylens had no choice but to send a messenger with a Focus so he and Aloy could converse again. Sylens chastised her at first, feeling she had made a rash decision that had virtually wrecked any possibility of halting the Zeniths. Aloy claimed to have a better idea, and she requested that he join her at her headquarters, the Regional Control Centre, with his weapon, much to his astonishment and curiosity.
Sylens unwillingly went to Aloy's facility, knowing that her scheme was his last hope of gaining APOLLO and departing Earth, and waited for her in her private chamber for their first face-to-face meeting since GAIA Prime. Aloy informed Sylens that if he ever betrayed her again, she would murder him, before presenting Tilda and describing her plan to attack Far Zenith's headquarters without sacrificing the Tenakth. Sylens was dubious of Tilda's actual goals and urged Aloy not to trust the rogue Far Zenith, which instantly heightened tensions between the two, while fully knowing what Tilda was truly all about.
Inside the facility, Sylens would await the assault while addressing any questions Aloy had regarding his plot and his ties to Regalla. When the attack began, Sylens utilised a modified version of his weapon to deactivate all of Far Zenith's shields permanently, allowing Aloy's crew to eliminate them all. Tilda deceived Aloy and her allies, and sought to compel her to leave Earth aboard the Odyssey, just as Sylens foretold.
===Nemesis===
Sylens sought Tilda after Aloy learnt the truth about Nemesis and murdered her in a brutal struggle, admitting that HADES taught him about Nemesis and that his ultimate objective was to take the spaceship and depart Earth with APOLLO. Unlike Tilda, Sylens requested Aloy respectfully to leave Earth and join him aboard the spacecraft, claiming that Sobeck would have done the same if she had known about Far Zenith.
Despite Tilda's concerns that Nemesis was unstoppable, Aloy dismisses Sylens' reasons and insists that he stay and assist her devise a method to fight Nemesis. Initially, Sylens and Aloy said their goodbyes and Sylens walked towards the spacecraft. When Sylens saw Aloy's friends gathered around her, he changed his mind and chose to assist in the destruction of Nemesis. After GAIA has cleared the Zenith traces of data from APOLLO's databases, he returns to Aloy's base, ready to examine it.
==Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores==
===The Rogue Zenith===
TBA
===Gathering Information===
TBA
Category:Synopsis