Sylens

**Sylens** is a major character in the *Horizon* series, serving as the deuteragonist of *Horizon Zero Dawn* and a major character in *Horizon Forbidden West*. He is a mysterious and intelligent wanderer, who is purportedly of Banuk origin, who seeks answers as to how the world has become as it is, but often resulting in performing questionable acts just to get what he wants.

He is the founder of the rebel factions including the Eclipse, Regalla's Rebels, and Sons of Prometheus, all for him to use to his own ends as pawns. He later encounters the Nora huntress and the Elisabet Sobeck clone known as Aloy, and soon he slowly unravels Aloy's origins, as well as the world, while hiding his grand scheme of plans.

Sylens is voiced and portrayed by the late Lance Reddick, who had also voiced Ra's al Ghul in *Beware the Batman* and played Charon from the *John Wick* series.

## What Makes Him Magnificent?

* Sylens is notably magnificent and, at best, an egotistical genius who is known for his adept cunning, who is able to use his intelligence to manipulate anyone he makes deals with, while hiding his ulterior motives in his own grand scheme of plans.
* He is also reputably known to be intelligent of the Old World history, albeit crude, being the only human in the new Earth to do so, besides Aloy. His intelligence led him to use it to monitor the Eclipse and HADES during his escape, and with Regalla's army and Asera's army as a proxy in the shadows, while using that spent time to master his anti-shielding weapon to deal with the Far Zenith.
* Sylens was able to manipulate the Shadow Carja into bringing HADES to Bahavas and Helis, treating it as their own religious deity, which in return gives them the firepower needed to retake Meridian from Avad, but with Sylens hiding the true motive behind it: it was done so that HADES would be sent to the Alight in Meridian and latch itself into the MINERVA broadcast tower to awaken the FARO machines and start a global extinction on Earth.
* He later did the same thing to Regalla's Rebels and Sons of Prometheus, who used Regalla and Asera's hate to the Carja, while hiding the truth behind this deal: to use Regalla's rebel army as cannon fodder to attack the Far Zenith base and escape Earth through the Odyssey ship.
* While he admitted into being foolish to worship the rogue AI itself, he later soon learned his lesson and created Regalla's Rebels and Sons of Prometheus, by making himself a proxy, so he would not be betrayed again, like how he did so when he served HADES.

## What Makes Him a Baddie?

* Sylens' approach to the pursuit of knowledge is often known to be questionable and morally ambiguous, as he has a lengthy history of using people to his own ends, including Aloy.
* He has created the rebel factions including the Eclipse (using them to attack Meridian and target the Alight for HADES to initiate extinction), Regalla's Rebels and Sons of Prometheus (using Regalla's army and Asera's army as cannon fodders to attack the Zenith base), all as means to his end as pawns to his plans.
* In the past, as mentioned by Ourea, Sylens has committed a sacrilege of posing as a purported Banuk shaman of a werak known as Owl's watch. He used this form of trickery to ransack the sacred caves of the Banuk Conclave and steal the Banuk's spoils of machine parts, leading him to be considered as a sacrilegious figure in the Banuk lore, with Ourea putting an oath of secrecy regarding his affairs. He got away from this crime, which counts him as Karmic Houdini, as he was never apprehended over it.
* He has manipulated Aloy multiple times over the course of the series, such as when he never told her about HADES in the Eclipse Main Base during her attack of the cult's Focus network, and later transmitting a signal for the Far Zenith members to enter inside LATOPOLIS and lure Aloy, so that the Zeniths could kidnap her, as a warning sign for her own interference to his plans.

## Trivia

* Sylens is the one of two Magnificent Baddies in the *Horizon* series, the other being Tilda van der Meer.
* He is one of the only characters in the *Horizon* series who is also a Guile Hero.

## External Links

* Sylens at the Guile Heroes wiki
* Sylens at the Heroes wiki
* Sylens at the Villains wiki
* Sylens at the Inconsistently Admirable wiki
* Sylens at the Inconsistently Heinous wiki