Y'all have any headcanons for the Horizon franchise games(like Horizon Zero Dawn & Horizon Forbidden West)?
Ok, I have way too many Horizon headcanons, so here are a few of my personal favorites:
When ELUTHIA was raising and releasing people into the world, she did so in numerous batches rather than all in one fell swoop. It would make sense to do it this way because then you don't need to have made the facilities to house thousands of kids at once, and it improves the odds of humanity's survival, especially since APOLLO was gone. The first batch of kids released would have had the hardest time surviving, but as subsequent batches were released, those people who had already been released and managed to survive would be able to help care for and teach the new ones. I think the Nora Proving ritual is derived from this time, where a year after a fresh batch of kids were released, they were given this sort of challenge to prove all the skills they had learned to show that they were no longer the helpless newbies they had once been. They were accepted as being part of the tribe just prior to the release of a new batch from ELUTHIA. As new children were born into the world and grew up, they began to also run in the Proving when they reached 18 years of age (the age at which people were released from ELUTHIA), as a rite of passage into adulthood. And when the batches of new people stopped coming from the mountain, the tradition continued for the children born outside ELUTHIA. The Nora, who are the decedents of those who clung most to their old home and traditions while others broke away to explore the world and hunt for more resources, have kept the tradition the longest, but some of the other tribes had or continue to have some rite of passage that is derived from this, though focusing on what that tribe values instead.
I have a ton of headcanons about Carja history, because those couple datapoints about their origins and the line of Sun-Kings gave me lots of material to work with. To start with, the Carja were not the first to live in what would become the Sundom. I imagine that in the first few generations of post-apocalypse humans, lots of people left what would become the Sacred Lands, whether to go exploring, or because resources were running low, or because of personal conflicts. So most of the non-Nora tribes have their earliest origins from back in that time, about 700 years before Aloy (BA). However, the Carja origin myth notes that they broke off from the Nora when Nora traditions were already pretty well established, and it is really hard to stretch 13 generations of kings into 700 years (Avad is the 14th and he's only had 3 years on the throne). I estimate the break took place about 400 years BA, which is a little generous. Using both averages of the reigns of Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs and the British monarchy as my starting point, I figure an average reign of 30 years per Sun-King is pretty reasonable, if a smidge generous. Obviously some are much shorter, like Iriv, but I imagine some had very long reigns to balance it out. But anyways, when the proto-Carja arrived, they actually joined up with some of the people already living there and the two groups influenced each other. (In my head I refer to this tribe as the Etrusjans, in reference to the Etruscans, who predated and were eventually subsumed by the Ancient Romans.)
On that note, according to my headcanon, Aloy and "Sun-King" Araman would actually have really gotten along. I picture Araman as someone who was seeking truth about the world and trying to fight against some of the more unreasonable traditions first of the Nora, then of the Etrusjans. He was not trying to found some sort of religion. He found a textbook about astronomy in the same ruins Aloy fell in as a child, and it inspired him to be a sort of proto-scientist. He became a leader of a schism of Nora due to his charisma and good sense. Under his leadership there was gender equality and an interest in studying the world. And in fact, his daughter really became the next leader of the proto-Carja as he grew older. However after his death and his grandson Amavad's death, there was a clash between Amavad's daughter and her cousin Sadahin. Sadahin won, and he began warping the history to consolidate more power for himself. He is the one who created the title of Sun-King and fully leaned into a solar religion (there had been both sun and moon worship among the Etrusjans, but Araman had been focused on real astronomy himself, but the fact that the sun is the center of the solar system is why Sadahin leaned into the sun as the one true god). Sadahin also created the idea that only a man could be the speaker for the Sun (to justify why he should lead instead of Amavad's daughter), thus reinstituting gender inequality to the proto-Carja which then snowballed. He also destroyed Araman's astronomy textbook so it wouldn't contradict his own mythology, but claimed it had crumbled to dust from age. Araman himself would have been appalled by the Sun Faith and the concept of the Radiant Line of Sun-Kings.
As for Banuk mythology, I think Banukai found a Cauldron, and figured out some way to override the machines based on what she found there. The "ravenous tribe" was another tribe from that period, however they were dying out because either a natural disaster or another tribe had displaced them from their home territory and they didn't know how to survive the winter in the north, so they had taken to praying on people as well as whatever animals they could hunt out of pure desperation (and an unwillingness to integrate with the proto-Banuk). The ravenous tribe went extinct from the combination of the above stressors and the proto-Banuk banding together to wipe them out. Banukai died battling the ravenous tribe, but her ability to override machines remained ingrained in the minds of the Banuk. Leading to my next headcanon:
The Banuk shamans really could control machines, at least in pre-Derangement times. They didn't fully understand how it worked, but they figured out how to use machine parts to mimic the radio signals the machines would send between each other. A bit more nuanced than simple machine lures, but less sophisticated than Aloy's overrides. Eventually they figured out how to fully "tame" machines by disconnecting them from communication with HAEPHESTUS. Due to their reverence for machines, they would do this sparingly and the techniques were a closely kept secret among shamans only. Still, they had herds of Striders and Chargers, and other machines they had tamed. But as HAEPHESTUS broke free, it was annoyed by loosing control and was able to reprogram its machines so these old techniques no longer worked. There are still some machines left that are tame, which the Banuk care for and repair, but due to their sacred nature, most of these tame machines were moved to Ban-Ur or the far north to protect them from the Red Raids. So the only ones we see on Aloy's trip to the Cut are the Glinthawks in the opening, who are cared for by the Shamans and respond to their call without becoming hostile because they are still running pre-Derangement programming. This headcanon is based on the throwaway line when Sylens compares Aloy's overrides to Banuk technology, and of course the incredible concept art of the Banuk living among tame machines. They don't talk about their machine taming with Aloy because it is something not spoken of with outsiders, especially in the wake of the Red Raids when it is canon that the Carja used shaman captives like Ourea to better manage the machines used in the Sun-Ring. However, Aloy's ability to override machines is the reason Naltuk sent her on the Shaman's Path even though it is for shamans only. He (and later Ourea), viewed Aloy as a shaman. Not a proper Banuk trained shaman of course, but a self-taught shaman. So she may not be allowed full knowledge of Banuk secrets, but she is allowed certain privileges.
If you made it through all of these, thank you for indulging me! XD And if you want me to share more, just let me know!
