Editing Horizon Zero Dawn (section)

==Carja?==

The setting is populated by several tribes, who hold all the typical distrust and racism towards each other that will be swept under the rug so the finale can have a cool "everyone allies" scene- well, everyone important, at least. The Carja are one of these "tribes", although politically they are a kingdom centered around a relatively advanced city. In more detail: 

===Carja===
Desert/jungle folk ruled by the supposedly divine Sun-King. They mostly live in Meridian, the setting's only city, and have a lot of religious and aristocratic drama (not human sacrifices anymore though, they stopped doing that). They are patriarchal sun-worshippers- the exact opposite of the Nora- and the only race who aren't some flavor of barbarian. This makes them a bit stuck-up, but mostly the Carja are good people.

A few years ago, the Carja were ruled by a crazy Sun-King named Jiran. He instituted public blood sports, claiming they would stop the Derangement, and the murderous Red Raids against every other tribe. He was no nicer to his own people, condemning any dissenters to death in a gladiator ring and executing his own son for speaking out. Luckily, the second son in line managed to escape Meridian, eventually usurping Jiran with the help of some sane Carja and the Vanguard, a band of Oseram mercenaries. Now, Sun-King Avad strives to reconcile the other tribes with his people, eradicate the remaining Jiran loyalists (they fled to a shithole named Sunfall) and institute a lot of left-wing policies: letting foreigners have high-level jobs, permitting women to fight, being nice to everybody, blah blah blah. For the most part, this has worked, and the Sundom (as it is known) is a beacon of peace and inter-tribe trade.

===Oseram===
The setting's blacksmiths. Most Oseram come (flee) from the Claim, a place with a '''lot''' of alcohol, arguing about everything, and beliefs about what women can't do. The Oseram are comfortable with tech, unlike most other tribes, and even build their own. They tend to wander through territories, trading stuff as they go. A lot of diplomatic work is outsourced to Oseram people, because every tribe knows them. They're also one of the most technologically advanced groups in the setting, having reinvented or invented steam engines, sonic weapons, hot-air balloons, rebreathers, and radio.

Personality-wise, most Oseram are crude, bluntly honest, and practical. Think dwarves, if dwarves were human-sized and a bit trigger-happy with their cannons.

===Banuk===
Tundra barbarians who live in nomadic groups known as "weraks". They know how to pacify machines by imitating their sounds, and unlike most tribes live ''alongside'' machines, which they revere as spirits of the natural world.

Culturally, the Banuk are very artistic (in the areas of cliff painting and music) and spiritual. Weraks are led by a typical tribal chieftain and the group's best shaman, who uses the "Blue Light" (a metaphor for life itself) to command machines. Banuk are very socially-Darwinist: if you can't survive the ice, it's ''your'' fault and no one should respect you. Even their leadership is based around proving who's the toughest, regardless of ethnicity or leadership ability. They choose to live in arctic regions because they think hypothermia makes them stronger.

For some reason, the Banuk also have better bows and armor than anyone else. Not because it makes sense in lore, but because the game's only DLC pack revolved around them, and offering gamers powerful loot is the best way of making them buy stuff.

===Tenakth===
Bloodthirsty reavers from the southlands who fought at least one war with the Carja; they lost, but they managed to terrify and physically scar the Sun-King of that time. Tenakth inter-tribal drama is one of the major problems in ''Forbidden West''; their chief wants to reconcile with the Carja, but one of his top warriors didn't like that idea and started a murderous insurrection to get her way. <strike>Worst breakup ever.</strike> <strike>''Second'' worst breakup ever, considering what Aloy does to Tilda at the end of the game.</strike> The insurgents learned how to tame machines, which gives them a massive advantage militarily and logistically despite their leader's stupidity.

Culturally, the Tenakth were inspired by US military relics, which they use a lot of terms ("chaplain", "bagging and tagging", etc) from. They lean even harder into social darwinism than the Banuk, so they accept Aloy and her RPG-protagonist mindset pretty easily- she will punch people to get what she wants, which they wholly approve of. She actually winds up getting along with the Tenakth better than she does most everyone else in the setting. The tribe's aesthetic is very desertpunk, with a lot of pointy armor and violently colored face paint.

===Utaru===
Peaceful agriculturalists who were deeply victimized during Jiran's reign. With the help of docile "land-god" machines, they cultivate vast amounts of food and people, which they trade with the Tenakth for protection...or used to, until plot events started driving the land-gods crazy. 

Like all good hippies, the Utaru live in structures woven of plant material, decorated with flowers and the various dyes their tribe specialize in. They hunt machines to protect themselves, but otherwise try to coexist with nature by carrying seeds around that will sprout from their corpses when they're buried and abstaining from meat. However, their culture does have flaws- most notably xenophobia and negligence, which are why their leaders do '''nothing''' about the Derangement, simply accepting their looming extinction as a given. The many Utaru who defy this fatalism find common cause with Aloy.

===Quen===
An imperialist empire who know more about the Old Ones than anyone except probably Aloy. They live on a continent separate from that of Aloy and co., but high-tech compasses and fierce devotion to their ancestor cult enabled them to send a fleet of ships to the latter. Apparently not all Quen are evil, but it's hard to say because the Quen characters Aloy interact with most have spent their whole lives being oppressed/censored/plagiarized by the tribe's elites, who control all knowledge of the past (their "Legacy", as they put it) by restricting access to their cache of prototype Focuses. They revere the Old Ones, especially Ted Faro, since all the knowledge they have of him is from before he fucked the world by inventing the Swarm. As part of this, they've adopted the trappings of old-world corporations, with a Board of Overseers, compliance officers, risk specialists, and one especially dickish character who goes by Ceo (as in CEO). 

The ''Burning Shores'' DLC is set in the ruins of Los Angeles after the Quen have arrived and set up shop. 

===Nora===
The elves. A small, territorial tribe who are obsessed with their mountain (or earth, or cave...it's not really clear) goddess, "All-Mother". They are defined mostly by what they hate: technology, the Old Ones, heretics, and any place or person outside their "Sacred Lands", the forested valley that no one may enter or leave. Their religion dictates that everywhere else is tainted by the sin of the Old Ones, and the Machine Devil that the All-Mother slew centuries ago. It also prevents them from using any weapon more advanced than bows and electrified tripwires. 

Why aren't the Nora dead yet? Because they are really, '''really''' badass. A previous Sun-King, whose soldiers fight ice-spitting crocodiles in the name of glory, led an army to conquer the Sacred Lands. ''The army lost.'' Which should tell you the level of sheer, stubborn courage that the Nora have. This courage makes the Nora bullheaded fanatics, but also a good deal more sympathetic than the previous paragraph implies. They are fully willing to die for their beliefs, and we know this because we see a lot of them do so over the course of the plot. Yes, even the asshole ones.

In that light, it's not surprising that a Nora should be the one to save the world.

===Far Zenith===
{{spoilers}}
The super-advanced precursor culture. Far Zenith was founded by a group of ultra-wealthy industrialists, influencers, financiers, and other rich-asshole types as an escape hatch from the Faro Swarm. They built a spaceship capable of traveling to Sirius and acquired all kinds of prototype technology to aid them in their endeavors, including personal energy shielding, advanced robotics, brain-uploading scanners, and a gene therapy that made them physically immortal. In ''Zero Dawn'', a text log states that their ship blew up before leaving the solar system, but in ''Forbidden West'' this turns out to have been a ruse the Zeniths pulled for no obvious reason. They made it just fine to Sirius and set up their colony, where they spent all their time immersed in personal simulations that let them do things like murder people for fun. They quickly got bored with physical immortality and being able to do whatever they wanted forever and decided to try uploading their brains so that they could achieve digital transcendence, but abandoned the project. Unfortunately for them, dumping the minds of a pack of selfish, amoral, narcissistic sociopaths into one database and leaving them to stew for a few centuries created an insane AI that was ''very'' unhappy about being abandoned. This AI, known as Nemesis, proceeded to massacre nearly the entire Zenith colony before sending the signal that triggered HADES in the first place, meaning that it's the true cause of all the problems in the Horizon series. The surviving Zeniths rock up to Earth to salvage more resources and kill some barbarians, but Aloy isn't having any of their bullshit.