Horizon Zero Dawn Khopesh War Robot 3D print model

The Faro Plague

In 2064, a swarm owned by the Hartz-Timor Energy Combine stopped responding to commands, began replicating at an unexpectedly high rate, and defaulted to biomass conversion as its fuel supply. The swarm came to be called the Faro Plague, and began to relentlessly consume the biosphere, ultimately eradicating all life. With no chance of containment or regaining control of the swarm, Project Zero Dawn was implemented to eventually brute force the swarm’s deactivation codes, shut the robots down, terraform the ravaged Earth and reestablish life after its extinction. The Khopeshes and other Faro robots that had overrun the planet numbered in the millions before they were shut down and buried by the system.

In the New World Centuries passed. Zero Dawn, managed by its governing AI GAIA, successfully terraformed the planet and reestablished life, including the human species, although because of early sabotage by an unhinged Ted Faro, they lived in primitive, tribal societies. Meanwhile, the millions of Khopeshes and other Faro Plague robots lay buried, although a few deactivated ones were scattered on the surface. Following GAIA's self-destruction, the rogue subordinate function HADES began pursuing its objective of destroying the new biosphere. Denied the use of Zero Dawn, HADES was forced to resort to other methods, and it decided to use the Faro Plague. To do so, it manipulated the leaders of the Shadow Carja into forming a cult in its service, the Eclipse. It had the Eclipse acquire numerous Faro Plague robots, including Khopeshes, which it reactivated to bolster the cult’s strength, as it planned to use the cult as an army to reach a Zero Dawn transmission array, known to the new humans as the Spire, sited nearby the Carja capital Meridian to reactivate the Faro Plague robots worldwide.

In accordance with HADES’ command, the Eclipse acquired several Khopeshes and other Faro Plague robots. Khopeshes were exhumed at ancient ruins such as Maker's End, and extracted from within the colossal derelict Metal Devils that had manufactured them, at sites such as the Grave-Hoard and in The Jewel. They were used by the Eclipse in their large-scale operations, such as their invasion of the Nora Sacred Land. Although some recovered Khopeshes could not be restored, the Eclipse were able to scavenge machine guns from their chassis and use them in combat. Due to their incredible firepower, the Eclipse named these ancient machine as Deathbringers.

The Nora huntress Aloy was first told of Deathbringers when she interrogated the Oseram delver Olin, who was working, albeit unwillingly, for the Eclipse. Aloy later terminated the Eclipse’s Deathbringer retrieval operations at Maker’s End and the Grave-Hoard, destroying the Deathbringer in each instance.

Aloy next encountered Deathbringers when she infiltrated the Eclipse’s main base in The Jewel to crash the cult’s Focus network. HADES, in response to Aloy's destruction of the network, had Deathbringers fire at her in an attempt to kill her. Finally, during the Eclipse’s assault on Meridian, the Deathbringers formed the main infantry of the invasion. While Meridian's defenses took down several, they were overwhelmed by the sheer number. One Deathbringer brought the processing module containing HADES to the Spire, allowing it to transmit a reactivation signal to the rest of the Faro Plague. To protect itself while it transmitted the signal, HADES used a heavily augmented Deathbringer as a guard. Meanwhile, in various tribal lands, long-buried Deathbringers began digging their way to the surface.

Despite its sheer might, Aloy and her allies destroyed the Deathbringer, allowing Aloy to reach HADES. She purged HADES from Zero Dawn using the system’s Master Override, permanently terminating its ability to use the Zero Dawn transmission array to broadcast its reactivating signal. With that, every Faro Plague robot it had reactivated went offline, including Deathbringers, this time without any further known means of reactivation.