It was early morning, before the dawn. An overcast that lay over the Nora Tribal village of Mother's Heart had changed to a light snowfall, turning the air crisp and cold, with the dusting of snow casting an almost surreal glow upon the otherwise dark hillside.

It was a time that most of the Tribe of Nora slept in their homes or in a communal lodge, resting before starting another day of labor, hunting small animals for their valuable pelts, bones, and meat; and Machines for their even more valuable components.

The young Nora named Aloy, once an outcast from the Tribe, chose to sleep outdoors, beside the last embers of a once-roaring campfire on the outskirts of the village. Her attempts to assimilate with the traditional Nora Tribe had been less than successful: after 19 years of cruel silence, of shunning, of whispered insults and threats, those same Nora had almost overnight become insufferably subservient; their whispers changed from insults to praise, calling her "The Anointed One" and suggesting she was a demi-god among mortals. As she had long ago become weary of their insults, she was now annoyed by their praise – in either case she felt isolated and separated from the residents of the Sacred Lands of the Nora.

Aloy was not Nora by birth, but rather something more – or perhaps, as she pondered in her rare moments of melancholy, something less. She had no family in this village, nor in the sweeping land known as the Embrace, nor on the entire planet, as she had been more created than born, a product of a long-forgotten technology that was much more advanced than any in her time. She had been reared by a man who was Nora by birth but an outcast of the Tribe, a wise and nurturing – and yet deep down silent, somber, and sad – warrior of a man named Rost. She still mourned Rost's death at the hands of an evil so strong that it had almost led to the destruction of human life. That Aloy turned out to be the savior of all humanity was not sufficient to make up for the sense of loss she felt every day.

In just days she would leave her teen years behind, and in the eyes of some become an object of pity, for most of the Nora of her age were married and raising children. But Aloy was driven by a deep sense of curiosity, of striving to know not only the why but the how and even the where of the ways of the Old Ones, those who walked the earth almost a millennium ago. This internal drive was her greatest inheritance, granted from the DNA of the Old One to whom she was most related: the brilliant scientist, thinker, philosopher, and humanitarian, Doctor Elisabet Sobeck, who died while saving the lives of her comrades a millennium ago.

So it was that the softly falling snow brought a chill, and Aloy awoke to the realization that the campfire was no longer a source of warmth. Clutching her heavy winter Banuk wrap closer about her shoulders, Aloy admitted to herself that sleep for her was over for the day. The pale blue glow to the East confirmed that the sun would soon rise, but the combination of low clouds and lightly falling snow would delay the arrival of warmth from the rising sun.

She sat up and poked at the embers of the dying campfire, coaxing a spark of flame and a bit of warmth from the coals. A small pouch at her side provided a meager, but satisfying, breakfast of wild grass and roasted boar, washed down with a few swallows of cold water.

Well, as long as I'm awake, I might as well get moving, she said to herself as she stood and dusted off a layer of dry, large snowflakes from her clothing. What shall I do today?

Since the defeat of the greatest threat to life on the planet, Aloy had become somewhat bored, a bit lost in direction. She knew a bit about her mother, but she wished to know more; she simply didn't really know where to start looking. A thorough search of her former home, the modest (except to the young Aloy – it had been a mansion when she was a child!) residence of the outcast Rost, had turned up nothing to suggest where she might want to look next. Sure, the hut was in pristine condition – the Nora Tribe had restored and now maintained Rost's hut as if it were a shrine for a hero – but even before looking, she had been pretty certain nothing of value would be found there.

The visit to Rost's hut had been a very solemn occasion: Rost had lived his adult life as an outcast from the Nora, ignored or ridiculed by the regular Tribe members, forced to raise the orphan Aloy by himself. Rost had been more than a father figure to Aloy, he was a mentor who showed her how to be an expert hunter and an even better human being, all while she grew up without a Tribe upon which she could rely. And now his home, and his burial site beside it, were preserved and maintained by the Tribe, in an almost cruel irony. Aloy could not bear to occupy Rost's hut – the memories, both pleasant and unpleasant, were simply too much.

Now Aloy's days were spent looking for new lands, new people, new clues to her origins and to the ancient past. She knew that she must venture far from the territories of the tribes: the Nora, the Carja, the Oseram, the Banuk – somewhere new, where perhaps she would find more answers to the questions she carried. Her world view was askew compared to that of any member of the tribes around her: to the Nora, there was little reason to leave the confines of the Embrace, and only wandering loners, scavengers, traders, and raiders ventured far from their homelands. But to Aloy, the world was much larger, and she wished to explore it.

Aloy had returned to the Embrace for only a few days, to pay respect to the memory of Rost, to look in on her dear friend, the Nora Matriarch Teersa, who now lay ill and perhaps on her deathbed, and to scour, one last time, through the ruins of the ancient world that lay within the Embrace. But she knew it was time to move on, to search elsewhere, and so she arose and gathered her belongings.

With extra clothing and valuable items wrapped in a boarskin sack and slung over her shoulder on a strap of leather, Aloy picked up a pouch of food and health stores, a quiver of ammo for the weapons she carried, and a sturdy lance, and prepared to venture out into the predawn light, as snow continued to fall.

It was then that she heard the first sound: almost a whisper from down the hill, somewhere along the trail she would travel; then the whisper grew louder as she heard several voices speaking more and more loudly, more and more excitedly.

Something is going on, and it probably isn't good, she thought to herself as she made her way down the trail toward the source of the voices.