Old Ones
Early in the year 2066 CE, the human race went extinct. Centuries of environmental neglect, coupled with the hubris of trying to fight war without the loss of human life, led the Earth and our own creations to turn on us. A swarm of automated war machines, released from the shackles of their human masters, consumed all available biomatter, including their own creators, in the service of producing innumerable copies of themselves to wage the war they had been told was all-important. Humans went underground to hide from the machines, building ever more machines in a desperate attempt to give themselves one last chance. In a twist which surprised few, the remaining humans turned upon each other and finished off the job started by the war machines.
These were the Old Ones.
Their history has been lost to sabotage, time, and the ravages of a planet without a functioning biosphere. What can be learned of the Old Ones is recovered in small, isolated holograms, audio recordings, and the rare printed material. A complete reconstruction of this history may never be attainable by those of the world of Skyline.
Players may wish to familiarize themselves with the Horizon Wiki’s Timeline.
The Old Ones in Skyline
While Skyline includes some conjecture on motives and outcomes not part of official Horizon canon, it does not make any significant contradictions to the lore. Many sections in the detailed entries on AI and History include this conjecture alongside ideas and suggestions for interpretations of the lore designed to broaden the world and give players options beyond those present in HZD.
In an attempt to keep the lore of Skyline as flexible as possible, you will find that this Setting Guide intentionally does not include or make reference to most of the datapoints found in the game. While those datapoints certainly add quite a bit of flavor, and you are highly recommended to read through them, each datapoint also locks down the world of the Old Ones just a little bit more. Narrators are encouraged to make up their own datapoints, Old Ones NPCs, motivations, historical events, and so on.