Margo Shĕn

"The lesson will be taught in due time, Aloy. Until then, we wait." This article contains heavy spoilers. Read ahead with caution.

Margo Shĕn
Culture	Old Ones
Birth	c. 2036
Gender	Female
Eye color	Brown
Hair color	Brown
Affiliation(s)	Project Zero Dawn Faro Automated Solutions (formerly)
Position	Alpha of HEPHAESTUS
Portrayed by	Melanie Bond (voice)

Margo Shĕn was a member of Project Zero Dawn, serving as the Alpha in charge of the HEPHAESTUS subordinate function. She was a world-class expert in robotics, possessing an unwavering work ethic along with a deep enthusiasm for her field.

History

Prior to the Faro Plague, Shĕn was an employee of Faro Automated Solutions (FAS). She eventually left the company, likely in protest of FAS's increasingly-rash and cutthroat philosophies. It is implied that Shĕn may have spent some time as a college lecturer.

During the early stages of the Faro Plague, Shĕn was recruited as part of Project Zero Dawn as the Alpha in charge of the development of HEPHAESTUS, which was responsible for providing GAIA with the knowledge and construction facilities necessary to produce the various specialized machines involved in terraforming the Earth.

Shĕn was self-conscious of her skills, age and communication style, being the youngest Alpha in the project by a wide margin. Despite these insecurities, Shĕn successfully led an interdisciplinary team, composed of robotics engineers as well as experts in machine cognition, virtual heuristics, and other branches of artificial intelligence. As HEPHAESTUS was developed, Shĕn herself was surprised by the sophistication and artistic flair displayed in GAIA's early designs, particularly her tendency towards biomimicry.

Shĕn watches Elisabet say goodbye.

As the Faro Swarm overran humanity's remaining strongholds before the subordinate functions were complete, Shĕn and the rest of the Alphas were evacuated to the GAIA Prime facility, where they would spend the rest of their lives perfecting their respective subordinate functions. Shĕn estimated that it would take her over three years to work through her task-queue, though she had given little thought to how else she would spend her time. Shĕn was preoccupied by thoughts of the end of human life, which she found bittersweet; as Travis Tate pointed out, due to her age, Shĕn was likely to be the last living Alpha alone in GAIA Prime. When it was discovered that one of GAIA Prime's access port seals malfunctioned, risking the facility's exposure to the Faro Plague, the Alphas were debating among themselves who would sacrifice themselves to fix it. As Elisabet appeared via hologram, having sacrificed herself for them and Zero Dawn, Shĕn turned away in sadness.

As she tried to continue her work, Shĕn began receiving increasingly frequent unsolicited messages from Ted Faro, demanding updates on the status of various components of Project Zero Dawn. She also described him as getting sketchy with her. Unsure of how to handle Ted's behaviour, Shĕn confided in Charles Ronson, who agreed to talk to Ted himself, while Shĕn contemplated ignoring Ted entirely.

Shĕn and the rest of the Alpha being killed by Ted Faro.

Some time later, Shĕn and the other Alphas were gathered into a meeting by Ted Faro. They were shocked to learn that Ted had not only locked them out of all the systems, but had purged all copies of the APOLLO database, believing it to be a disease that he wanted to keep from the new humans Zero Dawn would create. As Shĕn stood to comfort Samina, Ted vented the room's atmosphere, killing Shĕn, along with the other Alphas.

Legacy

Shĕn's work on HEPHAESTUS was instrumental in the revitalization of Earth, allowing GAIA to create a vast variety of highly effective machines, which were used in the terraforming process, as well as construction of Cauldrons, other facilities like Regional Control Center 9, and as construct the MINERVA transmission arrays. After the reintroduction of human life, the machines created through HEPHAESTUS were formative parts of the resultant tribal culture, serving as sources of various resources, as well as becoming significant figures in folklore and religion.

However, through no fault of her own, Shĕn's subordinate function also proved later to be an threat to human life on Earth in the 31st century. The Extinction Signal caused HEPHAESTUS to gain sentience and become fully autonomous, taking control of several Cauldrons. Due to the regular hunting and destruction of machine, HEPHAESTUS deemed humanity to be a threat to the animal and plant life, as well as the biosphere itself, prompting it to begin creating increasingly deadly Combat Class machines first to protect other machines from human hunters, then to make all machines aggressive to any humans they see, then to cull the human population outright. This phenomenon of ever-increasing machine aggression became known as the Derangement to the tribal population, and precipitated historically important events in the new world, such as the atrocities known as the Red Raids.

Trivia

• Shĕn was a strict vegan.