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

"If only he'd died with his king. But now he leads the Eclipse. I tell you, he’s the most dangerous man alive."
―Olin

Helis, known as The Terror of the Sun among the Carja and Stacker of Corpses by the Oseram, is the leader of the Eclipse and the secondary antagonist of Horizon Zero Dawn. A cruel and violent but intelligent fanatic with unbreakable loyalty to his equally cruel liege Sun-King Jiran, his name was greatly feared and loathed by every tribe the Carja had raided for human sacrifice victims during Jiran’s reign. His fanaticism made him easy for the rogue artificial intelligence HADES to manipulate into becoming the main instrument by which the AI planned to reactivate the Faro Plague and destroy all life on Earth. However he was ultimately defeated and killed by the young Nora woman who became his nemesis: the huntress Aloy.

Appearance[]

Helis is an adult male, apparently middle-aged. He has dark brown or black hair plaited into cornrows on the crown of his head, with a short ponytail at the back. The sides and back of his head are clean-shaven. His eyes appear to be a light brown or amber color. He is tall, with an imposing, very solid build. His regular outfit consists of a black and faded red armored chest piece that is crossed on the sides, with HADES' symbol on the front, and a ring of Deathbringer Gun ammunition around the neck. He wears gloves on both hands, along with a pair of dark green pants, boots, and a faded red, jagged-edged cape. His armor is conventional black and red Kestrel armor, complete with black markings on the chest and stomach. However, as the Kestrel commander, his helmet's feathers are larger and brighter, and form a large plume. Additionally, his helmet is larger, and his armor has feathers on the shoulders, which are absent in regular Kestrel armor. 

Background[]

Helis was the commander of the Kestrels in the service of His Radiance Jiran, 13th in the Line of Luminance. Burly and imposing, with an iron will, a disdain for material comforts, and great physical strength, he was also Jiran’s champion. His devotion to Jiran was fanatical, based on his unassailable religious belief in the infallibility of the Sun-King. He also had an equally unassailable belief in the superiority of the Carja over all other tribes. Without reservation, he supported Jiran’s cruel and brutal reign, considering it to be firm rule approved by the Sun, the Carja tribe’s deity.[1]

History[]

Sun-King Jiran[]

From an early age, Helis believed that he was destined for greatness. During the early years of Jiran's reign, he proved himself to Jiran when he survived a training regimen that Jiran decreed would determine the men who would become his first Kestrels. This regimen involved training in the most extreme desert conditions at a location known as Sandwhisper Valley, lashed by sandstorms strong enough to scour armor. Helis was one of the first to survive, and thus became one of the first Kestrels.[2] At some point, he married a woman who was mentally as tough and resilient as he was.[3] He was so highly regarded by Jiran that when his wife and child died in childbirth, Jiran ordered them interred at the Alight, an honor reserved for the Sundom’s heroes and royalty.[4] When Jiran ordered the Red Raids in response to the Derangement, Helis led many of these raids. His fanatical belief in the infallibility of the Sun-King and in Carja superiority contributed to the egregious brutality with which he treated victims, earning him his grisly nicknames.

When Jiran’s second son Avad successfully led an allied army against Jiran to overthrow him and end his atrocities, Helis was fully prepared to fight against them to the death. However, on Jiran’s order, he took Jiran’s queen Nasadi and third son Itamen to the summer palace at Sunfall. With them went other Jiran loyalists: Sun-Priests, including the High Priest Bahavas, Kestrels and Carja nobility, as well as slaves. Helis cut down any liberator who stood in their way. He and Bahavas, the two most senior of Jiran’s loyalists, established a splinter tribe from the civilians who went with them, called the Shadow Carja, with Sunfall as their capital. They declared Itamen their king, and Jiran’s true successor. However he was only a figurehead; Helis and Bahavas were the de facto rulers. Meanwhile Avad’s army liberated Meridian. Avad, forced to do so by Jiran’s refusal to surrender, killed Jiran, took the throne, ended the raids, and brought the Carja into an era of peace.

HADES[]

Helis and Bahavas viewed Jiran’s overthrow and Avad’s reforms with disgust, and dreamed of retaking Meridian in Jiran’s name.[5] But they knew their military force had no chance against the Carja army. Then they were contacted by a mysterious stranger: the wanderer Sylens. He offered them to introduce them to one who had the power to make their dream a reality. The two men accepted and went to the meeting place: the remains of an FAS-BOR7 Horus at a very remote and almost inaccessible location deep in the jungles of The Jewel.

There they were introduced by Sylens to the one they went to meet. Housed in the Horus’ still-functional computer core, the entity claimed to be the Devil of the Carja religion, known as the Buried Shadow. The entity was actually HADES. It wanted to gain control of Meridian so that it could access the Sundom’s most famous feature, the Spire. This was in fact one of a global network of transmission towers that has been used by Zero Dawn’s governing artificial intelligence GAIA to broadcast codes that shut down the Faro Plague centuries prior. HADES wanted to use the Spire to reactivate the Plague, though it kept this intention from Sylens. Sylens had suggested that it pose as the Buried Shadow to deceive Helis and Bahavas into creating a militarized cult that would be the army it could use to capture Meridian. HADES agreed. It was simple for it to deceive the two men, since both were completely ignorant of the ancient world and its highly advanced technology, and thus were easily persuaded that HADES was supernatural. When it quoted Carja scripture as taught by Sylens, they were convinced of its claim.[6]

The Eclipse[]

HADES offered the two men Meridian if they would serve it. Helis was at first apprehensive; his religious belief dictated that as a chosen servant of the Sun, the Buried Shadow was to be destroyed. However Bahavas convinced him to accept the offer: Jiran’s overthrow and death, which they considered the murder of the true Sun-King, had doomed the world to darkness; the Sun would be extinguished. This would destroy the world, including the Buried Shadow, for a Shadow cannot exist without the Sun. Thus by serving the Shadow, they would do more than retake Meridian in Jiran’s name; they would also save the world by putting the true Sun-King’s heir Itamen on the throne.[7]

Thus the two men were deceived into forming the cult that would serve as as HADES’ army, dubbing it the Eclipse. Bahavas returned to Sunfall to govern the Shadow Carja while Helis became the cult’s leader. He oversaw the establishment of the cult’s main base at HADES’ location. Meanwhile Sylens developed a Focus network, allowing him and the cult’s subordinate commanders to communicate with HADES and each other over vast distances. To bolster their strength far beyond the ability of the Carja army to withstand, HADES had the Eclipse mount operations at various sites to exhume Faro Plague robots, referred to by the tribes as Corruptors and Deathbringers, which HADES activated. To gather intelligence about their enemy, Helis pressed a professional Oseram delver named Olin into the Eclipse’ service. Olin had frequently worked for Sun-King Avad’s court; this made him valuable as a spy. In characteristically cruel manner, Helis coerced him by having his family kidnapped and threatening to kill them in grisly fashion if Olin did not cooperate.[8] He had Olin equipped with a Focus and sent him back to Avad’s court as a spy. Helis was later ordered to by HADES to kill Sylens when the latter had finished the Focus network.[9] However, Sylens had built a back door into the network to secretly monitor communications. He heard the transmission and escaped.

Aloy[]

The placement of Olin proved a pivotal decision that would ultimately result in the Helis’ death and HADES’ defeat. It did so by precipitating events that produced their most indomitable and capable enemy: Aloy. Olin was selected by Avad as the forward scout of a delegation to the Nora tribe to deliver an apology for the misery Jiran had inflicted on them during the Red Raids. The delegation arrived during the time of the tribe’s Proving, and was present to witness the festivities and ceremony the night before the ritual. It was at the ceremony that Olin met Aloy, an aspirant in the Proving. HADES saw her through Olin’s Focus. The AI was extremely alarmed at her physical appearance, recognizing her as a clone of the principal ancient scientist behind Zero Dawn, Elisabet Sobeck. Aloy was therefore physically able to use the system’s master override to purge HADES, defeating it. The fact that she wore a Focus indicated that she had the technological aptitude to do so. 

HADES immediately ordered her death. Helis therefore ordered all dig site commanders to immediately cease activity and bring their units to a set of coordinates in the Nora Sacred Land provided by HADES. Any Nora who saw them was to be killed, to maintain the secrecy of their existence. The coordinates marked the site of the end of the Proving: a plateau where all the participants would gather. Everyone present, including Aloy, was to be killed.

Helis surprises Aloy

Helis surprises Aloy

Helis fights Rost

Helis fights Rost

The first unit to arrive initiated the attack, killing many. However Aloy successfully killed the unit, allowing many others to escape. Helis then arrived with another unit and personally attacked Aloy. She was no match for him as he held her off the ground by the neck and slit her throat. Aloy’s guardian, the Nora outcast Rost, appeared and valiantly fought Helis in her defense. But Helis prevailed, fatally stabbed Rost, and ordered the entire area razed before leaving. With Aloy seemingly dead, the cultists set explosives to do so and withdrew.

Nemesis[]

Aloy survived due to Rost throwing her off the plateau to safety seconds before the explosives detonated. She went on to learn all about Helis and the Eclipse from tracking Olin down and interrogating him, and with assistance from Sylens, who was determined to stop whatever HADES was planning. Aloy doggedly disrupted every one of the Eclipse’s Faro robot recovery operations, killing all the cultists present. She briefly encountered HADES through a dead Eclipse commander’s Focus at Maker's End. Through HADES’ surprised, angry reaction on learning that she was still alive, Helis knew he had failed. Her very effective interference earned her his enmity.

Helis with Captured Aloy

Helis taunts Aloy after capturing her.

When she went to the ruin of the Zero Dawn Project Facility directly beneath Sunfall and inadvertently created a disturbance that alerted the Kestrels of activity in the ruin, Helis personally led a successful ambush that apprehended her. Because of her persistent disruptive attacks, Helis was convinced that her capture was the Sun’s divine plan, that she may be sacrificed to it. He confidently told her as much, savoring what he believed to be final victory over her. Moreover, in retribution for her interference, he ordered the Eclipse to conduct a genocidal campaign against the Nora, and informed her of it with great satisfaction. He then had her thrown into Sunfall’s Sun-Ring before the gathered Shadow Carja and loosed a Corrupted Behemoth upon her. 

But she proved him wrong; what was to have been her public execution became his humiliation. He ended up watching as Aloy used the machine’s brute strength against it to recover her weapons and ammunition and then killed the Behemoth. Shocked, he ordered the two Corruptors that had corrupted the Behemoth to kill her. But he had to watch his plans for her death completely unravel when Sylens explosively breached the arena, entered with two overridden Striders and rescued her. He impotently watched them escape while three overridden Ravagers entered and pounced on the Corruptors, preventing pursuit. Furthermore, Aloy subsequently returned to the Nora Sacred Land and successfully led a last ditch effort to defeat the genocidal attack against the tribe that he had ordered.

Defeat and death[]

However Helis’ confidence in ultimate victory remained unshaken; the Buried Shadow, he believed, was certain to make him and the Eclipse triumphant in the end. Sometime after Aloy escaped from him, HADES’ finally ordered the attack on Meridian. Wearing his Kestrel armor, Helis was one of the first into the city. Accompanied by cultists, he ferociously cut a path through any defender who tried to stop him. None could stand in his way. None, that is, except Aloy. This time, unlike the first, she was far more experienced and ready to engage him. When she appeared, he scoffed and taunted her. As she dispatched his accompanying cultists and then turned her full attention to him, he maintained his taunts, fully convinced of his inevitable victory. 

Aloy About to kill Helis

Helis is about to die.

But again she proved him wrong, and this time it cost him his life. His confidence turned to uncomprehending bafflement when, after a long fight, Aloy finally incapacitated him. He dropped to his knees, unable to process his defeat. He could do nothing as Aloy ran him though, putting an end to him, and any threat that he would ever pose again. Aloy then went on to ultimately defeat HADES, bringing all of Helis’ notions of his divinely ordained destiny and his plans for returning the Carja to the blood-soaked time of Jiran’s cruel reign to naught.

Personality[]

A trained warrior, Helis had an appetite for violence and cruelty. However his most dangerous trait was his religious fanaticism. He was rigid and uncompromising in his belief in the Sun faith and, like his liege Jiran himself, believed that Jiran was the actual embodiment of the Sun, the Carja religion’s deity. Therefore he devoutly believed whatever Jiran said and did to be the law of the Sun, and obeyed him without hesitation or question. When Jiran ordered the Red Raids, this fanaticism and his penchant for violence and cruelty both drove the extreme brutality with which he carried out the order. However, as brutal and violent as he was, he was articulate and well spoken, able to verbally express his beliefs with an almost poetic eloquence, as grotesque as these beliefs were.

However, despite his violent, cruel and unyielding nature, Helis was capable of softer emotions such as love for his wife, though it must be noted that this was likely due to him considering her a kindred spirit instead of a comfort. When he left their bed on their wedding night and slept naked on cold, hard stone, spurning the bed due to its comfort, she joined him. He awoke in the morning to find her lying in the same state next to him, and saw her instantly transition from sleep to fully awake and alert. The incident starkly demonstrated their compatibly, and he was convinced that their union was meant to be. It is likely that had this incident not occurred, Helis would have scorned her as a material comfort that would weaken him. Her death and that of their child during birth greatly grieved him. He was profoundly grateful and proud that Sun-King Jiran offered to bury Helis' family alongside members of the royal family and heroes of the Sundom at the Alight. Given subsequent events, this likely only strengthened his fanatical devotion to Jiran.[3]

Like the other Shadow Carja nobles, Helis was unrepentantly bigoted toward all non-Carja, especially Nora, whom he considered to be the lowest of savages. This and his unwavering belief in his destiny as chosen of the Sun produced in him a rock-solid belief that he was superior to all others except Jiran. He held a starkly black and white philosophy in which only victory or defeat existed. He considered every victory won to be a sign of his destiny and superiority over others. He genuinely believed himself to be Chosen of the Sun, specifically selected by the Sun as an instrument to carry out its will. Thus he was convinced that no warrior was able to match him in combat. He was therefore utterly baffled when Aloy, a Nora and therefore in his mind a filthy savage, bested him.

Abilities[]

Helis was an extremely formidable hand-to-hand combatant. His skill was such that he was able to hold his own against and ultimately defeat Rost, one of the most skilled and experienced warriors in Nora history. Additionally, he was quite intelligent, able understand ancient technological concepts such as Focus communication networks. Indeed, he was versed in the technology enough to confidently issue orders over the Eclipse’s Focus network, complete with holographic data where necessary, and record holographic imaging as messages.

Battle stats[]

Level HP Attack Damage Additional Info[10]
30 2000 Napalm Grenade 50 Fire Damage on contact, 40 Fire Damage per second within lingering effect area
  • Can block all single-target projectiles when not attacking.
Light Attack 175 (up to x3 combo)
Strong Attack 250 (up to x2 combo)
Leaping Attack 300

Trivia[]

  • The name Helis is likely derived from Helios, the Greek god of the Sun.
  • Helis' voice actor Crispin Freeman voiced Helios in the 2010 game God of War III.
  • Helis shares many similarities with Grazel from White Knight Chronicles, who was also voiced by Crispin Freeman
    • Both are cult leaders who seek restore a powerful nation to its former glory, with Helis leading the Eclipse to restore the Carja to a reign of terror, while Grazel leads the Magi in order to revive the Yshrenian Empire and take over the world.
    • Both were manipulated into thinking they were destined to fulfill their goals, with Helis believing that he was chosen by the sun, and Grazel believing himself to be the reincarnation of Emperor Madoras.
    • Both have an association with the words Sun King; Helis being the former champion of the 13th Sun-King Jiran while Grazel is the pactmaker of the Incorruptus, Aldolmaea, which is also known as the Sun King.
  • According to the Horizon Zero Dawn Collector's Edition Guide, "Helis was away on a mission when Oseram freebooters schemed with rebels and traitors to conquer Meridian and murder the king."
    • This potential discrepancy may be remedied when considering that Helis left Meridian on Jiran's orders, and therefore was not present during most of the Liberation.
  • If Aloy aided Uthid and/or extracted Itamen prior to entering the Zero Dawn Project Facility, it will alter dialogue with Helis during the opening cutscene of The Terror of the Sun.

Gallery[]

References[]

Carja tribe
Carja tribe members Sun-Court Avad - Itamen - Marad - Nasadi - Vanasha
Sun-Faith Hishavan - Irid - Jahamin - Namman - Vuadis
Military Balahn - Conover - Firiv - Gediah Kho Veriv - Hami - Janeva - Kavad - Lakhir - Laruvik - Lawan - Maleev - Mavas - Nessa - Nozar - Payiv - Urid - Uthid - Walid - Ybril - Zaid
Hunters Lodge Ahsis - Aidaba - Bashad - Greatrun Keeper - Havash - Izvad - Kyran - Ligan - Malesh - Palaved - Spurflints Keeper - Sun Furrows Keeper - Talanah - Tarkas - Tufanah - Valleymeet Keeper
Nobles Amadis - Daradi - Elida - Fashav - Lahavis - Ranaman - Ravan - Rhavid - Rokasha
Merchants Cantarah - Eclectic Collectibles Merchant - Kudiv - Machine Resources Merchant - Palas
Tribe Dirid - Duvad - Enasha - Furahni - Gavan - Gendas - Gulahni - Hashiv - Three-Toe Huadiv - Ilsadi - Javad - Keadi - Kindiv - Lubavad - Marzavid - Nasan - Nil - Omas - Quarry Foreman - Ranin - Ravan's Steward - Rushavid - Ruwas - Shahavad - Talvo - Vashad
Shadow Carja tribe members Abas - Atral - Bahavas - Dekamin - Ghaliv - Helis - Lokasha - Ryas - Savohar - Shianah - Shivin - Tarav - Uthid - Vezreh - Yusis
Lore Amavad - Aram - Araman - Basadid - Hivas - Iriv - Jiran - Juwadan - Kadaman - Khuvadin - Marzid - Nahasis - Ranan - Sadahin - Tashadi - Udain - Zavarad
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