welcome to
THE EMBRACE
The heart and most secure enclave of the Nora tribe is All-Mother Mountain and the surrounding valley, known as All-Mother's Embrace. It's located southwest of Devil's Thirst, which we know from a Vantage Point to be Colorado Springs. I don't know whether any official sources confirm it, but I am strongly of the opinion (and the Horizon Wiki agrees) that All-Mother Mountain is
CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN S.P.
The mountain and park are named for the indigenous people group forcibly removed from Colorado's Front Range in the 1860s.
A hundred years later, as a part of Cold War defense efforts, NORAD constructed a hardened facility inside the mountain – specially designed to be resistant to earthquakes, EMP, and nuclear explosions – for use as its command and control center. More recently, the Cheyenne Mountain Complex has additionally become a United States Space Force installation.
Fans of Stargate SG-1 will recognize the iconic entrance to the facility in which the show set the secret location of Stargate Command.
The Cheyenne people's history stretches from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains, with a large and influential role amongst the tribes of North America. Today, they make up two nations: the Northern Cheyenne in Montana and the Southern Cheyenne in Oklahoma.
The Cheyenne language is in the Algonquian language group, but the name Cheyenne derives from a Dakota Sioux exonym (a name given to a people, place, or language from outside that culture).
Learn more about the Cheyenne people here:
The complex is not open to the general public, but you can visit Cheyenne Mountain State Park if you're feeling nostalgic for the beautiful landscape of the earliest sequences of Horizon Zero Dawn.
Bonus "Personal Touch" Tour Guide Anecdote
My favorite thing about this location is how quickly my mom (not a gamer, but a Stargate fan and a word nerd) put it together when I told her this post-post-apocalyptic people group made their home atop a bunker in a mountain and were called the NORA.
