A beginner’s guide to the lore of Apex Legends

It’s easy to get drawn into Apex Legends because of its stellar gunplay and groundbreaking movement. But it’s even easier to be captivated by the rich cast of characters, each one with their own personality and origin story.

Crashlanding into the Apex universe, however, can be a fairly daunting task for a new player or to those who took a break and suddenly see an immortal murder robot in the arena. After all, a lot has happened since Kuben Blisk first introduced fans to the Apex Games in the opening cinematic and there’s even more to learn with callbacks to the Titanfall franchise.

Here’s a basic lore rundown to get you started.

A beginner’s guide to the lore of Apex Legends

This article compiles the big-picture information and context players should know to understand the lore. We’ll add details about characters when they impact the overall narrative, but if you’re looking to understand the backstory of your favorite legend, you can check out their official page or their Gamepedia articles.

Before Apex: Titanfall and the Frontier War

The Frontier War was the main conflict in the Titanfall franchise and its effects still ripple across the Frontier almost two decades after the fighting ended in 2715. There’s an 18-year time gap between the war and the events of Apex, which occur in the year 2733 (2734 as of season eight).

The Frontier War takes place between the Militia and the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation (IMC). At its core, the conflict was about the IMC’s interest in occupying the region (using its centuries-old investments as a pretext) and the Militia’s resistance to the opposing faction’s advances.

The planet Typhon was a research outpost for the IMC’s Archaeological RESearch (ARES) Division, tasked with scientific experimentation and technological developments for military applications. The ARES Division performed all sorts of experiments, including on human subjects.

In addition to its regular soldiers, the IMC also hired a mercenary unit, the Apex Predators. Their leader was the ruthless Kuben Blisk and its members were among some of the deadliest Pilots in the Frontier. In Titanfall 2, players go up against Ash and Viper, two names that came back to Apex in some capacity, and the game ends with an essential victory for the Militia at Typhon, crippling their extremely secret (and just as destructive) Fold Weapon, capable of taking down planets.

After the Militia’s decisive victory on Typhon, IMC forces retreated to Gridiron, their last stronghold. The Militia surrounded the planet in the final battle of the war. Few people know the exact events of the Battle of Gridiron and even fewer can talk about what transpired. Whatever happened there led to a blackout that took down communications across the entire Frontier. Anita “Bangalore” Williams was stationed at Gridiron during the battle and her firsthand account of the events is in Pathfinder’s Quest, Apex‘s first lore book.

Before Apex: The Outlands and the Civil War

Apex takes place in the Outlands, a small cluster of planets at the far end of the Frontier. This corner of the galaxy has its own history, which took a violent turn after the Frontier War.

The IMC provided the Outlands with security and stability since the 2600s, which fostered relationships between the planets. After the IMC gradually pulled back from the Frontier, however, the Outlands were plunged into lawlessness. Without a force to uphold agreements, the situation devolved into a conflict known as the Outlands Civil War. The fighting kicked off in 2716 and lasted until 2723, 10 to 11 years before the events of Apex.

The war ended with a peace treaty proposed by the Mercenary Syndicate. The institution became the law (or lack thereof) in most of the Outlands, though planets such as Gaea and Psamathe are allowed to have their own police forces. Those who didn’t sign the treaty became the Fringe Worlds.

The conflict took a toll on the Outlands, but the Syndicate had its own plan to stabilize the region after the fighting ended.

The Apex Games

The Apex Games are the Syndicate’s “big project to help rebuild the Outlands,” according to Gibraltar. The Games are based on the old Thunderdome, an old bloodsport on Kings Canyon. The competition shut down when the IMC pulled back from the Outlands, but the Syndicate decided to reignite it and expand it into the Apex Games. The original arena remained in Kings Canyon as a tribute.

The man in charge of the competition is Apex Games commissioner Kuben Blisk, the same Kuben Blisk who led the Apex Predators during the Frontier War. He was a Thunderdome veteran himself until he was deployed to the war and landed a position on the Syndicate after the fighting ended. As the commissioner, he can endorse people into the competition, which lets them bypass the normal qualifying process.

Of course, setting up the Apex Games requires a lot of open space. And after the Civil War, there were a handful of places that could serve as arenas for the Apex Games—each with its own secrets.

Kings Canyon, the first arena

Once the home of the Thunderdome, Kings Canyon became the first stage for the Apex Games. The island used to be a hub for IMC research and development, which helped bring “stability and jobs” to Solace.

Kings Canyon houses a series of military installations, some far more secret than others. Syndicate construction crews uncovered the remains of a former ARES Division facility called Singh Labs used to study Phase Tech. This is where Wraith was experimented on and swapped places with a Wraith from another dimension, as seen in the “Voidwalker” short. Kings Canyon was also the childhood home of Natalie “Wattson” Paquette.

During the events of season two, an attacker destroyed the Repulsor tower in Kings Canyon, which was keeping the wildlife at bay. We later learned that it was the work of Crypto, looking to create a distraction to hack himself as a competitor in the Games under a fake identity and clear his name.

The Games move to World’s Edge

After the attack on the Repulsor Tower, the Syndicate relocated the Apex Games to World’s Edge. This part of the planet Talos used to be a mineral extraction site in the days of the IMC, but an incident caused a flash freeze in the settlement and made it nearly uninhabitable, as seen in their cinematic, “The Old Ways.”

There’s more to World’s Edge than its square footage, however, and the Syndicate isn’t the only entity with an interest in exploring the area.

The resurgence of Hammond Robotics

Hammond Robotics is one of the most ancient companies in the Frontier. The “old” Hammond Robotics evolved into a subsidiary of the IMC centuries before the war. In Apex, the company returns as a “new” Hammond Robotics that’s “committed to leading the Outlands into the future“—but with the same greed as its predecessor.

Over 300 years before the events of Apex, Hammond Robotics developed its breakthrough simulacrum program. In short, a person’s consciousness (the “source code”) would be uploaded to a robotic body after their death, but their programming would trick them into believing they were still human. The Titanfall franchise introduced fans to Ash and Apex brought a simulacrum of its own—and he had a centuries-old grudge with Hammond.

Related: Lore recap: Everything that happened in Apex Legends in 2020

Revenant’s arrival

Revenant was the first simulacrum in existence. After his first death, he spent over 300 years as a hitman on Hammond’s dime, unaware of his fate or condition—at least, until his programming failed.

During the assassination of Marcos and Alanza Andrade in Olympus, a piece of glass embedded itself into Revenant’s neck and interfered with his systems. His programming could no longer sustain the illusion of his humanity or delete his older memories and 300 years of death and suffering came flooding in.

Fully aware of his condition as “a walking nightmare of steel and vestigial flesh,” Revenant sought revenge against the company that turned him into an abomination. And Hammond Robotics’ move to the spotlight put it in Revenant’s crosshairs.

Revenant’s vendetta against Hammond Robotics led the simulacrum on a warpath. He broke into a series of facilities and killed anyone in his path—most notably, he assassinated Forge during a live broadcast. With Forge gone, the Syndicate and Hammond Robotics inducted Revenant into the Apex Games in his place to keep the simulacrum’s bloodlust in check.

Loba’s revenge and The Broken Ghost

A hitman doesn’t go through life without making a few (or several) enemies, and Revenant made the most vicious enemy he’d ever encounter. Loba Andrade, the orphaned daughter of Marcos and Alanza Andrade, joined the Apex Games to take revenge against the simulacrum who murdered her parents.

Loba found a hidden facility below Kings Canyon, the secure location of Revenant’s source code. She accidentally tripped the security system, which teleported the source code to the planet Psamathe and caused the facility to self-destruct, taking down a chunk of Kings Canyon with it.

Related: Apex Legends’ season 5 launch trailer explained

Loba officially joined the Games after the incident to enact her plan for revenge. Luckily, she knew exactly what to do—but it’d require the help of the rest of the legends. That led to the events of The Broken Ghost, Apex‘s first quest, in season five.

Loba enlists the rest of the cast to uncover nine pieces of a mysterious relic scattered across a different dimension but with one catch: They can’t tell Revenant about it. The legends investigate and discover that she was working with Hammond Robotics and that the company would give her the new location of Revenant’s source code upon delivering the relic.

After the legends assemble the artifact, Revenant chases Loba and confesses that he wants Loba to put him out of his misery. “Every second of my existence is pain,” the simulacrum tells her. This puts the thief in a delicate position: She can’t get her revenge without giving Revenant what he wants. (Eventually, Loba decided to send Revenant’s source code to Gridiron.)

The “mysterious artifact” the legends put together for Hammond Robotics isn’t a “what,” but a “who.” After piecing together all nine parts of the relic, the legends assembled the (robotic) head of Ash, a former Apex Predator. Ash was destroyed during the Frontier War and later rebuilt, and the legends retrieved her head from a different dimension.

In addition to a series of cryptic hints, Ash also gave the legends a taste of what would become the next arena in the Apex Games: “The path ends here,” she says. “Welcome to Olympus.”

Olympus, a city in the clouds

A technological utopia in the clouds had to have a fitting name: Olympus. The city on the planet Psamathe was a colony for some of the brightest minds in the Outlands during the mid-2600s. But an accident in an experimental facility created a Phase Rift and sent its inhabitants fleeing.

The city’s computer systems kept it running despite the anomaly, which quickly drew the interest of the Outlands’ rich and famous. It spent 40 years as a colony for the wealthy until the Rift grew unstable and the city was abandoned for good—at least until the Syndicate turned it into another arena for the Apex Games. Hammond Robotics followed close and set up a laboratory in the area, presumably to investigate the Rift.

At the time, a group of scientists in Olympus researched a solution for an energy crisis that threatened the future of the Outlands. By most accounts, the answer came almost like a miracle. But that’s not the full story.

The 2600s energy crisis and the appearance of Branthium

In the 2640s, Olympus researchers discovered that energy resources in the Outlands would be non-existent within the next 20 years. A group of scientists from all over the Outlands gathered to find a solution. And it came shortly after—from an entire corner of the galaxy altogether.

An astrophysicist named Dr. Mary Somers launched a dangerous mission to a black hole. There, she believed she could find a powerful energy source called Branthium. She deployed a shuttle to attempt to extract the material. Her assistant, Dr. Ashleigh Reid, cut the connection between the shuttle and the main ship and ran off with the Branthium, leaving Somers stranded. Somers eventually made her way back to Olympus and joined the Apex Games as Horizon, as seen in her episode of Stories from the Outlands.

The energy crisis deteriorated after Somers’ disappearance until the year 2658, when large amounts of Branthium appeared suddenly across the Outlands. The Phase Rift, which made Olympus uninhabitable, appeared in the same time frame. The truth behind the events was hidden for nearly a century, but Pathfinder uncovered the full story during Pathfinder’s Quest.

Ash

Ash first appeared in Apex at the end of the season five quest, The Broken Ghost. The legends assemble her head and plug it into her body, located in a secret facility below Kings Canyon. When powering up, she starts a series of cryptic phrases such as “all roads lead to Branthium” and “Darion! Duardo!” Although these messages may seem nonsensical at first, they quickly fit into the rest of the lore.

She later appeared in the season six quest, trashed in a dumpster after Hammond Robotics extracted some codes from her memory banks. These turned out to be the Olympus access codes, according to a season 10 Twitter comic.

Season 11 confirmed the long-standing theory that before becoming a simulacrum, Ash was Dr. Ashleigh Reid, Horizon’s assistant. After the explosion, Hammond Robotics turned her into a simulacrum and the process inadvertently split her into two personalities: Ash and Leigh. Though Ash seems to be the dominant one, Leigh pops in whenever she wrestles control away from Ash, including during the season 11 quest, Trouble in Paradise.

Ash being Dr. Reid in a previous life is also a key point to Horizon, since the scientist-turned-simulacrum seems to know the whereabouts of Newton Somers. This information is concealed within Leigh, though, and because of it, Horizon will have to bring that personality to the forefront. That struggle was a key point of the season 11 quest.

Salvo, Fuse, and Mad Maggie

After introducing Olympus, Apex showed us another side of the Outlands: Salvo signed the peace treaty with the Syndicate almost a decade after the end of the Civil War, making the planet officially part of Syndicate Space. The new focus also brought two characters to the spotlight: Fuse and Mad Maggie, as seen in the “Good as Gold” cinematic (and later in the “Judgment” short).

Season eight introduced us to Fuse and Maggie, two friends-turned-rivals from the war-torn Salvo. Maggie was a warlord and a staunch defender of Salvonian independence, while Fuse seemed ready to put it all behind him to find the one place where he feels at home: the Apex Games.

In the season eight quest, Maggie seemingly fell to her death, but season 12 showed the rebel was actually alive—and would serve as a scapegoat for a power grab against the Mercenary Syndicate.

Related: Apex Legends season 8 lore recap

“Duardo” Silva’s power grab

Duardo Silva has shown his claws and ambition towards more political power in the Outlands for some time. He orchestrated the attack in the season nine quest, The Legacy Antigen, spreading deadly vines from the Icarus and causing a terrible incident in Olympus.

Related: Apex Legends’ The Legacy Antigen season 9 recap

His false-flag attacks eventually paid off thanks to the accidental help of Mad Maggie. The rebel was sentenced to death by firing squad, but Silva changed that verdict to death in the Apex Games. He tampered with Olympus’ systems and framed Maggie as a way to divert the blame from himself. 

In the season 12 quest, fans learned Duardo isn’t really Duardo Silva. Octane stumbled upon the death certificate of the real Duardo, and the quest revealed it was his grandfather, Torres Silva. Apparently, being the head of a pharmaceutical company can even stave off death.

“Duardo” Silva gets elected the “One Voice of the Syndicate,” a high-ranking position with a ton of political power. His first act is to overhaul the humanitarian Frontier Corps into the Syndicate Corps, essentially making them an army. He also gave control of the Syndicate Corps to Cherisse Che, Lifeline’s mother, who undoubtedly has nefarious intentions. That narrative got put on hold with season 13 and the arrival of Newcastle, however.

Newcastle, Jackson Williams, and a link to the IMC

Season 13 brought a new legend, but one fans have heard about since Apex launched. Newcastle joined the Games with a double life: in Harris Valley, he is Lamont Craig, a low-profile family guy who fixes Newcastle’s armor. In the Apex Games, he is Newcastle. And under all that, he is Jackson Williams, Bangalore’s long-lost brother, who surfaces as she is planning to go to Gridiron with Revenant, who wants to hunt down his source code.

He joined the Apex Games to protect Harris Valley from the rule of the Forgotten Families, a crime organization made up of old IMC members who punish deserters like Jackson and Anita. The old Newcastle was in debt to them, and Jackson took on his mantle to pay off that debt with his winnings from the Apex Games. But that’s just the beginning of his story.

As one of the few survivors of the IMS Hestia and the Battle of Gridiron, Jackson may know what happened at the end of the war. Jackson will also likely be a possible way for writers to link back to information about the IMC, the War, and ARES Division. This includes the past of former Science Pilot Dr. Renée Blasey—or, Wraith, as she is more commonly known.

Final note

The lore of Apex has come a long way since its launch. Individual storylines are often complex enough on their own and become even more convoluted when they overlap with the rest of the cast. Some storylines can also get some time in the fridge as the release of new seasons pushes those arcs to the backburner.

Pathfinder’s Quest contains some of the most vital bits of lore in the franchise and is a must-read for any fan who wants to learn more. Gamepedia is also a valuable resource for fans who want to learn about more specific details.  All new legends since season two have their own cinematic and some original cast members also received their own video seasons after release. The Stories from the Outlands series compiles the backstories of several characters, both new and part of the original cast.