Lore: Andrew Ford

Andrew Ford, also known as Founder Ford, is a human from Earth and a recurring supporting character in the Remnant series.

The Dreamer Project

[Section covering the events of Ford's military service until the Root Invasion of 1968]

Life Amidst the Ashes (1968–1989)

1989 – Evelyn Ford integrates with the Root, becoming the Root Mother

Scouring the Worlds (1990–2029)

Reeling from Evelyn’s sacrifice and increasingly desperate to find a way to stop the Root, Ford began journeying to other worlds in search of information that might assist Earth’s struggle. During this period Ford divided the majority of his time between Rhom, Yaesha, and his native Earth. However, he found himself spending more and more time away as his relationship with his daughter Nadine, and later his granddaughter Ellen, became increasingly strained by his absence and single-minded dedication to stopping the Root—a goal they, and many on Earth, considered impossible and had long abandoned.

Yaesha

Ford found his second visit to Yaesha, in the February of 1995, more hospitable than his first foray into its jungles as part of the Dreamer Project. Much as he had joined forces with the Akari rebels on Rhom, Ford found himself falling in with the growing Pan Rebellion led by Navun. Finding the Pan to be passionate but inexperienced in the art of rebellion, Ford drew on both his military training and his cultural and historical knowledge to equip them for the fight. First teaching the rebels inspiration gleaned from America’s own history—the Boston Tea Party and Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the Underground Railroad, the Civil Rights Movement—Ford would spend close to two decades running guns and providing yearly military training as he watched Navun rile up the Pan commoners and slaves into a force the nobility had to reckon with. Yet while Yaesha gave Ford a place to belong and to be of use, it did not present clear direction for his central mission.

Rhom

Rhom appeared to be a more promising lead. An irradiated desert world, Rhom had managed to successfully fight off the same forces plaguing Earth: the Root, known by them as the Guar’ee. Finding the citadels barred and guarded by the Vyr, Ford sought help from the Akari, an order of religious scholars in rebellion against Rhom’s ruler, the Undying King Ezlan. It was in August 1995, during his time on Rhom, that Ford died—and returned to life—for the second time, discovering that he had been gifted or cursed with immortality. Alhough unsure of its origins, this realization spurred Ford’s conviction that it was his duty and responsibility to stop the Root, and Rhom was a place he might learn to do so. His discoveries were bittersweet, however. While Ford’s time on Rhom furnished him with knowledge of the Root’s hive consciousness, it offered little in the way of practical solutions—for as he learned, Rhom had only driven back the Root through vast self-sacrifice. Using a vast quantity of the substance known as Kel-Hur, or Black Sun Dust, the Undying King had instigated a chain reaction that rendered the planet a desolate, irradiated wasteland. The revelation shocked Ford. Such a scorched-earth solution both impractical and undesirable. Ford felt the best solution was to find the Root’s secret and to kill it at its source. How was another question entirely.

Corsus

With leads on Rhom and Yaesha seemingly exhausted, Ford sought new horizons, and in August 2025 his realm-walking brought him to a new world, one of which he found no record in the data of the Dreamer Project. This was Corsus, a land of geothermal swamps that served as oases of life on an otherwise inhospitable icy planet. However, if Ford hoped that this new world would furnish him with answers unavailable elsewhere, these hopes would be dashed. What civilisation remained on the world was dilapidated and decayed, with only the remnants of villages, infrastructure and agriculture remaining. It took a year for Ford to finally encounter a being that would talk with him: the Iskal Queen, Cessnya. This proved equally as fruitless, however: the Queen was interested only in proselytizing to her visitor about the virtues of “Iskal.” After five months of zero progress, and with no leads and a longing for home, Ford made the decision to return to Earth in January 2027.

Homecoming

However, this homecoming was not the one Ford hoped. During his absence his daughter Nadine had passed away from illness, and his granddaughter Ellen resented him for his abandonment of both his family and the Ward. Excluded from Ward life, Ford built his base of operations in his “office”—a hideout located in the desolate, Root-infested city—while he vainly attempted to repair his relationship to Ellen. But some wounds do not heal. Reading a letter by his late daughter, Ford realised that he had done the same thing Evelyn had when she chose to become the Root Mother: he had prioritized the mission, stopping the Root irrespective of the costs. In 1968 the Root had taken away the world he had known, but in his decades chasing ghosts trying to reclaim what had been lost, he had thrown away any world—the family, the future—he could have had. Faced with this truth, Ford took his accumulated knowledge of the Root—half a century of notes and data—and burnt it all. In November 2029, after paying one final visit to the Root Mother, Ford departed again for Yaesha on what he intended to be a final journey.

Events of Remnant: From the Ashes (2062–2063)

2062 – The Wanderer encounters Ford in a prison on Yaesha, Ford returns to Earth for the first time in 33 years.

2063 – Ford enlists the Wanderer’s help in investigating Ward 13, leading to the discovery of Clementine and the defeat of Urik Harsgaard, finally ending the Root’s access to Earth.

Events of Remnant II (2084)

2084 – Enlisting the help of the Traveler, Ford re-activates the world stone and vanishes into it.