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Playing Borderlands 2 for a while, I've noticed something odd. There are clearly two human factions, one, the bandits, are uncivilized, wild, and will do anything for some "fresh meat". The other faction, the humans, live in Sanctuary, and they are normal people, considering the circumstances.

What I'm curious about is where most of these humans came from? Were they orginially in Pandora? In Borderlands 1, there were very few "real humans", besides the denizens of T-Bone Junction, New Haven, and some I have forgotten. In Borderlands 2, the only real humans (besides a handful of NPCs) are located in Sanctuary, Liar's Berg, and a few other places. The game does allude to some humans arriving on Pandora to work (ie, Jakobs Cove in Borderlands 1, where they turned into zombies under Dr. Ned (not Zed!))

Basically, where did most of these humans come from? Job prospects? Born on Pandora itself?

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    What's with the downvotes? is there something wrong with the question? Constructive criticism would be nice :D
    – childe
    Commented Jan 27, 2013 at 4:41
  • I believe the bandits are "indigenes" while everybody else is on Pandora because of employment with this or that corporation.
    – badp
    Commented Jan 27, 2013 at 9:49
  • There's a quest given by Hammerlock which has you explore the Caustic Caverns underneath Sanctuary which leads to some recordings of a Dahl mining operation. Tannis interrupts at some point to give you another quest and to explain that a lot of the Pandorans are former Dahl employees who were left behind and went insane.
    – jw013
    Commented Dec 3, 2015 at 19:02

2 Answers 2

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Tannis gives you some hints to this when she tells you the history of Dahl and Atlas and the like.

The bandits you fight out there used to be family men,
workers, scientists... We're all broken because of them.

These big corporations brought people in, then just abandoned them. It's easy to get to Pandora when your company deploys you there, and much harder to get off the place when you have to pay your own passage. Spaceships aren't cheap.

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The low number of peaceful people compared to psychos is, most likely, a game mechanic. I.e. the game is a shooter, so it needs hordes or respawning enemies, and pretty much doesn't need any civilians beside Marcus, so there are just a few.

The line between NPCs and enemies is more blurry than "real humans or not" - Marauders are human, you can't even call Midgets or Bruisers non-human. The world of Pandora is violent, there are many factions constantly at war, plus every other person is crazy or mutated - so it just takes a little of that shooter gameplay requirement to turn the whole planet into a perpetual bloodbath the game is.

Many people arrive on Pandora - some with corporations, some on their own hunt for glory or flight from the law - like most vault hunters. But other people live on Pandora for generations - for example, Salvador is a native.

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