A Theory On The Lotus, The Tenno, And Everything (Warning: Spoilers)

[Trylobyte]

So, I picked up this game only a few days ago but spent a lot of time since then bouncing around the wikis, reading up on everything, and checking out the bits of game lore I can find.  And from the copious things I've read, discussed, and played out ingame, I've come up with a fairly comprehensive theory of what is going on in ther Warframe world...  and it's not a pretty one.  Spoliers exist past this point.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nobody really knows who or what Lotus is, but I think there's enough evidence in the game world to pinpoint it - Lotus is a former Grineer Ruling Sister.  Captain Vor helpfully informs us that the Grineer are led by these mysterious Ruling Sisters, women who must have enormous resources at their disposal and are capable of getting pretty much anything they want.  The Corpus, in a transmission intercept, warn that Lotus is 'traitorous,' because she is.  Lotus was one of these Sisters at one point, but her ambition got too much for even a Ruling Sister and she decided she wanted control of everything personally.  No sharing.  No splitting.  Just her.  Obviously the other Sisters wouldn't go along with this, so she needed a plan, and she had the tools available to make one.

 

Stealing Sargas Ruk's research into cybernetics and bribing the Corpus for their technological acumen, Lotus was able to entirely mechanize herself, becoming a sentient machine or AI, just as Sargas Ruk wants to do.  She used the resources she had as a Ruling Sister to buy Sgt. Nef Anyo's Tenno cryopods, knowing that the long cryo-sleep would have affected their memories.  She set up shop in Mercury, where she knew the Grineer didn't really patrol too heavily, and began to train her new Tenno army, exploiting their memory loss to paint herself as a mysterious, enigmatic, benevolent figure there to help and guide them when in reality she's just exploiting them for her own ends.  This means that, rather than the reasons she gives you, she has a few altogether different motivations for assassinating some people.

 

* By killing Nef Anyo, she gains access to the rest of his Tenno cryopods without having to pay him.  Liberation, indeed.

* Killing Sargas Ruk ensures she won't have anyone else trying to follow her into the realm of the purely technological.

* Tyl Regor's death means the rest of the Grineer will eventually die off as well, removing one whole faction, the largest and most dangerous faction, from the field.  The timeframe isn't important, since she's immortal and Tenno keep well.

* Councilor Vay Hek has no military value and she can't really come up with a good reason to kill him, so she cites some vagueness about 'balance.'  In reality she wants him dead because, as a senior Grineer politician, he knows too much about her for her to be comfortable leaving him alive.

* Any advanced artificial intelligence has to be destroyed since they will prove to be a threat in the future.  Jackal and Hyena fit this description.

 

This also has a few other effects on the game world that aren't quite as obvious, but make just as much sense.

* The Stalker is a Tenno that has connected all the dots about Lotus and gone partially insane as a result of realizing he's actually serving an enemy leader.  He's since gone rogue and attempts, in his maddened way, to stop Lotus's plans by killing her best agents.

* The Orokin Towers aren't 'corrupted' at all.  They recognize that the Tenno are being manipulated and want to keep their technology out of enemy hands, that enemy being Lotus.

* Not all the information relayed ingame is entirely accurate, since we view the game through the interface the Tenno see, and Lotus controls that.  She may very well be bending things or 'mistranslating' messages to serve her own interests.

** Going along with this, the taunts the bosses throw at you aren't what they're actually saying.  The tenno don't understand Grineer or Corpus language, so they have to trust Lotus's translations.  How do they know your name?  How do they know your clan?  How do they know what warframe or gun you're using?  They don't - Lotus does, though, and she's 'personalizing' their messages to make them sound more menacing and dangerous.

 

(Edit:  Fixed a typo that was nagging me and added some more pieces to the theory)

 

What do you all think?

Edited June 9, 2013 by Trylobyte

[Cosmixkey]

I've heard of these things before, someone mentionned those suspissions too :P! I realy appreciate the effort you put into this, and I love the post.

 

What you say makes sense, and from now on I think whenever i Rush a boss mission, I'll take him to a bar and pay him a bear, ask him for the ressources nicely instead :)!

 

GJ mate! hope the truth gets discovered soon!

[xXTorquoisSolaceXx]

Wow! This is crazy, this makes so much sence :3 Nice one man :D

[SSC-47]

While this is a late post might I point out that while all of this does make sense there is one thing you've forgotten which is that the Lotus's marking is in every void tower which means that she is from the pre-orokin war era.