(PSN)BlacksmithUSA

I'm still having trouble with this. Dominus is presented in a totally different way from the other Duviri denizens. He appears to have a human body, with visible human skin. All of the other duviri characters have skin made of metallic void-stuff, and often have impossible physiologies, sometimes with parts missing, as if they really are action figures brought to life, missing pieces and all. Dominus is clearly different. There's also the matter of the Duviri denizens calling us "King". It seems pretty clear that they see Dominus as different from them, and call us king because we appear to be different in the same way. If Dominus and the Drifter are the only 'humans' commonly seen in Duviri, then this makes sense. Then there's the doll. If Dominus is just a conceptual embodiment of the storybook character, how could he have memories of the doll that inspired him? How could he have a personal, emotional connection to a toy from the Zariman if he doesn't have memories of the Zariman himself? If you showed Lodun a Lodun action figure from the Zariman, it wouldn't have any effect on him. He would just think it's a toy, possibly a mocking image of him. Lastly, there's the fact that Dominus has power over his domain. The only other being seen with this power is the Drifter. To me it makes no sense for a conceptual embodiment to have total emotional authority over the void around them, since they are something _created_ by the thoughts and feelings of the void, not the other way around. This is another way in which he's completely different from the other characters in Duviri. To me, it seems clear that the developers were trying to communicate that Dominus is not just a conceptual embodiment like the other Duviri denizens. Because of that, in my mind I have to conclude that he either literally is a child from some version of the Zariman, or that he is a döppelganger of one. The most likely option to me still seems that Dominus is a döppelganger of the Drifter. Not literally the Drifter, or the Drifter from a different reality or point in time, but a creation of the void in the Drifter's image similar to the forms that the Man in the Wall takes when visiting us / Albrecht Entrati, or perhaps similar to the Holdfasts aboard our Zariman.

This is possible, but the Drifter himself doesn't seem to have a strong personal attachment to the stories, or even really a working memory of them. It seems strange that he created Duviri, grew totally apathetic to the stories, yet Duviri remained. Wouldn't that mean that the reason Duviri is falling apart is because the Drifter no longer remembers or cares about the Tales of Duviri, and that by escaping Duviri, he's dooming the realm to be destroyed?

Massive spoilers. I have conflicting thoughts about the identity of Dominus Thrax after completing the story of the Duviri Paradox. Even after thinking things over for a couple months, reading codex snippets, tablets, fragments, etc. Things we know: - The name and appearance of Dominus Thrax are lifted whole-cloth from Tales of Duviri, a mythology-inspired storybook created by Euleria Entrati (Now Mother/Gomeitru) as a means of equipping the Zariman colonists with a cultural defense against unchecked emotions. Since the void is literally made of mind, strong emotions expressed in the void disturb it, leading to runaway effects where people can manifest their negative emotions into very real dangers which cause them to elicit stronger and stronger emotional responses (if they're not killed outright), until they drive themselves mad. - The denizens of Duviri are artifical beings. They are made of void-stuff, with blue-metallic skin that apes the imagery of Orokin elite. They are real beings in the sense that they exist in the void, but their existence is completely controlled by the void around them, which is in turn largely controlled by Dominus Thrax. - Dominus does not appear to be an artificial being. He has visible human skin, and he seems to wear a mask and have replaced one of his arms with a prosthetic, so that he can look more like the blue-gray Orokin perfection depicted in the original storybook. He doesn't seem to be actually made of void-stuff like the other denizens of his realm. - It's also shown that Dominus was aboard the Zariman with the drifter, and that he felt isolated or excluded, and he clings to his Tales of Duviri stories and toy as a means of coping with the extreme trauma of the Zariman incident, which resulted in him emotionally manifesting a void-stuff recreation of Duviri into reality, which has mostly protected him since. - Duviri is largely isolated from the rest of the void, the influence of the 'Great Indifference' / 'The Man in the Wall' seems to be repulsed by the power Dominus has over his corner of the void. However, Dominus' influence has slowly waned over the untold cycles of his stories that have played out, leading to most of the islands of Duviri already having been swallowed again by the void or cast off voluntarily by Dominus after they were changed by outside influences. In the dark corners and outer reaches of Duviru (e.g. undercroft), the realm is actively corrupting and melting away. - Dominus is stated to be a Tenno by Teshin. Considering that the Drifter is able to gain similar or even equivalent power over Duviri as time goes on, this appears to be true. - The Drifter is the Operator from a timeline where he wasn't "saved" from the Zariman. It's heavily implied that the 'deal' the young Tenno made with the Man in the Wall saved everyone but himself (source: tablet on Duviri). This would mean that in the Drifter's timeline, he shook the devil's hand, stayed marooned in the void, without gaining void abilities, while the other children became linked to the void, escaped the zariman, and eventually became the Tenno of his timeline. In the Operator's timeline, he refused the devil's offer, and some other deal was struck, probably with a different child, that resulted in the Operator being saved from the Zariman and gaining void abilities. - Dominus says that he created Duviri "for" the Drifter. They obviously have some sort of special connection. It could be as simple as Dominis keeping Drifter in the story loop as a means of shielding him from whims of the void. I know that's a huge wall of text, but I have a point to make. Most people seem to believe that Dominus is the Drifter. I have a couple problems with that idea. 1: Warframe has a multiverse problem. If Dominus is the Drifter, it begs the question, from what point in his life, and from what timeline is he from? We have seen the Operator and the Drifter exist in the void simultaneously, but it's made pretty clear that only one of them can exist in normal space at a time, and that they have some kind of special connection created by the point of departure between their timelines, so they're not swapping places with infinite versions of themselves, there's only the Operator we know, and the Drifter we know, and all they can do is trade places. If the Dominus is some third iteration of the same character, that seems to break this dynamic, and implies that yet more void #*!%ery could cause Dominus to also become connected to our game's reality, and swap places with the Operator. If it's not decided _exactly_ how externalism works and if those rules are not followed _to the letter_, Warframe's story could jump the shark entirely and become yet another multiverse narrative where there are no rules, and thus undercuts all messages of the story and eliminates the meaning of anything that happens. Therefore, I think Dominus being the Drifter would be problematic for the game's narrative, and discussing his identity is actually very important. We shouldn't just say "ehhh void magic" and wave our hands, because void magic is actually a load-bearing plot structure here, and it needs to be internally consistent to keep the plot from collapsing on itself. 2: Döppelgangers. How do they work. We've obviously seen Wally imitate our form (and Albrecht Entrati's form), and other void- entities like the Holdfasts on the Zariman can appear and act very human. Therefore, it's not impossible that Dominus is not the Drifter, but is a reflection of him, particularly his childhood trauma, manifested by the void but seemingly possessing separate agency from the both the Drifter and the rest of the void. This would explain why he appears to be human, but the Drifter is A-ok with leaving him in the void playing his role, rather than trying to wake him up to the reality of the Zariman and convince him to change in some way. If he's a void entity, even one fashioned in the likeness of us, it would be perfectly reasonably to leave him be in the void. 3: It is possible that Dominus is an entirely different child from the Zariman, who has rejected or avoided the possibility of rescue and either stayed with or returned to the marooned Drifter. This would also explain why he created Duviri to "protect" the Drifter, and why the Drifter doesn't seem to have a strong memory or understanding of Tales of Duviri despite Dominus' obsessive recreation of it. The only problem with this theory is that the Drifter is content with leaving Dominus adrift in the void, clawing to maintain control over his dying realm. If he were another survivor of the Zariman, you would expect that the Drifter would want to help him escape this prison of his own making. One way to test this would be to see if changing the Drifter/Operator skin tones changes the color of Dominus' exposed skin. If the devs thought to include that, would be an epic reveal. If you managed to read through this novel of an OP, what do you think? Personally, I think Dominus Thrax makes the most sense as a void-entity derived from the Drifter's experience surviving the Zariman incident, as opposed to actually being the Drifter from another point in his timeline or another timeline altogether, or as opposed to being someone else who also survived his Zariman incident. Do you agree with my assessment? Do you see any intriguing possible identities for him besides the ones I've mentioned?