Lore Discussion: Warframe Origins

[RyanGo]

Post-The Sacrifice-discussion, so stop reading if you don't want to be spoiled for that quest or the ones leading up to it

Ever since completing the sacrifice I've been really interested in the lore behind the true nature of the Warframes themselves, that they used to be actual people infected with the Helminth Strain of the infestation. This part especially is what I've been thinking about

Quote

We took our greatest, volunteers or not, and polluted them with these cultured reagents. They transformed. They became Infested ... but only just. Their skin blossomed into sword-steel. Their organs, interlinked with untold resilience. 

So from the "skin blossomed into sword steel" it might suggest that all of what we see on the outside of the warframe used to be skin. But there are definitely a lot of frames that have what look like clothes: Frost, Mesa, Harrow, limbo etc. In my mind this feels like there are one of two possibilites:

1. Everything we see was skin but perhaps the memory of what the previously human person used to wear most often somehow had an effect on what they looked like as a warframe. Whatever clothes they had on didn't matter. This was my first theory, but what I think is much more plausible is that
2. The clothes that the people were wearing at the time of infection also became infested and fused with the person, likely also becoming armored in the process. After all, we've seen how the infestation can even affect robots, what can it not infest?

I think the second possibility is the most interesting because

• It makes a lot of sense why so many Warframes seem like they have clothes.
• Why the cloth-like parts of Warframe never seem to wear and tear (because they are also steel-like infestation).
• This isn't to say that every part of the person was covered in clothes, skin that wasn't covered was probably what Ballas referred to in the quote above. Which parts were bare skin and which parts were clothes seem to be suggested by the color maps
• Under this lens, you can interpret what other frames that aren't as clearly clothed were wearing at the time. 
  • Kohra and ember stood out to me because at first glance you can't distinguish what might have been clothes, but if you color things a certain way you can see Khora had a sort of jacket/robe and Ember prime has this vest like garment. Just two examples, but seeing as nothing is confirmed I leave the rest to your imagination. 
• The connection between their appearance and their theme/abilities is much clearer since it also suggests what that person used to be.
  • Atlas has monk-like garb, harrow has his priest getup, Mesa has her cowgirl thing, limbo is in a tux (complete with a hat), Frost has a cold-weather coat, Nezha looks like Nezha, and Vauban has a space suit.
  • Also frames with hoods like Nekros and Ivara
• This last point is debatable but you can also take guesses as to which of the frames were "volunteers" and which were not.
  • Warframes like Excalibur, Nyx, Ash, Mag, Loki and Rhino etc. don't have things clearly resembling clothes, so it's possible they were the first batch of volunteers who wore some kinds of lab jumpsuits. Yes these were also the first frames that DE made, but let's at least try to come up with a lore-related explanation 😛
  • The rest of the frames that do have clothes may have been forcibly infected in what they were wearing at the time either after being abducted or maybe just poisoned as they went about their normal lives. That or they noticed that clothes also became infested and decided that if they were going to be transformed maybe for life, they might as well wear something they liked.

Admittedly there are some holes with this theory such as why some people have seemingly anachronistic clothing during the orokin age, but hey Vay Hek was wearing a powdered wig to emulate the the victorian era in an official comic.
Also not sure how alternate helmets fit into this. Either way, seeing as DE has made it clear in the past that even tennogen skins should avoid having face-like helmets, I guess the Helminth strain really doesn't care for recognizable facial features. 
Also primes vs not primes vs alternate skins??

Overall this has just been something I've been thinking about while I play Warframe, and I just wanted to put it out there. I would be so curious to see what the people looked like before they became Warframes but who knows if we'll ever get that. The best we have for now are the fan-arts where they have human faces. 

TL;DR I think frames look the way they do because the clothes the humans were wearing at the time of infection became part of them. 

[(PSN)VenuxCore5]

Only Excal Umbra was made this way btw. But I like your theory.

The other Warframes were specifically made the way they are.

[RyanGo]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)VenuxCore5 said:

Only Excal Umbra was made this way btw. But I like your theory.

The other Warframes were specifically made the way they are.

It was my impression the excal umbra was made as a special punishment for umbra. I think the unique thing about umbra was the single burning memory as opposed to creation by an infested person.

Even the Ballas quote I mentioned above seems to suggest there were more than just one person infected with the helminth strain:

Quote

We took our greatest, volunteers or not, and polluted them with these cultured reagents. They transformed. They became Infested ... but only just. Their skin blossomed into sword-steel. Their organs, interlinked with untold resilience. 

All these reference a plural number of people, unless you mean all these people were made into excalibur umbras? 

[--F--NerevarCM]

11 minutes ago, RyanGo said:

It was my impression the excal umbra was made as a special punishment for umbra. I think the unique thing about umbra was the single burning memory as opposed to creation by an infested person.

Even the Ballas quote I mentioned above seems to suggest there were more than just one person infected with the helminth strain:

And you're right. I don't know where people saw that Umbra is the first Warframe or the only one made from a "volunteer"

Edited October 10, 2018 by -SDM-NerevarCM

[(PSN)VenuxCore5]

But it is the only one that has a mind of its own. Umbra was made to be a soldier on its own but the other warframes were made to be conduits for the existing tenno power.

[Lixon99]

Well alad v have look inside warframe and no body is in there so no?

[Loza03]

1 hour ago, (PS4)VenuxCore5 said:

But it is the only one that has a mind of its own. Umbra was made to be a soldier on its own but the other warframes were made to be conduits for the existing tenno power.

From Ballas's words "Even I make mistakes", it seems that Umbra's sentience was not intentional, but in his specific case, a side-effect of Ballas suppressing the memories not related to his final moments and keeping those memories forefront, presumably leading the resulting frame to maintain independent control.

Initially all frames were like Umbra, only more feral. This is evident from the Vitruvian entries which talk about how they created frames initially without the Tenno, and how they turned on the Orokin. They attempted a vast number of experiments to get them to behave, but they always fought back. They were free from what Ballas called 'The Infested Madness', the hive mind, but if Rhino Prime's codex is anything to go by, the creatures were animalistic, as well as nigh-unstoppable as they raged through everything they saw, although they did have memories. However, one researcher noticed that the presence of Tenno calmed the creatures, and proved it by causing one to break into the room they were kept in when it escaped, which was likely a part of their transference therapy. Most likely, the Tenno's dreams turned to it and helped calm it down.

From that point on, Ballas created the frames in conjunction with the Tenno's 'therapy', likely as amalgams of the original host, orokin tech, the Tenno's own dreams and his designs, with help from other specialists where necessary, for example Silvana, who specialised in biology, and probably had a hand in frames like Nidus, Oberon and of course, Titania. Margulis also seems to have been involved - given her role as an Archimedean, which seems to be similar to a historian, she may well have contributed to the cultural connections several frames have. A few were able to twist this process however - Mirage for example, implanted her own personality, and given Limbo's mannerisms and intellect, I would imagine he did something similar. Additionally, aspects of the Tenno also Imprinted on the Frame - Harrow was evidently designed to be the priestly, noble, no-nonsense type, but he does perform various actions in his idle animations in line with Autistic 'stimming' (fidgeting motions, particularly those involving spinning), which he most likely picked up from Rell, who was confirmed to be Autistic.

[(PSN)wintersfrozen]

6 hours ago, (PS4)VenuxCore5 said:

But it is the only one that has a mind of its own. Umbra was made to be a soldier on its own but the other warframes were made to be conduits for the existing tenno power.

I don't think that's true. Many of the warframes were made prior to the tenno being used as would be pilots as evidenced by Rhino Primes codex entry. That they were all made from humans is further supported by Ballas during several of the Prime frame videos and supported again in the sacrifice. All the warframes were made to be soldiers but being made form people they could not be mass produced. Unlike the other frames Umbra recalls who he was before becoming a warframe this is what makes him unique (for the moment at least). It is unclear if the other warframes know who they were prior to the virus or not.
.

Spoiler

Red lights flashing on stark, white walls. Davis is running ahead of me, dropping his notes. We're running for our lives. The fear gives me a strange perspective - I'm out of my body. I've forgotten how I got here. I don't recognize this place.

Davis and I slam pinned against a cell door and he shouts at me. I give him a dumb look. I can't hear him, the sirens, anything, only the muffled throb of terror in my head. I turn away from Davis down the hall and I see it. The hulking mass, flickering red, glinting like steel and fresh blood. Its skin changes, flowing like mercury when I'm blinded by the sudden muzzle-flashes. They do no good. The beast surges forward and the security men become crimson mist and gore.

I'm a statue, a cornered animal. A gate opens inside me and recognition floods in. I have seen this monster before. I have cut its shell and eviscerated its brothers. I have given it pain and measured its response. I have crafted then rejected countless like it. But I've never seen this beast so close, without the shield, without restraints. I have never seen it... free.

I know I will die so I just watch with curious acceptance. The beast squats down, shovelling a heap of gore into its mouth. It is watching me with vague eyes, a sense of recognition, ancestral memory. It knows who I am and what I've done. It rears up like a bear and roars, shattering the lights and casting us into darkness. I can hear it lumbering toward me, its metal fingers rending the walls, but I know I am dead. I close my eyes and stand ready to pay.

I feel the pull on my arm and realize Davis got the cell open. He tugs me into the cell beyond and I fall on my back. I see Davis standing at the open door, waiting, as the monster tears towards us.

Suddenly I could live through this I shout, "Davis, close the goddamn door!" - But he shakes his head eyes wide as moons. He shouts, "Watch!" over the roaring and rending of metal.

Then silence. Davis is panting, laughing? The beast fills the doorway, inches from him, dripping in blood, but still without violence. It stands there, looking at its hands. Davis whispers, "No one would have believed me."

I crawl up the wall to stand, opposite the door. I've never seen this cell, a cold place with an array of shelves. A morgue? "Where are we, Davis?"

"This is where they keep them. The ones from Zariman." I'm thrown, what was the Zariman? The ship that never returned? "Davis, what's going on?"

Davis turns to me, a smile forming - "What's going on is..." he turns back to the beast now silent and calm.

"...big, fat promotions."

Spoiler

• "These like-faced savages, these earth-worn mules, a vast violent ocean at our command. Yet they wither. Mired in massed steel and flesh, casting these hordes from gene molds and flock minds, we inspire nothing. Our demons of void womb must be different. Unusual. Singular. Crafted without caste, wrought of the finest ore, slender and queer.

Sight without eye. Wrath without sound.

Not a soldier, but a myth. Not a warrior... a spirit... Banshee."

"Our long deathless winter has left us numb. Our wasted animal within, ugly and gaunt, hibernates beneath our shimmering beauty. Why do these Warframes stir us so? They burn with our lost desires, lost instincts. Tenno tamed, but only just. Cast and hunted as game. Trapped and tortured, yet they remain... animals.

Less than their human seed, gnawing their limbs from the snare, devouring a banquet of suffering, obese with heat and acid... and rage.

That is why they will destroy us."

"Oh, how you suffered to become this beast. Yet you laughed at me. Others writhed and raged in the vice, but you, you played the fool. And so it was, that you distorted my design.

A sanguine trick. A murderous comedy. But no one is laughing anymore... except you.

The mere vapors of your life, shimmering still. Mirage."

 

• "The Warframes... all of them... failures. Surprised? They turned on us, just as you did. And so we had no choice but to commit them... to grave. This is all you know, Hunhow, but there is a hidden half. A secret, that lies within a place forbidden to you and your kind. I speak of the Void."

"--We had created monsters we couldn't control. We drugged them, tortured them, eviscerated them... we brutalized their minds, but it did not work. Until they came. And it was not their force of will, not their Void devilry, not their alien darkness... it was something else. It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly broken thing...and take away its pain."

 

[(XBOX)Arbalestier]

It does make sense as to why Warframes are built like special characters and not designed to actually fight a war as military hardware.  Albeit a really shoehorned reason because Warframes are mass produced but don't excel at fighting in special environments and Umbra was the only one who seemed capable of fighting sentients.

Which dampens the whole lore aspect of Tenno and Dax openly engaging Sentients.  Doesn't explain what tenno are missing to develop new warframes since you replicate everything as needed.

[Loza03]

16 hours ago, (XB1)Turaglas said:

It does make sense as to why Warframes are built like special characters and not designed to actually fight a war as military hardware.  Albeit a really shoehorned reason because Warframes are mass produced but don't excel at fighting in special environments and Umbra was the only one who seemed capable of fighting sentients.

Which dampens the whole lore aspect of Tenno and Dax openly engaging Sentients.  Doesn't explain what tenno are missing to develop new warframes since you replicate everything as needed.

I'm guessing that Dax and Tenno just brute-forced it. It's possible with the right setup. Sentients have a limited number of troops since they can't reproduce, and grow weaker every time they fragment a new fighter. Kill enough of them, and that Sentient either dies or becomes harmless.

As for why we can't develop new ones... we probably just didn't know how. Sure, we had the ingredients, but we didn't know we needed humans to make them from. And I doubt we're going to start simply because we're emotionally attached to most of the best non-Tenno fighters. I doubt we're down for turning Teshin or Clem into frames, and I'm not sure if the Bosses we fight are strong enough to make it worth it.

[(XBOX)Arbalestier]

Warframe cryopods and Helminth though.

[Loza03]

On ‎2018‎-‎10‎-‎20 at 9:08 PM, (XB1)Turaglas said:

Warframe cryopods and Helminth though.

I assume you're replying to me about making new frames? It's hard to tell since there's no quote or mention.

Well, in that case, it's possible we're turning them into Warframes. But I don't think we're producing NEW frames from them. If we are indeed using them for that purpose, it's more likely they'd be winding up as the Generic Frames we create, as opposed to brand new models. Remember, Warframes need to be made from really good fighters or really intelligent individuals to produce a frame worth using. People like Limbo, who could literally write prose out of mathematics, or Umbra, who was tough enough to be able to overcome sentient resistances with brute force.

Therefore, to make a brand-new frame, we'd need such a fighter, hence why I called out Teshin and Clem. Teshin because he's a Dax of a similar rank to Umbra (you can tell from his Helmet and how he uses a lesser, silver version of the Dax Nikana sheathes) and is presumably similarly skilled, and Clem because he's one of the top Grineer fighters. Most of the Grineer bosses get their abilities from equipment, not skill (and may also have too many cybernetics to produce a fully-infested organism, they may instead produce some kind of Warframe Mutalist), and the Sergeant is the only Corpus boss who could qualify, and he's the Sergeant.

[(XBOX)Katsuhiro 1139]

The Umbra-specific sentience aside, the presence of the Helminth strain aboard your Orbiter seems to imply that while the standard frames are created by the foundry in a combination of "wearable" biomass encased by cybernetic chassis (bio-mechanical in origin). This chassis incorporates systems and neuroptics conducive to facilitating Transference.

In simple terms, standard frames are mass-produced versions of the Prime Warframes, which were likely originally members of the Dax selectively infected for the Warframe programme (building on the Umbra project, which was an early miscalculation on Ballas' part, motivated by his outrage at having been spied on). 

I could be wrong on this, but it's how I'm reading it.