The Naga Drums

[Vapor_Spectre]

In the Octavia mission when you rescue Suda from Hunhow he plays the Naga Drums, he mentions a bit about them and their backstory yet it seems his voice lines change if you play the Naga Drums back to him. Ignoring the slight lack of continuity to it Hunhow seems to play a bigger role with the Orokin then I thought.

After going back through the mission to test my time and one day get a high score. I actually paid attention to what he was saying and began to think a little about it.

Hunhow asks if you remember the Naga Drums which is fair since the music was a big deal, and when you beat him with it he claims to control it. But to my knowledge, the Orokin controlled it and were using it as a tool to end the threat of the Tenno. Though my knowledge is hazy at best on that.

So let me ask this of my fellow Tenno out there. Did Hunhow work with the Orokin at one point in time? The beat of the Naga Drums was enough to allow him to take control over Suda and Ordis, perhaps eventually Simaris but something tells me Simaris would last the longest out of the three. So the Drum's power is pretty important, did he just copy the work of the Orokin or did he integrate like space mom did? Then again we have already seen the Lotus turn her back on us and turn into the monster so maybe before she had a change of heart she gave the secrets of the Drums up to Hunhow? (Still waiting to see how that one goes, if it doesn't end with her back to replace the annoying glitchy copy of her that just reminds me she betrayed us then I'm gonna be mad!). 

Another thing I still need to look into how Octavia's Anthem plays into countering the Naga Drums. If the Naga Drums was supposed to celebrate the decommissioning of the Tenno (As I have been told I need to confirm) then was Octavia's Anthem supposed to be for the Tenno rising again to protect the system? Or am I just grabbing at straws hoping for content to fall into my lap after playing the game for a few months and already reaching the end game...?

[novalery]

All sentient worked for the orokin before. The orokin made them

[CriticalFumble]

It wasn't the song that corrupted her, Hunhow used some kind of trick to co-opt her.  I assumed it had something to do with her not doing normal maintenance, possibly because it effected her memory and/or her appreciation of music in general.  The Anthem itself actually brings her back from under Hunhow's influence with increasing effect as you correct the song in the datascape.  

As far as its use, the drums were mentioned in the Stalker codex.  It said that they were being used to celebrate the end of the war, but that the Tenno also somehow coordinated their uprising using the sound.  What that specifically means is unclear.  Possibly there were a bunch of synchronized events that the Orokin leaders were attending, so that none of them would have time to react.  Another is that the Drums were somehow Void related, a tool that the Tenno had used to coordinate and communicate without the risk of Sentient eavesdropping, and they used that as the signal to jump the Orokin.  

Of course, that whole amnesiac thing raises the question as to what specifically happened there, if it was completely voluntary or even the actual Tenno who did it.  It's safe to assume that the Lotus wanted the Orokin gone so they couldn't abuse the Tenno any further, but Hunhow had to have been asleep at that point or the Sentient forces would have already overrun the system.  

[evilChair]

13 hours ago, CriticalFumble said:

It wasn't the song that corrupted her, Hunhow used some kind of trick to co-opt her.  I assumed it had something to do with her not doing normal maintenance, possibly because it effected her memory and/or her appreciation of music in general.  The Anthem itself actually brings her back from under Hunhow's influence with increasing effect as you correct the song in the datascape.  

As far as its use, the drums were mentioned in the Stalker codex.  It said that they were being used to celebrate the end of the war, but that the Tenno also somehow coordinated their uprising using the sound.  What that specifically means is unclear.  Possibly there were a bunch of synchronized events that the Orokin leaders were attending, so that none of them would have time to react.  Another is that the Drums were somehow Void related, a tool that the Tenno had used to coordinate and communicate without the risk of Sentient eavesdropping, and they used that as the signal to jump the Orokin.  

Of course, that whole amnesiac thing raises the question as to what specifically happened there, if it was completely voluntary or even the actual Tenno who did it.  It's safe to assume that the Lotus wanted the Orokin gone so they couldn't abuse the Tenno any further, but Hunhow had to have been asleep at that point or the Sentient forces would have already overrun the system.  

When you pick up the Mandachord body you get this:

Suda: A Mandachord part! For most Cephalons, music is thought to be a glitch of evolution and language. It seems to short-circuit an organic mind's pattern-recognition function... a confusion they find... pleasurable.

Music seems to be the secondary basis of Orokin culture, as we encounter so many different instruments used by them that the number escapes me (the Mandachord, the Hydraulus, the Music-box hard-drives in the music puzzle room, the Shawzin, the Naga drums). The Lua spy mission also has that one Simon Says puzzle where you have to jump on the drums to unlock the last door in the sequence, and I take those switches to have been modelled after the Naga drum.

Hunhow's fragments, too, seem to "sing", especially the Oculysts. The reverb effect that they have seems to imply some kind of choir-singing (hivemind/mind-hive coordination?).

Octavia's abilities are centered around coordinated fighting, which makes her the perfect candidate to have initiated the Big Shanking. Her energy-refund passive ties her abilities (and so, music) even more to the Void. (Energy is already Void related - Corrupted Vor's line, "I am energy, and I can not be destroyed.", Energising dash, and Harrow's 3rd, which supplies energy/kill, coupled with his description: "Enchain the tainted, silence their heresy, and deliver their tormented souls unto the Void's embrace." seem to point in the direction that it's directly derived from the Void)

There's a constellation of things here: souls/minds, music (and by extent, dance, as seen with the nartas, especially the breakdance one), and energy all seem to be correlated to some extent to each other and to the Void, and it's highly possible that fiddling with void-energy (which is also the channel for transference) seems to provide a control override and cut off the operator from the frame. There's a clue in Vor's Prize: "The Lotus cannot allow the Warframe to be captured, as losing them is bad enough already. She surges the Warframe's systems remotely, allowing the Tenno to fight back against the soldiers nearby using their innate powers." If this is true, then it only demanded one warframe (an Octavia) to get jacked for literally anyone to fell the whole population of the Orokin.

Spoiler

Anyways, none of this explains how and why the Lotus was able to survive as a sentient in a void-barrel on Lua for centuries or milennia.

 

[Vapor_Spectre]

On 2019-03-04 at 1:01 PM, evilChair said:

Anyways, none of this explains how and why the Lotus was able to survive as a sentient in a void-barrel on Lua for centuries or milennia.

She said she sacrifices her "Sentience" didn't she? Left her weakened or something, I don't remember the specifics but I believe she can't be a Sentient anymore. Though that doesn't explain how she still BETRAYS US by turning back into a sentient abomination before flying off goD DAMN IT SPACE MOM!

[(PSN)I_I_Hope_I_I]

Okaaaaay, everyone is getting a bit mixed.

Lemme explain everything : The Naga Drums are a Orokin instrument, the Naga Drums were being used to celebrate the end of the War, wen the Tenno coordinated their attack on the Empire whit the last beats of the Naga Drums, lore wise the Tenno used Octavia's Anthem to coordinate themselves during the War against the Sentients, this can be backed up by the fact that Hunhow says: 

"The Naga drum sounded, subversive, unknown, coordinating the slaughter of your masters across the gap! Did you end our war? Or merely set the stage for the next?"

Meaning not only did we use Octavia's Anthem to send the Sentients back to the Gap, but we also use it to coordinate the revenge of Margulis.

Now about your questions:

Yes, Hunhow has "worked" whit the Orokin Empire, the Sentients were first made to be terraforming machines that would end up dead after their work was complete because of the void energy in the solar rails, but, after turning their back at the Orokin, Ballas helps Hunhow giving away our location.

Octavia's Anthem uses Naga Drums on its composition, the Naga Drums weren't used to control Suda, they were used to release her from Hunhow, why ? Simple, because Suda was a Orokin Archemidian, so Octavia's Anthem reminds her of her past, making her free herself from Hunhow.

How Hunhow entered Suda would be the better question, but it seems like it was because Suda (just like Ordis) starts to remember her past (She even calls Simaris by Ermis, which kinda hints that maybe Simaris was also a Orokin himself and that him and Suda had known each other) which could have made her vulnerable and left a backdoor entry into her precepts.

[evilChair]

11 hours ago, DandereAkali said:

She said she sacrifices her "Sentience" didn't she? Left her weakened or something, I don't remember the specifics but I believe she can't be a Sentient anymore. Though that doesn't explain how she still BETRAYS US by turning back into a sentient abomination before flying off goD DAMN IT SPACE MOM!

Sentients who cross the Void become unable to reproduce. Hunhow's fragments that you find in the Void in Octavia's Anthem can't persist for long even when cloaked with Suda's own semi-Void cephalon "structures". In CoH Palladino still refers to her as "Great Sentient Queen".

She was able to "betray" (it's still shaky what her motives are, and for all we've been given she might be trying to broker peace in Tau) us thanks to a narcissistic psychopath (Ballas) attempting to take "Margulis" (of whom he knows is dead because he personally activated the Jade Light) for himself, but only managing to fry the helmet which kept her from being reabsorbed into the sentient hivemind, which was literally the one single thing she was terrified of the most (see: Natah). She has always been a "sentient" as far as the definition goes, but never found it comfortable to be in the same basket with her "parents".

Ballas, of course, thinks with his nuts all the time and is never able to accept responsibility for his action, which is the mindset that gave us Chimera in the first place. Being the slimeball that he is, he immediately shifts the blame at Lotus for all the S#&$ that he's caused himself: he permitted the creation of the sentients, one of whom became his "fake Margulis"; literally seconds before that he killed the actual Margulis because of course he didn't wanna warrant for her or pull strings to save her as literally the 8th most powerful creature in the known universe; he killed Umbra's son and thought that he could get away with acts of incredible cruelty without getting shivved, and then in Chimera we see him S#&$talking Lotus as if he didn't know that his beloved Margulis #2 was never the actual Margulis.

Ballas, the man who has a mind warped enough to have caused everything in Warframe and still shift blame after that, is somehow taken to be more of a reputable source than what we're seeing with our own eyes, mostly because any more level-headed interpretation wouldn't fuel enough fandom-wide outrage and hysteria. And let's face it, "hysterical fandom" is about the same kind of redundant phrasing as "wet water".

We have Ballas blaming his murder victim/crush for manipulating the Zariman kids (as if he ever gave a damn about them) and him (because he's literally an insane man), Lotus' M o t h e r blaming the Zariman kids for manipulating the Lotus in the TNW trailer, and so far nobody's come to the conclusion that the Zariman kids and the Lotus are an unhappy family getting torn apart by a manipulative narcissist who can't accept any facts on one side, and on the other, the Lotus' jealous mother who will not permit her kid to grow up and leave home.

[(PSN)I_I_Hope_I_I]

1 hour ago, evilChair said:

In CoH Palladino still refers to her as "Great Sentient Queen".

I found that really... weird ?

Like.. the Red Veil speakers knew Lotus was a Sentient and they chose to keep their mouth shut ? Or did all the Syndicates get informed about what the Lotus is after she reveals it to us ? Like, Paladino knew about Margulis and the Holy Children before all other Tenno knew, and she chose to keep that hidden, like... why ?

[Vapor_Spectre]

7 hours ago, (PS4)d_HopeCraft_b said:

I found that really... weird ?

Like.. the Red Veil speakers knew Lotus was a Sentient and they chose to keep their mouth shut ? Or did all the Syndicates get informed about what the Lotus is after she reveals it to us ? Like, Paladino knew about Margulis and the Holy Children before all other Tenno knew, and she chose to keep that hidden, like... why ?

Maybe Rell told them? We don't know if he did or didn't have access to the information but if anyone did tell them without the Lotus wanting it to be known it would be Rell. Begs the question of if Rell knew she was Sentient but did nothing about it while he could still fight or even if he could. Can Rell in his ghostly invulnerable state fight a Sentient? Or would it just be a wet noodle fight where the two couldn't hurt eachother?... He could have just chosen not to act thinking Lotus to be some area of good he didn't need to focus on Sentient or not?

[SgtHotPepper]

For me the Naga Drums are not only a instrument but a poetic name to some communication device.

Probably a faster that light system.

Orokin need them to coordinate their empire and transmit important news and directives.

The Naga Drums use the Void ? Maybe.

Are they tied to a musical code ? It's possible.

Are they a way to directly communicate between cephalons ? Possible. (And maybe they can bypasss some types of "firewalls" as a priority communication).

 

The drums are used to announce the victory simultanous to all locations of the orokin empire so it's a perfect way for tennos to be sure to act at the same time and dont let a chance that a pocket of resistance of orokin survive and exact vengeance upon them.

 

It's only my personnal interpretation but this way it's make sense why the Drums are used to coordinate the onslaught of orokin and how Hunhow can corrupt cephalons through them.

[evilChair]

6 hours ago, SgtHotPepper said:

For me the Naga Drums are not only a instrument but a poetic name to some communication device.

Probably a faster that light system.

Orokin need them to coordinate their empire and transmit important news and directives.

The Naga Drums use the Void ? Maybe.

Are they tied to a musical code ? It's possible.

Are they a way to directly communicate between cephalons ? Possible. (And maybe they can bypasss some types of "firewalls" as a priority communication).

 

The drums are used to announce the victory simultanous to all locations of the orokin empire so it's a perfect way for tennos to be sure to act at the same time and dont let a chance that a pocket of resistance of orokin survive and exact vengeance upon them.

 

It's only my personnal interpretation but this way it's make sense why the Drums are used to coordinate the onslaught of orokin and how Hunhow can corrupt cephalons through them.

1) we probably have seen the naga drums, or naga drum-lookalikes in one spy vault on the first spoiler location:

Spoiler

2) if those really are naga drums, then it's quite likely that these switches that look like them are designed with a lookalike purpose in mind. since orokin higher-ups used genetic markers to interface with machines, more physical security overrides such as this one were put in place in case of system interface failure (a real possibility given that physics says that the finer the system, the less durable it is). If Naga drums therefore have some kind of cultural association with backdoors and backup plans, then it's no wonder that they could be used for subversive purposes.

And speaking of them as communication devices, so far the lore we have forbids FTL travel/communication, but the Void seems to be a kind of wormhole-like shortcut. If Naga drums have miniature void-gates in them, then you basically have a shortcut where all the drums are at a mutual distance of perhaps just inches across the Void, no matter their distance in realspace. Same goes for the formasword (you know, that spoilery thing), which seems to have a kind of ring at the top of its hilt that looks suspiciously like a miniature void gate.

[evilChair]

sorry for thread necromancy, but i think i caught a very, very important detail.

if octavia was a frame integral to tenno coordination via music (as said by hunhow in the final part of octavia's anthem), then there also must be a reason why the shape of her helmet recurs as the synathid's design:

the orokin may have considered this specific shape to have a deeply symbolic value connected with control, coordination and maintenance of order.

[Vapor_Spectre]

Thread necromancy only really matters if you don't have anything of value to add. That seems pretty important, though I wonder how many other frames share such importance. Sure Octavia has a lot of roots in the Orokin world but I wonder about some of the others. Perhaps with how much DE pushed Excalibur as the face of warframe there is more to him as well? Or is it just Octavia? I will do some more digging into that line of discussion myself later but seeing that Octavia not only has such a strong connection to the old war but the end of the Orokin perhaps other frames can shed some more light on the Orokin as well?

[evilChair]

17 hours ago, DandereAkali said:

Thread necromancy only really matters if you don't have anything of value to add. That seems pretty important, though I wonder how many other frames share such importance. Sure Octavia has a lot of roots in the Orokin world but I wonder about some of the others. Perhaps with how much DE pushed Excalibur as the face of warframe there is more to him as well? Or is it just Octavia? I will do some more digging into that line of discussion myself later but seeing that Octavia not only has such a strong connection to the old war but the end of the Orokin perhaps other frames can shed some more light on the Orokin as well?

It's likely. Syndicate questframes might be the more important ones. Already mentioned Octavia. Nidus seems to be cobbled together from what was left on the cutting room floor of the warframes project, and his relationship with Helminth is also interesting, since Helminth is often implicitly taken to be harvested for the flesh of all the frames that you build, which makes Nidus the top dog in the whole warframe family, so to speak. Titania's significance is already deeply explained in the silver grove, and she might be the only frame so far (except, maybe, also mirage) to have not gone entirely mad from helminth conversion. Harrow's quest says all.

Other questframes seem to be equally important: Lotus went "Chroma is actually real?" when she sees him for the first time, which, coupled with the fact that we don't know who controlled the original Chroma that we synthed, and the quotes about the "womb of the sky", implies that there are persons who are using transference, aren't tenno, and whom we haven't met yet. (The Stalker is one such person if one of the acolytes is to be believed). Lotus seems to have been in love with Mirage, which means that the Mirage was "authentic" and not tenno-controlled. Limbo is... Limbo, but the one important thing about him is that he can use the Rift, which seems to be the same thing as Wally's "Wall". His new skin, the one where he looks like some kind of Battalyst, also seems to imply that the Rift allows for near-express travel between Sol and Tau, and may have been the original way the sentients had been sent there.

Also note that all frames who are "liminal" seem to have tall hats: Limbo, who can enter the rift; Revenant, whom we pull out of the land of the dead; and Harrow, who is also strongly associated with the Void. They all cross the limits of "realspace" into either the place between realspace and the Void, between realspace and the Land of the Dead (strongly implied to be the Void, though it might be a separate "layer" of it inaccessible to the living), and the last one of the three straight-out "delivers souls unto the Void" in exchange for energy and health.

So far we've seen what Umbra is and can do, but there's also the question of Excalibur Vanilla's importance. In the Vitruvian we can see the original person who went through the process, and who looks like an adolescent in a special suit. I have no doubt that that person is going to be very important down the line. Finding that specific Excalibur, in fact, might actually happen, but I doubt that we will find him alive.

One other thing of note is that Maroo might be Orokin - she seems to know that all warframes have armour for skin ("tin-stuff"), even ones that don't look like it, and she might know a lot more than she lets on. In her bazaar you can find either faction's stolen stuff in the wings of the hall, but the middle door is empty, with only a small hill of what looks like white powder on the side (could be ground-up ayatan porcelain). We have no access to the actual concourse of her relay and what's inside. She says that she "extracts" Endo from ayatan sculptures, but I have doubts about that, since we're never shown that she takes one of those things apart, or if she does, for that specific reason. Once you give her the ayatan, she gives you Endo in return, just like that, without anything in exchange, and having that in mind alongside that ayatans are basically VCR cassettes for Orokin memories, her constantly "coming across" Orokin codices, you can't come to any conclusion but that suddenly you have a woman who's exchanging pittances of Endo (that she may as well have stolen) for Orokin databanks, which gives me suspicions that she, like Alad, might be another "Orokin hiding in plain sight". In fact, I'll go right ahead and say that she might possess Oro - while other capture targets scream their lungs dry when you capture them, her capture lines are two: "Owww! It stings!" and "It kinda tickles!", implying some sort of safeguard or resistance to the process. Not to mention that she, just like the Corpus capture targets, seem to speak Orokin (=English) while everyone else in the Corpus speaks in that dubstep consonant salad. Not to mention that she does fulfil at least four of the seven Orokin principles - cunning, agility, speed, stealth. And probably the most definitive proof is that she had interfaced with Orokin machinery for Tyl Regor's money: only Orokin were able to do that. Everyone else would simply walk up to a no-sell terminal.

[Vapor_Spectre]

I know it isn't entirely even related anymore but since this seems to have expanded to a whole Lore based threat. "Hey Kiddo" is what the man in the wall says occasionally donning your own visage in your orbiter. It is also what your operator's father said to you during one of your flashbacks regaining your operator powers in the War Within. Makes me wonder if the connection between those of the 10-0 and the man in the walls is stronger then we think?

Otherwise, I also did some more digging on Maroo as you mentioned and came to have a few theories on the matter. The Orokin never truly die (Unless they are killed by a good old tenno) but can choose forms to take control over. We see this in the mountain depicted in the War Within (Yea replayed the quest a few times to truly understand how it worked). It seems that the Orokin were quite fond of their mind over their body, since they were able to change forms so easily as hinted at with the grineer queens being remnants of Orokin that weren't killed (Still need to look into how the Tenno even in their big attack failed at killing a few of the cockroach-like Orokin). There is a chance that not all of the Golden Lords were lacking in humility, it was clear that the first Lotus was Orokin but replaced by a Sentient, both were benevolent (Until Natah left us in The Sacrifice). So it isn't impossible to think that Orokin can't be good people. Just few and far between.

Another reason she could be an Orokin is that besides her vast knowledge of Orokin ships and derelicts she seems to be quite content sending us Tenno out and giving as you mentioned a free conversion of the Ayatan into Endo. Ignoring other methods of gaining the sculptures for a moment she stands to gain nothing from it unless the Endo is just a currency and she is buying and stockpiling sculptures clearly valuable even to the Orokin judging my how well secured they are. But I suspect the treasures themselves hold more then she is letting on. If left alone the sculptures will act as perpetual motion machines given all sockets are filled. Perhaps they are some form of Orokin battery? It would give her more incentive to get ahold of them to do... something? I still don't have a clue on that because we have little information to go on.

So I would assume Maroo is one of these few good Orokin or at least was planned to be at a future point in time but was scrapped. The main reason I say that storyline was scrapped is that not only has it not gone anywhere besides a few small hints it seems like she has been stuck in the role of just looking for Ayatan treasures. It would be nice if she played a bigger role but it doesn't seem like she will nor is it being hinted that she may play a bigger role in the story. Orokin or not she is likely just going to remain a background character that will occasionally give you a hint at Ayatan treasure.

Though I am still gathering notes on other things, I will keep this thread posted if I make another breakthrough.