Lore discussion: Grendel's Leverian entry supports that there's only 1 of each WF

[Troposphere6]

There is also the fact in the Grendel exhibit the piece of Gauss is non-critical and there for could have been lost without the death of the frame. Though I agree with the single progenitor for each frame and a multitude of near identical copies as it is clear the orokin had the technology to exactly replicate people 

[JackHargreav]

It is possible that there was only one warframe per operator. At least for now.

We don't know how many tenno are there. Could be just a few hundred could be a million.

If there is only a few hundred tenno out there, It's more than possible that there was only one frame. And a frame were given to the tenno who could control them best.

If we are talking about thousands, It's more than possible that we had more of the same frames. And some frames needed certain setups to be as efficient as possible.

Maybe Grendel and Gauss were much more effective together so using them at the same time was a must.

I imagine Hildryn and Wisp was the same. While Hildryn is good for boosting shield, Wisp is good at boosting health. So maybe these two were also a pair that helped each other.

[Troposphere6]

1 minute ago, JackHargreav said:

It is possible that there was only one warframe per operator. At least for now.

We don't know how many tenno are there. Could be just a few hundred could be a million.

If there is only a few hundred tenno out there, It's more than possible that there was only one frame. And a frame were given to the tenno who could control them best.

If we are talking about thousands, It's more than possible that we had more of the same frames. And some frames needed certain setups to be as efficient as possible.

Maybe Grendel and Gauss were much more effective together so using them at the same time was a must.

I imagine Hildryn and Wisp was the same. While Hildryn is good for boosting shield, Wisp is good at boosting health. So maybe these two were also a pair that helped each other.

I'm fairly sure there's less than a thousand tenno, just from the context clues in the lore as it's made quite clear that the children of the zariman 10-0 knew each other personally. Margulis also seems to have had a personal relationship with each of them.

Spoiler

you know Tenno slaughter the orokin when they killed Margulis 

Neither of which is probable if there were millions or really even thousands of tenno.

[JackHargreav]

13 minutes ago, Troposphere6 said:

I'm fairly sure there's less than a thousand tenno, just from the context clues in the lore as it's made quite clear that the children of the zariman 10-0 knew each other personally. Margulis also seems to have had a personal relationship with each of them.

  Reveal hidden contents

you know Tenno slaughter the orokin when they killed Margulis 

Neither of which is probable if there were millions or really even thousands of tenno.

That's a good point. 

Now that you say it, even Lotus said, all tenno is known to her, with only one exception, obviously.

So I guess there are a few hundred tenno. And it's probably not more than a thousand.

Edited November 13, 2019 by JackHargreav

[CephalonDizzy]

43 minutes ago, JackHargreav said:

That's a good point. 

Now that you say it, even Lotus said, all tenno is known to her, with only one exception, obviously.

So I guess there are a few hundred tenno. And it's probably not more than a thousand.

Petulant mode engaged: Well how can Lotus be so sure that all Tenno are known to her if she can't account for the ones she doesn't know about? Could be more than just Rell she isn't counting

 

In all seriousness, I wouldn't be so sure that just because all the Tenno know each other it must mean there are few in number. Since the Zariman was a colony ship, I wouldn't rule out the possibility there were many thousands of children aboard.  It could very well be that each Tenno can personally know this many other people due to their mutual connection to the void.  Rell, due to his unique mental condition, wasn't able / refused to connect to the void in quite the same way leading him to be shunned by some and completely unknown to the others. 

While we know Lotus claims to know all Tenno, we aren't sure if it's because Margulis personally knew all of them (which would limit the number of Tenno to a reasonably small number) or because Natah was able to track them (in which case there could be literal millions, considering how even present day computers can index a huge numbers of records).

Edited November 13, 2019 by CephalonDizzy

[Skaleek]

If i remember correctly the rhino palatino? skin references multiple rhino's as some sort of temple guard? Maybe i made it up in my head, honestly. Don't quote me. It was always my thought that there were common warframes, for which there existed many, and some unique frames, whereby circumstance created them, ie: revenent.

The dev's basically said about Valkyr prime it made no sense lorewise. Pretty sure it was on a devstream, once again i have no source so, maybe it never happened.

Edited November 13, 2019 by Skaleek

[(XBOX)Demon Intellect]

1 hour ago, Troposphere6 said:

I'm fairly sure there's less than a thousand tenno, just from the context clues in the lore as it's made quite clear that the children of the zariman 10-0 knew each other personally. Margulis also seems to have had a personal relationship with each of them.

  Hide contents

you know Tenno slaughter the orokin when they killed Margulis 

Neither of which is probable if there were millions or really even thousands of tenno.

The 10-0 was a colony ship though. So it would make sense to send a large number of people. Dont get me wrong a lot of them probably were people who didn't have kids but were at good age to repopulate. If you read the ember codex, kids weren't supposed to be on the ship, meaning they were likely born on the ship, so who knows how many it could be. Probably in the hundreds, doubt over 1000.

[EmberStar]

There's also the Gauss Leverian referring to the alternate helmet as "not a standard dress helm."  That implies that there's a "standard" uniform.

It seems likely that each Warframe was designed as a unique individual, but once perfected they could be copied.  This is more or less directly stated in the missions where we are rewarded with new Warframes (such as Limbo, Atlas, Nidus and Mirage.)  We find a circumstance where at least ONE of that Warframe existed and was destroyed, possibly in a way that they couldn't return from.  As an example, the individual Mirage specifically was apparently captured by a Sentient and imprisoned in a way that made it impossible for Lotus to sever the link, and then obliterated before she could be rescued.  But we progress the quest by constructing a copy of that Warframe (with the option to claim the fully functional restored copy afterwards.)  In the comic featuring Admiral Vor, Lotus *does* sever the link to the captured Excalibur to prevent Vor from trying to somehow dominate/enslave him.  This happens *prior* to the events of the tutorial mission, meaning that neither the Mag nor the Excalibur in that story can be the ones that you (the player) can choose to wake up with at the start of the tutorial.

There's also the cinematic where a group of Tenno are trying to rescue a Mag who has been captured by Alad V.  At the start of it, an Excalibur variant (although not the default skin) is torn to pieces by Alad V and sold to the highest bidders as spare parts.  If there is only ONE of each Warframe, then Excalibur is canonically dead.  Except that the intro trailer to The Second Dream (which they showed publicly and therefore isn't exactly a spoiler) shows the Stalker being annoyed that no matter how many times he slays individual Warframes, they seem to refuse to remain dead.  "You cut off their heads, yet they rise again." says the Ominous Voice.

There are at least two mission types that make it clear that it is possible for a Warframe to be lost to a Tenno without necessarily harming the Tenno.  One is a spoiler, but the other is the rare cases where someone is actually captured by a Zanuka Hunter.  If you fail at the "prison break" mission (or get disconnected or whatever,) that Warframe is locked in your arsenal until you return and actually finish the mission.

As far as the Leverian caretaker referring to the Warframes as if they are unique individuals, that could simply be an accidental mistake on his part.  Judging from a lot of the dialogue that's meant to happen prior to The Second Dream, such as the tutorial mission with Vor, most people have a very unclear idea what Tenno are.  Most seem to assume that "Warframe" and "Tenno" are basically the same thing - ancient Orokin super warriors who never speak and have powers that defy all logic.  A Warframe is a Tenno, because only a Tenno can wield a Warframe.

Even the one example we have of what is definitely a "unique" Warframe seems to indicate that his nature is part of his design, and something that can be duplicated if the blueprint happened to be shared.

Spoiler

Specifically Excalibur Umbra from "The Sacrifice."  Ballas destroys him during the opening cutscene - you start the mission by scanning the (almost completely vaporized) remains and then trying to find a way to extrapolate the blueprint.  His ability to function independently from an Operator is a result of the circumstances of his conversion, and the memories that torment him are apparently hard-wired into his new form.  The way the mission progresses also makes it clear that you still retain your original Warframes and can switch between them as you choose, since Ordis freaks out when the Operator decides to eventually try to face Umbra *without* one.  The fact that multiple Umbras can exist in the same mission could be "just a game mechanic," or it could be a result of the Chosen One (player character) choosing to share the design with other Tenno after recovering it.

The entire nature of Tenno and Warframes "in universe" seems to be deliberately murky, and you can probably create as much "Game Theorist" nonsense as you want without any of it actually being totally correct or incorrect.

[Traumtulpe]

As I recall the story bits, each Warframe was originally a living warrior, infected with a particular strain of the infestation (some voluntarily, others not so much) to enhance they combat potential. All of the originals appear to be long destroyed though, we merely recreate them.

[EmberStar]

9 minutes ago, (XB1)Demon Intellect said:

The 10-0 was a colony ship though. So it would make sense to send a large number of people. Dont get me wrong a lot of them probably were people who didn't have kids but were at good age to repopulate. If you read the ember codex, kids weren't supposed to be on the ship, meaning they were likely born on the ship, so who knows how many it could be. Probably in the hundreds, doubt over 1000.

The individual in the Ember codex was pointing out that there shouldn't have been children on a military ship.  Before the guards carried her off, the person she was talking to simply replied to the effect that there *weren't* children on a military ship.  Which could imply that it's a coverup, or could simply mean that it wasn't a military ship.  We also have no idea of the scale of the Zariman, or how big the crew was.  Considering that the Orokin had enough space magic to give Mars a breathable atmosphere and also turn the burning, crushing acidic hell that is Venus into ICE, the Zariman could potentially have been carrying a crew of hundreds of thousands or *millions* of colonists.  Even now, hundreds or thousands of years after the fall of the Orokin Empire the Corpus and Grineer are constantly fighting in conflicts where they apparently throw *millions* of soldiers at each other.  Maybe that's an exaggeration.  Or maybe Cetus is really a city of thousands and we only *see* about thirty people because that's as much as the game engine can handle, and it's enough to get the point across.  (If Cetus really is that small, just the random Ostrons standing around in any given Relay would be a huge chunk of the population.)

[(XBOX)Demon Intellect]

2 minutes ago, EmberStar said:

The individual in the Ember codex was pointing out that there shouldn't have been children on a military ship.  Before the guards carried her off, the person she was talking to simply replied to the effect that there *weren't* children on a military ship.  Which could imply that it's a coverup, or could simply mean that it wasn't a military ship.  We also have no idea of the scale of the Zariman, or how big the crew was.  Considering that the Orokin had enough space magic to give Mars a breathable atmosphere and also turn the burning, crushing acidic hell that is Venus into ICE, the Zariman could potentially have been carrying a crew of hundreds of thousands or *millions* of colonists.  Even now, hundreds or thousands of years after the fall of the Orokin Empire the Corpus and Grineer are constantly fighting in conflicts where they apparently throw *millions* of soldiers at each other.  Maybe that's an exaggeration.  Or maybe Cetus is really a city of thousands and we only *see* about thirty people because that's as much as the game engine can handle, and it's enough to get the point across.  (If Cetus really is that small, just the random Ostrons standing around in any given Relay would be a huge chunk of the population.)

The ship was lost for years in real time, which means who knows how long it was lost in void time, so it's very possible generations have passed. The Zariman was supposed to be a pioneer colony ship to the Tau sector, which may or may not have been at war with the indigenous populace at that time period, so I doubt theyd put millions on it.

[Lost_Cartographer]

As far as I can tell, lore wise, there's only one of each warframe, and one warframe to a Tenno, rather, there WAS only one per Tenno, but without our Orokin masters to keep us on a leash, we've zero obligation to limit our power and options like that.  And the "final product" are the normal variants.  Umbra posits that real humans were turned into warframes through a strain of the infested, and by extension it must be assumed that cloned frames COULD be made from that original source OR it didn't matter who was infested, it only mattered what the armor placed upon these people was designed to do.  We could have a female excalibur, but that model's systems were designed to manipulate minds.

Game play wise, primes are probably just a carrot on a stick.  At best in lore, ceremonial.  In general though, I doubt primes were really the originals with the normals being mere copies, as I doubt there are actually millions of Tenno unless the Duviri Paradox somehow explains how that's possible.  Today we can mass produce warframes... I mean assuming our orbiter could actually lore wise craft a warframe from scratch instead of just performing maintenance.  I mean, the Orokin don't strike me as the type to allow the Tenno to be entirely self sufficient.  But then again, WTF do we have a transference chair on the orbiter when we could control our warframes from the moon unless it was built after the fall of the empire?

[EmberStar]

Just now, (XB1)Demon Intellect said:

The ship was lost for years in real time, which means who knows how long it was lost in void time, so it's very possible generations have passed. The Zariman was supposed to be a pioneer colony ship to the Tau sector, which may or may not have been at war with the indigenous populace at that time period, so I doubt theyd put millions on it.

Tau had no population.  The Sentients were sent there to terraform it.  They were/are self replicating machines that decided they *liked* their new planet and that the Orokin would eventually arrive to plunder it, devour it, and strip it bare just as they were doing to the Origin System  The fact that Zariman survivors could interact with Warframes and pacify them (from the Rhino Prime entry) was discovered by accident, and only used as a weapon because the Orokin were completely desperate to stop the Sentients.  And again, the Orokin *STRIP MINED THE MOON.*  They built structures around it that, if they exist at that scale, encircle the entire moon and would be *thousands* of kilometers tall.  The Orokin liked to do things BIG.  It's entirely possible the Zariman wasn't just meant to be a "frontier colony," but to be the foothold for plundering the entire Tau solar system.  Considering that the Orokin apparently commanded an empire of billions (or even trillions) of people, it's not implausible at all that the Zarmian had a crew of millions of people.

[EmberStar]

Additional, and my final comment:  If the one and only Mirage (and possibly her Tenno) was destroyed... who was going around scribbling terrible poetry on the pieces to lead the player character to what they needed to build a copy?

[Cloudyvisage]

The Primes are presumably the war embossed pinnacle warframes that the Tenno were sent out with to war, whether they were the frames only esteemed Tenno could acquire or they were for specialized roles we don't know. We do know that the Orokin produced the means to build many more prime warframes, or at least repair them as we are able to find the parts for them in ancient relics. I understand that there is a little Schrodinger's Parts going on with the relics but it's still accurate.

The regular frames were mass produced, there is some good evidence that they were used but whether they were used in a prototype capacity, a mass produced capacity or as recreations afterwards is a little hazy, though it would appear that the normal frames were still used in the war.

The blueprints we acquire are created from a source that relates to the original frame, therefore any corruption to that source (Valkyr's tampering) pollutes the blueprint that we can get. It is likely that there were many more frames out there that we simply will never find because they have been lost forever.

I've always assumed the reason why other Tenno have the non-exclusive things is they also stole them from wherever they were stored. The exclusive things I can't really think of a good reason, though I think in this case it is similar to what many MMO's do, you're the main character despite the many others who are doing the same thing as you and anything that goes on in related to you. Basically, alternate universes. We were told that there are a lot of Tenno, the Colony ship was supposed to be massive on a ludicrous scale after all. DE put out things in the past indicating that the number of players is consistent with the number of Tenno but I wonder about that.

[Troposphere6]

23 minutes ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

As far as I can tell, lore wise, there's only one of each warframe, and one warframe to a Tenno, rather, there WAS only one per Tenno, but without our Orokin masters to keep us on a leash, we've zero obligation to limit our power and options like that.  And the "final product" are the normal variants.  Umbra posits that real humans were turned into warframes through a strain of the infested, and by extension it must be assumed that cloned frames COULD be made from that original source OR it didn't matter who was infested, it only mattered what the armor placed upon these people was designed to do.  We could have a female excalibur, but that model's systems were designed to manipulate minds.

Game play wise, primes are probably just a carrot on a stick.  At best in lore, ceremonial.  In general though, I doubt primes were really the originals with the normals being mere copies, as I doubt there are actually millions of Tenno unless the Duviri Paradox somehow explains how that's possible.  Today we can mass produce warframes... I mean assuming our orbiter could actually lore wise craft a warframe from scratch instead of just performing maintenance.  I mean, the Orokin don't strike me as the type to allow the Tenno to be entirely self sufficient.  But then again, WTF do we have a transference chair on the orbiter when we could control our warframes from the moon unless it was built after the fall of the empire?

Leverian directly contradicts that idea in the Gauss exhibit. "Gauss. Front edge: smooth heat-resistant composites. Trailing edges: streamlined, foiled, this particular one vaguely warped by extreme heat stress." From his discription of the Gauss in the museum which indicates at least 2 gauss' existing. On top of that warframes do have different roles from a combat perspective so it's not inconceivable that the orokin built multiple copies of frames and switched the tenno between them as needed.

[AshenHaze]

10 hours ago, Padre_Akais said:

I've always thought all the Warframes were single units...Particularly the primes.

My thinking: In this game, the Operator, is the star of the show and everything they get is unique for them from a narrative perspective.

So there can be many operators but only yours is getting all the good stuff through lore so to speak.

I'm sure there's a writing term for it but am not that smart.

1st person narrative maybe? (someone's gonna correct that because it's probably wrong)

It's called "Bad Writing".

Almost every MMO on the market treats the player as if they were some god and forks over some legendary item for them to use. Problem is its a damn MMO and I can literally see someone else using the same stuff as me. There's no point in making players the stars of MMOs and I don't see how this silliness keeps selling.

[Hypernaut1]

I thought that the first primes were unique Warframes made from infected people.  After that tenno created Warframes based on these legendary warriors. To py ,

[(XBOX)furiousplayer40]

do you think there is going to be lore like this for every warframe nekros will probably be some kind of mass genocide

 

[GrayArchon]

10 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

This supports the notion that there's only one of each WF

This does appear to have been the implication in the game for quite some time now, as the examples you cite attest.

11 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

what would be the implications for frames such as Valkyr Prime for example?

My guess is – and this is mostly speculation – that each Tenno had a warframe they mainly used. For example, Rell mostly used Harrow (until he was cast out). We know they likely didn't swap out warframes as quickly as we do now, because the Tenno Operators were in the "Second Dream" during the Old War. They were still asleep, not fully remembering what and who they were, so they believed they were the warframe. This sensation could not have been perpetrated if they were constantly swapping into and out of warframes.

Anyways, it probably was not much of a stretch (as far as cognitive dissonance goes) to swap between the prime and non-prime versions of warframes, so I imagine the Tenno that used Valkyr also used Valkyr Prime from time to time, and they just happened to be using Gersemi Valkyr (which was previously the base Valkyr) when they were captured by Alad V.

10 hours ago, BornWithTeeth said:

People who don’t know about the Tenno, don’t know. They don’t necessarily know about the distinction between Tenno and Warframe. So, historical accounts written by third parties are likely to confuse the weapon with the individual. There are also some faint and contradictory accounts which might be either an out of control ‘frame, or a Tenno carrying out a personal objective.

This is also good to keep in mind. Although, it seems like everyone these days knows the secrets of the Tenno. The Quills, Little Duck, Nora Night…. who is even in the dark these days?

10 hours ago, Dragmod said:

My understanding is that while originally there were only one of each frame, those being the Primes, the "standard" frames were developed after the fall of the Orokins.

Though, we know there were also multiple attempts to create Excalibur. Umbra being one of the early attempts and Prime being the final, perfected attempt.

We know the standard models of the warframes were present at the time of the Orokin. The What Remains comic depicts a base-model Octavia with a squadron of Dax. Umbra was far from early. Excalibur's Codex entry states that Excalibur was the first warframe (it isn't stated whether this is base Excalibur or Excalibur Prime), so all other warframes followed him. Umbra was created fairly late into the Old War and the deployment of the Tenno on the front lines, so he's entirely separate from that first Excalibur. Why he has the model and abilities of Excalibur is unexplained. Perhaps Ballas wasn't being very creative at the time.

10 hours ago, (PS4)Eluminary said:

The umbra quest showed this for the most part,  all excaliburs are clones of that guy and he was the first.  We even see him killed and we rebuild him.

As addressed above, Umbra is not the first or original Excalibur.

10 hours ago, (PS4)Ozymandias-13- said:

I always figured there is only one "original" of each frame, whose personality/theme was tailored to their creator (host?). We are just creating blueprints to duplicate that specific design.

This is likely. I imagine the warframes were crafted to reflect both their original hosts and the Tenno who they would ultimately serve. We know Mirage's host was able to corrupt her warframe with her force of will and personality (though this was clearly a surprise to Ballas – perhaps this didn't happen all that often). We also know that the Tenno Operators' Void powers could manifest in different ways. Margulis (and Kaleen) was burned by one of the Tenno – perhaps that Tenno was eventually given Ember to control.

10 hours ago, DrBorris said:

My take is that there were " original Warframes", self sentient beings. And when Ballas talked about those un-piloted Warframes being uncontrollable that was not that they were beasts, but that those Warframes had their own free will and did not follow the will of the Orokin. It is easier to control the will of teenagers that have had their mind wiped than some person you tortured.

The way Ballas describes it in the Sacrifice doesn't really line up with what you're describing. Ballas says they were "volunteers or not", which implies some of them were in fact volunteers, eager to fight for the Orokin. Yet he says that all of the first-generation warframes turned on the Orokin when they were released. Why? We know that the Technocyte virus subsumes your consciousness. Ballas says of those warframes that "their minds were free of the Infested madness. Or so we thought." It sounds like his conclusion is that the Technocyte did overwhelm them and caused them to go feral.

9 hours ago, CephalonDizzy said:

And Mirage Primes trailer showing her fighting post orokin grineer is impossible due to Mirage being destroyed in the old war.

I'm pretty sure what's shown in the trailers are theatrical liberties. Nekros Prime and Banshee Prime are fighting Grineer, presumably at the behest of the Orokin, yet the Grineer are not known to have rebelled against the Orokin until the Collapse.

That being said, Mirage Prime fighting Grineer isn't an impossibility, since Void relics allow us to obtain blueprints for items, including warframes, from long ago. Mirage Prime (and all primes) may have been constructed in the present day using this process. But again, the video footage of the prime cinematic trailers appears to be unrelated to Ballas' speech, except for in theme.

8 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

The Gauss part said “For every Grendel there is a Gauss”.

It does not say that. It says "wherever we find evidence of Grendel, we’re sure to find some trace of Gauss as well".

8 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Consider this - there is a piece of Gauss found wherever there is Grendel. If Warframes are unique, that means they are irreplaceable. However, there is a full Gauss with helmet aerofoil intact in Drusus's Leverian, from Altra. If Gauss was unique, he couldn't have been found at Altra because Altra happened pre-fall, and thus he would have walked away unharmed to lose his piece later, and thus would lack it at Altra.

I doubt Gauss' warframe-corpse was found at Altra (it certainly seems his weapons were, though), as he doesn't appear to have died there. As for the bits of Gauss, it's entirely possible that the part that broke off at Riddha was repaired or replaced. It seems like a pretty minor part that could easily have been manufactured by a Tenno Foundry.

8 hours ago, Loza03 said:

If Warframes are unique, that means they are irreplaceable.

This also isn't necessarily true. The warframes are based on blueprints (which appear to be encoded into their DNA, according to Sigor Savah), so they are easily replaceable, as evidenced by the fact that it takes Ordis ten seconds to reconstruct Umbra after he was vaporised. However, they could still be unique in the sense that only one of them exists at a time. Ballas discusses in the Banshee Prime trailer how and why he values uniqueness, so I can see him holding this principle, only building a new Banshee after the old one is destroyed in battle.

8 hours ago, Loza03 said:

it's highly unlikely that each Warframe was entirely unique

Why do you say that? Is it because there are so few warframe models (42 as of Grendel)? Because the number of Tenno is likely to be similarly low. Probably not 40, but likely less than a few thousand at most. And we definitely haven't seen all models of warframe.

If it's for some argument of pragmatism, you have to remember that pragmatism was almost antithetical to the Orokin. I have no problem seeing Ballas make a specialised, unique warframe for each and every Tenno, just to suit his sensibilities.

[mraz641]

10 hours ago, Marvelous_A said:

Each warframe had an unique owner during the Great War. That's my take on the lore.

But most warframes are lost afterwards, only blueprints are left for the tenno coming after to make an exact replica. 

each of the tenno probably controlled one, but if they controlled more originals or close it wouldnt make the difference. when we fought sentients in old war, we had our mods maxed, best weapons modded to perfection, so it makes sense that we destroyed sentient and orokin with ease. couple of thousands of years later, lotus wakes us up in an empty warframe clone, which was probably ours as we tried to clone prime versions but could only clone them to a degree. so we can conclude that our starting warframe isnt our main warframe. so we started breaking sealed relics with void power and found pieces of frames that we put together to recreate prime warframes, other good mods we found on abandoned derelicts which were corrupted by time, and out friend baro found top of the line prime mods in void. imagine every mod that you wear on your gun to be prime and that you get the riven you want. that was who we were. but now without capital and most of the primes we are weaker

[Loza03]

1 minute ago, GrayArchon said:

I doubt Gauss' warframe-corpse was found at Altra (it certainly seems his weapons were, though), as he doesn't appear to have died there. As for the bits of Gauss, it's entirely possible that the part that broke off at Riddha was repaired or replaced. It seems like a pretty minor part that could easily have been manufactured by a Tenno Foundry.

Even if it was found somewhere else, it's highly unlikely that many parts could have come off a frame in such a way that they can be easily replaced without a foundry that somebody could just... reconstruct a full second Gauss out of them. Especially head parts. At some point we have to assume there was a Gauss corpse lying around. Or several.

3 minutes ago, GrayArchon said:

This also isn't necessarily true. The warframes are based on blueprints (which appear to be encoded into their DNA, according to Sigor Savah), so they are easily replaceable, as evidenced by the fact that it takes Ordis ten seconds to reconstruct Umbra after he was vaporised. However, they could still be unique in the sense that only one of them exists at a time. Ballas discusses in the Banshee Prime trailer how and why he values uniqueness, so I can see him holding this principle, only building a new Banshee after the old one is destroyed in battle.

That is pretty much the gist of my theory. It shows that the Warframe aren't actually unique since it could be reconstructed. It's not unique if there's multiple copies, even if somebody only made one at a time. But it does stand to reason that, since there's no reason why different Tenno with different skillsets wouldn't be given multiple Warframes, especially since the uniqueness can be added by a Tenno's own personal touch. I mean, the Tenno's addiction to fashion had to come from somewhere, right?

4 minutes ago, GrayArchon said:

Why do you say that? Is it because there are so few warframe models (42 as of Grendel)? Because the number of Tenno is likely to be similarly low. Probably not 40, but likely less than a few thousand at most. And we definitely haven't seen all models of warframe.

If it's for some argument of pragmatism, you have to remember that pragmatism was almost antithetical to the Orokin. I have no problem seeing Ballas make a specialised, unique warframe for each and every Tenno, just to suit his sensibilities.

Ballas wasn't the only person working on the Warframe project, remember. And they were at war, and especially at first there wouldn't have been enough frames to go around. I'm sure there was at least one person saying to Ballas "Yes, I know you want to be all fancy, but if you were to look out the window, you may see the giant robot coming to kill us all, so could you please compromise until that's no longer a pressing matter?"

It's implied that the process of making an original prime frame is at least a somewhat lengthy one, and at first they would have needed a Sentient countermeasure ASAP. It's likely early Tenno battlefields may have been flooded with Excaliburs, Rhinos and other frames remodeled from the pre-Tenno Warframe project - this might even be why Nidus (who resembles the incomplete/prototype frames seen in the Vitruvian) was turned into a production model, they needed more soldiers and soldier types early, before they had the opportunity for greater specialisation.

[Lost_Cartographer]

45 minutes ago, Troposphere6 said:

Leverian directly contradicts that idea in the Gauss exhibit. "Gauss. Front edge: smooth heat-resistant composites. Trailing edges: streamlined, foiled, this particular one vaguely warped by extreme heat stress." From his discription of the Gauss in the museum which indicates at least 2 gauss' existing. On top of that warframes do have different roles from a combat perspective so it's not inconceivable that the orokin built multiple copies of frames and switched the tenno between them as needed.

I'm not sure it's clear that he's referring to Gauss itself so much as the plates that cover him.

And while it's not inconceivable the Orokin built multiple copies, it's doubtful they would have allowed their Tenno access to them, it's practical to have each Tenno assigned to a specific warframe such that they'd master them to their fullest, and it's unlikely that they would have even thousands of Tenno at their disposal.   There isn't really any lore that solidly supports there are multiples of any single warframe, as they're always spoken of as unique, legendary warriors, as if for example Grendel is THE Grendel, not A Grendel.

Edited November 14, 2019 by Lost_Cartographer

[Rakosta_Kai]

41 minutes ago, AshenHaze said:

It's called "Bad Writing".

Almost every MMO on the market treats the player as if they were some god and forks over some legendary item for them to use. Problem is its a damn MMO and I can literally see someone else using the same stuff as me. There's no point in making players the stars of MMOs and I don't see how this silliness keeps selling.

Or the writers could expect the player to suspend their disbelief on those points long enough to enjoy the story itself.

What you call "Bad Writing" is the cornerstone of a number of genres. aside from MMOs

[o0Despair0o]

My understanding is that the 'frames we build are just clones/replicas of the original.

Edited November 14, 2019 by o0Despair0o