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

Sitchrea · November 14, 2019

10 hours ago, SilentMobius said:

There are a lot of variables here:

From the Sacrifice we know that when we create a new Warframe in the foundry they come with a complete imprint of the personality and memories (The Umbra we make is based on scans of the one that Natah blasted)

The existance of the Zarimen Teno-Zero children was a closely guarded secret (So much so that Ballas considered it betrayal to let the Sentient's know this)

Prior to the existance of the Operators some Warframes' existed as "Bio Drones" until they rebelled.

Some Warframes retain more of their persona than others. (Umbra, Mirage Prime)

The physicality and personality of a Warframe can be re-clones, lockiing in the changes (Valkyr)

The Second Dream suggests that the Zariman children thought they were the Warframes, and that the personality of the warframe (In the Stance) can show through.

From the Sacrifice we know that Warframe have a progenitor being who was infected with the Helminth strain of the infestation. We also know that some warframes were formally designed (Nova) We don't know if any Warframe's are "cloned" then modified from a common progenitor or if each Warframe line (Or even Warframe variant) was once a unique person.

We have multiple canon variants of Warframes.

Post-cryo there are multiple canon instances of specific Warframe lines (Profit trailer has an Excalibur with variant helmet destroyed)

Even at the height of the Old War the Tenno were secret enough for the front-line toops to be able to not believe they existed (Mag Prime codex) this suggests that any stories may well be apocryphal. First person stories surrer from the possibility of an unreliable narrator who believes they were unique or even a story from the time of Bio-drones, before the operators.

Post-cryo, sleeping Tenno can still change Warframe without conceptual issue.. somehow. Also they have no problem collecting and building Warframes or being told by the Lotus to "Master them" (plural)

I don't think it's as simple as "All Warframes were once unique" I think it's messier.

Some might share a progenitor

Some might retain friendships from when they were people, replacating that into every cloned Warframe pair

Some warframes might have only hade a single Prototype/Prime created and post-Old War and pre-Cryo the Tenno themselves created their own versions (Not sure how that happens when the Tenno didn't know they weren't the Warframe.

Certainly in at least some cases, as some point, singular stories happened.

Have we also considered the possibility that every Warframe skin is a separate Warframe model? Archimedian Silvana created Warframes which never saw combat (Loki Knave, Saryn Orchid, and Oberon Feyarch). It stands to reason that beyond every Warframe is unique, more specifically it is every Warframe skin is unique and has its own story. After all, the Excalibur killed in The Profit is an Immortal Excalibur Pendragon, not a normal Excalibur.

Perhaps Immortals were veterans, and Immortal tattoos were akin to regular military medals? It's conjecture, but it stands to reason, as Tenno already communicated a lot via tattoos and energy sigils. Hell, we still do.

EmberStar · November 14, 2019

34 minutes ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

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.

The thing is, most people *don't understand* the Tenno. Most people assume that "Tenno" and "Warframe" means the same thing. Unless they happened to see two Grendel (or Mag, or Atlas) standing together, they don't have any reason to know or figure out that there is more than one.

A possible, if perhaps not very good comparison: A bunch of modern soldiers drop into a primitive village. The soldiers wear identical uniforms, and masks that cover their faces. They never speak to the villagers, but each of them carries a unique weapon. Would it be implausible that, given they know *nothing* about these strange beings, the villagers might decide that they're all identical and it's the *weapons* that make each one different?

It's equally possible that Prime Warframes are NOT always the initial prototype, but upgraded "Dress Uniform" variants made for special individuals and/or Orokin ceremonial purposes. In the Octavia prelude comic we see *A* Mag Prime apparently being destroyed in space. In another comic, we see a Mag interacting with Little Duck at a point that's supposed to happen *before* the tutorial mission (and if the player chooses Mag, that automatically means there's at least two of that frame.) It's pretty likely that Umbra Prime was created *after* other Warframes, because of spoiler comments Ballas makes in his dialogue.

In the Silver Grove, we find out that one of the scientists who helped to create Titania stole the prototype and tried to use it herself. She was NOT a Tenno and the attempt at Transference went horribly wrong. But somehow the Titania seems to have "gone feral" and died to protect her. Using the Apothecary elixirs always summons a Grove Specter, which the Silver Grove apologetically explains she cannot control. These take the form of variants of Loki, Saryn and Oberon. There's also the Rail Specters, who apparently exist to deny access to unauthorized Tenno attempting to use the Solar Rails without permission. The Corpus and Grineer can apparently use the Rail Network without interacting with them.

Spoiler

Mainly that he's turning the unnamed Dax into a Warframe to as a way to punish him for almost revealing the fact that Ballas has betrayed the Orokin and Tenno to Hunhow. The device the player character recovers from Umbra's prison chamber on Lua had to have been sealed in there with him, presumably *before* the destruction of the other Orokin. And in that recording Ballas is describing to Hunhow what he needs to know to actually destroy the Tenno and win the war. Which strongly implies that it was written when the Sentients were *losing* to the Tenno, and Hunhow actually had a reason to consider trusting anything at all from the apparent leader of the absolute enemy of the Sentients.

Again, the whole thing seems to be deliberately murky and unclear. Lotus wasn't aware of Rell because he was apparently separated from the other Tenno before Margulis was killed. But if he was never part of the Transference project which Margulis originally intended as a way to allow Tenno to interact with the world *without* the risk of uncontrolled Void Blasts melting people into goop... where did he get his Harrow from?

Honestly, the whole lore is incomplete, inconsistent, and possibly deliberately contradictory. Just with Valkyr, the person who designed the Valkyr Prime apparently *admitted* she's sort of an oopsie, and that he just "Primed" a standard Valkyr and totally forgot that she was originally "supposed" be be Gersemi. And that her current non-prime look (and possibly even powers) are a side effect of having been captured and vivisected by Alad V. Valkyr Prime shouldn't have prison manacles bolted to her arms, but that's how she looked when they revealed her and the design was apparently already set by then.

The devs apparently have a "Lore Bible" in an office somewhere. And I'm guessing that rather than a sacred leather bound tome that contains a complete and self-consistent lore, it's a three ring binder that they add to (and remove from) at will. And that someone might have borrowed a couple of pages and forget them in the bottom of a drawer once.

*Edit* Even before the Second Dream, the player can swap Warframes. Ordis seems to be aware there is a difference, although at one point he had dialogue (possibly removed since then) that one of his core directives was to "preserve the Dream." At any rate when you change Warframes, he'll sometimes comment that "Your chosen Warframe 'suits' you! Ha. Ha." Changing Warframes seems to be a core function of the Orbiter, and it seems pretty likely that Tenno could always do that. (Along with storing a Tenno's personal arsenal and stored "digitized" copies of Warframes that aren't currently in active use.)

Again, the lore is all over the place, and it's hard to tell what's actually in-game and what's just a convenient gameplay mechanic. Do you actually have 40 (or a hundred or whatever) spare Warframes standing silently in cupboards? Or are they digitized like Capture targets apparently are? We know from Octavia's Anthem that Cephalons exist in a kind of alternate dimension, since we have to ask Simaris to send us there so that we can attempt to fight the force trying to corrupt Cephalon Suda. Or to put it another way, do we actually "digitize" Capture targets at all, or is it just a heck of a lot more convenient to *pretend* we do and not force someone to play through babysitting a hostile NPC all the way to the exit?

Do all Infested actually look identical with less than a dozen different types, or is that just a design shortcut because the memory requirements for having a hundred different variations of "mutated body horror" would be nuts and the current design is "good enough" to get across the point that "Infested are bad. They eat you, but won't let you die. Ever."

Edited November 14, 2019 by EmberStar

Loza03 · November 14, 2019

34 minutes ago, EmberStar said:

A possible, if perhaps not very good comparison: A bunch of modern soldiers drop into a primitive village. The soldiers wear identical uniforms, and masks that cover their faces. They never speak to the villagers, but each of them carries a unique weapon. Would it be implausible that, given they know *nothing* about these strange beings, the villagers might decide that they're all identical and it's the *weapons* that make each one different?

To further note, according to some texts from the period, Ninja used this exact principle all the time. It's the 'Bushin no Jutsu', and it's where the idea that Ninja could make shadow clones came from. Since ninja would look so similar, if they didn't speak and moved in a sufficiently co-ordinated manner, it was possible to convince scared, tired guards that there was more than one of the same person. It helped that they aggravated any rumours of mystic powers, to amplify this effect. If a target thinks a Ninja can do this, and sees it well enough, in their mind they might well fail to connect the dots. Considering Tenno were the subject of propaganda to begin with (according to the Mag Prime entry), and this historical reference, this theory makes a lot of sense.

chaotea · November 14, 2019

18 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Yeah that comparison doesn’t work.

It does, in that Its something said as a metaphor, but isnt nessiserally true. After all, not every cloud actually has a silver lining.

There is the less well know 'For every fat man there is a thin man'. But i felt that was even more abstract.

C104 · November 14, 2019

vor 23 Stunden schrieb Jarriaga:

Some time ago I started thinking about Revenant's "creation". Originally, Revenant was a different WF called Warden, but had been exposed to the remains of the Sentient killed by Gara for so long that he became corrupted and transformed into what we know as Revenant. This got me thinking about the convoluted process it would be to actually create a second Revenant by having another Warden follow the same process in order to obtain the same results. That, when coupled with Gara's lore entry referring to her as if she was the only Gara (Or at least the only Gara worth talking about) got me thinking that maybe frames are unique.

There's also Chains of Harrow before Mask of The Revenant. Not even the Lotus knew of Harrow, which is difficult to believe unless there was only one of it.

Sure we have WF blueprints that create fully built frames, but these are only gameplay concessions in my opinion for the same reason we have all done TWW and got one of the Queens killed.

Fast forward to the Leverian and Grende's entry, and it includes a dedicated section just for Gauss because he was apparently always present around Grendel. They were "Ancient Allies":

"It came as no surprise to me, to find this tiny fragment of Gauss just outside the city. Indeed, if one thing is for certain, wherever we find evidence of Grendel, we're sure to find some trace of Gauss as well. Did they breach the city as a pair? Or did Gauss hang back intercepting the patrols, generously letting his friend Grendel eat his fill at the feast within?"

This supports the notion that there's only one of each WF because, otherwise, the only other alternative would be that somehow every single Grendel (If more than one) would have happened to have a Gauss best friend, and all Grendel and Gauss units would have also have happened to travel together.

What do you all think? And what would be the implications for frames such as Valkyr Prime for example?

I agree and believe there is only one frame each and my theory to explain Valkyr Prime is that we simply used orokin parts we salvaged from the original frame that becameValkyr Prime

PhoenixFury · November 14, 2019

I've always thought there might only be four tenno in total. Based on the S#&$enno, or the four heavenly kings/knights, and the fact that there is a maximum of four players in a session.

GrayArchon · November 14, 2019

22 hours ago, EmberStar said:

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.

We know the warframes are based on blueprints that can be replicated. Once Alad V or the Stalker kills an Excalibur, that Tenno can obtain the blueprints and build that warframe again. This is not mutually exclusive with the idea that there was only one of each warframe during the time of the Orokin (excluding Excalibur Umbra).

22 hours ago, Troposphere6 said:

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.

Are you thinking that "this particular one" is referring to the Gauss? From my reading of the sentence, it's referring to the trailing edges of the aerofoil: "The trailing edges are supposed to be streamlined and foiled, but this one right here is warped." The Gauss warframe in the exhibit doesn't seem "warped" at all.

21 hours ago, Loza03 said:

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.

We know that the Tenno carried with them foundries that could replicate entire warframes, because we still have it in our ship. The Orbiter we use is the same Orbiter we used in the Old War.

Troposphere6 · November 14, 2019

9 minutes ago, GrayArchon said:

Are you thinking that "this particular one" is referring to the Gauss? From my reading of the sentence, it's referring to the trailing edges of the aerofoil: "The trailing edges are supposed to be streamlined and foiled, but this one right here is warped." The Gauss warframe in the exhibit doesn't seem "warped" at all.

I read it as "this particular gauss had warped trailing edges."

Loza03 · November 14, 2019

41 minutes ago, GrayArchon said:

We know that the Tenno carried with them foundries that could replicate entire warframes, because we still have it in our ship. The Orbiter we use is the same Orbiter we used in the Old War.

Well, yeah, but... if you can rebuild something, and frequently do, is that really a unique item? And that doesn't address the fact that, at first, there wouldn't be enough Warframes developed to give each Tenno their own unique one, even if it's only a thousand or so.

Kerberos-3 · November 15, 2019

On 2019-11-13 at 5:40 AM, 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.

My understanding was that Primes were simply elite-grade Orokin gear while Normal one were Orokin shovel-tech meant to build up soldiers as fast as possible without eating too many reasources.

TenebraeAeterna · November 15, 2019

...I thought it was common knowledge that there was only one of each frame?

Well, what I mean to say is that there were originally one of each frame during the time of the Orokin...which then changed for each prototype that they deemed viable. After that point, duplicates were undoubtedly cloned in a process similar to the Grineer for frames that fell in battle...but without the degradation of a subservient class not dedicated to the role of protection and warriors. We do the same thing, manufacturing additional Warframes based upon their original...creating, effectively, a clone.

Spoiler

We do this with Umbra Excalibur, who was likely the first of all Excaliburs...but deemed too unstable to control because of his rage. Furthermore, when we reconstruct him...he retains his psyche, showing that genetic memory is a thing with Warframes...to a level that exceeds our current understanding of genetic memory in reality. It's very likely that the reason our basic Excaliburs aren't anything like Umbra is that they were either designed using a relative of Umbra, or they had all genetic memory completely erased...and the "Umbra" aspect has to do with his strong emotional psyche.

We have to remember that each Warframe started out as a human...they were an individual who was converted. We possess them, which may be why Helminth refers to us as demons...though that's somewhat odd when the Infestation takes over people too, completely. I guess that the entity that can possess the possessed husk of another is the demon of demons, aye?

Regardless, when you take the relationship between the Tenno and Warframes into consideration...every Warframe is TWO people, and likely always the same two people. From a story perspective, the Tenno are limited...not a vast resource, but a smaller clutch of kiddos who were then bound to Warframes as a means to protect the Orokin from the Sentients. When Gauss was destroyed in battle...the Tenno lived on, likely instantaneously "waking" within a back-up Gauss specifically cloned for when that happened. Same for Mirage, Chroma, Volt, Wisp, and all of the various Warframes.

Back then, every Operator was likely bound to a single Warframe because, from how the story seems to play out, we thought that we were the Warframe we inhabited. The fact that we now jump from Warframe to Warframe like they're a new suit seems to be relatively new. We don't even fully remember our past, or the great war, when we wake up...we're just the Warframe we inhabit.

To simplify things...

The original Gauss was likely a single Tenno individual and the Gauss Warframe...two psyches working as one. When the body died, a new Warframe with that same psyche was waiting for the operator to jump into it...ignorant to the fact that they were two distinct beings due to the memory bleed. It's very likely that the Orokin used the memory-bleed to their advantage, ultimately dissolving the individual psyches until both Warframe and Tenno believed that they were truly one being who, when their body died, would simply be resurrected by their Orokin masters. This would have likely made them extremely subservient to the Orokin...because the new composite psyche was entirely created by the Orokin with a vast ritualistic hierarchy surrounding the entire concept...placing them as the mystical defenders of their masters in a way similar to the Dax. Just as the Dax were loyal, so too were the Warframes...until free will got the better of them.

Anyway, I believe that originally there was only one Guass, Mirage, Wisp, Nidus, so on and so forth...and each were a composite being consisting of two individual psyches ignorant of that fact due to memory bleed and Orokin manipulation.

Now, we're finally learning to just be ourselves...storyline speaking...

Edited November 15, 2019 by TenebraeAeterna

Talonflight · November 15, 2019

That's because there IS only one of each warframe. According to lore, each Tenno's power manifested differently. They channeled their unique strengths into the Warframe, their own ideas and talents molding the kind of Warframe that they would control.

At first, they turned to already-made Warframes that were simply 'close enough'; the Umbra warframes. They were prototypes; tests. Only a handful were ever used. They simply found Tenno who's particular 'void manifestations' were similar to the old, abandoned 'bio drones', and crammed them into them via transference. This is why Umbra warframes, the ones who have people inside them, are a rare and a lost secret; because according to lore found in The Sacrifice, they were from an older abandoned project and were ultimately just 'test subjects'.

However, once it became clear how useful the Warframes were, they began to craft Prime warframes as the pillars of strength. These did not have people inside them; they were made specifically as vessels for the Tenno, without a 'will' to animate them, so as better to fool the Tenno who slept in the second dream. As the war grew on, while the Tenno were winning, sometimes the Prime Warframes would take damage, and the beautiful Prime Warframes would have to be repaired...

...Thus, came the ordinary Warframes; mass-production models, cheaper to produce, and more replacable when damaged. Eventually, the Prime Warframes were kept only in Orokin Vaults, no longer used by the Tenno except for ceremonies and great need. That is why we all start out in Normal Warframes; because the Primes are lost in Orokin locations, where we left them long ago.

As for the Varients/Skins, its likely these models were designed as side-grades for the tenno to use; similar to the way that a military unit will change gear depending on his surroundings and objective, but might keep his skillset intact; Immortal skins might, lorewise, be for a mission that was a suicide run. Rhino's Palantine Armor? Likely a heavier-plated version for more intense firefights. Excalibur Prisma? A more energy-focused build for more Exalted goodness. Whether they were used or not (some lore points to some varients never being used) is simply because they were created for them, but the unit in question never was deployed on a mission that called for it.
The stats don't reflect this because DE doesn't want to have to balance that, and because it would bring up pay-to-win issues as far as stats go. In-game, its just skins. Lorewise, you look at me and tell me that Palatine isn't tankier than Rhino.

As for the cutscenes that feature warframes specifically, it is doubtful that they can be considered fully canon in their own right, but should be considered 'canon enough'. A warframe DID probably die in the Profit trailer; but they can't very well be Excalibur if your particular Tenno IS excalibur, right? But DE can't simply design a warframe and NOT give the players access to it. The community backlash would be too intense. Therefore, every warframe is available; but canonically, not every warframe is 'alive' today.

Keep in mind EVERY CHILD ON THE ZARIMAN 10-ZERO BECAME A TENNO. Every child. The Zariman was a COLONY SHIP on a mission. Colony ships easily hold thousands of people. THey had to have enough people to colonize an entirely new planet; and plenty of children to learn HOW to do it alongside the adults, so as to have a trained next-generation, in case colonization took longer than they thought.

There could easily be a THOUSAND Tenno lurking around the system, especially with the fact that there are multiple relays acting as meeting places. We are just one of the many.

Also worth noting, the players ability to switch warframes is NOT canon. That is gameplay, taking precedence over Lore. This is why the Operator was so distraught in The War Within, moaning piteously about how "I lost my Warframe!" It isn't just one in his collection; its his ONLY one. We, the player have variety, but the CHARACTER we play as does NOT.

Ordis might make a comment about Warframe specs, acquiring blueprints, and encourage us to build other Warframes, but if the Operator could so simply 'switch warframes' at will then the entirety of The War Within shouldn't have been a problem. In fact, every single Warframe 'fatality' that has taken place since the beginning of the war shouldn't have taken place if the Tenno can simply switch to a new one. The Tenno, now that they have 'awakened', MIGHT be able to do so; but its not normal, or usual. I personally believe that the Tenno retrieves the Warframe blueprints, builds them, and brings them to the Relays to give to a Tenno who has awoken but doesn't have a transference link.

Imagine the Tenno who went into the Long Sleep between the Old War and the Present Day, but who's Warframe was destroyed before they awoke? They would have stayed asleep until the Second Dream, when the tenno awoke properly.

When they woke up, they'd need a Warframe. That's why we're building them; we might borrow them, from time to time... but they're THEIRS.

It also seriously raises the questions of body dimorphism; how would you react when awakened, if you visited a relay, and see another tenno... 'wearing your old skin', so to speak? Imagine an Ember who visits a relay in tenno form, seeing the next Ember walking by in their warframe?

Edited November 15, 2019 by Talonflight

(PSN)Dishinshoryuken · November 15, 2019

This is what I prefer to read in Gen. No whine. No ME-ME-ME talk. None of that bored/endgame/do it my way gank talking.

Thanks for this fresh breathe of air in the Gen Dis area. I would spout my Outlook on this, but some have hit it which means I am not a lone voice in thinking that those ways are possible.

Play on and lore analysis away. It is always a good read

DrakeWurrum · November 15, 2019

Not entirely true. Specific frames were mass-produced: Excalibur, Mag, Volt, probably Ember and Frost. Pretty much the "original 8" or something like that.

All the others are special and unique one-of-a-kind type frames. Limbo, Inaros, Gauss, Mirage. etc etc. It may be that these were special projects or experiments as Ballas played around with the Helminth strain, coming up with new designs. It seems like the Tenno of the Old War may even have had some involvement in creating new frames, maybe after the Betrayal.

This is likely just true of the Old War, however. The current-era Tenno are uncovering these old Warframe designs and re-purposing them, so that more than one copy is made, and thus new variants (skins) are born. Thus explaining why we can have a cell of 4 Grendel.

4 hours ago, Talonflight said:

These did not have people inside them; they were made specifically as vessels for the Tenno, without a 'will' to animate them, so as better to fool the Tenno who slept in the second dream.

I strongly disagree with this. The Sacrifice showed us that even before the Tenno were involved, the super-soldiers that are the Warframes were specifically created from people using a special strain of Infestation.

We also know from a certain tidbit of lore in the Codex (I think from Simaris scans) that the Infestation can basically instantly clone any single, individual person that it has... assimilated. And copy their capabilities, and even memories, through all of these copies. We don't know the specific mechanics behind this - it may be there's some sort of "Undermind" involved, like with Halo's Flood. Clearly only the Helminth strain of Infestation is capable of copying our frames, else we would see more Rhino-like beasts roaming.

We also don't know for sure if Umbra came first, or if Umbra was some secret side-project that Ballas carried out to do something different with the Warframes. Because we know that a key flaw of these supersoldiers was that they were not free of the Infestation's... mindless destruction... as desired. The Infestation still affected them and caused them to run amok. Ballas needed a method to control them.

It was *ONLY* the Tenno who were able to solve this problem. Ballas did not have any other way to do it. So it should be expected that all of our frames were once normal people... and are now Infested supersoldiers, though it may be that nothing of their humanity remains, as it did for Umbra. He seemed to have been a special case where Ballas was trying to keep something of their former selves intact, but we don't really know what the end-goal of that all was.

4 hours ago, Talonflight said:

Also worth noting, the players ability to switch warframes is NOT canon. That is gameplay, taking precedence over Lore. This is why the Operator was so distraught in The War Within, moaning piteously about how "I lost my Warframe!" It isn't just one in his collection; its his ONLY one. We, the player have variety, but the CHARACTER we play as does NOT.

I'm not so sure that it is canon. I'm not so sure that we only have one single frame. There's nothing in our specific story to tell us one way or the other. The simple fact that Ordis describes the Warframes as being vessels for us to wield suggests that we can have multiple different vessels.

Even the specific bit you mentioned can be easily hand-waved away. You may have multiple hand-painted figurines from your favorite anime, but that doesn't mean you don't cherish each and every one.

More importantly, in that scenario, our Warframe was on the Kuva Fortress. At the time, the implication was that we simply didn't know where it now was, because it's always moving. I imagine anytime we've returned later is because we managed to find it again, but we don't know how long that canonically would take for our Tenno.

4 hours ago, Talonflight said:

but they can't very well be Excalibur if your particular Tenno IS excalibur, right?

^this for example

A perfect demonstration that there is more than one. The cutscene, in-game, where Stalker meets Hunhow includes him tossing a Loki's severed head to the ground. If what you suggest is true, all Loki players don't actually exist, canonically. Stalker murdered 'em.

4 hours ago, Talonflight said:

Ordis might make a comment about Warframe specs, acquiring blueprints, and encourage us to build other Warframes, but if the Operator could so simply 'switch warframes' at will then the entirety of The War Within shouldn't have been a problem. In fact, every single Warframe 'fatality' that has taken place since the beginning of the war shouldn't have taken place if the Tenno can simply switch to a new one. The Tenno, now that they have 'awakened', MIGHT be able to do so; but its not normal, or usual. I personally believe that the Tenno retrieves the Warframe blueprints, builds them, and brings them to the Relays to give to a Tenno who has awoken but doesn't have a transference link.

Easily hand-waved away. Again, we would cherish each Warframe, and we had no idea where the Fortress was located. We should also recognize that EVERY Warframe is a powerful weapon that we cannot allow to fall in the wrong hands. You're talking about the Grineer Queens. Who knows what they could have done with it, invented because of it.

Also, there is a suggestion that in the cases where Tenno have died, it was because their actual Tenno self died as well, not just their frame. We know the resurrection system (our Revives) is actually canon - the Mirage Prime Codex, I think, mentioned that Lotus couldn't activate it for some reason. We don't know the full extent of how intertwined with our frames we really are when they die, or what it would specifically take to kill a Tenno (since when our Operator form is "killed" we just poof back into the frame somehow). We don't know if "running out of revives" can actually happen canonically, or (if it is) what happens to the Tenno in that situation. Let alone... do we lose the frame and have to rebuild it? How does that all tie together? What of our weapons and companions?

4 hours ago, Talonflight said:

Keep in mind EVERY CHILD ON THE ZARIMAN 10-ZERO BECAME A TENNO. Every child. The Zariman was a COLONY SHIP on a mission. Colony ships easily hold thousands of people. THey had to have enough people to colonize an entirely new planet; and plenty of children to learn HOW to do it alongside the adults, so as to have a trained next-generation, in case colonization took longer than they thought.

There could easily be a THOUSAND Tenno lurking around the system, especially with the fact that there are multiple relays acting as meeting places. We are just one of the many.

Keep in mind... it wasn't a colony ship. It was a military vessel, and children were not supposed to be on it. We don't know the full story yet. Duviri Paradox may shine a light on the truth of it all.

That being said, canonically, there are thousands of Tenno... but not enough that we aren't outnumbered by the Grineer and the Corpus. We fight a guerilla war because we are limited in number, but mighty individually.

Edited November 15, 2019 by DrakeWurrum

mrpyro12345678 · November 15, 2019

Easy explanations for it.
There were prototypes - Umbra Warframes - there's only one of each.
There were Orokin Combatants - Prime Warframes - there were duplicates, usually only used in specific operations
Now there's new ones - Classic Warframes - they are well-spread and used everywhere.

GrayArchon · November 15, 2019

21 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Well, yeah, but... if you can rebuild something, and frequently do, is that really a unique item? And that doesn't address the fact that, at first, there wouldn't be enough Warframes developed to give each Tenno their own unique one, even if it's only a thousand or so.

I was taking "unique" to mean that there was only one of each warframe extant at a time. So, to the enemy's perspective, there would only be one Gauss warframe, not a platoon of Gausses zipping about everywhere. And perhaps the Tenno were kept asleep (in the "first dream") until a warframe was built for them.

17 hours ago, TenebraeAeterna said:

...I thought it was common knowledge that there was only one of each frame?

Well, what I mean to say is that there were originally one of each frame during the time of the Orokin...which then changed for each prototype that they deemed viable. After that point, duplicates were undoubtedly cloned in a process similar to the Grineer for frames that fell in battle...

Do you have a source for this? What we have in this thread is mostly speculation, with some evidence for certain supporting facts. The theory you present is similar to mine, but it's still just theory until something comes out that confirms or refutes it.

17 hours ago, TenebraeAeterna said:

Back then, every Operator was likely bound to a single Warframe because, from how the story seems to play out, we thought that we were the Warframe we inhabited. The fact that we now jump from Warframe to Warframe like they're a new suit seems to be relatively new. We don't even fully remember our past, or the great war, when we wake up...we're just the Warframe we inhabit.

This is also what I think, based on the dialogue at the end of the Second Dream.

17 hours ago, TenebraeAeterna said:

The original Gauss was likely a single Tenno individual and the Gauss Warframe...two psyches working as one. When the body died, a new Warframe with that same psyche was waiting for the operator to jump into it...ignorant to the fact that they were two distinct beings due to the memory bleed. It's very likely that the Orokin used the memory-bleed to their advantage, ultimately dissolving the individual psyches until both Warframe and Tenno believed that they were truly one being who, when their body died, would simply be resurrected by their Orokin masters.

I think this is largely correct, though I think you're overstating the degree to which the warframes have a psyche. Much of their consciousness appears to be gone, with the exception of Umbra. I'm not sure there's enough of a psyche for the Tenno Operators to take notice of.

12 hours ago, Talonflight said:

That's because there IS only one of each warframe. According to lore, each Tenno's power manifested differently. They channeled their unique strengths into the Warframe, their own ideas and talents molding the kind of Warframe that they would control.

At first, they turned to already-made Warframes that were simply 'close enough'; the Umbra warframes. They were prototypes; tests. Only a handful were ever used. They simply found Tenno who's particular 'void manifestations' were similar to the old, abandoned 'bio drones', and crammed them into them via transference. This is why Umbra warframes, the ones who have people inside them, are a rare and a lost secret; because according to lore found in The Sacrifice, they were from an older abandoned project and were ultimately just 'test subjects'.

However, once it became clear how useful the Warframes were, they began to craft Prime warframes as the pillars of strength. These did not have people inside them; they were made specifically as vessels for the Tenno, without a 'will' to animate them, so as better to fool the Tenno who slept in the second dream. As the war grew on, while the Tenno were winning, sometimes the Prime Warframes would take damage, and the beautiful Prime Warframes would have to be repaired...

...Thus, came the ordinary Warframes; mass-production models, cheaper to produce, and more replacable when damaged. Eventually, the Prime Warframes were kept only in Orokin Vaults, no longer used by the Tenno except for ceremonies and great need. That is why we all start out in Normal Warframes; because the Primes are lost in Orokin locations, where we left them long ago.

Do you have a source for any of this? Sounds like great headcanon.

The second paragraph is certainly drawing on the Sacrifice quest, but even so, you are making a lot of details out of Ballas' vague narration. And I wouldn't call them "Umbra" warframes – Umbra was an individual who was completely unrelated to these very early warframe models.

12 hours ago, Talonflight said:

As for the cutscenes that feature warframes specifically, it is doubtful that they can be considered fully canon in their own right, but should be considered 'canon enough'. A warframe DID probably die in the Profit trailer; but they can't very well be Excalibur if your particular Tenno IS excalibur, right? But DE can't simply design a warframe and NOT give the players access to it. The community backlash would be too intense. Therefore, every warframe is available; but canonically, not every warframe is 'alive' today.

I think this is a reasonable assumption to make. There is always a dividing line between what is canon and what is gameplay in terms of video game mechanics.

12 hours ago, Talonflight said:

Also worth noting, the players ability to switch warframes is NOT canon. That is gameplay, taking precedence over Lore. This is why the Operator was so distraught in The War Within, moaning piteously about how "I lost my Warframe!" It isn't just one in his collection; its his ONLY one. We, the player have variety, but the CHARACTER we play as does NOT.

Ordis might make a comment about Warframe specs, acquiring blueprints, and encourage us to build other Warframes, but if the Operator could so simply 'switch warframes' at will then the entirety of The War Within shouldn't have been a problem. In fact, every single Warframe 'fatality' that has taken place since the beginning of the war shouldn't have taken place if the Tenno can simply switch to a new one. The Tenno, now that they have 'awakened', MIGHT be able to do so; but its not normal, or usual. I personally believe that the Tenno retrieves the Warframe blueprints, builds them, and brings them to the Relays to give to a Tenno who has awoken but doesn't have a transference link.

It actually is canon. Ordis makes reference to it in his dialogue after changing your warframe in the Arsenal: "If I may say, Operator, your chosen warframe 'suits' you! Ha. Ha." He also says at the end of the Limbo Theorem quest: "Well, perhaps when you occupy this frame, you will use more... caution." What happened in the War Within is the warframe was used as a focal point so the Operator could return to the Kuva Fortress. What the Operator says is: “No. But I’ve lost my warframe… and Teshin… what if the Queens know that he helped me escape? I have to go back.” They seem much more focused on Teshin's fate. If their warframe was lost forever… that appears to just be an inconvenience, as it would be if there were multiple warframes for the Tenno.

8 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

Not entirely true. Specific frames were mass-produced: Excalibur, Mag, Volt, probably Ember and Frost. Pretty much the "original 8" or something like that.

All the others are special and unique one-of-a-kind type frames. Limbo, Inaros, Gauss, Mirage. etc etc. It may be that these were special projects or experiments as Ballas played around with the Helminth strain, coming up with new designs. It seems like the Tenno of the Old War may even have had some involvement in creating new frames, maybe after the Betrayal.

This is likely just true of the Old War, however. The current-era Tenno are uncovering these old Warframe designs and re-purposing them, so that more than one copy is made, and thus new variants (skins) are born. Thus explaining why we can have a cell of 4 Grendel.

Source for this?

8 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

We also know from a certain tidbit of lore in the Codex (I think from Simaris scans) that the Infestation can basically instantly clone any single, individual person that it has... assimilated. And copy their capabilities, and even memories, through all of these copies. We don't know the specific mechanics behind this - it may be there's some sort of "Undermind" involved, like with Halo's Flood. Clearly only the Helminth strain of Infestation is capable of copying our frames, else we would see more Rhino-like beasts roaming.

You appear to be referencing the Corrupted Ancient Synthesis entry, in which an Orokin healer is assimilated by the Technocyte, allowing multiple Infested lifeforms to exhibit her healing powers. I wouldn't call this cloning though. However, the Tenno and their warframes appear to be immune to the Technocyte, so there's little worry about Infested warframes running about (Infested Mesa being a special case).

8 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

We also don't know for sure if Umbra came first, or if Umbra was some secret side-project that Ballas carried out to do something different with the Warframes. Because we know that a key flaw of these supersoldiers was that they were not free of the Infestation's... mindless destruction... as desired. The Infestation still affected them and caused them to run amok. Ballas needed a method to control them.

We actually do know that Umbra came later, as Ballas' secret side project. It's clear from the dialogue in the quest that Umbra was transformed quite late into the Old War.

Loza03 · November 15, 2019

2 minutes ago, GrayArchon said:

I was taking "unique" to mean that there was only one of each warframe extant at a time. So, to the enemy's perspective, there would only be one Gauss warframe, not a platoon of Gausses zipping about everywhere. And perhaps the Tenno were kept asleep (in the "first dream") until a warframe was built for them.

If the Tenno weren't given frames until one was built for them, the Orokin would likely have fallen in the meantime. That would mean, at first, there was one soldier trying to fight an entire army that nobody else could even stand against. If the Mag Prime entry is to be believed, by the time Tenno hit the scene, Sentient squads were capable of annihilating entire armies with minimal effort. The Orokin could not reasonably afford to not deploy multiples of some frames, at least at first. Some may have been distinct, but even an army of elites needs footsoldiers as well as specialists.

GrayArchon · November 15, 2019

51 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

If the Tenno weren't given frames until one was built for them, the Orokin would likely have fallen in the meantime. That would mean, at first, there was one soldier trying to fight an entire army that nobody else could even stand against. If the Mag Prime entry is to be believed, by the time Tenno hit the scene, Sentient squads were capable of annihilating entire armies with minimal effort. The Orokin could not reasonably afford to not deploy multiples of some frames, at least at first. Some may have been distinct, but even an army of elites needs footsoldiers as well as specialists.

I agree with you in terms of modern military strategy, but there are a few complicating factors here:

1. The setting of outer space invalidates much of our current understanding of warfare. The vast distances and travel times, the sparseness of population and military centres, the lack of gravity and air, changes the approach significantly. This is to be kept in mind as a general concept.

2. The setting in the future, and specifically the advanced technology of the Orokin, further abstracted by the usage of Void power, means that many of our usual assumptions do not hold true (for example, the Orokin can achieve faster-than-light travel using Void technology in the Solar Rail network).

The Sentients were capable of annihilating entire armies, yes, but the Orokin were capable of generating entire armies in short order, using cloned Grineer. These Grineer were at least marginally effective against the Sentients. This could have bought them time. The Sentients were generally not able to use the Rails, and so would have been restricted to sub-lightspeed travel.

The first warframe(s) produced would have given the Sentients great pause. The Excalibur Codex entry says that the warframes were "Warrior-gods cast in steel and fury, striking our enemies in a way they could never comprehend." Obviously poetic language, but when your invasion tide gets stopped all of a sudden, you take notice.

The ending of World War II is a complex subject, and I'm no historian, but the commonly held (and commonly taught) belief is that when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered because atomic bombs were a new and shocking technology in warfare. It wasn't the destruction of the bombs themselves – Tokyo had suffered conventional bombing only 5 months prior, which killed 100.000 civilians, a comparable number to the losses at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was because the bombs were new. Obviously the Sentients didn't surrender when the warframes were unleashed against them, but it is reasonable to assume that there was a significant pause or slowing of the war as they assessed these new weapons.

Also, the Mag Prime Codex entry which you cite demonstrates that the warframes were deployed alongside normal troops, and could in fact enhance the effectiveness of those troops. It explains why so many warframes have buffing and teammate abilities. A few warframes could have been very effective, especially at first. We know the Orokin were losing the war, but they might not have been quite on the brink of destruction. They might have had the time to be picky.

Ultimately, I think your theory is as valid and about as likely as mine. You're right that the logical thing to do would be get as many warframes in the field as fast as possible. But I don't think you can strictly rule out the methodical uniqueness approach. The Orokin were known for flaunting logic, efficiency, and common sense in service to their ideals of perfection. That they would do so even in the face of their own extinction is not only a reasonable assumption, it's even borne out by the depiction of Executor Avantus.

Loza03 · November 16, 2019

1 hour ago, GrayArchon said:

I agree with you in terms of modern military strategy, but there are a few complicating factors here:

1. The setting of outer space invalidates much of our current understanding of warfare. The vast distances and travel times, the sparseness of population and military centres, the lack of gravity and air, changes the approach significantly. This is to be kept in mind as a general concept.

2. The setting in the future, and specifically the advanced technology of the Orokin, further abstracted by the usage of Void power, means that many of our usual assumptions do not hold true (for example, the Orokin can achieve faster-than-light travel using Void technology in the Solar Rail network).

The Sentients were capable of annihilating entire armies, yes, but the Orokin were capable of generating entire armies in short order, using cloned Grineer. These Grineer were at least marginally effective against the Sentients. This could have bought them time. The Sentients were generally not able to use the Rails, and so would have been restricted to sub-lightspeed travel.

Warframe sub-lightspeed is still extremely fast by our level. The Kuva Fortress is kept secret and moves gradually, so it can be assumed it avoids solar rails since those places are operated by everything from Corpus to Civilians, and there seems to be need for a certain level of proximity to use one. In turn, it can be assumed the Fortress uses sublight travel, but it can still travel the whole system in anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on the Warframe/reality time scaling. And that's using relatively crude Technology, which the Sentients definitely were not using.

1 hour ago, GrayArchon said:

The first warframe(s) produced would have given the Sentients great pause. The Excalibur Codex entry says that the warframes were "Warrior-gods cast in steel and fury, striking our enemies in a way they could never comprehend." Obviously poetic language, but when your invasion tide gets stopped all of a sudden, you take notice.

The ending of World War II is a complex subject, and I'm no historian, but the commonly held (and commonly taught) belief is that when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered because atomic bombs were a new and shocking technology in warfare. It wasn't the destruction of the bombs themselves – Tokyo had suffered conventional bombing only 5 months prior, which killed 100.000 civilians, a comparable number to the losses at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was because the bombs were new. Obviously the Sentients didn't surrender when the warframes were unleashed against them, but it is reasonable to assume that there was a significant pause or slowing of the war as they assessed these new weapons.

In the same vein, the Sentients weren't like the Japanese for a very important reason - any Sentient mind that was willing to make the jump was most likely utterly convinced in their cause, possibly even fanatically so, either through indoctrination or vengeance/bloodlust. You'd somewhat have to be to willing go, despite the near-guarantee of never coming home even if you do win and losing a vital part of you in the process. We see this in the Eidolon, who is said to have appeared after the fall of the Orokin, whilst they were waiting on the 'go ahead' signal, indicating that it broke ranks for one reason or another.

Although it might have resulted in a shock, or a change of strategy, a single battle being turned that way would quickly go back if they realised there was only one of them. To my knowledge, another part of the reason is that Japan didn't know how many bombs the US had. If they had enough, they could quickly enact genocide on their entire people. The fact there was two added to this. Even in that moment of pause, there were still hostilities, and the same would likely be true for the Sentients, especially given what we know. So that lone Excalibur would need to be deployed again, and it would rapidly become apparent that there was only one. If anything, that would force the Sentients to redouble their efforts and spread the destruction further - wide-spread devastation is the best thing to do against a lone warrior who can only be in one place at one time.

More than one of these faceless warriors, who at this early phase may be identical? That much would cause the desired pause quickly enough. If they can be deployed to multiple sectors

1 hour ago, GrayArchon said:

Also, the Mag Prime Codex entry which you cite demonstrates that the warframes were deployed alongside normal troops, and could in fact enhance the effectiveness of those troops. It explains why so many warframes have buffing and teammate abilities. A few warframes could have been very effective, especially at first. We know the Orokin were losing the war, but they might not have been quite on the brink of destruction. They might have had the time to be picky.

To be honest, by the time Mag got there, it would be more accurate to refer to the situation as having been deployed alongside a normal troop... given how quickly they died, and that Mag was aboard one of these ships as opposed to a landing craft or orbiter, it's quite plausible that these soldiers were sent in more as meat shields for Mag's deployment than an actual fighting force.

1 hour ago, GrayArchon said:

Ultimately, I think your theory is as valid and about as likely as mine. You're right that the logical thing to do would be get as many warframes in the field as fast as possible. But I don't think you can strictly rule out the methodical uniqueness approach. The Orokin were known for flaunting logic, efficiency, and common sense in service to their ideals of perfection. That they would do so even in the face of their own extinction is not only a reasonable assumption, it's even borne out by the depiction of Executor Avantus.

It's true they tend to forgo it, but remember that the imminent threat of extinction is largely what convinced the Orokin to forgo one of their most precious laws to create the Sentients in the first place. Given their immortality, it's likely they value their lives above all else. When push comes to shove they will act out of character to save their souls, even at the cost of their skins.

TenebraeAeterna · November 16, 2019

3 hours ago, GrayArchon said:

Do you have a source for this? What we have in this thread is mostly speculation, with some evidence for certain supporting facts. The theory you present is similar to mine, but it's still just theory until something comes out that confirms or refutes it.

I don't have anything on hand...and it's always been left rather vague, as far as I can tell.

...but I'm pretty sure the lore we have implies such, and I mean...all the Warframes are piloted by a single Tenno, who were a clutch of kids on a single ship. It wouldn't even make sense for it to be any other way, from a story perspective, unless the Orokin military intentionally sent many ships filled with families to a similar fate with the intention of experimentation.

Which, considering the flavor-text for Ember, that actually might be the case...as it implies this was a planned experiment.

...even then, it still seems to imply that every frame is "one" entity...and by one, I mean two unified.

3 hours ago, GrayArchon said:

This is also what I think, based on the dialogue at the end of the Second Dream.

Yeah.

I mean, they've kept it intentionally vague, likely because they probably aren't even sure how they want to go with it and it was never fully solidified.

3 hours ago, GrayArchon said:

I think this is largely correct, though I think you're overstating the degree to which the warframes have a psyche. Much of their consciousness appears to be gone, with the exception of Umbra. I'm not sure there's enough of a psyche for the Tenno Operators to take notice of.

This doesn't seem to be the case for the original Warframes.

Keep in mind that they needed the Tenno to keep them under control, as they descended into unbridled madness. I believe the originals still maintained their psyche, though shattered and twisted by the process...of which we, the Tenno, then soothed through our possession of them...much like how we ultimately do with Umbra. I think they were all, initially, pretty much like Umbra...but only Umbra was incapable of being subdued, likely because his hatred burned too deep...so deep that he still maintained some semblance of focus in his goals...which completely conflicted with that of the Tenno in their obedience to the Orokin.

For the current ones, yeah...they seem to be completely devoid of any residual psyche...likely rendered dormant through the multiple generations of cloning/manufacturing. Hell, it's possible that the transference process imbued them with some of the Tenno's memories too...and that the Orokin used this to their advantage by cloning future frames from those that had been possessed...creating frames with psyches so muddled by the hybridization that they were even easier for the Tenno to pacify.

We know the Orokin love this sort of thing...being pretty damn malevolent in many ways...

Ultimately, I think DE were/are somewhat confused on where they wanted to go...especially when you take Mirage into account. I mean, Lotus was extremely worried and distraught over losing Mirage, who also set things into motion to be reborn...but with the way the Warframes work...losing Mirage is meaningless, as the Tenno who was Mirage still lives and the Warframe itself can simply be manufactured anew.

...and yet...this loss seemed to be significant. Very.

So, it appears that the bond wasn't between the Lotus and Tenno, but Lotus and Mirage herself...the first Mirage frame, the individual who became the Mirage taken over by the Tenno who joined with Mirage in union.

It's the only way this makes sense...that the Warframes DO have a psyche, or initially did...and the Tenno allowed them to shed the madness and be, somewhat, themselves. So, it makes even more sense that, gradually, the two became one...and it also explains why we're so mentally screwed up with such fragmented memories throughout everything. There's a lot of headgames going on here, probably in part due to intentional lore...and partially because the development team kept it vague because they weren't sure where they were going with the story.

The first iteration of Mirage died...but the Tenno that was, in part, that first iteration of Mirage lived on. The only reason the Lotus would feel loss over this event is if Mirage was two distinct beings...that the frame itself was an individual psyche twisted into that of the Tenno who helped her quell the madness of infestation. Unless I'm forgetting something, of course.

That's why I need to get my butt in gear and write up a thread about how the whole "Umbra" process for all the other Warframes should actually be some sort of serum that activates their genetic memories, allowing the original psyche, now dormant in the modern frames, to temporarily shine through. From a lore perspective, it makes more sense...and it's just much more interesting than the notion that we're simply implanting an AI into them. It would be a missed lore opportunity to just do it half-assed with the notion that it's just us inserting AI into our frames so they mimic Umbra.

Talonflight · November 16, 2019

14 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

I strongly disagree with this. The Sacrifice showed us that even before the Tenno were involved, the super-soldiers that are the Warframes were specifically created from people using a special strain of Infestation.

We also know from a certain tidbit of lore in the Codex (I think from Simaris scans) that the Infestation can basically instantly clone any single, individual person that it has... assimilated. And copy their capabilities, and even memories, through all of these copies. We don't know the specific mechanics behind this - it may be there's some sort of "Undermind" involved, like with Halo's Flood. Clearly only the Helminth strain of Infestation is capable of copying our frames, else we would see more Rhino-like beasts roaming.

We also don't know for sure if Umbra came first, or if Umbra was some secret side-project that Ballas carried out to do something different with the Warframes. Because we know that a key flaw of these supersoldiers was that they were not free of the Infestation's... mindless destruction... as desired. The Infestation still affected them and caused them to run amok. Ballas needed a method to control them.

It was *ONLY* the Tenno who were able to solve this problem. Ballas did not have any other way to do it. So it should be expected that all of our frames were once normal people... and are now Infested supersoldiers, though it may be that nothing of their humanity remains, as it did for Umbra. He seemed to have been a special case where Ballas was trying to keep something of their former selves intact, but we don't really know what the end-goal of that all was.

I strongly disagree with your disagreement.
Ballas's narration isn't vague at all. He clearly states that the "Warframe Project" was a failed project that he had designed, an attempt to make "bio drones" out of infestation. He stated that it didn't work. His exact words were "failures, all of them." And he clearly states "but then, THEY came". The way he phrases is clearly shows that the Tenno came AFTER the Warframe project had already been deemed failure. He also states them using plural, meaning multiple; therefore showing that there cannot possibly be just one Umbra, and DE themselves have said that there will be more Umbra warframes released. It is a VERY safe assumption to make that the Umbra line of warframes are these old 'bio drones' that they'd tried to use, and consigned to failure... until they realized that the Tenno could interact with them. "we turned them into weapons, willing or not". I think its also very clear that our normal warframes do NOT have this kind of 'will' inside of them. Our Tenno is shocked and surprised at their own ability to go into the Umbra's memories, the first time it happens, and actually has to ASK ordis what happened. If the other Warframes had living beings inside of them, we'd have to do something similar every time we have a new Warframe; which would NOT mesh well with the events of The Second Dream. Its hard to convince someone that "you are this person" when you have another will besides your own inhabiting that same body. Especially with the body dismorphia that would be happening.

14 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

-in response to "1 warframe = 1 tenno"-

'm not so sure that it is canon. I'm not so sure that we only have one single frame. There's nothing in our specific story to tell us one way or the other. The simple fact that Ordis describes the Warframes as being vessels for us to wield suggests that we can have multiple different vessels.

Even the specific bit you mentioned can be easily hand-waved away. You may have multiple hand-painted figurines from your favorite anime, but that doesn't mean you don't cherish each and every one.

More importantly, in that scenario, our Warframe was on the Kuva Fortress. At the time, the implication was that we simply didn't know where it now was, because it's always moving. I imagine anytime we've returned later is because we managed to find it again, but we don't know how long that canonically would take for our Tenno.

^this for example

A perfect demonstration that there is more than one. The cutscene, in-game, where Stalker meets Hunhow includes him tossing a Loki's severed head to the ground. If what you suggest is true, all Loki players don't actually exist, canonically. Stalker murdered 'em.

Easily hand-waved away. Again, we would cherish each Warframe, and we had no idea where the Fortress was located. We should also recognize that EVERY Warframe is a powerful weapon that we cannot allow to fall in the wrong hands. You're talking about the Grineer Queens. Who knows what they could have done with it, invented because of it.

Also, there is a suggestion that in the cases where Tenno have died, it was because their actual Tenno self died as well, not just their frame. We know the resurrection system (our Revives) is actually canon - the Mirage Prime Codex, I think, mentioned that Lotus couldn't activate it for some reason. We don't know the full extent of how intertwined with our frames we really are when they die, or what it would specifically take to kill a Tenno (since when our Operator form is "killed" we just poof back into the frame somehow). We don't know if "running out of revives" can actually happen canonically, or (if it is) what happens to the Tenno in that situation. Let alone... do we lose the frame and have to rebuild it? How does that all tie together? What of our weapons and companions?

DE stated in multiple devstreams that each tenno was one person. I do not have the devstreams specifically on hand, and frankly I'm not hunting through 100+ devstreams to find it, someone else can do that. Further, if the Tenno lived inside of their warframe and thought they WERE the warframe, they couldn't have been able to switch warframes pre-second dream. Period. It would shatter the illusion of the second dream.

POST-Second Dream is a different story. Its unclear. We have to keep in mind that there is a degree of gameplay and story segregation that HAS to happen. Its a video game. Some things will happen that will break lore; such as a warframe dying, but the warframe still being able to be used. DE has never addressed it.

5 hours ago, GrayArchon said:

Do you have a source for any of this? Sounds like great headcanon.

The second paragraph is certainly drawing on the Sacrifice quest, but even so, you are making a lot of details out of Ballas' vague narration. And I wouldn't call them "Umbra" warframes – Umbra was an individual who was completely unrelated to these very early warframe models.

I think this is a reasonable assumption to make. There is always a dividing line between what is canon and what is gameplay in terms of video game mechanics.

It is stated by DE that the Prime variants are the "original" warframes, the orokin best, with the most power in them. The other models are clearly not made with orokin finery and are cheap to assemble. Therefore; mass production as replacements for when the shiny toys break. Its accepted by most of the fanbase in regards to Base-Frames vs Prime-Frames. As for Umbra, I believe its quite clear that he is one of the 'wanton, violent, destructive to ally and enemy both' bio drones; if not one of the originals, then at least constructed similarly to them or in the same manner. Plus, a Tenno had to first interact with a 'bio drone' somehow in the first place before they realized 'aw S#&$, the tenno can wear them like puppets'. If this isn't an Umbra-style frame (REmember "we used our finest, willing or not"), then I don't know what is, it goes out of their way to tell the player that the Tenno can heal their wounded minds; just like we did with Excal-Umbra. But if ALL Warframes had a will, like Umbra or a Bio Drone, then we'd have Sacrifice Part 2 every single time we did a frame; which CANT be correct since our Operator is clearly suprised by his first mental interaction with Umbra.

DrakeWurrum · November 17, 2019

On 2019-11-15 at 8:58 PM, Talonflight said:

I strongly disagree with your disagreement.
Ballas's narration isn't vague at all. He clearly states that the "Warframe Project" was a failed project that he had designed, an attempt to make "bio drones" out of infestation. He stated that it didn't work. His exact words were "failures, all of them." And he clearly states "but then, THEY came". The way he phrases is clearly shows that the Tenno came AFTER the Warframe project had already been deemed failure. He also states them using plural, meaning multiple; therefore showing that there cannot possibly be just one Umbra, and DE themselves have said that there will be more Umbra warframes released. It is a VERY safe assumption to make that the Umbra line of warframes are these old 'bio drones' that they'd tried to use, and consigned to failure

Most of what you stated there is literally what I was saying to you in the quote. Right up to where you claim Umbra was one of the original failed designs.

He designed the Warframes, then the Tenno came along, presenting a way to control them - something he was not able to figure out before. We also know that Umbra was fitted with a Transference bolt, even if it was different from the one we normally use. We know Umbra was fitted with this by Ballas before he was transformed. We also know that the original attempt at Warframes, sans-Tenno, resulted in supersoldiers that did not have minds or memories of their past lives.

Therefore, the SAFE assumption is that Umbra was NOT one of the old bio drones, and was something more experimental AFTER the Tenno had come along. As you said, the narration of this is not vague.

Also, I never suggested that there was only one Umbra, I'm not sure why you keep bringing that up as if I ever said there was.

On 2019-11-15 at 8:58 PM, Talonflight said:

DE stated in multiple devstreams that each tenno was one person.

No. What they've stated is that they know what each Warframe looked like as a person.

This does not prevent the Infestation's ability to copy individuals from resulting in more than one of each frame existing.

On 2019-11-15 at 8:58 PM, Talonflight said:

Further, if the Tenno lived inside of their warframe and thought they WERE the warframe, they couldn't have been able to switch warframes pre-second dream. Period. It would shatter the illusion of the second dream.

Untrue, because we can switch frames before the Second Dream. Nowhere did any of us players question our ability to do this. Nowhere in-game is it suggested that our Tenno questioned this. While some people assumed this meant each frame was a different character, most of us generally assumed that we were one character wielding different "armors" or "robots"

It is perfectly safe to assume that Tenno in the Old War were capable of using more than one frame. That doesn't mean they all did - since we know in certain cases, there were unique one-of-a-kind frames like Mirage and Harrow. I don't remember where or when, but I've heard it said in Devstreams that certain frames, like Excalibur and Mag, were mass-produced frames, while the "quest frames" are all unique.

It's also worth noting that these are called "warframes" - in the Orokin text, it's literally written as "war platform"
Honestly, I've not seen in the story or the lore that we believed we WERE the warframes, though most of the community seems to accept that this is true. Maybe it's just been a while since I played through the cinematic quests.

On 2019-11-15 at 7:22 PM, TenebraeAeterna said:

Ultimately, I think DE were/are somewhat confused on where they wanted to go...especially when you take Mirage into account. I mean, Lotus was extremely worried and distraught over losing Mirage, who also set things into motion to be reborn...but with the way the Warframes work...losing Mirage is meaningless, as the Tenno who was Mirage still lives and the Warframe itself can simply be manufactured anew.

...and yet...this loss seemed to be significant. Very.

I've seen some posters in the past theorize that what happened with Mirage was the Sentients had actually boarded Mirage's Orbiter.

Whether or not that's true, we don't know what it takes to kill a Tenno. We don't know what happens if the canon revive system for warframes doesn't work - does the Tenno actually still survive? How intertwined are we with the frames? We can carry multiple versions of the same frame or gun, so by extension, if a frame completely dies in a mission with no revives available, that frame is lost and we have to build a new one (thankfully we don't, that would suck!).

None of that has ever really been explained in lore. We just assume that, since the Operator is separate from the frame, that we can survive if the frame doesn't. We don't know if that's actually true. Maybe that's why Ordis had us "cut the link" during War Within.

On 2019-11-15 at 2:58 PM, GrayArchon said:

You appear to be referencing the Corrupted Ancient Synthesis entry, in which an Orokin healer is assimilated by the Technocyte, allowing multiple Infested lifeforms to exhibit her healing powers. I wouldn't call this cloning though. However, the Tenno and their warframes appear to be immune to the Technocyte, so there's little worry about Infested warframes running about (Infested Mesa being a special case).

I am referencing that because the Warframes *are* Infested individuals already, though it's a specific strain. That's why we're "immune" to it. Because our frames are already Infested supersoldiers. It seems to me that different strains cannot mingle easily, hence why Alad V had to work hard to create Infested Mesa.

I would say it goes beyond cloning, though. Those Infested lifeforms didn't just exhibit her healing powers, they WERE her, each and every one, as per the twin carrying a psychic link to her. It seems to me that the Infestation doesn't just physically copy an individual's body and abilities, but also their psyche, their mind.

Edited November 17, 2019 by DrakeWurrum

TenebraeAeterna · November 18, 2019

13 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

I've seen some posters in the past theorize that what happened with Mirage was the Sentients had actually boarded Mirage's Orbiter.

Whether or not that's true, we don't know what it takes to kill a Tenno. We don't know what happens if the canon revive system for warframes doesn't work - does the Tenno actually still survive? How intertwined are we with the frames? We can carry multiple versions of the same frame or gun, so by extension, if a frame completely dies in a mission with no revives available, that frame is lost and we have to build a new one (thankfully we don't, that would suck!).

None of that has ever really been explained in lore. We just assume that, since the Operator is separate from the frame, that we can survive if the frame doesn't. We don't know if that's actually true. Maybe that's why Ordis had us "cut the link" during War Within.

The Sentients boarding Mirage's Orbiter wouldn't have mattered, as the Tenno have been in stasis on Lua.

We also do know what happens when a Tenno's Warframe dies due to the Stalker's discussion with Hunhow, who says, " "Sever their heads, yet they rise again. Someone has hidden the Tenno essence, their truth, from you." The entire point of Hunhow employing the Stalker was to attack the Tenno on Lua so that they couldn't simply rise again...as the Sentients are incapable of entering the Void for prolonged periods of time.

This makes it very obvious that when a Warframe dies, it has zero impact on the Tenno themselves...supporting the theory that we, canonically, just jump to a new husk. This is also why we were so brash against the Grineer Queens...and why Ordis was so distraught over what was happening...as the Elder Queen was attacking us directly. She had no care for the Warframe itself, she wanted our physical form...and sought to implant herself within it.

What she was doing is something the Sentients can not...else they would have used that method, rather than employ the Stalker.

DrakeWurrum · November 18, 2019

1 hour ago, TenebraeAeterna said:

The Sentients boarding Mirage's Orbiter wouldn't have mattered, as the Tenno have been in stasis on Lua.

We also do know what happens when a Tenno's Warframe dies due to the Stalker's discussion with Hunhow, who says, " "Sever their heads, yet they rise again. Someone has hidden the Tenno essence, their truth, from you." The entire point of Hunhow employing the Stalker was to attack the Tenno on Lua so that they couldn't simply rise again...as the Sentients are incapable of entering the Void for prolonged periods of time.

This makes it very obvious that when a Warframe dies, it has zero impact on the Tenno themselves...supporting the theory that we, canonically, just jump to a new husk. This is also why we were so brash against the Grineer Queens...and why Ordis was so distraught over what was happening...as the Elder Queen was attacking us directly. She had no care for the Warframe itself, she wanted our physical form...and sought to implant herself within it.

What she was doing is something the Sentients can not...else they would have used that method, rather than employ the Stalker.

Hrm, fair point. I'd forgotten that line from Hunhow.

The theory with Mirage, btw, was that they at that point they had not yet been hidden away on Lua, and that Mirage's death was the catalyst that led to Lotus hiding all the Tenno on Lua, as well as in the Void, to protect them from ever being threatened by the Sentients again.

Though, of course, this falls apart when you remember that the Sentients didn't know about the Operators until Ballas told them.

Not saying the theory is true, just that it's out there.

I do think that, on some level, there must have been some method for fully killing the Tenno that we don't know about which exists in the Sentient arsenal. Just as there's a special method for fully killing the kuva liches that the Queens didn't seem to know about (but somehow we already knew all the details about Requiem mods and the Parazon, without anybody helping point us to it, and no story behind it)

Of course, we could just accept that a lot of DE's lore doesn't fit together because they've pieced it together over time, and details have changed along the way. 🤷‍♂️

TenebraeAeterna · November 18, 2019

1 hour ago, DrakeWurrum said:

Hrm, fair point. I'd forgotten that line from Hunhow.

The theory with Mirage, btw, was that they at that point they had not yet been hidden away on Lua, and that Mirage's death was the catalyst that led to Lotus hiding all the Tenno on Lua, as well as in the Void, to protect them from ever being threatened by the Sentients again.

Though, of course, this falls apart when you remember that the Sentients didn't know about the Operators until Ballas told them.

Not saying the theory is true, just that it's out there.

I do think that, on some level, there must have been some method for fully killing the Tenno that we don't know about which exists in the Sentient arsenal. Just as there's a special method for fully killing the kuva liches that the Queens didn't seem to know about (but somehow we already knew all the details about Requiem mods and the Parazon, without anybody helping point us to it, and no story behind it)

Of course, we could just accept that a lot of DE's lore doesn't fit together because they've pieced it together over time, and details have changed along the way. 🤷‍♂️

It doesn't fit either though.

We learn in The Second Dream that it was Margulis, not Lotus, who put them into stasis to protect them from their uncontrollable powers...from hurting themselves and those around them, much like they did to the woman in Ember's flavor-text...who I think actually becomes the Ember Warframe later, but that's purely speculation. This came before The Great War, as they ultimately become weapons for the Orokin after Margulis' execution through the continuation of her research...ultimately leading to transference technology. Margulis, apparently, never lived to see the Tenno used in this way...and she had already placed them in stasis. Their ability to control Warframes came after they were already put to "sleep" and through the process of transference...where they could harness those abilities.

Lotus actually makes some vague comments as Natah about her time as Lotus actually being the work of the Orokin...and I'm starting to wonder if they programmed her with Margulis' memories so that the Tenno wouldn't rebel after they killed their mother-figure. The Tenno themselves seem pretty mentally messed up, but Lotus replaced the only individual who cared for them after they returned...

Regardless, as you say, Ballas then tells the Sentients about them...but by that point, Lua was already in the void and unreachable to them. I believe it's implied that the Lotus actually placed them into the void...rather than Margulis, but I'm not certain.

As for the Sentients having some sort of method, that would water down the betrayal of Ballas. The entire reason his betrayal was so great is that they didn't have a method of taking them down permanently, hence why they lost the war. They could take the Tenno down...but they'd be back, having learned from their previous defeat. They took the strengths of the Infested and enhanced them with lucid minds. The Sentients were helpless, smacking their head off a brick wall until Ballas ultimately gave them the information they needed. Even then, it was too little too late...and the Tenno won the war, destroying Hunhow...well, downing him.

The only thing that makes sense is that Lotus valued the Warframe itself, and perceived it as a individual...which would make sense, if she knew how they were created.

.............that said, yeah......the lore is kinda vague and muddled. Lots of holes and things that just don't make much sense.

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

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