*Spoilers* After the Ropolyst I'm 60/40 that they are still loyal to us.

[TheArcSet]

After beating the Ropolyst and watching some reactions to that and the chimera prologue, I saw a lot of comments that Natah was fully against the Tenno now.

However, there are a few reasons why I think that's not yet certain and in fact I wouldn't be surprised if, even if the Lotus is dead, Natah, is still with us, or at least doesn't want to see us dead.

I'll 1st lay out reasons to think about this, then evidence to consider for loyalty, then possible motives for her current actions.

To begin with, the entirety of the main Warframe story has been a conspiracy, told in half truths by unreliable narrators and with the status quo constantly replaced by new fact or stories. From the apostasy prologue onward we know that the Lotus' past isn't what we were told, but it would hardly be strange for DE to write the story in a different direction to where they're currently pointing. So it's worth looking at all the evidence we have and certain plot-holes these quests have opened up.

At this point Ballas has freed Natah from the the Lotus cradle, she has revealed that her actions were controlled by brainwashing and Orokin slavery and ostensibly she has turned against us.
 

However this opens up 3 large plot holes.

1. If she was a brainwashed Orokin slave, existing solely as a tool to control the Tenno, after Margulis' execution, then why did she seemingly orchestrate the Tenno rebellion and the genocide of the Orokin? She obeyed neither her people or her masters plans.
2. If being removed from the cradle freed her from her corrupted purpose, then her choosing to leave the cradle herself, by her own freewill, could be plot-hole in the Second Dream; though it could just be that most of what Ballas removed was virtual and the cables were just what we could see.
3. Ballas says she woke the Tenno to divide the different human factions and weaken the origin system, but by his own account, at that point, before he freed her, she should still have be coerced to destroy other sentients. And he gives us the slayer, while saved by her and under her eye.

During the Ropolyst mission she says a number of interesting things to the Tenno.

• She admits to seeing some of the void illusions and hearing the entity's voice, where as she previously denied their reality.
• She contacts the Tenno, to explain the situation, rather than to make threats like grineer or coprus, ect.
• She reminds the Tenno how void energy effects sentients, at the point when you need to remove the Eidolon's shield.
• She says that in Lua she was changed, just as she said you were changed by the knowledge of what you needed to do to your parents.
• She says "Ropalolyst, rise, remain, and die, for the others to live.", that could refer to it being lessened and fragments of it becoming amalgams, if it lives now, or to it dying now so we can live.
   

She is definitely antagonistic to the Tenno in her final lines, but as I've said some of actions don't seem to line up and some of her lines and her conversing with us in general are interesting.

So if she isn't bent on destroying us, what could she be doing?

We don't know how many actual sentients, as oppose to fragments, were ever created. All we know is that one to build objects and one to tend the land were sent to the Tau system, Natah was born and then those 3 crossed the void, returning to the Origin system and becoming sterile in the process. It seems that as no new sentients can be made in the origin system (at least not without kuva which she may not know) she is trying to make amalgams to create more fragments and possibly to gain some immunity to the void.

I see two ideas.

1. If she doesn't hate the Tenno but has returned to being a loyal sentient then she may be uncertain what to do with us: as she doesn't hate us like the Orokin, and the queen ruled Grineer, but the void entity represents an unknown that seems dangerous to her kind. In that case she could be torn between neutrality, affection and duty.
2. She recognises the truth in Teshin's words: now the sentients are no-longer sleeping, they cannot be stopped by a handful of Tenno, or warring humans clinging to the remnants of old technology. So the changed line may refer to her having to take an active role and use her infiltration skills to spy on and work against the sentients from within their command.

Or, of course she may have wholly and truly abandoned us, after being freed from her chains and finding out she is not who she thought herself to be, although it does sound like she is still questioning who and what she is.

Eithe way, I wouldn't put It past DE to pull the rug out from under us again, after charging 400 ducats for it of course 😉.

[TARINunit9]

During the Erra cutscenes, we see that the Sentients had to rip out basically all of Natah's memories in order to win her loyalty back. There is a LOT of room for her to defect back to the Tenno, with that in mind

Edited January 6, 2020 by TARINunit9

[TheArcSet]

2 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

During the Extra cutscenes, we see that the Sentients had to rip out basically all of Natah's memories in order to win her loyalty back. There is a LOT of room for her to defect back to the Tenno, with that in mind

Ah, very interesting. Is that in some extra media, like the Rell comic, or is that in railjack?

[TARINunit9]

9 minutes ago, TheArcSet said:

Ah, very interesting. Is that in some extra media, like the Rell comic, or is that in railjack?

Stupid autocorrect. I was trying to say "the Erra cutscenes". The new Railjack "quest" cutscenes

[TheArcSet]

Just now, TARINunit9 said:

Stupid autocorrect. I was trying to say "the Erra cutscenes". The new Railjack "quest" cutscenes

Ah, thanks, I mean to get to that soon.

[AuroraSonicBoom]

Always keep in mind that the persona of the Lotus is an amalgamation of Natah and what remains of Margulis, and given by what we've been shown it's quite clear that Natah still has some Margulis in her, most prominently symbolized by the fact that she still wears her face. Also, the Erra cinematic solidified the fact that Natah hasn't shed Margulis for good, still having occasional lapses of memory from her time as the Lotus.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

I'm guessing something will happen that makes Natah "remember" us and once again take our side. not sure how else they can really write it considering Lotus is, for better or worse, a main character.

that said, if I'm offered something sufficiently shiny and rare in exchange, I would totally shoot her in the face. they wouldn't give her such a buff Sentient body without giving us a boss fight against her, would they? and I don't mean a scripted "just use the amp and win" boss fight, I mean a PROPER battle, making the most of Umbra mods, Operator mode, and our Warframe abilities. space mom knows us more than we know ourselves, she could probably kick our a$$ if she wanted to, so worth considering IMO.

 

[QueenofYandxre]

<sup>As noted with the Erra quest, from my personal observation, Natah was hesitant when speaking to her brother about the Tenno (until he forced Ballas to tell/confirm her the information about the Orokin being dead and in par the Tenno being the enemy.) You could hear in her voice that she almost switched back to being "Lotus" until Ballas intervened.

While it's uncertain for now, I honestly believe and feel that she will come back to us and betray her kind once again. As said by @TARINunit9 , we saw that the Sentients had to rip out basically all of her memories to make her loyal again. With that in mind, there is a hint or possibility that she will likely regain her memories and rejoin the Tenno. I feel deep down that Natah still loves and cares for the Tenno, under what's now become of her mind.</sup>

Spoiler

^{A mother simply can't abandon her beloved children...}

 

[Katinka]

Even if we do have boss fight against her, it doesn't have to end with her death.  I'm expecting/hoping that we'll be able to restore her Lotus memories but without removing her Natah memories and then let her choose what to do with a level of clarity she's never had before.  It'd be sad for her to end up with amnesia for a third time.  She'll end up like Ordis if we keep wiping her memories.

[Cubewano]

25 minutes ago, AuroraSonicBoom said:

Always keep in mind that the persona of the Lotus is an amalgamation of Natah and what remains of Margulis, and given by what we've been shown it's quite clear that Natah still has some Margulis in her, most prominently symbolized by the fact that she still wears her face. Also, the Erra cinematic solidified the fact that Natah hasn't shed Margulis for good, still having occasional lapses of memory from her time as the Lotus.

None of that is canon though, the entire notion that the Lotus is a combination of Margulis and Natah is entirely fan speculation. So far as we're aware the Lotus has only ever tried to emulate Margulis' behavior based on what she's been informed on her and that is as far as their connection goes, which is why she can be surprised when new information is revealed about her such as when we learned Rell had been cast out by Margulis, something the Lotus received with disbelief since Margulis had always been touted as this saintly being who gave her everything to protect the tenno and her abandoning a child ran so very counter to that notion.

Frankly anything more than a kind of admiration/imitation would run counter to the coming themes of chosen family that the new war is supposedly meant to explore, it isn't really choosing sides if the decision is based on separate personas rather than one consolidated being. It'd warp the struggle.

Edit: I also don't think her having her Lotus appearance present in her sentient form has anything to do with Margulis in specific, I think it has more to do with her still just feeling connected with her identity as the Lotus and is symbolic of her still feeling split between her two identities (one as the sentient spy and the other as the mothering lotus) 

Edited January 6, 2020 by Cubewano

[TARINunit9]

16 minutes ago, Katinka said:

Even if we do have boss fight against her, it doesn't have to end with her death.

*Rolls eyes in Vay Hek's general direction* Agreed

[Loza03]

I'm fairly certain she's being mind controlled and/or brainwashed. Basically, being made to THINK her past life was her being reprogrammed, whereas in actual fact she was reprogrammed to think that. Basically, the whole Lotus thing was legit, but she's been brainwashed to think it wasn't.

I think this for a number of reasons, but mostly along the lines of Orokin reprogramming not making much sense.

 

This also could possibly result in a third outcome between save and kill. The new Natah personality winds up sticking, but instead of having to mercy-kill her (with varying levels of enthusiasm depending on the person), the reveal of the brainwashing, the legitimacy of her original defection and the inevitable cavalcade of suffering the Sentients will inflict upon those who seem to have no part in this war, will get Natah to independently defect - effectively recreating the Lotus (possibly with another new name) with a new personality. I'm actually leaning towards this, because DE has shown they like to throw curveballs, and because this lets them keep an iconic character whilst also letting them tweak character traits to help warm people who weren't fond of the rather cold Lotus. 

[Renegade343]

2 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

During the Erra cutscenes, we see that the Sentients had to rip out basically all of Natah's memories in order to win her loyalty back. There is a LOT of room for her to defect back to the Tenno, with that in mind

But here's the thing: Natah was rather coherent and had her memories during the Ropalolyst, and she was rather 'Team Sentients', so to speak, evident by her little speech as we travel to defeat the Ropalolyst. Why would the Sentients then decide to rip all her memories out, when her with her memories would better serve the Sentients in their upcoming war?

My thought is that she's starting to suffer an identity crisis from the reprogramming both by the Orokin (when she was captured) and likely the Sentients (when they found her and brought her back to their side), and her hesitation, along with her stilted dialogue, is her trying to process all of that. I wouldn't be surprised (in fact, delighted) that she might decide to be her own third faction: Natah and the Amalgams, the next step in the Sentient's evolution.

Edited January 6, 2020 by Renegade343

[TARINunit9]

10 minutes ago, Renegade343 said:

But here's the thing: Natah was rather coherent and had her memories during the Ropalolyst, and she was rather 'Team Sentients', so to speak, evident by her little speech as we travel to defeat the Ropalolyst. Why would the Sentients then decide to rip all her memories out, when her with her memories would better serve the Sentients in their upcoming war?

Lemme check the dialogue...

There is an inconsistency between the Ropalolyst fight and the Erra cutscene, but it's not her loyalties. Erra has her attention during both. The inconsistent part is her knowledge of the Tenno. In the boss fight she knows exactly what a Tenno is and that they want to kill Sentients using the Void. In the Erra stuff, she needs to be reminded about all of that

[Renegade343]

10 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

Lemme check the dialogue...

There is an inconsistency between the Ropalolyst fight and the Erra cutscene, but it's not her loyalties. Erra has her attention during both. The inconsistent part is her knowledge of the Tenno. In the boss fight she knows exactly what a Tenno is and that they want to kill Sentients using the Void. In the Erra stuff, she needs to be reminded about all of that

I was more referring to her tone and dialogue in the comparison between the two cutscences. In the Ropalolyst, she was at the very least confident and sure of herself in her speech, but in Erra, she ends up being hesitant and unsure. My point is that it doesn't make sense the Sentients would rip out her memories between that and now, because why risk decreasing her effectiveness for the upcoming war when she did go back to their side, as she implied during the Ropalolyst speech, without having to delete portions of her memory?

Hence, I suggest that she might be suffering from an identity crisis, battling between the identity the Orokin gave her when she got captured, and the identity the Sentients presumably restored to some degree, and that conflict is likely hampering her capabilities significantly.

Edited January 6, 2020 by Renegade343

[Loza03]

7 minutes ago, Renegade343 said:

I was more referring to her tone and dialogue in the comparison between the two cutscences. In the Ropalolyst, she was at the very least confident and sure of herself in her speech, but in Erra, she ends up being hesitant and unsure. My point is that it doesn't make sense the Sentients would rip out her memories between that and now, because why risk decreasing her effectiveness for the upcoming war when she did go back to their side, as she implied during the Ropalolyst speech, without having to delete portions of her memory?

Hence, I suggest that she might be suffering from an identity crisis, battling between the identity the Orokin gave her when she got captured, and the identity the Sentients presumably restored to some degree, and that conflict is likely hampering her capabilities significantly.

We still don't know if the Orokin actually did give her a new personality, or if the Sentients are feeding her lies. Erra IS named after a god responsible for such things after all. Erra, god of Plague and Mayhem in Akkadian religion, who's job it was to attempt to destroy humanity by subverting and manipulating the leaders of great civilisations and armies.  She could have developed that new personality on her own, and the Sentients snipped-snipped her mind, and then later decided that the control wasn't strong enough, or it wasn't complete.

If we consider the Sacrifice, in that, she seems pretty much 90% Lotus - she's still answering to 'Lotus', she's not directly attacking us (jury is still out on if she's the one getting the fighters to fire or if the trigger was pulled by someone else, though it should be noted they had the same core colour as seen in 'Erra') and generally seems fairly lucid - no hesitant speech, no metaphors or flowery language, just classic Lotus, just with a makeover - with the major exception of the last section which I go into later. Then Ropalolyst, and she's mostly normal, but saying some things that don't seem to line up entirely, and speaks in a markedly different way. She's a lot more... Shakespearian for lack of a better word, when she's normally pretty direct. A trait we now know she shares with Erra - "If I had a heart, it would be broken.  If my eyes could weep, I'd be blind." Erra's dialogue is very elaborate, very well written, absolutely layered in a way that gets an English nut like me happy - and in way VERY familiar to how she speaks in. Then in the Erra quest, we see her behaving very unlike how she normally does. Of note, she seems to be robotically responding to inputs, even launching into a Tirade against the Tenno prompted only by the word. Almost like she's reciting a prime directive.

 

It feels like Erra is slowly deconstructing her personality, using parts of his own as substitutes whenever holes in the reprogramming show up or he needs her to perform, and then trying to reconstruct a new one in its place, one he at least wants Natah to think is the original. There's more circumstantial evidence too - during the line: "Drifting, gaunt, beyond the bleak star. Mother: I am coming home" line, a male voice overlays into hers and she emits a red glow - one that would later be associated with Chimera and Erra in particular. Watch this scene: Lotus is clearly associated with the colour blue, and Erra the colour red. The same red as seen in the Sacrifice.

Spoiler

 

I dunno, the similarities seem very strange to me.

[Renegade343]

1 minute ago, Loza03 said:

We still don't know if the Orokin actually did give her a new personality, or if the Sentients are feeding her lies. Erra IS named after a god responsible for such things after all. Erra, god of Plague and Mayhem in Akkadian religion, who's job it was to attempt to destroy humanity by subverting and manipulating the leaders of great civilisations and armies.  She could have developed that new personality on her own, and the Sentients snipped-snipped her mind, and then later decided that the control wasn't strong enough, or it wasn't complete.

Ah, but you also understand that the Sentients have a will to live too, when they realized that they would be of no use once they finish terraforming the Tau system and would be cast aside by the Orokin, in which they decided to start rebelling against the Orokin (of course, the other reason is them knowing that the Orokin would desecrate the system too). Given that, the idea that to defeat the Orokin is to create a Sentient that would, for a while, be leading the one weapon that can kill them and their children would likely not go down well with at least some of the Sentients.

You can say that only a small sect of Sentients crafted this plan and hid it from the rest of the Sentients, but as we can see, they are not perfect, and it is plausible that the plan can leak out by accident, and thus we go back to the above. Given that there's no hints of Sentient infighting based on Natah acting as the mole within the Orokin ranks, since that would likely be noticed by the Orokin through a decrease in Sentient strength, it lends more credence that Natah was captured and reprogrammed by the Orokin.

17 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

It feels like Erra is slowly deconstructing her personality, using parts of his own as substitutes whenever holes in the reprogramming show up or he needs her to perform, and then trying to reconstruct a new one in its place, one he at least wants Natah to think is the original. There's more circumstantial evidence too - during the line: "Drifting, gaunt, beyond the bleak star. Mother: I am coming home" line, a male voice overlays into hers and she emits a red glow - one that would later be associated with Chimera and Erra in particular. Watch this scene: Lotus is clearly associated with the colour blue, and Erra the colour red. The same red as seen in the Sacrifice.

I would disagree on that, considering Hunhow is also somewhat Shakespearian during TSD, and that he himself does emit a red glow, which suggests to me that it's more of a family trait than Erra imposing his personality on Natah. And it doesn't make sense as to why Erra, if he was slowly deconstructing Natah's personality, to essentially lobotomize her, given that he would at least know that playing around with her personality can have unintended consequences. Surely at some point, he would've noticed the degradation of Natah's capabilities and stopped early on, and since it is implied that he cares for her, he would've paid more attention to it.

[TARINunit9]

2 hours ago, Renegade343 said:

I was more referring to her tone and dialogue in the comparison between the two cutscences. In the Ropalolyst, she was at the very least confident and sure of herself in her speech, but in Erra, she ends up being hesitant and unsure. 

I noticed that too, but she only started doing it after she mentioned the Gold Spear Fleet only to be told said fleet no longer exists. At which point she forgets who the Tenno are, so yeah, you might be right