I had a question why does Umbra look the way he does lore wise?

[(XBOX)Heartrime6690]

Ballas tested on the Dax soldier/Father to torture him. So why does he look like a prime frame? Did the Helminth fuse him with his gear? He has unique symbols on him as well; the U crests and these Batman-like arm guards are interesting, too. I can't think of any Frame with those. (By the way, I know the design came before the lore, but that doesn't change anything, as the lore was built around the design.)

[TARINunit9]

8 minutes ago, (XBOX)Heartrime6690 said:

So why does he look like a prime frame?

Varzia Dax has said that some frames started out as Primes, and the not-Prime versions were reverse-engineered later. But for other frames (most notably Ivara and Titania) the not-Prime versions came first and had to earn the right to have Prime forms built later

Excalibur Umbra was probably built using the Prime stuff, since it was a pet project made by Ballas himself

9 minutes ago, (XBOX)Heartrime6690 said:

Did the Helminth fuse him with his gear?

Probably?

[(PSN)MYKK678]

13 minutes ago, (XBOX)Heartrime6690 said:

Ballas tested on the Dax soldier/Father to torture him. So why does he look like a prime frame? Did the Helminth fuse him with his gear? He has unique symbols on him as well; the U crests and these Batman-like arm guards are interesting, too. I can't think of any Frame with those. (By the way, I know the design came before the lore, but that doesn't change anything, as the lore was built around the design.)

He looks how he looks because of the Lore.

 

Inner layer is all red and gooey (as seen in the Umbra cracked helmet) because Humans are injected with a certain strain of the infestation, and thus mutate beyond human recognition (its pretty dark).

Second Layer is the Warframe Skin, which used to be the aforementioned Humans skin. Its not a suit, that's what the human mutates into. Pretty sure there's a lore text in the game somewhere that talks about the process of creating the original Warframes and how their Skin turned to Steel.

Third Layer finally is the Decorations. This is present because of Ego. Specifically Ballas' Ego. He wouldn't have a "special project" Warframe and not dress it up.

[CosoMalvadoNG]

hace 50 minutos, (PSN)MYKK678 dijo:

Second Layer is the Warframe Skin, which used to be the aforementioned Humans skin. Its not a suit, that's what the human mutates into. Pretty sure there's a lore text in the game somewhere that talks about the process of creating the original Warframes and how their Skin turned to Steel.

According to Ballas' Vitruvian, when a subject is exposed to a Helminth strain, it transforms their skin into sword-steel, as well as interlinking their internal organs with untold resilience, while at the same time preventing the same infestation from completely destroying their mind.
 

Cita

Terrestrial organisms are organism based of carbon. What helminth does is use that carbon to create some kind of alloy on the skin similar to L6 Bainite, a carbon-based alloy for sword making . (this paragraph is pure assumptions)

 

Edited September 5, 2023 by CosoMalvadoNG
misspellings

[Loza03]

His Filigree is probably inherited from his armour, or more likely the memory of his armour. If you look at the Dax Nikana and other Dax-themed items (such as the Dax Nikana skin, Teshin's helmet etc.) they are adorned with crescent shapes, and we see similar shapes on Lua. Considering the Lotus/Tenno symbol also incorporates angular crescent shapes, it's likely this represents warriors in Orokin culture.

So, Umbra grew whole bunch when he got infested. Umbra was also a very high-ranking dax, and might have had some gold adornments or other gold on him to represent this, which might explain where it came from. Or perhaps Ballas just wanted to make his tortured victim look more pleasant.

[BroDutt]

11 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

Or perhaps Ballas just wanted to make his tortured victim look more pleasant.

It's the later. That SoB is the embodiment of the whole Orokin. The only reason the Orokin reject Entrati design (weapon, necramech) because it didn't had Orokin aesthetic value and crude. The fact that necramech can bypass Orphix/Sentient Resonator at least gave the Orokin an upper hand in Old War. But nope, lets gilded this mutated human and had the magic child controlled it.

 

[CosoMalvadoNG]

hace 1 minuto, BroDutt dijo:

magic child

void devils

[(XBOX)Heartrime6690]

1 hour ago, (PSN)MYKK678 said:

He looks how he looks because of the Lore.

 

Inner layer is all red and gooey (as seen in the Umbra cracked helmet) because Humans are injected with a certain strain of the infestation, and thus mutate beyond human recognition (its pretty dark).

Second Layer is the Warframe Skin, which used to be the aforementioned Humans skin. Its not a suit, that's what the human mutates into. Pretty sure there's a lore text in the game somewhere that talks about the process of creating the original Warframes and how their Skin turned to Steel.

Third Layer finally is the Decorations. This is present because of Ego. Specifically Ballas' Ego. He wouldn't have a "special project" Warframe and not dress it up.

Umbra was a special project? I thought it was just Ballas torturing the Soldier and wanted to see what would happen.

[(XBOX)Heartrime6690]

50 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

His Filigree is probably inherited from his armour, or more likely the memory of his armour. If you look at the Dax Nikana and other Dax-themed items (such as the Dax Nikana skin, Teshin's helmet etc.) they are adorned with crescent shapes, and we see similar shapes on Lua. Considering the Lotus/Tenno symbol also incorporates angular crescent shapes, it's likely this represents warriors in Orokin culture.

So, Umbra grew whole bunch when he got infested. Umbra was also a very high-ranking dax, and might have had some gold adornments or other gold on him to represent this, which might explain where it came from. Or perhaps Ballas just wanted to make his tortured victim look more pleasant.

I like this idea. The helminth forms the body around his memories as he wasn't brain-dead like the other frames sort of like after your tooth gets crowned it conforms to your body while in use even tho it has a base look. 

[Loza03]

16 minutes ago, (XBOX)Heartrime6690 said:

I like this idea. The helminth forms the body around his memories as he wasn't brain-dead like the other frames sort of like after your tooth gets crowned it conforms to your body while in use even tho it has a base look. 

It's worth noting that at least Mirage had a conscious influence, so it's likely several other frames had influence over what their final appearance looked like. How much that survived Orokin meddling afterwards, who knows - Proto Volt, if that is canon, very much doesn't resemble modern-day Volt, nor Volt Prime.

[(PSN)MYKK678]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Heartrime6690 said:

Umbra was a special project? I thought it was just Ballas torturing the Soldier and wanted to see what would happen.

He was kind of both. Umbra found out about Ballas' contact with the Sentients, and so Ballas put Umbra through a modified version of the Warframe creation process.

Normally Warframes are left as puppets without a will of their own. Still "technically" alive but unable to function without Tenno connection. Ballas made sure Umbra was different.

After forcing Umbra to kill his own son, Isaah, this specific Warframe mutation left Umbra with the ability to control its own body, but purged of all feeling and memory, except for the memory of killing his own son. In short, Ballas went a bit overboard and left Umbra in a living hell. Reliving the worst moment of his life constantly until it drove him mad, along with whatever the Infestation Mutation was already doing to his mind.

 

I've seen a few folks claim Kullervo has Warframes darkest backstory. Umbra Dax still wins that race by a mile.

[0_The_F00l]

His decorations feel more like , for the lack of a better word , big ass staples and pins stuck in his skin.

I am of the opinion that most of his gold parts were part of a restraining mechanism , like the nails and frames you use for butterflies and other trophy esque decorations. The rest were literal decorations cause ballas is a psychopath.

And during his "transformation" they were embedded in his body and he took it with him when he escaped.

[Pakaku]

27 minutes ago, 0_The_F00l said:

His decorations feel more like , for the lack of a better word , big ass staples and pins stuck in his skin.

I am of the opinion that most of his gold parts were part of a restraining mechanism , like the nails and frames you use for butterflies and other trophy esque decorations. The rest were literal decorations cause ballas is a psychopath.

And during his "transformation" they were embedded in his body and he took it with him when he escaped.

Sounds like Valkyr could sympathise with Umbra there

[CopperBezel]

11 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

Varzia Dax has said that some frames started out as Primes, and the not-Prime versions were reverse-engineered later. But for other frames (most notably Ivara and Titania) the not-Prime versions came first and had to earn the right to have Prime forms built later

Eh. On the one hand you have individual contradictory implications in details of deep lore, and on the other you have the surface reading of literally everything else ever said, which wins?

No frame was a "Prime" during the Orokin era, the Tenno just call them that retrospectively to refer to the original models. That's been the whole idea all along, the reason they're called "Prime", which is very much a real word in a common usage that just means the first or original in this context, like T' in an equation means the initial time.

Ivara and Titania are only unique in that we're told about the singular original frame of that model while also being shown the non-Prime one. But like ... we know the reasons the Titania quest and Ivara Levarian respectively can't show us the Prime versions, c'mon. There wouldn't have been any reverse-engineered Tenno designed frames at the time either of those stories happened, because the Orokin were explicitly still making warframes, so if there were already Primes and by extension non-Primes at the time, what would the non-Primes even be, and why would they resemble the later Tenno designs?

Making the lore work while taking every snippet at exact literal face value is fun and all, but we gotta be real here about the story that's actually being told. And equally honest about why it inevitably contradicts itself, like it will again when they release Kullervo Prime in a few years, and he doesn't look like the singular actual original Kullervo who is still alive in the Duviri mind prison and older than the Tenno. I suppose avid lorehounds can say at that point that Ballas later made a production run of a new model Kullervo out of spite, while the original was mutated by Duviri magics to look like DT's Dax. 

(I also look forward to Xaku Prime, though DE figured out the problem in the years between Valkyr Prime and Revenant Prime and just told us that the origin story we were told about Revenant actually happened to the Prime original before the Tenno copied it, easy, so they'll probably pull the same trick with Xaku as well.)

 

Edit: On the main topic, Excalibur Umbra is just like us, he's got cosmetic slots. They're just different ones than we get. He was turned into an Excalibur Prime and then got a scarf and an armor set, but the attachments worked differently X centuries ago so they're not compatible with our slots.

Edited September 6, 2023 by CopperBezel

[TARINunit9]

8 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

No frame was a "Prime" during the Orokin era, the Tenno just call them that retrospectively to refer to the original models. That's been the whole idea all along, the reason they're called "Prime", which is very much a real word in a common usage that just means the first or original in this context, like T' in an equation means the initial time.

Ivara and Titania are only unique in that we're told about the singular original frame of that model while also being shown the non-Prime one. But like ... we know the reasons the Titania quest and Ivara Levarian respectively can't show us the Prime versions, c'mon. There wouldn't have been any reverse-engineered Tenno designed frames at the time either of those stories happened, because the Orokin were explicitly still making warframes, so if there were already Primes and by extension non-Primes at the time, what would the non-Primes even be, and why would they resemble the later Tenno designs?

No, see, I'm pretty sure this is wrong

The Ivara who killed the Mymidon looked like this, a not-Prime. And this was during the Old War. A not-Prime fighting during the Old War, that's what Varzia is saying. And it was only after killing the Myrmidon that Ivara was allowed to look like this, a Prime. Ivara had to earn the right to be a Prime

Revenant is a completely different story, because we're told he was a different frame entirely, nicknamed "Warden" after some dialogue from Nakak. We don't know what "Warden" was, only that it was PROBABLY the same Warframe we call "Revenant Prime" today

[CopperBezel]

33 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

No, see, I'm pretty sure this is wrong

Right, I mean, I'm entirely certain you're wrong too, that's what I said.

But I hadn't heard those dialogue bits from Varzia, specifically that some frames "earned" being Prime contra Ballas, and also that "Primes were reserved for the Prime Vanguard". She also refers to frames that aren't Primes as "training" frames. This is obviously inconsistent with other lore, but by mentioning that Ballas "never told the whole truth", she does seem to account for that. 

The idea of "training frames" might entirely supersede the idea of reverse-engineered Tenno handiwork, though, which is itself more implied than stated. If that's the case, all the frames that exist now would have existed then in the same flavors. 

There is still the meaning of the word "Prime" to get around, but if non-Prime frames are training frames, that's an easy answer; Ballas designed the original, Prime design of each model, and non-Primes are cheap alternatives based on those models to allow Tenno to learn how to use the real thing. There would still need to be a Prime original for everything though. 

41 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

The Ivara who killed the Mymidon looked like this, a not-Prime. [...] And it was only after killing the Myrmidon that Ivara was allowed to look like this, a Prime. Ivara had to earn the right to be a Prime

This is what you're inferring, but it'd would have been more useful to have linked to your reasons for thinking so. 

The story of the Myrmidon comes from the Levarian, and none of that is in it. Ballas tells Ivara she has earned the right to be remembered. That's why the other two frames in the story, which didn't "earn" it, are left nameless. By all appearances, it's just a story about the original Ivara Prime that happens to be presented by the Levarian, which uses non-Prime equipment, no hidden extra meaning to be found. You can make it something else if you read really hard into the single word "earned", but I don't think that's an intended easter egg. 

1 hour ago, TARINunit9 said:

Revenant is a completely different story, because we're told he was a different frame entirely, nicknamed "Warden" after some dialogue from Nakak. We don't know what "Warden" was, only that it was PROBABLY the same Warframe we call "Revenant Prime" today

Revenant Prime has a trailer, in which Ballas, in sequence, calls Revenant fatherless, says Revenant "mock[s] me and causality alike", and asks who gave him the name Revenant. It's a deliberate and explicit explanation that yes, all the Revenants we have in the present, Primes included, were copied from the Warden after he got Eidolonized, not from Ballas's original design.

[TARINunit9]

3 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

The story of the Myrmidon comes from the Levarian

I've heard the argument of "you shouldn't take the Leverian so strictly, perhaps it was embellished or slightly off" before, but frankly I don't agree with it.

For one thing, there's an obvious sense of "we, the writers at DE, wouldn't be telling you this if it wasn't both canon and true" about the Leverian. The Leverian is intended to be trustworthy, in other words. Lines such as "Perhaps Porvis enjoyed the telling a little too much or, perhaps, there is something to it." are intended to wink-and-nudge toward this trustworthiness.

And as for the Ivara tale specifically, we actually have a LOT of details that point to it being A) trustworthy, and B) an "Ivara Training Frame" as you would call it, as opposed to an Ivara Prime. Drussus tells us that the details of the Ivara vs Myrmidon battle have "remained consistent" over multiple retellings before it was finally put into writing. He tells us that Ivara was dressed in a "Salix Syandana" and "Avia Armor," as opposed to Ivara Prime's Apavada Prime Syandana and Anasa Ayatan Prime Armor. I conclude fairly quickly that his was a non-Prime Ivara wielding non-Prime weapons, and by "earning the right to be remembered" she was pulled into the war effort. And "graduating" this way was a causal step toward being given a Prime version (it may or may not have been the only step, we simply don't have enough info there)

 

I'm not going to comment on Varzia's dialogue, because it's clear from your quotations you have checked her quotes and just flat-out don't like the idea that non-Primes can predate the Primes. And while I'm on the other side of this argument (I love that idea) I empathize with your position. I refuse to acknowledge Devil May Cry 2 even exists, despite Capcom's writers insisting it has to remain canon for the time being

[CopperBezel]

Yeah, not much to argue out from there really. I think the Ivara thing hangs on a lot of assumptions that all happen to fall right where the limits of the formulae do. You're right that the Varzia stuff is pretty unambiguous, so there's a substantial change or reveal to lore there, but the role it introduces for for non-Prime frames doesn't really leave a lot of space for frames that only exist as non-Primes. And then we'd still have the question of who was designing these other non-Prime frames not based on the Prime designs (different Orokin, the Tenno themselves?) and for what reason.

And yeah, I don't love the change, I think it's a little limiting. Like it's already bad enough that every model of warframe that exists already existed, and in its best form, during the Orokin era, makes things feel more static than they need to. If the copies we thought were reverse engineered Tenno work were actually around all along as budget models, that's just even less change over the interim.

[TARINunit9]

30 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

And yeah, I don't love the change, I think it's a little limiting. Like it's already bad enough that every model of warframe that exists already existed, and in its best form, during the Orokin era, makes things feel more static than they need to. If the copies we thought were reverse engineered Tenno work were actually around all along as budget models, that's just even less change over the interim.

I agree but for different reasons. Warframe is a "post-diluvian" ("after the flood") franchise; that's literary speak for "everything was bigger, better, and stronger during the Old War. But the story you actually see takes place long after the War and you're picking up scraps."

Context:

Spoiler

The term comes from the Book of Genesis (the world was a wicked world of monsters and wizards, then God flooded everything to kill them all, and only good magic-less Noah was left) and another example would be Star Wars: A New Hope (where the mythical Jedi Knights fought in the legendary Clone Wars and everything was destroyed and the new Empire was all that was left to pick up the pieces. Vader scoffs at the idea the Death Star could be even half as powerful as the Jedi were before the war) I think you can see the parallels that Warframe was going for

I agree it does have one big inherently limiting factor to it, yes, that everything awesome has already been invented and was either destroyed, or will be scavenged/reverse engineered instead of invented.

Combine this with DE's plan to let us explore the Tau system, and I look forward to a retcon of just how the hell we are supposed to get there, if the Orokin couldn't do it alone

34 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

And then we'd still have the question of who was designing these other non-Prime frames not based on the Prime designs (different Orokin, the Tenno themselves?) and for what reason.

There used to be something called the "Tenno council" who created Nova. They were an in-universe extension of the real life Tenno Design Council... I don't know if they're still considered canon though

[(XBOX)Heartrime6690]

On 2023-09-05 at 6:40 PM, (PSN)MYKK678 said:

He was kind of both. Umbra found out about Ballas' contact with the Sentients, and so Ballas put Umbra through a modified version of the Warframe creation process.

Normally Warframes are left as puppets without a will of their own. Still "technically" alive but unable to function without Tenno connection. Ballas made sure Umbra was different.

After forcing Umbra to kill his own son, Isaah, this specific Warframe mutation left Umbra with the ability to control its own body, but purged of all feeling and memory, except for the memory of killing his own son. In short, Ballas went a bit overboard and left Umbra in a living hell. Reliving the worst moment of his life constantly until it drove him mad, along with whatever the Infestation Mutation was already doing to his mind.

 

I've seen a few folks claim Kullervo has Warframes darkest backstory. Umbra Dax still wins that race by a mile.

OHHHH I see I didn't know that. Rhino prime bio story is pretty dark too the Frame was eating people during his rampage. Some people have said that it isn't even about the Prime version it's a different version of Rhino which would make sense because like we talked about.

[(XBOX)Heartrime6690]

20 hours ago, 0_The_F00l said:

His decorations feel more like , for the lack of a better word , big ass staples and pins stuck in his skin.

I am of the opinion that most of his gold parts were part of a restraining mechanism , like the nails and frames you use for butterflies and other trophy esque decorations. The rest were literal decorations cause ballas is a psychopath.

And during his "transformation" they were embedded in his body and he took it with him when he escaped.

That's a cool idea. What do you think about Skiajati? Somehow it's made of his flesh

[0_The_F00l]

10 minutes ago, (XBOX)Heartrime6690 said:

That's a cool idea. What do you think about Skiajati? Somehow it's made of his flesh

Sometimes a spade is just a spade :P

it was probably kept nearby as part of the "collection" from the time umbra was a dax , hanging by the hilt attached to the same gold trims that kept umba restrained.

[(XBOX)Heartrime6690]

2 hours ago, 0_The_F00l said:

Sometimes a spade is just a spade :P

it was probably kept nearby as part of the "collection" from the time umbra was a dax , hanging by the hilt attached to the same gold trims that kept umba restrained.

I like that idea as well

[CopperBezel]

9 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

I agree but for different reasons. Warframe is a "post-diluvian" ("after the flood") franchise; that's literary speak for "everything was bigger, better, and stronger during the Old War. But the story you actually see takes place long after the War and you're picking up scraps."

I understand that, but if you'll forgive me shifting mythologies west a bit, that's what the non-Prime warframes represented when they were iron-age imitations of golden-age heroes. Now it turns out even they were around during the golden age too. From a purely technological standpoint, that does make for a bigger fall, but it sidelines the visual metaphor going from gilded porcelain to steel and twisted flesh.

I also think they could have easily gone the other way with it and had new models of frames created by the Tenno post-Orokin, and given them something other than Prime counterparts as the equivalent later in-game upgrade, Nova and Revenant and Valkyr Tekelu or something. But hindsight is 20/20 and all that.  

And the imagery is more important than the technological reality IMO. The Tenno already possess void magics that the Orokin never fully understood and couldn't replicate themselves, the Zariman and Deimos still have people around from the Orokin age, Ballas survived until recently and had figured out his own very costly means of getting to Tau. We have access to the very last of Albrecht Entrati's old junk to rifle through, and he's the original Prometheus for the Orokin themselves. So it doesn't throw a wrench in the works if Archimedean Yonta can complete some equation by Albrecht or something and finish the Zariman's jump IMO. 

9 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

There used to be something called the "Tenno council" who created Nova. They were an in-universe extension of the real life Tenno Design Council... I don't know if they're still considered canon though

Yeah, you can imagine that if I don't trust the Levarian to be perfectly literal in all it presents, I'm not super keen on basing lore assumptions on load-screen tips. 

[AegidiusF]

Il y a 14 heures, CopperBezel a dit :

But I hadn't heard those dialogue bits from Varzia, specifically that some frames "earned" being Prime contra Ballas, and also that "Primes were reserved for the Prime Vanguard". She also refers to frames that aren't Primes as "training" frames. This is obviously inconsistent with other lore, but by mentioning that Ballas "never told the whole truth", she does seem to account for that. 

 

I don't see how this is inconsistent with other lore. On the contrary. This could explain why some warframes look like non-Prime versions on some quests (as Protea, the bodyguard the Orokin gave to Parvos). The Varzia voice text you quoted says exactly that some Primes were Primes from the begining and other were not. The part about Ballas never having told the whole truth has no contradiction with the clear affirmation of two groups of different kinds of warframes (Prime and non-Prime).

About Ivara, I don't really know if the Leverian was talking about a Prime or a non-Prime warframe (both opinions can't be proved with the lore elements we currently have), but, like you, I think it was a Prime (but not sure).

Citation

"Some Warframes were Prime from the start. Others earned it. Ballas never told the whole truth."

 

She also says that even at the Orokin Era there were attempts to make frames based on the Prime standard (possible origin of some non-Prime frames).

Citation

"I see there's been a whole lot of... valiant attempts to make Frames up to the Prime standard since my time. Bless them. They did the best they could with what they had."

 

The "training" warframe does not seem to designate a specific category, but is used by her to put non-Prime frames down, which is something she does a lot, calling them "merely adequate", "valiant attempts"...

Citation

"It's fine if all you want is a training warframe, instead of a Prime. We all start somewhere."

Citation

"Primes were reserved for the Prime Vanguard. The best of the best, and the rest... are adequate, I guess. If you're satisfied with merely adaquate."

 

On the other hand, Kullervo's lore introduces the idea of Proto-warframes, that could be the origin of some Proto skins.

 

Le 06/09/2023 à 12:08, CopperBezel a dit :

Making the lore work while taking every snippet at exact literal face value is fun and all, but we gotta be real here about the story that's actually being told. And equally honest about why it inevitably contradicts itself, like it will again when they release Kullervo Prime in a few years, and he doesn't look like the singular actual original Kullervo who is still alive in the Duviri mind prison and older than the Tenno. I suppose avid lorehounds can say at that point that Ballas later made a production run of a new model Kullervo out of spite, while the original was mutated by Duviri magics to look like DT's Dax. 

(I also look forward to Xaku Prime, though DE figured out the problem in the years between Valkyr Prime and Revenant Prime and just told us that the origin story we were told about Revenant actually happened to the Prime original before the Tenno copied it, easy, so they'll probably pull the same trick with Xaku as well.)

Valkyr Prime has no real contradiction and it's in harmony with Varzia's voice texts : Valkyr "Gersemi" already existed before the Corpus experiments. Alad V seems to know Valkyr Prime, because Valkyr has her claws like Valkyr Prime, and Gersemi does not have those. Nothing on Valkyr's lore prevents her Prime version from existing since the begining and nothing prevents Gersemi from being the non-Prime visual of Valkyr before Alad V.

Revenant was a more challenging problem, but they explained it as not being created by Ballas. This has no contradiction with Varzia's or the Leverian informations though. Only Revenant's lore is concerned by this weird explanation. Easy answer, as you said (and a bit disappointing).

Xaku is very very easy and has no problem at all. And this is the reason I think that the Leverian was talking about Ivara Prime : the warframes that failed the test, the "forgotten ones", were also Primes. Xaku was formed by the parts of these Prime warframes. Non-Prime Xaku was created based on the Prime model. And this is just one possible explanation : there can be many others.

And, yes, for Kullervo, I think this could be the explanation : its the same way Ballas created Umbra, and then he created Excalibur Prime. The Original Kullervo is the first Ballas created and punished and then he created Kullervo Prime, based on Kullervo.

[CopperBezel]

Eh, you can assume that Umbra was created before Excalibur Prime, or you can assume the reverse. It's not evidence for one idea or the other if it's completely consistent with both. That's the case for 99% of this stuff.

The other 1% is that almost all of the lore in the game is told around frames that are not said to be the Prime version, are shown not to be when they're shown at all, and are also treated as individuals with names and not as particular instances of a product line by that name, and I don't understand the value of latching onto the handful of times where that's more explicit than usual and pretending we can uncover an elaborate hidden reason for it. We also know that every frame will eventually have a Prime version with the same abilities, and that would still be the case even if DE decided to introduce a frame that was explicitly created as an original model long after the Orokin era. These are just unshaking limitations of the formula.

3 hours ago, (NSW)AegisFifi said:

Valkyr Prime has no real contradiction and it's in harmony with Varzia's voice texts : Valkyr "Gersemi" already existed before the Corpus experiments. Alad V seems to know Valkyr Prime, because Valkyr has her claws like Valkyr Prime, and Gersemi does not have those. Nothing on Valkyr's lore prevents her Prime version from existing since the begining and nothing prevents Gersemi from being the non-Prime visual of Valkyr before Alad V.

We probably should assume that the profile video isn't a very good guide to canon, but the last line, "Valkyr was crafted from torment, Tenno. Take control of her rage," is still in her lore snippet in-game. Her whole theme all along was meant to be that the frame we know now was a result of the experimentation inflicted on her. She has the remains of restraints bolted to her arms and uses them in combat along with her claws.

I'm not really concerned with whether the Geresmi skin, which doesn't have those restraints, has been retconned out of existence by Valkyr Prime. It's a Deluxe skin, it doesn't have to fit. Atlas Karst is a rock.

What Valkyr Prime does importantly retcon is to say there was a whole Valkyr line that always had the same abilities (so that "rage" had nothing to do with being experimented on) and the same blocks bolted to her arms before they were restraints. So like, Alad V just picked a frame that was already bondage and torture themed, and subsequently bound and tortured her. 

I think it's probably better to just let both ideas (original Valkyrs created by Alad V and Ballas) live in their own spaces and not assume there's one "real" history there that we have to make up based on the bits we have. "But the canon!" - forget it, DE didn't care and neither should you. (I think they do care now, and avoid creating frames with lore that will be complicated by having Primes later. More's the pity, honestly, I'd rather they didn't have the limitations. Sevagoth was a ghost themed frame even before he became a ghost ship captain, why.)

3 hours ago, (NSW)AegisFifi said:

The "training" warframe does not seem to designate a specific category, but is used by her to put non-Prime frames down, which is something she does a lot, calling them "merely adequate", "valiant attempts"...

And it could easily reflect how those frames are seen now, as opposed to how they were used then, kind of impossible to say which. It's just the closest she comes to actually giving us a category. All we know is that there Primes, there were frames that weren't Primes, some of those frames "earned" being Prime (which could mean individual frames being turned into Primes or non-Prime models having Prime models created based on them), and we also have frames now that also aren't Primes either.

I think the more important retcon is that the word "Prime" seems to come from this "Prime Vanguard" we've never heard of elsewhere and doesn't mean they're the originals of anything per se. Maybe non-Primes aren't all the same, maybe that's just a gameplay and progression design thing, and non-Prime frames have existed for different reasons at different times. Maybe the Prime Vanguard is what Ballas is pitching frames to (that "For your consideration" in the Vauban Prime trailer) and even his own designs weren't "Primes from the start". (Though in that case, what would be?)

Maybe Ivara was created by Archimedean Stacie long before the fall, and then Ballas tested one with his Myrmidon trap and decided he liked Ivara's kit, so he created his own Ivara to pitch for the Prime Vanguard and took the credit, and finally, much later Tenno tried to recreate Ivara Prime and failed and created non-Prime Ivara instead, who somehow happens to exactly resemble Stacie's original design before Ballas's changes. (No less tortured than Valkyr's apparent story.)

I think the best thing to insist is absolutely for definitely certain canon is nothing at all. 

3 hours ago, (NSW)AegisFifi said:

She also says that even at the Orokin Era there were attempts to make frames based on the Prime standard (possible origin of some non-Prime frames).

"I see there's been a whole lot of... valiant attempts to make Frames up to the Prime standard since my time. Bless them. They did the best they could with what they had."

I want to be really clear before responding to this: I'm not denying that Varzia's snippets introduce a bunch of non-Prime frames into the Orokin era, because they 100% do.

I also just really need to point out that this is not one of those lines. I mean, that is the reverse engineering theory, that Tenno have been trying to make their own copy frames, with imperfect results, in the time since the Orokin era. If Varzia was summing up what we thought before she showed up, that's what she'd say.

(She's not though. I want to be very explicit here to avoid waking the strawmen: There absolutely were non-Prime frames around in the Orokin era and they were the majority. This line in particular is just not how we know that.)

3 hours ago, (NSW)AegisFifi said:

On the other hand, Kullervo's lore introduces the idea of Proto-warframes, that could be the origin of some Proto skins.

It actually doesn't. The Kullervo lore just refers to the same uncontrollable monster frames that Ballas told us about in the Sacrifice, the ones that were in the process of being destroyed when it was discovered that the Tenno could control them, as also seen in the Rhino Prime codex entry. It's not necessarily a bad guess that the the prototype skins refer to the prototype frames in lore, but they're not explicitly called that, and nothing in the Kullervo lore makes a stronger connection between those skins and those frames than what we already got from Ballas in The Sacrifice. (The new lore does of course put lie to the idea that those frames were, in fact, uncontrollable monsters, and it's very consistent with what we know of Ballas for him to see monsters in anything he can't personally control.)

I did find one place those original frames before the Tenno are referred to as proto-warframes, but it was just a paraphrase of the Kullervo lore text on the Warframe wiki. Given the skins are Dark Sector themed, I'd personally put my chips on Volt Proto showing up as a costume in 1999 instead. 

3 hours ago, (NSW)AegisFifi said:

And this is just one possible explanation : there can be many others.

Yep. Every one as good as any other. Better to stick to what's actually known.

Edited September 7, 2023 by CopperBezel