Jade’s Operator(SPOILERS)

[Vahenir]

1 minute ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

The Tenno weren't discovered until quite a while after the Warframe project began, so there's plenty of chance that more Warframes from that era had approximations of their own memories. But, as Ballas says in the Vitruvium, the ones that turned on their masters were 'committed to grave'.

Indeed, but not all frames were created before they found out what the tenno could do. Many frames were also created during the old war when the tenno were actually around. So my theory there is pretty much that the first of most frame models were fully capable of autonomy and stabilized by the tenno as to keep the madness away. (Like we do with umbra) If this contact was only necessary once or twice then those frames could have gone fully autonomous after in a lot of cases, thus leading to the stories in the leverian. So the original Gara as an example did all the things in the legends and died against the sentients on the plains of eidolon, and more importantly did this on her own without an operator.

[OniDax]

4 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Alright, the basic gist of this quest, from what we've seen and been told about Warframes overall:

Jade and Sorren were people, they were turned into Warframes and in this case Jade was pregnant at the time.

Frames like Mirage are shown to be so strong-willed that they can change the original design of the Warframe they were to be made into (Mirage's helmet and light powers suggest things like the deep-sea cuttlefish, rather than a harlequin, and it's Mirage's nature that changed the light and dark powers into a performance).

Umbra has shown us that frames can retain memories of their human lives, in fact it's implied by that quest that Ballas does actually remove the human memories because he's able to leave Umbra with just the one.

So this is the next kind of evolution from there.

Both Jade and Sorren were made into Warframes, they both retained some of their memories in some way. There were no operators for them, it seems, and it even seems like the Operators that ended the Orokin Empire were on the verge of killing Sorren too, if Jade hadn't stopped them.

It's presumed that, over time, the resentment that Sorren had for the Warframe's destruction of the Orokin (his way of life), caused him to adopt the persona of the Stalker... and forget. A lot.

Everything we saw in the quest was him remembering at last ^^

In hindsight given this quest and how Prime trailers have described frames like Mirage, and given what we know about Umbra and Limbo and Dante, was it a mistake for DE to make the Operators? I'm wondering at what point the Operator influences the Warframe at all? Even the animations for Jade have her rubbing her stomach. Seems like the Warframes have personalities, but the Operator's personality doesn't influence the Warframe at all. Perhaps it would've been better if DE had never made the Operators and just let the Tenno be the Warframes that were built around people, like the lore used to be before the lead up to TSD (remember, Alad said there was nothing in the Warframes - he couldn't tell they used to be people), and like what is basically now the lore again.

[OrangeSphere]

I'm going to throw my hat in this ring with a steaming hot take: there are a precious few Warframes that actually exhibit personal autonomy and Jade is not one of them. She was turned into a Warframe, and then for the full length of her time as a Warframe under the Orokin, she had a Tenno operator.

Now that's a bold claim. Allow me to explain.

To date, the only Warframes we can all but guarantee had no Tenno operators are Kullervo and Umbra. Kullervo, because it is strongly suggested he is a pre-Tenno Warframe, and Umbra, because Ballas created him out of spite. All other Warframes that exhibit apparent autonomous characteristics (Citrine, Dante, Gara, Protea, Voruna, etc., and now Jade) must be post-Tenno Warframes because they each held roles in the Orokin Empire, and pre-Tenno Warframes never exited experimental development.

In The Sacrifice, Ballas doesn't just say that *some* pre-Tenno Warframes failed, he states, "The Warframes... All of them... Failures. Surprised? They turned on us, just as you did. And so we had no choice but to commit them to the grave." Kullervo only survived because he escaped, and that made him a fugitive. From this description, we can derive that all pre-Tenno Warframes were too unstable to adopt as a widespread technology. Only when Margulis introduced the Tenno did Warframes become viable, suggesting that any Warframe with a role in the empire would need to have a Tenno operator. Ballas wouldn't logically allow anything else.

It is also important to note that having operators does not diminish those Warframes' personalities at all. We see in The Sacrifice that our operator calls Isaah their own son because they fully empathized with Umbra's memories, suggesting that when we use Transference, we are effectively becoming one with our Warframe. Hence, Dante can still do his archiving because his operator wanted to help, Voruna can still lead her wolves and eventually eviscerate Tuvul because her operator wanted to help, and Jade can still save Sorren because her operator realized who he was and wanted to help. Operators, in effect, help to restore some of the autonomy that the Orokin took away.

Tenno operators also explain why many of the less-than-willing Warframe subjects did not immediately rebel once created. I think it is almost certain that Jade was one such very unwilling subject, and she was granted the role of an executioner! What was stopping her from immediately turning her light upon her oppressors? If the Tenno were the minds of their Warframes, and the Tenno remained loyal (or at least subservient) to the Orokin, then each Warframes' vengeful impulses would be suppressed until the Tenno themselves turned against the Orokin.

The lack of an operator also explains why Jade is more or less inert for the duration of Jade Shadows until our operator Transfers into her. Like our Warframe in The Second Dream, she can instinctually react but otherwise just holds position. It's only when our operator goes in that she can give birth, say her goodbyes, and then pass away.

The one anomaly is Dagath. Her pre-face-melt behavior in her backstory makes her sound like nothing more than a Helminth RealDoll, suggesting that she did not have any operator to act out her old personality. Given that the Tenno are children, it's probably for the best that this is the case. Once she gets her face blasted off though, she seems to almost revert to a kind of pre-Tenno Warframe. No operator, just the burning memories of what was taken from her. My guess is that the laser destroying her brain allowed a decentralized and unrestricted infested nerve mass to take over, giving her the autonomy her old brain was not allowed.

[Birdframe_Prime]

16 hours ago, Vahenir said:

Indeed, but not all frames were created before they found out what the tenno could do. Many frames were also created during the old war when the tenno were actually around. So my theory there is pretty much that the first of most frame models were fully capable of autonomy and stabilized by the tenno as to keep the madness away. (Like we do with umbra) If this contact was only necessary once or twice then those frames could have gone fully autonomous after in a lot of cases, thus leading to the stories in the leverian. So the original Gara as an example did all the things in the legends and died against the sentients on the plains of eidolon, and more importantly did this on her own without an operator.

I agree, mostly. I would argue that Gara could quite easily have had a Tenno controlling her at the time, that's completely up for debate.

We have a solid basis, for example, that Umbra was one of the (if not the) last Warframes Ballas made, because Umbra only exists for discovering that Ballas was planning to defect to the other side. Ballas was right on the brink of it, and the only thing that stopped him (fully) from doing so at the time would have been winning the War. Ballas wouldn't leave the winning side, after all. And while he might have made Warframes after the War ended, it's unlikely because when the War ended, the Tenno turned on the Orokin at the celebration (according to the Lore we have).

And because of that point on the timeline being easy to put a rough pin in, we can say that Ballas absolutely created Warframes after the Tenno were discovered. This would account for the changes that DE have made over time, too, in a Lore perspective, because Ballas was getting more and more specific with his ideas, his themes, and even accounting for his specific victims. Having different takes on elemental frames, like heat, or electricity, having more esoteric types like Dante, Voruna or Kullervo. And we even know about the deal with Parvos for Protea.

So as Warframe design has shifted from DE based on how they know we play the game, so too could you say that Ballas shifted his designs based on how the Tenno fought.

It could be easily argued that Warframes retaining some of their sentience are mentioned in the Lore already, such as Ivara, or Ash. But just as easily could those have been controlled by a Tenno.

It's so hard to pin down, but I definitely agree that all the possibilities are there.

[Sporthand]

16 hours ago, Sporthand said:

Possibly, Stalker Prime and Jade's Romantic Scene!

 

[Saxton_Neurax]

one possible topic that is still debatable to this day would be to do with "Continuity." but there are quite a few, if not a fair amount of blanks that need to be filled in, if not built upon. transference being similar but leaning more on partial altruism since it is not permanent like that of continuity and only serves as a means of helping affected warframes find some measure of inner peace amongst other things. 

Spoiler

(and from the possibility of the operators transference influence being able to reach jade via her grasping sorrens arm which allowed the operator to partly see jades memories too while the operator was temporarily inhabiting the stalker.)

and lest anyone forgets the one quest where our warframe breaks the war blade in half, without an operator of which the stalker was dealing with them at that time. which undoubtedly alludes to the partial sentience retained by those subjected to the helminth strain in question but not to the levels of sentience seen in the likes of a frame such as excalibur umbra or maybe even more so with the upcoming lore around the protoframes in warframe 1999.

It would be wise to have some patience and wait as some of the blanks might be filled in around the time of warframe 1999, some of which may be able to practically write themselves if done correctly. considering there is the new lore tidbits to be attentive too like the Protoframes of that time period, but I'll just have to wait as will everyone else to see if we get more answers to this as I am genuinely curious as to how it plays out.

Edited June 24 by Saxton_Neurax
grammatical correction.

[(PSN)Unstar]

On 2024-06-21 at 1:27 PM, OniDax said:

How do we know it will go through natural human stages of development?

 We don't, it's just one of the most likely outcomes.  Which isn't all that different from real-life humans, because not every human will go through all of the "natural human stages of development".  There are always exceptions, because — while humans statistically have a lot of commonality — the truth is that no species is a monolith and the natural process of variation inevitably leads to different experiences.  To paraphrase my comp-sci socio-technical systems professor: "Our best attempts to understand anything will result in a model, and that model will always be an incomplete abstraction of reality."

 

On 2024-06-21 at 1:27 PM, OniDax said:

What makes the baby physiologically different from an infested creature?

Without dissecting the baby, I couldn't tell you.  But if you look at all the Warframes, and then you look at all the Infested, and you compare and contrast the two, I'm guessing you'll find some differences in their physiology.

[Birdframe_Prime]

On 2024-06-22 at 7:08 PM, OniDax said:

In hindsight given this quest and how Prime trailers have described frames like Mirage, and given what we know about Umbra and Limbo and Dante, was it a mistake for DE to make the Operators? I'm wondering at what point the Operator influences the Warframe at all?

Oh, that's explained.

It doesn't matter what creation it is, everything turns on the Orokin, so the Warframes when not controlled by Operators turned on the Orokin. The discovery of the Operator's ability is what basically resurrected the Warframe project. The Operators' ability to calm down the frames and pilot them like actual bio-mechs instead of their overall personalities holding sway was the only thing that made the project actually effective at fighting the Sentients.

The fact that even the Tenno turned on the Orokin was just kicking the can down the road in turns of what creation would eventually end the Orokin's hubris...

Still. The effect of the Operators was key to winning the War, able to turn the untamed Warframes into useful a useful combat force. The problem is that it was the Sentients, then the Infested, then the Warframes, then the Tenno. Even the Dax would have turned if they didn't have absolute obedience to the Kuva.

In DE's lore now, there's a chance for us to go everywhere, we can get more frames that act independently, we can get a new system of 'awakening' frames to their old personalities and gaining bonuses from them in the same way we gain power from the Focus system.

Besides, absolutely nothing will hold a candle to the sheer malicious joy that myself and the rest of my Clan felt, all having completed The Second Dream for the first time, and just agreeing 'Heh, DE basically just said we're all a bunch of whiny kids, and people are going to love it forever.'

[AtsiaZ]

On 2024-06-22 at 9:35 PM, OrangeSphere said:

All other Warframes that exhibit apparent autonomous characteristics (Citrine, Dante, Gara, Protea, Voruna, etc., and now Jade)

We know Voruna had an Operator, that's the point of the last part of her Leverian, it being a mirror to the Second Dream. And we know Dante didn't have an Operator, Loid specifically mentions Dante escaping the purges when frames were deemed a liability.

[OrangeSphere]

4 hours ago, AtsiaZ said:

We know Voruna had an Operator, that's the point of the last part of her Leverian, it being a mirror to the Second Dream. And we know Dante didn't have an Operator, Loid specifically mentions Dante escaping the purges when frames were deemed a liability.

"I remember when we learned of the Warframe insurrections. Their madness, savage and sudden, justifying all the Orokin fear. All their heroic deeds were forgotten in an instant. Those like Dante who had yet to succumb became fugitives. To shelter them meant death - or glassing." - Loid

Yeah that's pretty clear; Dante is one of the originals. Thanks for pointing this out, I had no idea about this line.

Edited June 25 by OrangeSphere

[(PSN)Unstar]

On 2024-06-22 at 6:35 PM, OrangeSphere said:

I'm going to throw my hat in this ring with a steaming hot take:

Thank you for this great post; I was thoughtful and well-written.

I'm curious whether you have any thoughts on what this means for the Stalker?  During Jade Shadows I wasn't sure whether DE was trying to suggest that the Stalker was currently or had always been autonomous.

After reading your post and reconsidering this line from The Second Dream...

Lotus: "Within The Moon, lies the Reservoir, the secret to your Tenno power. But this secret is dangerous, it drove the Stalker to madness. Forgive my deception, I was only trying to protect you from the same fate."

...my current hypothesis is that the Stalker still has an Operator, though that distinction has faded since they learned the truth of the Reservoir which in some way broke the minds of both the Tenno and the Warframe.

Anyway, thank you again for the thoughtful post.

[OniDax]

9 hours ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

 We don't, it's just one of the most likely outcomes.  Which isn't all that different from real-life humans, because not every human will go through all of the "natural human stages of development".  There are always exceptions, because — while humans statistically have a lot of commonality — the truth is that no species is a monolith and the natural process of variation inevitably leads to different experiences.  To paraphrase my comp-sci socio-technical systems professor: "Our best attempts to understand anything will result in a model, and that model will always be an incomplete abstraction of reality."

 

Without dissecting the baby, I couldn't tell you.  But if you look at all the Warframes, and then you look at all the Infested, and you compare and contrast the two, I'm guessing you'll find some differences in their physiology.

We know the difference in their shape. The Orokin fashioned the infested creatures into the shape of human bodies. Both the Infested and Warframes are infested humans for the most part. Do the Infested creatures continue to grow? Do they develop like normal humans? Or does the nanotechnology inhibit the natural human growth?

It's an assumption that the baby will grow and develop like a normal human. The baby is not a normal human, though. It's an infested creature that isn't even born naturally.

8 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Oh, that's explained.

It doesn't matter what creation it is, everything turns on the Orokin, so the Warframes when not controlled by Operators turned on the Orokin. The discovery of the Operator's ability is what basically resurrected the Warframe project. The Operators' ability to calm down the frames and pilot them like actual bio-mechs instead of their overall personalities holding sway was the only thing that made the project actually effective at fighting the Sentients.

The fact that even the Tenno turned on the Orokin was just kicking the can down the road in turns of what creation would eventually end the Orokin's hubris...

Still. The effect of the Operators was key to winning the War, able to turn the untamed Warframes into useful a useful combat force. The problem is that it was the Sentients, then the Infested, then the Warframes, then the Tenno. Even the Dax would have turned if they didn't have absolute obedience to the Kuva.

In DE's lore now, there's a chance for us to go everywhere, we can get more frames that act independently, we can get a new system of 'awakening' frames to their old personalities and gaining bonuses from them in the same way we gain power from the Focus system.

Besides, absolutely nothing will hold a candle to the sheer malicious joy that myself and the rest of my Clan felt, all having completed The Second Dream for the first time, and just agreeing 'Heh, DE basically just said we're all a bunch of whiny kids, and people are going to love it forever.'

So, we're informed that the Warframes go mad (similar to how the Dark Sector infested go mad because of the pain) and berserk. They're like feral beasts. The Operators calm them down. So, how do we now have all these Warframes that are able to be calm without the Operator? Because more and more, we're getting stories about Operator-less Warframes that are in complete control and capable of fighting, like Stalker, who has all the Warframe abilities without an Operator. What was the actual point of having the Operator?

[L3512]

2 hours ago, OrangeSphere said:

"I remember when we learned of the Warframe insurrections. Their madness, savage and sudden, justifying all the Orokin fear. All their heroic deeds were forgotten in an instant. Those like Dante who had yet to succumb became fugitives. To shelter them meant death - or glassing." - Loid

Yeah that's pretty clear; Dante is one of the originals. Thanks for pointing this out, I had no idea about this line.

Maybe the feralness of operator-less Warframes was somewhat overstated by the Orokin, like "Warframe insurrections" seem somewhat planned and targeting the Orokin specifically, thus intentional. Or the infestation just ate into their brains making them prone to becoming uncontrollable, hence the succumb part.

[OrangeSphere]

12 hours ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

Thank you for this great post; I was thoughtful and well-written.

I'm curious whether you have any thoughts on what this means for the Stalker?  During Jade Shadows I wasn't sure whether DE was trying to suggest that the Stalker was currently or had always been autonomous.

After reading your post and reconsidering this line from The Second Dream...

Lotus: "Within The Moon, lies the Reservoir, the secret to your Tenno power. But this secret is dangerous, it drove the Stalker to madness. Forgive my deception, I was only trying to protect you from the same fate."

...my current hypothesis is that the Stalker still has an Operator, though that distinction has faded since they learned the truth of the Reservoir which in some way broke the minds of both the Tenno and the Warframe.

Anyway, thank you again for the thoughtful post.

Funny you should ask about my take on the nature of the Stalker, since that's actually what got me on this lore bent in the first place. I apologize for the length of this post, as I'm more or less using it as a draft for the eventual standalone lore discussion I'd like to start on the subject.

I personally remain of the belief that the Stalker is a non-Tenno operator who Transferred their consciousness into a Warframe to even the odds against other Warframes. Thanks to Jade Shadows, said operator can now be identified as Sorren.

Now once again, that's a hot take, so please allow me to explain.

We know that this is a possibility because of Silvana's messages from The Silver Grove: despite not being a Tenno, Silvana was able to use Transference to control Titania in short bursts. In her final message, she explains that she intends to use stolen Somatics to perform Transference on her botanical projects, and as a result becomes the consciousness of the Silver Grove. Silvana also provides us with an example of the effects that long-term Transference can have on non-Tenno: Silvana's mind slowly fragments, and she forgets who she was. Sound familiar?

For the Stalker, most of the evidence that he might be a similar case comes from The Second Dream.

• First, there is the Lotus' line about the Reservoir that you included in your post. The Reservoir is a large chamber on Lua that houses Tenno within countless Somatic Pods. Since the Reservoir contains little else, the Lotus seems to be suggesting that either the Somatic Pods or the Tenno within them are responsible for the Stalker's madness.
• Second, there is scene right after our operator is first introduced, where the Stalker looks at his arm, and our operator repeats this motion with their own arm. The cinematic language of this exchange suggests that there is some kind of connection or parallel between the two.
• Third, Hunhow's line, "All your dread-long life, you've waited for this moment. But you're asking yourself - was I one of these wretched things? You know the answer. You still hate them. You still hate yourself." While he could be referring to our operator's Warframe here, these lines are delivered while the Stalker is focused on our operator. As such, Hunhow seems to be suggesting that the Stalker is either a Tenno, or something similar.
• We know, however, that Sorren cannot be a Tenno himself, as the Tenno were all sequestered in the Reservoir for the duration of the Old War.

Altogether, I believe that this evidence provides a good basis for the idea that the Stalker is Sorren's consciousness trapped within an unknown Warframe.

---

Alas, there is more! I am very much aware that the current dominant theory for how Sorren became the Stalker is that he was transformed into a Warframe alongside Jade when their relationship was discovered. It makes sense: if the Orokin turned Jade into a Warframe, then it follows that they would also turn Sorren into a Warframe, as they were both involved. Jade Shadows' opening scene also shows Jade rescuing the Stalker from the other Tenno, suggesting he was already a Warframe. Simple, right?

If it was not already apparent from the rhetorical question, I do not agree with this theory. First, consider the conclusions from my previous post. If Sorren was transformed into a Warframe, then it follows that he would need a Tenno operator to be able to do anything. Given that he hunts other Warframes to avenge the Orokin, this Tenno would then need to be some kind of rogue who remained loyal to the empire. Alternatively, Sorren could have had his autonomy restored like Dagath via an injury or something.

Both of these are valid possibilities; I just don't like them. The rogue Tenno operator works with the aforementioned lore in The Second Dream, in that the rogue Tenno operator would be the one having the identity crisis instead of Sorren. But it also means that it was not necessarily Sorren taking action in Jade Shadows, and I feel as though his agency is an important part of the emotional weight of that story. Sorren regaining his autonomy would resolve that dissonance, but now the operator identity crisis makes less sense.

Second, consider that the Stalker displays strong residual loyalty to the Orokin Empire. Hunhow calls the Orokin "[The Stalker's] way of life" in the opening of The Second Dream, and the Stalker's codex entries also indicate that his motivation for killing Warframes is to avenge the Night of the Naga Drums. Finally, the Low Guardian Chest Plate, a reward from Operation: Belly of the Beast, states "Before he became the Stalker, the Low Guardian Sorren was awarded this mark of valor and loyalty by his Orokin masters." If you look closely at the opening cutscene of Jade Shadows, you'll even notice that he's wearing the Low Guardian Chest Plate in that scene, indicating that he remained loyal even as the empire collapsed. But as a reminder, we are currently considering the world where both he and his lover were transformed into Warframes! Why would Sorren remain loyal to the empire that took everything from him?

Third, consider that in the opening cutscene of Jade Shadows, Sorren looks nothing like he did when he was a human. His entire silhouette has been altered, and his face has been replaced with the Stalker's helmet. How, then, would Jade be able to recognize him? Well, I believe that the Stalker's presence in this scene is symbolic. We view the scene as the Stalker's memory, and since Sorren's identity was all but subsumed by that of the Stalker, it would make sense that he remembers himself as such. I also do not find it very likely that he would still possess an accolade (the Low Guardian Chest Plate) nor keep his Low Guardian rank following his punishment. As such, I believe that the Stalker is merely a stand-in for the human Sorren, used to show the Stalker's scrambled identity, and because we as the audience would not recognize Sorren as a man.

Finally, consider Hunhow's line from the start of Jade Shadows, "All your dread-long life, you have lived with despair. Anguish. Hatred. But none of these compare to your guilt." The Stalker's primary emotion is guilt, but why? The easiest explanation is that he failed to protect the Orokin, but Jade Shadows marks the first we hear of this guilt, and the quest has nothing to do with the Orokin. It does, however, feature Jade. Her final line, "You'll take care of us, always, won't you?" is never answered, and based on what happened to her, we can derive what Sorren should have said.

So what does all of this mean? How could Sorren have managed to remain human if Jade was transformed into a Warframe? One explanation is that Jade was discovered on her own, likely due to her pregnancy showing. She was condemned to the Warframe program, but managed to keep Sorren's part a secret in the process. In this case, however, Sorren would still have every reason to falter in his loyalty to the Orokin, which does not seem to have happened.

Enter my preferred explanation: Sorren outed his relationship with Jade to the Orokin in hopes that they would make an exception based on his excellent track record. I'll leave it up to you to decide if he did this in good faith (as I believe), or if he did it to save his own skin. The Orokin, in turn, granted Sorren's request, but did not extend this kindness to Jade. As punishment, she was condemned to the Warframe program, and he was left to stew in his own guilt. At the same time, the Orokin would be able to effectively demonstrate both justice and generosity, showing their strong but fair hand as rulers. They get to keep their top-notch Low Guardian, with the added benefit that his tortured conscience will now ensure that he never tries anything like this ever again.

Then, when the Tenno slew the Orokin, those Golden Lords for whom he had sacrificed everything, is really any surprise that he finally broke?

---

So, let's review. There are three main possibilities discussed in the post, with one bonus possibility added on for completeness. The first two assume Sorren was punished for his relationship with Jade, while the latter two assume he was spared because of his unwavering loyalty to the Orokin.

• Sorren was transformed into a Warframe as punishment and has a rogue Tenno operator helping him take revenge on other Tenno. I don't like this because it undermines the Sorren's agency as the Stalker and thus the emotional weight of Jade Shadows.
• Sorren was transformed into a Warframe as punishment, but regained his autonomy like Dagath. I don't like this because it doesn't explain the operator-triggered identity crisis the Stalker has in The Second Dream.
   
• Sorren remained a human until the Night of the Naga Drums, and then used stolen Somatics to do Transference on an unknown Warframe. I favor this explanation because it smoothly navigates both older and newer points of lore.
• Sorren remained a human until the Night of the Naga Drums, and then used custom Helminth infusions to turn himself into a Warframe with free will and the ability to speak. I never covered this possibility, but it works off the same logic as the Transference one, except that it still doesn't explain the operator identity crisis.

So at long last, we arrive at my speculations on the nature of the Stalker.

I believe that, in an attempt to protect his family-to-be, Sorren made the ill-informed decision to bank on his goodwill with the Orokin to try and gain clemency for violating the Orokin Legums. It backfired, and while Jade was punished, Sorren was spared by the "kindness" of his lords. Weighed down by his guilt, Sorren became more loyal than ever, as the Orokin had ensured that they were now the only thing that he had left.

So when the Tenno came and took that away, he snapped and turned his self-loathing upon them. In an attempt to level the playing field, Sorren scoured the now-unguarded Orokin archives for a means to access a Warframe of his own. Eventually he found both an ideal Warframe and a means to control it via Somatics and Transference, and made the fateful decision to use them. As with Silvana, he eventually lost himself to his new body, becoming the Stalker we know today.

And that's my theory! Thank you very much if you made it all the way through! Hopefully it all made some sense.

Edited June 25 by OrangeSphere
Formatting

[GamerOfGods33]

On 2024-06-19 at 9:39 PM, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

Warframes were acting on their own well before the tenno arrived on the scene. For many or them, Ballas and the Orokin used psychological torture and trauma in an attempt to brainwash and mind control them. This, ultimately, failed since they simply stopped moving. Those frames are the ones the tenno were able to control and operate at will. 

However, there are other frames that volunteered themselves as subjects and kept their sanity, functioning as either soldiers, guards, spies and even dignitaries. 

Presumably not volunteering, in this case, they were probably turned as punishment, similar to Umbra, but without the whole memory torture thing. 

The only Warframe that is known to have volunteered for the procedure is Gara.

[Birdframe_Prime]

On 2024-06-25 at 2:56 AM, OniDax said:

So, how do we now have all these Warframes that are able to be calm without the Operator?

Because of generalisation versus specific edge cases. Under the current general theory, that's how ^^

From Mirage's Prime Trailer we got a person with a strong enough will that it even changed the intended results of what Ballas was trying with Warframes, with Gara we had a person so strong that they actually volunteered for the process, and now from Jade we had one so strong that she kept her state from before the process and incorporated it into the basic structure of the Warframe she became.

Meanwhile from Rhino we see a beast that was untamed without the Operators' intervention. From the Vitruvian we have Ballas' words saying that the Warframes, all of them, were failures.

But maybe we're thinking about it wrong.

What would constitute 'turning on their masters' to an Orokin?

I don't think all of the frames went 'mad'. To me, all of the frames simply turned on their masters, which implies that they, like the implications of the Sentients before them, actually had different moral goals to the Orokin and just stood up to them.

To an Orokin, failing to follow every order, with full willing and commitment to the Orokin's praise, would have been a failing. Disagreeing with an Orokin would have been a crime they could punish.

Turning against the Orokin, given who the Orokin were, would have been the only acceptable course to most people who recognise what dictators are. So I don't think they all went mad. I think that's the Orokin's false narrative that DE are showing us through having the only Lore we have come from the Orokin side.

I believe, while the early Warframe experiments did result in a few failures where the Infestation's hive mind over-rode the human mind, that it's more likely the majority were regular people that had justifiable reason to turn on the Orokin for what those slimy golden buggers had done to them and their families. And when given all of the power of being a Warframe, some of them played the part until they had the chance to strike, some of them raged from the pain of their transformation, while some of them maintained their loyalty to the Orokin until they realised the power they now had could change the system.

[OniDax]

6 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Because of generalisation versus specific edge cases. Under the current general theory, that's how ^^

From Mirage's Prime Trailer we got a person with a strong enough will that it even changed the intended results of what Ballas was trying with Warframes, with Gara we had a person so strong that they actually volunteered for the process, and now from Jade we had one so strong that she kept her state from before the process and incorporated it into the basic structure of the Warframe she became.

Meanwhile from Rhino we see a beast that was untamed without the Operators' intervention. From the Vitruvian we have Ballas' words saying that the Warframes, all of them, were failures.

But maybe we're thinking about it wrong.

What would constitute 'turning on their masters' to an Orokin?

I don't think all of the frames went 'mad'. To me, all of the frames simply turned on their masters, which implies that they, like the implications of the Sentients before them, actually had different moral goals to the Orokin and just stood up to them.

To an Orokin, failing to follow every order, with full willing and commitment to the Orokin's praise, would have been a failing. Disagreeing with an Orokin would have been a crime they could punish.

Turning against the Orokin, given who the Orokin were, would have been the only acceptable course to most people who recognise what dictators are. So I don't think they all went mad. I think that's the Orokin's false narrative that DE are showing us through having the only Lore we have come from the Orokin side.

I believe, while the early Warframe experiments did result in a few failures where the Infestation's hive mind over-rode the human mind, that it's more likely the majority were regular people that had justifiable reason to turn on the Orokin for what those slimy golden buggers had done to them and their families. And when given all of the power of being a Warframe, some of them played the part until they had the chance to strike, some of them raged from the pain of their transformation, while some of them maintained their loyalty to the Orokin until they realised the power they now had could change the system.

Ok. That's a nice theory. Wish we had confirmation through the storytelling. One more question: what's the role of the Operator, then? Is it the Operator's role to simply mind-control the human-turned-Warframe? Is that the significance of them being corrupted by the Void, that it allows them to transfer into the surrogate body?

 

EDIT: nvm. I think TARINunit9's comment provides the answer. Would be nice to get that stated more clearly in the lore, but I think they're probably right that the purpose of the Tenno was to make the Warframes more docile and compliant (like someone dreaming or someone under hypnosis).

Edited June 29 by OniDax

[TARINunit9]

On 2024-06-24 at 6:08 PM, (PSN)Unstar said:

Thank you for this great post; I was thoughtful and well-written.

I'm curious whether you have any thoughts on what this means for the Stalker?  During Jade Shadows I wasn't sure whether DE was trying to suggest that the Stalker was currently or had always been autonomous.

After reading your post and reconsidering this line from The Second Dream...

Lotus: "Within The Moon, lies the Reservoir, the secret to your Tenno power. But this secret is dangerous, it drove the Stalker to madness. Forgive my deception, I was only trying to protect you from the same fate."

...my current hypothesis is that the Stalker still has an Operator, though that distinction has faded since they learned the truth of the Reservoir which in some way broke the minds of both the Tenno and the Warframe.

Anyway, thank you again for the thoughtful post.

The thing about Stalker is that he looks exactly like a Tenno Warframe to the real life audience, but every single character in the story can tell from a single blurry glance that he's something distinct and not-Tenno

Necra-Loid, the Corpus captain during the Jade quest, and Stalker himself all repeat the same thing: Low Guardians are not Tenno. Something about him is instantly apparent and obvious to them, even if it's never explained to us. Maybe it's a case of asset reuse that DE was never able to fix and Stalker's not actually supposed to look like Excalibur? Maybe there were more users of Transference besides the Tenno? The why is eternally unclear, but the what is made emphatically definite: whatever Stalker is, doesn't count as a Tenno

-----

On 2024-06-22 at 6:35 PM, OrangeSphere said:

In The Sacrifice, Ballas doesn't just say that *some* pre-Tenno Warframes failed, he states, "The Warframes... All of them... Failures. Surprised? They turned on us, just as you did. And so we had no choice but to commit them to the grave."

I like your post as a whole but small details rub me up the wrong way. Remember that when Ballas says someone "failed" what he actually means is "didn't immediately surrender all agency and grovel at my boots." He claims the Sentients failed, but they didn't fail at their task. They succeeded with flying colors and terraformed the Tau system. Their only "failure" was not capitulating to the Orokin. Likewise, the pre-Tenno frames only "failed" because they were refusing to follow orders, not because their actual combat effectiveness was lacking.

Overall I think your post goes over some good theory crafting but I feel you have the conclusion backwards: the introduction of the Z-Kids was to make the Warframes less autonomous. I look at this part:

On 2024-06-22 at 6:35 PM, OrangeSphere said:

Tenno operators also explain why many of the less-than-willing Warframe subjects did not immediately rebel once created. I think it is almost certain that Jade was one such very unwilling subject, and she was granted the role of an executioner! What was stopping her from immediately turning her light upon her oppressors? If the Tenno were the minds of their Warframes, and the Tenno remained loyal (or at least subservient) to the Orokin, then each Warframes' vengeful impulses would be suppressed until the Tenno themselves turned against the Orokin.

The lack of an operator also explains why Jade is more or less inert for the duration of Jade Shadows until our operator Transfers into her. Like our Warframe in The Second Dream, she can instinctually react but otherwise just holds position. It's only when our operator goes in that she can give birth, say her goodbyes, and then pass away.

Your post feels like an argument against itself. You argue that the Warframes WANT to rebel, WANT to attack the Orokin, but would also be completely inert on their own, and that adding the Z-kids allows the Warframes to express any urges at all?

No, I think the frames would be autonomous on their own, and the Z-kids are a measure to override their rebellious nature with that of a docile slave. I also think Jade starts the quest with no Z-Kid -- because if she already had one, then your player character wouldn't be able to Transfer inside her. Two people can't Transfer into the same Warframe