So, about the "lower guardians"...

[S074]

Hello there,

I just want to drop down a few things I'm pondering about based on some information the game gave us, with possible interpretations in lieu of the recent quest.

We know that the first generation of warframes were autonomous. Ballas said of them "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 grave." This statement doesn't state when "all" of the Gen1 turned on the Orokin. Kullervo's lore clearly treats him as an autonomous warframe that was still active along with the Tenno during their Orokin slaughter. I won't go into super-long tangents trying to guess which warframes were originally Gen1, but I think that both Jade and the Stalker fall squarely into this generation.

Also from Ballas, we know that the orokin still wanted the warframes to serve them. "We had created monsters we couldn't control. We drugged them, tortured them, eviscerated them... We brutalized their minds... but it did not work. Until they came." I think that this practice of drug, torture and brainwash worked at least on some of them. I have the feeling Sorren is indeed one of those whose Orokin's brainwashing worked wonders.

He was punished for his relationship with Jade, yet we can see the grudge he holds against the Tenno for slaughtering the Orokin.

I'm clearly overthinking it, but I feel like his helmet (as well as his Acolytes') bear the scars of their torture and brutalization. The permanent mark of brainwashing and drugging that made them loyal to the Orokin hundreds of years after the fall of their lords, still seeking the Tenno to avenge them.

The acolytes and the stalker were all Lower Guardian Warframes in the Orokin era.

Maybe I'm entirely wrong, but speculating is fun.

What do you think?

[sXeth]

6 minutes ago, S074 said:

Hello there,

I just want to drop down a few things I'm pondering about based on some information the game gave us, with possible interpretations in lieu of the recent quest.

We know that the first generation of warframes were autonomous. Ballas said of them "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 grave." This statement doesn't state when "all" of the Gen1 turned on the Orokin. Kullervo's lore clearly treats him as an autonomous warframe that was still active along with the Tenno during their Orokin slaughter. I won't go into super-long tangents trying to guess which warframes were originally Gen1, but I think that both Jade and the Stalker fall squarely into this generation.

Also from Ballas, we know that the orokin still wanted the warframes to serve them. "We had created monsters we couldn't control. We drugged them, tortured them, eviscerated them... We brutalized their minds... but it did not work. Until they came." I think that this practice of drug, torture and brainwash worked at least on some of them. I have the feeling Sorren is indeed one of those whose Orokin's brainwashing worked wonders.

He was punished for his relationship with Jade, yet we can see the grudge he holds against the Tenno for slaughtering the Orokin.

I'm clearly overthinking it, but I feel like his helmet (as well as his Acolytes') bear the scars of their torture and brutalization. The permanent mark of brainwashing and drugging that made them loyal to the Orokin hundreds of years after the fall of their lords, still seeking the Tenno to avenge them.

The acolytes and the stalker were all Lower Guardian Warframes in the Orokin era.

Maybe I'm entirely wrong, but speculating is fun.

What do you think?

All original frames were people, dunno where people pulled the “generation” stuff from, but Ive never seen a source.

And all originals were self motivated. Not exactly mentally stable, being infected with a torturous symbiote, experimented on, then “released” to commit unspeakable acts of violence at a The Boys level wouldn’t be healthy even for the voluntary. It’s unclear if mass produced strains (we know strains wete copied from Albrecht possession of duplicate Excal and Mag)were given to individuals or clones of some kind. The ones we build seem to be cobbled of non-person biomasses, and we follow old blueprints, so it’s reasonable to assume this was also the Orokins production line method.

Ballas Vitruvian has the principle quality of being written by Ballas. A narcissist who can not fathom disobedience, and tried to torch the system over one to a half dozen people who wouldn’t kneel to him for all his conquest and power. His opinion of mindless drones and uncontrollable monsters and unviable soldiers is incredibly tainted and suspect. When to the contrary we have seen multiple frames enact their own agendas, of varying complexity. 
 

Jade certainly seems to have been “volunteered” for the project as punishment. Sorren is unclear. It seems highly unlikely the Seven would trust an non-operator Warframe in their personal/estate guardians. And his Codex of the Parade certainly is written from his own non-Tenno point of view. Everything would point to him becoming a Warframe after. My own theory would be that Ballas located him and facilitated his transformation to hunt the Tenno as. Natah failed to complete the plan to kill them. As Ballas would know that a Warframe could maintain a focused purpose or fixation from various other events.

The other oddity out is when Jade saved him. The diorama seems to indicate he was already Stalker and facing an Excalibur. But that invites many oddities about where she was in the interim. It would make more sense if she saved him from the Tenno attack that caused the fall, potentially even leading Sorren to bring her to Ballas to assess her, as he was loyal, and Ballas was an Orokin Executor in charge of Warframe science in his eyes. With her being in Ballas moin vault alpng with Umbra before we unsealed them in its return (possibly the Stalker memory was even jarred during Second Dream, explaining why he vanished on Lua only to return later to confront us on the Orbiter, he went to retrieve Jade)

[(PSN)robotwars7]

15 hours ago, S074 said:

What do you think?

when Ballas says "commit them to grave", he simply means the project was canned. some of the first gen warframes obviously escaped, like Kullervo and continued to run rampant for some time. the warframe project may have still been worked on in secret, but wasn't fully revived until after the Zariman Incident when it becomes apparent that the Zariman Kids can somehow calm the feral warframes down and control them. 

I'd say Stalker's brainwashing may have finally been broken now, with Jade's Death and the birth of Sirius/Orion. when a Jade is in the squad, Stalker will refuse to fight her and leave, meaning his brainwashing has been lifted, as his love for Jade seriously trumps his hatred of the Tenno.  Stalker will be feeling a lot of complex emotions, and this also leads to the reason he left his hideout on Uranus, as he cannot bear to live in the place where his true love passed away.

 

[S074]

On 2024-06-24 at 12:03 AM, sXeth said:

The diorama seems to indicate he was already Stalker and facing an Excalibur. But that invites many oddities about where she was in the interim.

Not necessarily. You can assume that when they have been found out in their unapproved relationship both were punished.

Following my train of thought I can imagine Jade was coerced into becoming a warframe possibly to avoid sorren to be executed. The orokin then didn't kill Sorren, but still proceeded by torturing, brainwashed and forcefully made into the Stalker lower Guardian.

On 2024-06-24 at 3:41 PM, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

when Ballas says "commit them to grave", he simply means the project was canned. some of the first gen warframes obviously escaped, like Kullervo and continued to run rampant for some time. the warframe project may have still been worked on in secret, but wasn't fully revived until after the Zariman Incident when it becomes apparent that the Zariman Kids can somehow calm the feral warframes down and control them. 

Yes, I feel that's a reasonable turn of events.

 

To continue with the idea that Stalker and Acolytes were all Lower Guardians, I can see them as some sort of "second-rate warframes" in the eye of the orokins.

• Let's assume that the scarred helmet they share is indeed a proof of their torture/brutalization/brainwashing
• They all resemble other warframes
• Their skill set seems a mishmash/modified version of "our" standard warframes

Especially after this quest I feel we should get some more background on Sorren and his Acolytes. We kind of got a glimpse on his past, but it would be very interesting to also flesh his team out in terms of lore.

 

[JimmyKaeos01]

It's my understanding that the Warframe that came before the Tenno had some level of autonomy and sentience, which would explain events such as those mentioned within the Levarian museum, and why the frames were celebrated instead of the tenno piloting them. Something to note here that has raised questions for me, when exploring Ash's Levarian exhibit, there are several Despair throwing knives on the pedestal of the edo armour, rather than say kunai or haiku. Whilst we can assume that all frames had access to all weapons available at the time, it makes me wonder if there is a connection between stalker, the acolytes, Umbra, etc, and those mentioned within the levarian. 

 

Whilst I can understand that's Ballas' vitruvian was written by Ballas, and so any inherent information should be taken with a pinch of salt, it's also the only solid piece of history we can rely on - the Cephalon fragments don't add much history until you collect all of them, and from what I understand it's mostly about Ordis/Ordan Karris before the old war and doesn't go into any specifics about the direct or indirect history or the Warframes. To quote another thread I found whilst searching for this one again, it feels like DE has gone off on so many tangents without tying off any of the loose ends. A good example of this is indeed the jade shadows quest - it was marketed as a glimpse into the history of the stalker, but it doesn't actually go into any detail other than "I'm pregnant and now I'm a Warframe". There's no real information to gather from this other than the quest is set after TNW which in turn makes it a recent event with historical flashbacks. Certainly, I've yet to find any solid in-game lore chronologically ordering everything. Most of it is educated guesswork and a few scraps thrown our way. .

The further into the lore I get, the more questions I have, and the more those questions become "why?" for what is not necessarily the intended reason

Edited Wednesday at 02:34 PM by JimmyKaeos01
Typo

[S074]

7 hours ago, JimmyKaeos01 said:

To quote another thread I found whilst searching for this one again, it feels like DE has gone off on so many tangents without tying off any of the loose ends. A good example of this is indeed the jade shadows quest - it was marketed as a glimpse into the history of the stalker, but it doesn't actually go into any detail other than "I'm pregnant and now I'm a Warframe". There's no real information to gather from this other than the quest is set after TNW which in turn makes it a recent event with historical flashbacks. Certainly, I've yet to find any solid in-game lore chronologically ordering everything. Most of it is educated guesswork and a few scraps thrown our way. .

Exactly!
This quest gave us some information on the Stalker's past, at the same time leaving a lot of it open for assumptions. Sorren and Jade were in love is confirmed, but anything other than that is left open for us to assume. Yes, likely they were in a not approved relationship and thus punished for it with warframization, but this doesn't explain why Sorren would remain loyal to the Orokin after the fact. It doesn't show us anything on Sorren's lower guardian status (I think I am not the only one still waiting for some heavy lore on what is a lower guardian in Orokin society)