Were The Orokin Really Despots?

[ElHefe]

The Void gets referred to with expressions along the lines of "hellspace where our reason and science fail", so I'd put my money on whatever native life might exist there being so utterly different from anything in this reality as to render the whole question academic.

 

Utterly different, sure

But we are talking about science fiction, not applied theoretical ecology ... so I don't agree with you that the question is pointless

Edited August 2, 2014 by ElHefe

[vaugahn]

Utterly different, sure

But we are talking about science fiction, not applied theoretical ecology ... so I don't agree with you that the question is pointless

 

The void doesn't seem like the place where anything would be living, and if there was something living there it would not be the sort of being we could or would want to interact with. That question is essentially immaterial because for all intents and purposes nothing lives there.

 

Anyways, as for the question of what changed, the Orokin were probably emboldened by their survival. They now had a whole new system to expand their influence in to, and presumably new peoples to conquer. 

[Viridias]

Utterly different, sure

But we are talking about science fiction, not applied theoretical ecology ... so I don't agree with you that the question is pointless

 

It is, however, quite academic. Purely theoretical. We don't really know what humans actually *do* with the Void, but exposing people to it in some fashion appears to have been a key step in creating the super-powered Tenno and the Orokin apparently liked to use it for installations hidden in obviously very long-lived "pocket realities" of sort. Spaceships can apparently also get stuck there somehow so it may have something to do with the space-travel technology of the setting, and Infested critters apparently like to use such derelicts as their "home bases" - which in turn suggests even they can somehow move between such "islands of reality" there.

 

The Tenno seem to be able to reach specific sites there without trouble in nothing more than their Lisets so long as they actually know where to go looking, and the Grins and Corps seem to have much the same capability despite being presumably less familiar with the principles of the place than the ancient super-commandos.

 

This crap has been going on since God knows when, at the very least the Orokin era; quite a while in any case. There's no indication that any entities that might exist there have paid any heed to such extended human trespassing of their plane of existence, or if they have they clearly quite lack the ability to do anything concrete about it. Nor is there even the slightest hint in the lore that during all their interaction with the place the humans had observed anything even remotely recognisable as some kind of native lifeform.

 

As such the whole topic is basically arguing about angels on the head of a pin. Might be a good way to pass the time and even good mental exercise (though I have deep-seated doubts about Internets forum debates), but bearing no relevance to anything.

[ElHefe]

The void doesn't seem like the place where anything would be living, and if there was something living there it would not be the sort of being we could or would want to interact with. That question is essentially immaterial because for all intents and purposes nothing lives there.

 

Anyways, as for the question of what changed, the Orokin were probably emboldened by their survival. They now had a whole new system to expand their influence in to, and presumably new peoples to conquer. 

 

Will defer the first point to another thread ...

But, your second point made me rethink the Sentient Civilization - maybe they weren't homogenous

 

If the Sentients were imperialistic themselves, then they may have other species under their rule, species that are now liberated

 

But liberated to what?  Autonomy?  Their own internal struggle for power?

What would the Orokin do with these "peoples"?

Assimilate them?

Enslave them?

 

What would The Lotus do with these freed "peoples"

Protect them?

Ignore them?

 

What if those previously under Sentient rule were human/humanoid but more naïve or child-like?

Would that change how the Orokin or The Lotus view them?

 

[vaugahn]

-snip-

 

The void seems to be sort of a "sub-plane" of existence, rather than a series of pocket dimensions. It also seems to behave differently than reality, because travel through it is seemingly instantaneous.  If you listen to the radio transmissions, one of the grineer rail operators basically says that ships going from rail to rail are shot through the void. This makes me think it's like the warp from 40k, a separate plane of existence that allows FTL travel.

 

-snip-

 

That's the difference. After the fall of the sentients, the Orokin have more opportunities for expansion. This was something thetenno would most likely not be happy about.

[Viridias]

Anyways, as for the question of what changed, the Orokin were probably emboldened by their survival. They now had a whole new system to expand their influence in to, and presumably new peoples to conquer. 

 

Eh, sounded to me like the elusive Sentients were the exact only recognisably intelligent alien species the Orokin discovered - hence the name - and the experience likely wasn't encouraging. Plus the snippets of lore we have of the war itself hint at it having been terribly costly and grueling; while there's no hint of how the conflict was finally won the manner was apparently decisive enough that the surviving Tenno could be called home for some kind of grand victory ceremony (as related by the Stalker), ie. they weren't needed to snuff out remaining pockets of resistance or serve as rapid-response reserve for some kind of occupation force.

 

The war likely stretched the Orokin state very thin indeed; I reckon they were going to need at least one generation's worth of rebuilding and general breath-catching before they could so much as seriously start planning for any real follow-up moves.

 

[vaugahn]

Eh, sounded to me like the elusive Sentients were the exact only recognisably intelligent alien species the Orokin discovered - hence the name - and the experience likely wasn't encouraging. Plus the snippets of lore we have of the war itself hint at it having been terribly costly and grueling; while there's no hint of how the conflict was finally won the manner was apparently decisive enough that the surviving Tenno could be called home for some kind of grand victory ceremony (as related by the Stalker), ie. they weren't needed to snuff out remaining pockets of resistance or serve as rapid-response reserve for some kind of occupation force.

 

The war likely stretched the Orokin state very thin indeed; I reckon they were going to need at least one generation's worth of rebuilding and general breath-catching before they could so much as seriously start planning for any real follow-up moves.

 

 

Well from the excal codex it sounds like they had all but lost when they created the warframes. Still, at their level of technology rebuilding would be easy, and if they expanded into the sentient system they'd have even more resources to take advantage of.

[Viridias]

The void seems to be sort of a "sub-plane" of existence, rather than a series of pocket dimensions. It also seems to behave differently than reality, because travel through it is seemingly instantaneous.  If you listen to the radio transmissions, one of the grineer rail operators basically says that ships going from rail to rail are shot through the void. This makes me think it's like the warp from 40k, a separate plane of existence that allows FTL travel.

 

Eh, pay closer attention please. The "pocket dimensions" there are the artifacts of the Orokin derelicts and towers and whatever else they might have left there by intent or accident; artificial "bubbles of reality" by some technological means separated from the surrounding alien universe.

 

But yeah, seems to be involved in the setting's space-travel shenanigans in some fashion. And weird superpowers. An obvious difference from the Warp of WHverse would be the acute shortage of very strange but only too sentient native energy life prone to taking active and highly unpleasant attention of the material world and its inhabitants...

[Viridias]

Well from the excal codex it sounds like they had all but lost when they created the warframes. Still, at their level of technology rebuilding would be easy, and if they expanded into the sentient system they'd have even more resources to take advantage of.

 

Sounded like even with their newfangled Space Ninja Wizards they still suffered casualties a-plenty though. Expansion to newly vacated premises only comes up on the agenda if your economy and demographics actually allow for it, and the former in particular was almost certainly a tottering wreck - remember, the Orokin state had nobody to get assistance from; all the burden had to be shouldered domestically to the bitter end. Know much about what things were like in Germany towards the end of both World Wars...?

 

More to the point, that the Tenno could be recalled for pageantry and victory parade stuff basically means the Sentients and their ill-defined ability to "turn" technology were no longer relevant, likely meaning dead and routed past any likely reinitiation of contacts. Hard to see what the war-weary Tenno vets would have against the state claiming the worlds so viciously fought over as their rightful spoils, and it's not like there's been the slightest hint anywhere that there were competing claims from any party.

 

Whatever it was that motivated the Tenno revolt in the aftermath of the war was nigh certainly related to domestic matters; further than that moves to the field of idle speculation given the desperate shortage of information we have of the workings of the Orokin-era state and society and just where the Tenno fit in the picture.

[Sloan441]

Empire suggests highly centralized rule. Empires are often expansionistic in their early phases. They become static after a time and then basically just defend their own borders.

 

What little we know of the Orokin Empire suggests it was highly stratified and authoritarian, at least later on during and after (briefly) the Great War.

 

So, yeah, despotic might be a bit of a lurid description, but it seems likely that during the war the Empire was very authoritarian.

 

Steve in a devstream referred to the void as "compressed space." You can make of that what you will, but it does imply it exists outside of normal space/time.

 

Why the Tenno turned on the Orokin? Well, we can only infer. Two reasons spring to mind:

 

1) The Empire planned to eliminate the Tenno after the war (could be for a few reasons) and they decided to strike first. Simple enough.

2) The Tenno discovered something that changed their perceptions of the Empire while fighting the Sentients and decided it had to be eliminated on their return from the war. This could be any number of things as well, including #1 above.

 

The most interesting thing about the stalker's entry (and keep in mind it is from his perspective) is the fact that the Tenno had already decided to destroy the Empire when the victory celebration was underway. Of course, we have no clue what the actual timeline was and the stalker isn't exactly a disinterested observer, so his recollections are suspect.

[ElHefe]

(edit) ... the Tenno had already decided to destroy the Empire when the victory celebration was underway.

 

Good point ... the Tenno uprising was not an extemporaneous riot - it was a premeditated rebellion

 

BUT, pulling off a revolution is no small thing:

It requires inspiration - it always begins with one who sees things different that their contemporaries

It requires leadership - once inspired, there must be recruitment by charisma and logic

It requires organization - both in terms of personnel as well as strategic and tactical planning

It requires commitment - total and absolute, no going back

 

As you point out, fragmentary information about the origins of the Tenno make it nearly impossible to surmise their intentions, but given what I listed above, it would have to be BIG

 

Nice introductory summary too ...

Edited August 3, 2014 by ElHefe

[Sloan441]

I'm not sure a revolution was what the Tenno had in mind. Once the Empire was decapitated, they went into cryo-sleep and weren't heard from again until now. They left it up to the surviving people of the empire to clean up after the party.

 

Of course, we don't know what the timeline was. Some things the Lotus says could be interpreted as this rebellion possibly going on for some time. On the other hand, the stalker's recollection seems to imply the rebellion was over quickly. We simply don't know.

 

Then there's the Lotus.

 

What we know of her seems to imply she was an Orokin AI that was their interface or liason with the Tenno. All your revolutionary points can be answered by simply saying "the Lotus."

 

Inspiration: very possibly supplied by the Lotus. Lets assume the Orokin did decide to do away with the Tenno after the war. Their liason would know about it and could very well have warned the Tenno what was coming.

 

Leadership: the Lotus does manage the Tenno. She does it now. She probably worked the same way during the war. The way Lotus handled Mirage's last battle is no different from the way she handles everything we do now (and the present Tenno don't listen any better than Mirage did).

 

Organization: what the Lotus was made to do. She plans and executes strategies using the Tenno. Arguably, she prosecuted an entire war to a successful outcome. Same then as now.

 

Commitment: the Lotus does seem very single minded. If she is an AI, you don't get more much committed than a machine doing what it was made to do. You could say the same for the Tenno as well. They were created to do something and they do it quite well.

 

I suspect the Lotus was very involved in the fate of the Orokin.

[arch111]

^ There are two scenarios to Lotus.

1) She was and still is Tenno Commander. AI or cyborg construct.

2) Lotus took command of the Tenno and led them in rebellion. Freed their minds. She could be Sentient or an ally in this case.

[Viridias]

Or she coulda been an Orokin dissident who became disillusioned with the system and conspired with the Tenno to put paid to it. Or, over the course of her apparent association with them over the war, came to identify more with the supersoldiers than her more-or-less peers and thus went along with their rebellion plan. Or God knows how many other possible and at least as convoluted scenarios, it's not like we knew diddly squat about the motivations of the revolt or even where the idea originated. Could even been the result of some kind of "memetic warfare" effort by the Sentients as a final eff-you to the Orokin for all we know.

 

Hell, the jury's still out on whether the Lotus is a specific individual or a position.

[Sloan441]

Everything the Lotus has done can be explained by applying the HAL9000 conundrum from 2011.

 

She was created to manage and lead the Tenno. She was/is a self-aware AI. She's given a goal (win the war) by the Orokin and turned loose to achieve it. She achieves that goal.

 

Now the Orokin have a new problem. What to do with the Tenno? If we again assume it's to put them down, the Orokin would have to work through Lotus to execute (pun intended) their plan.

 

This places the Lotus in an untenable position. She's made to lead and take care of the Tenno. We know how she regards the Tenno and how seriously she takes these responsibilities (Mirage quest again). Now she has to preside over their liquidation. The least dissonant way to resolve this situation is to remove the cause of that dissonance: the Orokin. Her own internal balance is restored and she can continue with her main purpose: manage and guide the Tenno.

[Dedjal]

I think that the tennos were imbued with a strong sense of keeping balance.

Leaving the orokins at peace after the sentinels was defeated, would thus unbalance the solar system.

So the only logical thing to do, would be to wipe the orokins out.

[Viridias]

I think that the tennos were imbued with a strong sense of keeping balance.

Leaving the orokins at peace after the sentinels was defeated, would thus unbalance the solar system.

So the only logical thing to do, would be to wipe the orokins out.

 

And this compulsion would come from where exactly? Your reasoning is circuitous.

 

[Dedjal]

And this compulsion would come from where exactly? Your reasoning is circuitous.

It would steem from the logical mind of tennos, or programmed into them by the Orokins, to use them as space police after the war was won.

[Trajhenkhetlive]

I'm guessing the Orokin were either an organized earth government (who lost a lot of technology after their fall causing a dark age of sorts, hence why there would be "prime" gear around) or more likely a group of aliens who ruled earth and humans for a long time. Some of the humans were turned into Tenno to perform police missions and what not. At some point the Orokin began asking the tenno to do more than police work. Humans probably began revolting under the "benevolent dictatorship" and the tenno were asked to wipe them out on a far less moral scale than law enforcment should (maybe even to the point of killing off whole cities or colonies). The Tenno being humans to a point were not going to turn their guns on their families or homes. Corpus, Grineer, and most of the infested are pretty much human's. Keep in mind also there are unaligned people in the solar system. We have no idea how much of civilization these people make up in the current game.

 

I'm guessing the Tenno are trying to break up the Corpus conglamerates and Grineer DNA copying governments while also keeping tab on infested outbreaks. Once all three factions are busted humanity can be free to be what it will be.

[Wereduck_of_Arrakis]

Just a thought but could it be that after defeating the Orokin's great nemesis (I.E. the Sentients) that many Tenno

would have felt our creed of balance demanded we likewise destroy the Orokin?

It seems a bit too simple to be satisfying but then again, how could we maintain balance by exterminating only one side.

EDIT: Damn, read 2 whole pages to make sure everyone else wasn't saying the exact same thing ..then posted on p3, where the entire page is about the exact same thing.

Edited August 5, 2014 by Wereduck_of_Arrakis

[arch111]

Datamined Lotus lines calls them tyrants and basically job well dun, now go to sleep...but its Unofficial at this point.

But again;

Cold and Gold.

Sound like nice soft rulers to you?

[ElHefe]

(edit)

But again;

Cold and Gold.

Sound like nice soft rulers to you?

 

They sound like public lavatory seats ...

 

[Morec0]

Datamined Lotus lines calls them tyrants and basically job well dun, now go to sleep...but its Unofficial at this point.

But again;

Cold and Gold.

Sound like nice soft rulers to you?

 

I've seen that datamined stuff - but until it makes an appearance in-game I treat it with the same credibility as I treat my unpublished novel: yes, it exists, but because it is not published (in this analogy, published standing for "in-game") my legitimacy as an author (in this analogy, their legitimacy as a fact in Warframe lore) falls under heavy scrutination.

[Campaigner]

I'm guessing the Orokin Empire's expansion and grand ambitions led to their decision to refuse peace, plunging all Humans and Sentients into a hopeless war. Maybe the Sentients actually desired peace and the Tenno turned on the greedy Orokin? Or maybe destroying the Empire was the only way to appease the angered Sentients, allowing the surviving humans to escape the fate of being forcefully conscripted into a doomed war effort by their Orokin overlords?

 

Who knows...