[Theory/hypothesis] Ember's Codex Entry

[AnonFirefly]

I was reading over the Codex entry for Ember and I was struck with an idea that seems ludicrous, but seems really cool to me and I would like to have others input on it. 

 

So Kaleen, the officer who found the Zariman and was subsequently burned by whom I assume was the original Ember, was the principle investigator of the case. That would mean that she would have had access to all the records on the Zariman, its cargo, and more importantly its crew. She would have had their names, their histories, and their records since she informed their families of their disappearance. She didn't notice any children on board and since it is a military ship, the crew would all have been adults. 

 

However, when the Zariman comes back, it's full of very scared Tenno children and yet the old woman interrogating Kaleen says that they had not put children on the ship since that would "violate procedure" (whatever that means). The prevailing theory I've seen so far is that the Orokin had reached the point where they were turning ordinary children into Tenno to mass-produce or control them from a young age.

 

But what if the old woman was telling the truth? What if the Orokin HADN'T put children on the ship, but fully trained military personnel (who had no idea where they were being sent) and when the ship came back from the Void, the Tenno were there in their place?

 

What if the adults were de-aged into children by the Void?

 

Only a few return from the Void and become Tenno and sending a ship full of people is bound to produce several Tenno just on statistics. The Void is a place that the Orokin can't explain and they don't fully understand. The trauma and the physics (or complete lack thereof) could de-age someone exposed to it in addition to giving them powers. Perhaps when the Orokin sent that ship, they expected to get back adult Tenno and instead found children Tenno. They did not violate their own procedures, but found, once again, that their results were not what they expected. 

 

So, thoughts, comments, suggestions, criticisms?

[ClockworkSpectre]

It would make more sense(simpler more plausible explanation) that the Orokin top brass were doing things "off the books" that break their own laws/procedures.  They were, after all, loosing the war and probably desperate.  Its not like it would be a surprise that a military or government did something not considered legal or ethical.  Human history is littered with examples and the Orokin, while much more advanced, were still human.

[RavenousPartyLibrarian]

The way the entry is written, with that quote; "We didn't. That would violate procedure." being the very last part, it should be obvious that the writer is using literary techniques to try to tell us something.

 

And the message can either be that they did in fact not send children, or that the Orokin were no longer trustworthy.

 

In my opinion, due to the way the text is shaped up, it's much more likely that the writer wanted to hint at the children being the crew.

Ship goes through the void, crew disappears, void children appears, and the story is finished off with Kaleen being told that the children were not there in the first place. That sounds pretty suspicious one way or another. It could still mean that it was just a petty lie, but if that last statement wasn't important, then why was it the last?

Edited November 12, 2014 by RavenousPartyLibrarian

[gnat6]

It would make more sense(simpler more plausible explanation) that the Orokin top brass were doing things "off the books" that break their own laws/procedures.  They were, after all, loosing the war and probably desperate.  Its not like it would be a surprise that a military or government did something not considered legal or ethical.  Human history is littered with examples and the Orokin, while much more advanced, were still human.

I admit that the de-aging theory did occur to me but this one is both more plausible and helps justify the tenno turning on the orokins during the victory celebration.  

[ClockworkSpectre]

The way the entry is written, with that quote; "We didn't. That would violate procedure." being the very last part, it should be obvious that the writer is using literary techniques to try to tell us something.

 

And the message can either be that they did in fact not send children, or that the Orokin were no longer trustworthy.

 

In my opinion, due to the way the text is shaped up, it's much more likely that the writer wanted to hint at the children being the crew.

Ship goes through the void, crew disappears, void children appears, and the story is finished off with Kaleen being told that the children were not there in the first place. That sounds pretty suspicious one way or another. It could still mean that it was just a petty lie, but if that last statement wasn't important, then why was it the last?

To emphasize the Orokin higher ups doing things in secret, being deceitful and placing a lie on the official record.  It feels more like the story is meant to show Kaleen being faced with her superiors conducting a cover up, hiding that they are conducting human experiments on children.  There may have been no crew to begin with, and the "crew" that was reported missing (and reported dead to their families) may have been war casualties from before the "experiment".  It wouldn't be beyond the power of the Orokin leaders to falsify records, and it is within reason that the ship could have made the jump by an autopilot system.  A cover up of an unethical experiment and falsified records makes more sense than crew members that had regressed into children.