[Theory] Supposed History Of The Orokin

[Durmstragg]

Supposed History of the Orokin

Index

• Changelog

• Incipit

• The Orokin race

  • Life in the orokin Empire

• The Sentient

Changelog

• 05 march 2015 - added the “life in the orokin empire” subsection for better explanation thanks to HermlT for the input (i’m still processing the rhino prime lines)

• 06 march 2015 modified T-virus description, thanks to Akavakaku

• special thanks to silkevicious for the review

Incipit

i’d like to apologize for my grammar, and general bad english, this is not my first language, so if someone want to make some correction, i will update the post.

The present writing is a possible story of the orokin race, and Warframe lore in general, that i’m about to start, instead of scanning each possible “truth” behind orokin and warframe lore i will try to group each single drop of lore from devstream and Warframe description, linking them together in one single timeline with a single explanation for everything.

If any reader cares, can comment it, and if pointing out facts that i misread or missed at all i will make the proper correction and compile the changelog section.

i hope you all will enjoy this lines.

Orokin Race

this is the core question, who the orokins where, and how they come to a sudden end?

What do we know for sure, since it was said out loud in a devstream, is that Hayden Tenno from “Dark Sector” (Digital Extreme’s previous game), was the first Tenno in history.

So we can assume that the whole Dark Sector story actually happened at some point in the Warframe’s far past.

Most of the theory regarding found some sort of controversy in this because in some lore-line is said that Orokin, and not Humans, developed the Technocyte virus, later i will explain how this is both true and false at the same time.

Now lets take a look at this brief citation form the Wikia:

“INFESTATION describes both a disease and its victims - a metamorphic affliction without cure. Living organisms are consumed and merged into rabid amalgamations.

Individuals are violent and animalistic yet the larger whole exhibits signs of coordination, with multiple swarms converging on ships and colonies.

Its origins are uncertain but there is historical evidence of a similar outbreak before The Collapse.”

Some hypothesis, based on lore-line that i cannot recall right now, state that orokin used T-virus (which is also responsilble for the creation of infested ) against the sentient, but as said above in the Warframe universe it was not the first time this virus spread out.

this virus appear several times in the history of warframe, being the source of both the monster form Dark Sector and, in his latter state, of the infested themselves.

Hayden Tenno himself was exposed to the T-virus which turn him into the first Excalibur-like Warframe (check the excalibur proto-armor in Warframe), and since we know he was the first Tenno, we know that the Warframe existence, or at least the technology they are based on,  has  been made possible thanks to the existence of T-virus.

Lines from now retired bosses, like the old j3 golem, point out the same fact as he use to say :

"Why do you destroy us? We are your flesh."

At the end of Dark Sector, the T-virus got loose and spread around earth, it was clearly said that some percentage of our planet was inhabited by infected life form. Yet it was not state that Humanity extinguished from this pandemic.

I think that this is the moment in which the Orokin may have come to be.

Let’s, for a moment, focus on what do we know of the Orokin through direct experience.

    Orokin were humanoid.

    Their Void towers are filled with stairs and elevator, which are good only if you have legs, and the step-spacing is function of the height, so they were between 1.5 and  2 meters high (average to tall human person).

    Orokin mastered interstellar space travel.

    in the mag prime lore (which we will be recalling later) it is sad that the space ship, using a solar rail, travelle to the “alien blue star”, the sun is a yellow star, not a blue one, so here we have interstellar jumps, yet the solar system is know as “origin system”

    Orokin had pets.

    we all know that Kubrow where created as pet. and petting animal is a very interesting behaviour, that a few spices share.

    Orokin have social classes

    Syandanas, wirm sentinels and other stuff, point out that Orokin likes to detach from the common people, through the possession of rare and distinguishable clothing and object.

by what we know up to this point, i can say that the explanation that best fits the story is that Orokin where humans.

Orokin were said to be the creator of the t-virus, but in “Dark Sector” the US create it, yet they were recorded as Orokin, not as humans, in the lore so we can assume that human and orokin where two different species.

This statement will sound like it is in opposition with the first one but it is not, the common Human belong to the homo sapiens sapiens race,  but what i guess is that Orokin where homo sapiens superior.

I guess that, after the T-virus spread out, part of the survived humans undergo an evolutionary jump acquiring a feature denied to standard humans: the collective thinking.

how they do it? mastering the T-virus.

from the infested description we know that infested have some sort of hive-mind, yet, some powerful infested being like Phroid, or the old J3 golem, show signs of self-consciousness and are able to communicate using words.

at the end of the Dark Sector game the earth was full of T-virus infected life form, so it is possible that either human scientist were able to reverse engineering the virus or a strain of T-virus infected some human who were able to master this feature, without going mad.

after this discovery the human tech may have experienced the greatest boost in his history, since a great number of mind were able to share both thought and knowledge in the matter of second, being able to processes it right away.

no more time need to discuss theory, no scientific paper to be wrote down, if one individual understand something, all the others understand it too, being able to use this newly undestood concept for their own thinking.

this fact will explain some other line in the game like the one from excalibur:

The Sentients had won. They had turned our weapons, our technology, against us. The more advanced we became, the greater our losses. The war was over unless we found a new way. In our desperation we turned to the Void. The blinding night, the hellspace where our science and reason failed. We took the twisted few that had returned from that place. We built a frame around them, a conduit of their affliction. Gave them the weapons of the old ways. Gun and blade. A new warrior, a new code was born. These rejects, these Tenno, became our saviors. Warrior-Gods cast in steel and fury striking our enemies in a way they could never comprehend.

Excalibur was the first

if the “Sentients” were able to crack the Orokin mind-network and read from it, than each bit of knowledge the orokin gain, the sentient gain too.

from there the necessity to use something which was not understable from the orokin themselves, the void.

another interesting line lies in the Stalker codex description:

Some have walked these desolate worlds while you have slept. Some like me. I remember what you did. I remember the day.

The Tenno appeared at the Terminus, gleaming and victorious. Our cold and gold Emperors, breathless, bathed you in savior's silk. Then came the sound. Across all our worlds, all at once, the ceremonial Naga drums. A royal salute to the honored Tenno. Ten solemn beats to declare the suffering was over. I watched from a distance, with the rest of the low Guardians. With each beat terror began to crush my throat. The Tenno were not stoic and silent. They were waiting. They were poised. I tried to call out but only a strangled whisper escaped.

When the ninth beat rang a torrent of blood filled the stadium, loosed by Tenno blades. The drums, the Empire, fell silent forever.

Now I hunt, dividing your numbers. Watching from that dark place, cataloging your sins, I am the ghost of retribution. You may forget but you are not innocent.

first of all we have the “torrent of blood” this mean that the stadium was filled with living being, and that as soon as the blood shed was over, the empire fell and it is described as “silent”.

this is quite interesting, from our own history, we learn that empires take years to fell. it’s not like “the emperor is dead, let’s just became barbarians” the falling of social construct, and the technologic setbacks that usually follow the annihilation of a culture, takes years to happens.

yet in the orokin case was a matter of minutes,  more interesting, is the description of the emperors (yep there was more than one).

if you know something about computers, you should know that you can link computers together in a LAN (Local Area Network) so they can share information.

but in order to do that some hardware is required, for example the router, and usually we have a more powerful computer, the server, which provide services to the network and a lot of smaller, cheaper computer, the clients, that use those provided services to interact.

since orokin likes to distinguish themselves with object and clothing the guess is that they were capable of contributing in different way to the hive mind, some may have been better than others.

my theory is that those “cold and gold” and “breathless” emperors were some sort of super-server creature, maybe some true IA - cephalon tasked with the goal of keeping the orokin mind-lan up and running, or some former human, deeply mutated by the t-virus strain that allows the hive-mind communication, when the Tennos attacked the servers were destroyed and all, or the majority of the client suffered the same fate, taking down the maybe century-old mind network.

even if not all the orokins were inside the Arena, the laking of a server, or most probably the mental repercussion of so much death may have killed or incapacited the missing onese, and without the collective mind to boost their abilities, humanity may have fallen back a few step on the technological scale, because it is possible that some tech are just too much complicated to be handled by a single human mind.

Life in the orokin empire

to better understand what i consider the orokin to be i decided to rearrange part of this document  describing how, assuming true all the above conclusion, life in the orokin empire may have been.

years after the Orokin were born on earth, they became the ruling force of the human race.

the boosted mental capability led to a huge tech jump, allowing interstellar travel and finding new power source, as orokin reactors, catalyst point out.

Humanity may have experienced a true “age of gold” guided by those god-like emperors-server-creature.

not all human had been turned into orokin though, standard humans represent still the biggest portion of humanity, and maybe a source for new Orokin to be implanted on the network, but for sure they were an important source of “guinea pig” for the rulers.

there are various reason for which not all human were Orokin, for example, it is possible that not all humans possessed the genetic set adequate to be turned into orokin, but it is more likely that only the most smart and experienced Human were granted access to the hive mind, optimizing  in this way the network itself.

allowing each and any human to be part of the network may result in a handicap, c’mon you all know what Lag is, it is troubling enough when you play, now try to figure out how lag-thinking may be.

at some point is possible that Orokin developed a standard genetic imprint to clone themselves over and over, creating a powerful oligarchy.

visiting a orokin city at the time of its cultural peak we may have seen huge urban conglomerates, filled with thousand of standard humans, serving as medium workforce, who move from point to point using advance transportation (levitating lifter for example, as in the orokin tower) just concentrated in their business as we are today.

obviously problems like poverty, street violence, may still be present, but overall the medium lifespan and life quality improves.

sometimes a Orokin may have been found on the streets, moving to some place the hive mind need a direct control, or gathering some data on the field.

inside an office or a house, we could have seen the same thing we see today, yet made of new cheaper and stronger materials, a lot more integrated tech and andvanced systems. i belive some thing from our own time were yet present: paper for example.

as good as a screen may be, write down something, or printing it on paper is still the fastest way to ceck things up (i'm a mechanical engineer so belive me on that ) at least as long as you can't share thought on the go.

this is likeable since some Kubrow were designed to defend their masters, or attack their enemy, which lead me to belive that at some point in the empire history, a few revolutions occured, as some group of standard humans try to free themselves from the empire.

this is, i belive, the nature or man,  as for the overcome of this conflict i cannot tell, but most probably the orokin were able to win each war, due the advanced tech only them can understand, at least untill they found the Sentients and the old war start.

Edited March 6, 2015 by Durmstragg

[HermlT]

I like your theory but i don't think that the orokin were specificly hive mind. if they were then they wouldnt need to talk, and moreover wouldn't need propoganda. Look for example at mag prime codex entry and rhino prime entry. At mag's codex the zero tech solider thought the tenno to be war propoganda, but in a hive mind society you wouldnt need it since information is shared between all of its specimens. Also at rhino's codex davis and the author of the entry seem to be talking while rhino chased them. Wouldn't it be logical for them to talk using the server like thing where rhino couldnt hear them, instead of talking verbally? i think that the orokin might have been something else, a bit more complicated.

[Durmstragg]

I like your theory but i don't think that the orokin were specificly hive mind. if they were then they wouldnt need to talk, and moreover wouldn't need propoganda. Look for example at mag prime codex entry and rhino prime entry. At mag's codex the zero tech solider thought the tenno to be war propoganda, but in a hive mind society you wouldnt need it since information is shared between all of its specimens. Also at rhino's codex davis and the author of the entry seem to be talking while rhino chased them. Wouldn't it be logical for them to talk using the server like thing where rhino couldnt hear them, instead of talking verbally? i think that the orokin might have been something else, a bit more complicated.

 

well, i think the soldier in the mag prime codex was a normal human, maybe i did not express myself clearly enough but i think Orokin were a restricted elitarian group, which lead the humans, and only the "best" (smartest, more expirienced) human were part of it.

i belive standard human  (homo sapiens sapiens, in other words, we) just follow them. the soldier was i think a standard human, cannon fodder for the sentient war, not an actual orokin.

the codex entry of rhino prime is a bit more complex, but some details makes me belive that is taken from a post-orokin era and is not the tale of the creation of the rhino.

e.g. the rhino chasing them is not prime, is a standard rhino, and we know that from the color of his iron skin, which is "like mercury", in other words grey, not gold. more important the space ship mentioned (mentioned in the ember entry too) come from the "Verge"  the orokin i belive call it Void.

Edited March 4, 2015 by Durmstragg

[silkevicious]

Seems interesting...

[The.Night.Wolf]

Will read it later, looks well written. But, black on black is really hard to read

[Z1B1]

i do agree with most of the theory here,but there are still questions yet without awnsers, i know its not cannon but it migth be accurate in the rigth direction.

[Durmstragg]

Will read it later, looks well written. But, black on black is really hard to read

 

sorry i do not understand, i visualize it black on white in the forum, if you like i can give you view access to the google drive version of this writing.

 

i do agree with most of the theory here,but there are still questions yet without awnsers, i know its not cannon but it migth be accurate in the rigth direction.

 

well i work on it at each launch brake, and it will take time to complete.

as for the un answered question, the reason i post this is to be questioned, so i can try to figure out possible answer.

 

i'd like to thank you both for the feed back, it's good to find out that someone found my work interesting.

Edited March 5, 2015 by Durmstragg

[Akavakaku]

Very nice ideas! One proposition I have: the Infestation is related to, but different from the technocyte plague. The latter was made by humans in Dark Sector and was cured before or just after the rise of the Orokin. The former is a weapon developed by the Orokin, based on the technocytes.

[Durmstragg]

Very nice ideas! One proposition I have: the Infestation is related to, but different from the technocyte plague. The latter was made by humans in Dark Sector and was cured before or just after the rise of the Orokin. The former is a weapon developed by the Orokin, based on the technocytes.

yes i tought that too, and modified the post to be clearer on the subject. thanks