Umbra warframes [Discussion & Appreciation][*spoilers*]

[Intotsu]

A lore discussion? How exciting!

 

8 minutes ago, TearsOfTomorrow said:

Adding to this, it has been explicitly stated that the tennocyte infection SOMEHOW works on metallic constructs/machines, which is why the Infested have the Mutalist MOA/Osprey. So yeah, this fact makes it completely meaningless to wonder where the flesh of a warframe ends and the metal begins: flesh and metal have literally become one.

In the Cephalon fragments (on Eris especially) the Warframes are specifically mentioned to be a "Bio-Metal" and the Infestation described as giving inorganic material organic properties and vice versa. This information combined with that provided by the Sacrifice quest confirms that when people were infected by the Helminth strain of Infestation to become Warframes, their bodies became the biometal, "blossoming into swordsteel", as mentioned.

In regards to the potential of Umbra Warframes… I don't think it possible due to the specific reasons that Umbra  was... well, Umbra (Who that person was before they became a frame, etc). However, would it be possible to, say "Reawaken" the Warframes like Umbra? I personally think it would be a neat idea, especially as part of the war against the Sentients.

Also, as an aside, I had a theory that when we make a Warframe, we're basically 3D printing an infested golem out of Helminth, which lends credence to the idea of us "Reawakening" the golems as separately fighting entities. I could be overthinking this though.

[TearsOfTomorrow]

5 minutes ago, Intotsu said:

Also, as an aside, I had a theory that when we make a Warframe, we're basically 3D printing an infested golem out of Helminth, which lends credence to the idea of us "Reawakening" the golems as separately fighting entities. I could be overthinking this though.

I honestly think our foundry-made, non-prime warframes are just... How do I put it? Imagine meeting Cthulhu: being the nice, chill dude he is, he decides to give you an object as a present, and this object is of course made of some pentadimensional hypermetal from the alternate dimension of beyond. Now, you want to try and mass-produce it: since eldritch materials are not readily accessible to you, you try and make due with normal metal.

Yeah, something like that. Of course, there's still the question of where the living bits of our foundry-made warframe came from, I.E. wether or not we're pulling a Ballas and turning present-day people into our "replica" 'frames... Am I the only one who suspects capture missions?

[Urlan]

8 minutes ago, Intotsu said:

A lore discussion? How exciting!

 

In the Cephalon fragments (on Eris especially) the Warframes are specifically mentioned to be a "Bio-Metal" and the Infestation described as giving inorganic material organic properties and vice versa. This information combined with that provided by the Sacrifice quest confirms that when people were infected by the Helminth strain of Infestation to become Warframes, their bodies became the biometal, "blossoming into swordsteel", as mentioned.

In regards to the potential of Umbra Warframes… I don't think it possible due to the specific reasons that Umbra  was... well, Umbra (Who that person was before they became a frame, etc). However, would it be possible to, say "Reawaken" the Warframes like Umbra? I personally think it would be a neat idea, especially as part of the war against the Sentients.

Also, as an aside, I had a theory that when we make a Warframe, we're basically 3D printing an infested golem out of Helminth, which lends credence to the idea of us "Reawakening" the golems as separately fighting entities. I could be overthinking this though.

Normal warframes were made by Sylvana, crafted to look like humans and have powers similar to the earlier Bio-Drones as called by Ballas; but are surrogates rather than the bio-drones which were infested folk "volunteered" from outer colonies (probably around Eris, Sedna, and other trans-neptunian bodies); which Ballas states in Sacrifice's Vitruvian were destroyed due to turning against the Orokin as seen in Rhino prime's Codex entry.

That said, both are infested organisms and we know that Tenno at least can pickup Void echoes. Given that Somatic Fiber description, it could be that we might be able to use those Void Echoes and Somatic Fibers to revive the memories of compatible Bio-Drones into these "empty hollow shells" if compatible of course.

[CopperBezel]

The Foundry station looks a lot like a 3D printer and there's plenty to imply some kind of replication process, but Ordis specifically says that the Helminth and its chamber are needed for our equipment, and of course, he does all of the actual foundering. Stating the obvious, the foundry also requires very specific materials and built components to construct things anyway. So I don't think the physical machine we use to interact with the Foundry is synthesizing any flesh, which would happen in the Helminth chamber.

9 minutes ago, TearsOfTomorrow said:

I honestly think our foundry-made, non-prime warframes are just... How do I put it? Imagine meeting Cthulhu: being the nice, chill dude he is, he decides to give you an object as a present, and this object is of course made of some pentadimensional hypermetal from the alternate dimension of beyond. Now, you want to try and mass-produce it: since eldritch materials are not readily accessible to you, you try and make due with normal metal.

Yeah, something like that. Of course, there's still the question of where the living bits of our foundry-made warframe came from, I.E. wether or not we're pulling a Ballas and turning present-day people into our "replica" 'frames... Am I the only one who suspects capture missions?

To the second part, yes, it's an entirely fair and spooky question.

I can't see the first paragraph, though. We don't get Prime parts from relics, we get Prime part blueprints from relics. The implication is that even the plans for the original warframes were lost and the non-Primes were latter-day imitations without the benefit of full Orokin know-how.

17 minutes ago, Intotsu said:

In regards to the potential of Umbra Warframes… I don't think it possible due to the specific reasons that Umbra  was... well, Umbra (Who that person was before they became a frame, etc). However, would it be possible to, say "Reawaken" the Warframes like Umbra? I personally think it would be a neat idea, especially as part of the war against the Sentients.

I'm of two minds on this. I know DE has indicated they've considered the possibility of other Umbral frames, which I feel implies other frames rather similar to Umbra. Lorewise it doesn't make sense; imagine if he'd just called himself Excalibur Black and we were asking for Black frames. Well, you have plenty of color palettes. = P The two things that make Umbra special as a frame are his ability to operate autonomously and his anti-Sentient themed abilities and mods, and those are entirely unrelated to one another. The first is directly the result of how Ballas made him, and the second is to do with his experience after that point and likely not at all part of Ballas's plan.

So yeah, I don't think a series of Umbral frames fits, but I won't be surprised if they jam one in regardless.

[(XBOX)SapphyreBlue]

If sylvana created the normal frames that is the “bio drones” so we won’t have the Titania Prime?
And I think every Tenno have they own characteristic and every frame was made with they own characteristics like One Tenno like music and one Dax girl like music so they made octavia for this Tenno that like music, like every frame have a lore on the codex with they own characteristics things they did, like the mirage laughing when it was time of her death, I think that they take compatible persons for each Tenno, not just bio drones made randomly with randomly powers, it’s like two persons connecting they mind, and the umbras maybe be the warframes that ballas on the vitruvian when they didn’t know the tenno thing, so they don’t have the tenno for control him or something they act with they own mind, like different things, uses they own fashion. But this theory have a lot of fails like why MC can use a lot of frames and some others thing 😛

[(XBOX)SapphyreBlue]

And I don’t think so much that exist a lot of tennos because the for the orokin empire is prohibited putting child’s on ships, so they did that in a irregular way, putting a bunch of kiddos don’t is the best way to make it secret =p

[CopperBezel]

"Erra" shows us a fair number of Tenno. Enough in one place to make it seem likely there's quite a population around and the Zariman was quite a large ship.

I don't see any evidence that Silvana created any warframes other than Titania. She just indicates that there were people other than Ballas tasked with designing warframes.

The only reason to doubt the existence of a Titania Prime is the fact that we get her non-Prime blueprints from the source that should have the originals. The thing is, I have no doubt that we'll get a Titania Prime and little hope that there will be any explanation. At that point, the only explanation for why we got non-Prime blueprints from her original designer will be "because gameplay". Much as I expect we'll get a Revenant Prime who's already called Revenant and already has the same Eidolon-inspired abilities.

As for Tenno "characteristics" - I think it's much more likely that the assignment of Tenno to warframes happened after the frames were designed and created, but that the assignment could have taken the operator's strengths into consideration. It's unavoidably weird that frames are always referred to as if they're singular characters in quest dialogue, no matter when in the timeline the events happened. But I take that to mean that the frame and operator shaped each other so much that it's one person from the perspective of history.

[Birdframe_Prime]

14 hours ago, Urlan said:

Normal warframes were made by Sylvana

To reiterate:

1 hour ago, CopperBezel said:

I don't see any evidence that Silvana created any warframes other than Titania. She just indicates that there were people other than Ballas tasked with designing warframes.

The Silver Grove quest does show that Silvana was working on Warframes (plural) during the time of the Tenno. (Important note, the Tenno were discovered long after the Warframes were created and after the Warframes turned on their masters just as any Infested tended to do. But because she's working directly with the Tenno, and using Transference Therapy, it must be during the time after the Tenno Transference method was discovered, literally at the height of when they were able to produce Warframes. This is why she was tasked with working with the Warframes, because the Tenno Transference was being turned into a tool of war. However, something very important; it's while Margulis is still alive, and therefore at a stage before the Lotus could have existed and before the Tenno (as all Orokin projects tend to do) turned against the Orokin and killed them.

In all of the searching of those dialogue lines, it does not say that she had any influence on designing the Warframes and there's no reference to her actually even designing Titania, only making her. It's an interesting point to note, though;

How does she know that the Warframe is called Titania before she starts to build it? Her notes name the warframe as she's referring to it as something she now has to do, not something she's actually doing. To me, and hopefully to others, this means that there is a blueprint that they're having to build from, a project passed to her by Ballas. This then would indicate that there was a prototype (a Prime) that Ballas created, that they can now build regular Titania frames from using the original creation as their guide.

What I also found was reference to what she experienced when she used Transference 'as only a Tenno can stand', which referenced a 'tortured presence' that 'stains' her own mind when she uses it to connect to the Titania she built. Apparently this is one of those points where her earlier statements about hating Titania because it's a killer made by her, a healer, change because when Silvana is brought back to clarity by the final Apothic not long later in our time, she talks about her 'beloved' Titania. Interesting... Because if only a Tenno can stand that quality or type of Tranference, that may be exactly why none of the Orokin ever actually had control of the Warframes despite clearly being able to use the Transference Bolts to communicate or even restrain them.

[(XBOX)SapphyreBlue]

I think this is a important part on ember codex

-The old woman gestured for the officer to take Kaleen away. The meeting was over. When Kaleen reached the door she twisted out of his grip and shot back, 'Why would you do that? Why would you put children on a military ship?'

'We didn't. That would violate procedure.' 

so how they managed to put so much children’s there or the child’s enter there without permission?

[Birdframe_Prime]

4 minutes ago, (XB1)SapphyreBlue said:

so how they managed to put so much children’s there or the child’s enter there without permission?

Ah, now this one is kind of a known, an 'implied' known.

The known part of it is this: In the Orokin's effort to expand their empire, they attempted an experiment Void-Jump with a military ship, the Zariman Ten Zero. However, the ship experienced an accident while making "the fold from Saturn to the Outer gates" and vanished into the Void, an incident that would be known as the Void-Jump Accident.

The implication is simple, the military ship was the only one capable of taking a Void Jump, but the people on board weren't military, they were regular families. The Orokin threw families into the Void in one colossal waste of human life just to further their own goals. And it wasn't the military, because they have procedure, this was just... the Orokin being evil.

As a note there, I think we're actually going to get that full story in The Planes of Duviri. At the end of the trailer the view pans to a massive ship in the distance, which has the exact same silhouette as the ship that appears in the Vitruvian entry about the Tenno. Like this:

Spoiler

So our speculation may all be moot about that.

[(XBOX)SapphyreBlue]

Ty boy :3

[Urlan]

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

To reiterate:

The Silver Grove quest does show that Silvana was working on Warframes (plural) during the time of the Tenno. (Important note, the Tenno were discovered long after the Warframes were created and after the Warframes turned on their masters just as any Infested tended to do. But because she's working directly with the Tenno, and using Transference Therapy, it must be during the time after the Tenno Transference method was discovered, literally at the height of when they were able to produce Warframes. This is why she was tasked with working with the Warframes, because the Tenno Transference was being turned into a tool of war. However, something very important; it's while Margulis is still alive, and therefore at a stage before the Lotus could have existed and before the Tenno (as all Orokin projects tend to do) turned against the Orokin and killed them.

In all of the searching of those dialogue lines, it does not say that she had any influence on designing the Warframes and there's no reference to her actually even designing Titania, only making her. It's an interesting point to note, though;

How does she know that the Warframe is called Titania before she starts to build it? Her notes name the warframe as she's referring to it as something she now has to do, not something she's actually doing. To me, and hopefully to others, this means that there is a blueprint that they're having to build from, a project passed to her by Ballas. This then would indicate that there was a prototype (a Prime) that Ballas created, that they can now build regular Titania frames from using the original creation as their guide.

What I also found was reference to what she experienced when she used Transference 'as only a Tenno can stand', which referenced a 'tortured presence' that 'stains' her own mind when she uses it to connect to the Titania she built. Apparently this is one of those points where her earlier statements about hating Titania because it's a killer made by her, a healer, change because when Silvana is brought back to clarity by the final Apothic not long later in our time, she talks about her 'beloved' Titania. Interesting... Because if only a Tenno can stand that quality or type of Tranference, that may be exactly why none of the Orokin ever actually had control of the Warframes despite clearly being able to use the Transference Bolts to communicate or even restrain them.

Yup, Silver Grove shows she made the warframes, after the events of the Rhino prime codex entry has the "Bio-Drone" Rhino escape and be calmed by a Tenno after being lured down to where we ourselves were being cold storaged since recovered from the Zariman. After this, we were given to Margulis by Ballas who was in charge of the Bio-Drone projects and she called in Silvana to make Surrogate bodies for the Tenno as part of our rehabilitation. Some of this is told by Silvana's Apothics, some like how the Bio-drones were exterminated before working on the Tenno controlled Warframes - by Ballas in the Vitruvian during Sacrifice. The stage before the Lotus is again, yeah of course; as this is brought up by Lotus at the end of 2nd Dream when asking if we remember our personal reason she stoked to have us assist in trying to massacre the Orokin Elite during the Ceremony. As for primes, they aren't the prototypes, but more ace custom improved models. Prime can mean best or first, in this case its best or yeah, we would have been finding prime blueprints from quests like this.

Yeah, transference touches the Void, we exude Void energy, more the more emotional we get; these spikes can hurt folk near us like that more security officier that helped discover us on the Zariman, or maiming Margulis which could have been the same. Silvana mentions that she was proud to work with Margulis, one of the head Archimedians of her field since she had no interest in fighting, even to prevent a genocide of her own species. She loathed her actions in making tools to kill, and bemoaned being drafted for military projects instead of her Earth reseeding program she had been dreaming of on Earth. Even as is, her target for the transference attempt was never Titania itself, but rather the Earth or the Silver Grove she would eventually become, just using Titania as a filter. Even this filtered touch of the Void, the same Margulis put mental blocks on us to prevent our full manifesting (as Teshin states during War Within, to protect us) was tearing at her essence. Warframes were designed from the start as Empty Soulless Shells. Golems, as Ballas, Hunhow (who Ballas showed all the specs), and the Twin Queens (during War Within, the Elder Queen claims they were involved or at least oversaw the Warframe project) and reinforced by the Infested who see like flesh but nothing inside to respond to their call. By contrast, a Bio-Drone was directly infected by a specialized strain from Helminth and their mind specifically protected - at least partially - to have super soldiers with technocyte mutation powers fueled as Ballas states: by Void energy collected and beamed from Lua.

[OmegaVoid]

On 2020-01-11 at 2:38 AM, CopperBezel said:

Ah, there it is. I'd thought there was a good reason somewhere to assume that the creation of Umbra was late, but couldn't place it.

Well the other thing is that in The Sacrifice, Ballas tells his old friend that he is to become "a sacred surrogate of the unholy Tenno", while the Rhino Prime Imprint reveals that the Warframes already existed before it was known that Tenno could control them.

15 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

The implication is simple, the military ship was the only one capable of taking a Void Jump, but the people on board weren't military, they were regular families.

That's not how I interpreted it... Perhaps I'm wrong but I always thought it meant that time passed differently in the Void.

While the Zariman was lost only a few days in reality, inside the Void it was years. Thus the crew of the Zariman relaxed their normal military discipline and had children.

Hence in the Ember Prime Imprint, when Kaleen asks why they put children on a military ship, she is told "We didn't".

On 2020-01-12 at 3:56 AM, CopperBezel said:

The two things that make Umbra special as a frame are his ability to operate autonomously and his anti-Sentient themed abilities and mods

Lore-wise, he's also distinguished by having absconded from the Orokin's Warframe programme and gone rogue.

Harrow also absconded from the Orokin, becoming the corporeal vessel for Rell's disincarnate mind.

Inaros rebelled against the Orokin, and became the protector of the Mars colonists.

And Titania also went rogue. My interpretation is that when Silvana used Transference and sensed Titania's host's mind, the awareness went both ways. Titania's host knew that Silvana hated what she was doing (and remember that not all of the hosts were volunteers), and how Silvana planned to escape. So it was Titania (acting autonomously without a Tenno Operator) who came to save Silvana.

Lore-wise, Titania would be the perfect fit for an Umbral 'frame instead of a Prime. And if she came with Sacrificial mods for secondary weapons too, that would be great.

Edited January 13, 2020 by OmegaVoid
kan nott spel. Text amended to include verbatim quote from Sacrifice quest.

[ES-Flinter]

vor 15 Minuten schrieb OmegaVoid:

That's not how I interpreted it... Perhaps I'm wrong but I always thought it meant that time passed differently in the Void.

While the Zariman was lost only a few days in reality, inside the Void it was years. Thus the crew of the Zariman relaxed their normal military discipline and had children.

Hence in the Ember Prime Imprint, when Kaleen asks why they put children on a military ship, she is told "We didn't".

Would be hard to have resources for such a long time. (But who knows. Maybe Orokin technology was so good, that it could make you a burger from nothing.)

But what, if the time in the void work reverse?So the crew did grow back to child. Or even better. Because of a malfunction the crew were exposed to to strong void waves and the one who could survive it, were turned into children.

[Urlan]

4 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

Well the other thing is that in The Sacrifice, Ballas tells his old friend that he is to become the puppet of a Tenno, while the Rhino Prime Imprint reveals that the Warframes already existed before it was known that Tenno could control them.

That's not how I interpreted it... Perhaps I'm wrong but I always thought it meant that time passed differently in the Void.

While the Zariman was lost only a few days in reality, inside the Void it was years. Thus the crew of the Zariman relaxed their normal military discipline and had children.

Hence in the Ember Prime Imprint, when Kaleen asks why they put children on a military ship, she is told "We didn't".

Lore-wise, he's also distinguished by having absconded from the Orokin's Warfarme programme and gone rogue.

Harrow also absconded from the Orokin, becoming the corporeal vessel for Rell's disincarnate mind.

Inaros rebelled against the Orokin, and became the protector of the Mars colonists.

And Titania also went rogue. My interpretation is that when Silvana used Transference and sensed Titania's host's mind, the awareness went both ways. Titania's host knew that Silvana hated what she was doing (and remember that not all of the hosts were volunteers), and how Silvana planned to escape. So it was Titania (acting autonomously without a Tenno Operator) who came to save Silvana.

Lore-wise, Titania would be the perfect fit for an Umbral 'frame instead of a Prime. And if she came with Sacrificial mods for secondary weapons too, that would be great.

The Old Dax is a fusion of the techniques from Bio-Drone (the mixture was unique made by Helminth that Ballas used on the Old Dax) as in keeping the memory and being used on an existing human host; and Silvana's Surrogate techniques meaning that the result would be controllable remotely. the Rhino prime codex entry has a Bio-drone 'escape' a research area on Lua and be led down to the cold storage area for us to show that we could pacify them. The Zariman itself as described in War Within was victim of a grade A military cover-up; we can't take what the administrator said if Lotus wasn't lying to us at the beginning of War Within. Its true that time might have differed though, and the Colony ship that went in might have left in a different potentiality than it went in; but we don't know if that is the case yet. Ember prime's codex entry refers to some of the cover-up that Lotus was discussing.

Warframes don't normally have minds, as we are repeatedly told; but Bio-Drones as Ballas stated were intended to keep at least some of their minds, liking to be better soldiers when the Orokin found they couldn't trust their normal higher tech. Harrow is one of the Sylvana class Surrogates, taken or obtained by Rell after going on the lamb from the Orokin and used by him as a merged body when he tried to imprison Wally (The Man in the Wall), forming the Red Veil to act as both his sted and wardens. Inaros was used by a Tenno that was assigned to escort Yuvan Tithe collections from Ballas' Colonies on Mars, but that Tenno went Rogue and killed those he was escorting when the Tithes of the colony's children disgusted them. We know that the Inaros used stayed near the colony of Baro's future people and defended it for a long while, but eventually either fell to infested or was deactivated when the linked Tenno was put into stasis with the rest of us. It would be interesting to know why harvesting the life force of those specific enemies was enough to revive the Inaros warframe to fight us, and if a Tenno or a Void Echo was in control. What link might that method have to Kuva collection?

Silvana was aiming at Transference with the Grove, but its possible that part of her mind left an Echo in the warframe, which was instead being used as a filter per the Silver Grove quest. Sacrifice says that the Old Dax was a unique creation, and that the former Old Dax was placed in containment in a lab on Lua, then trapped in the Void when Lotus hid it there until being released with the chaos and reality shift caused during 2nd Dream. Its possible we could replicate the process sure, maybe without even infesting a human; if the description on the Somatic Fibers is accurate, and we found surviving samples of Bio-Drones or potential Bio-Drones like the New Strange Chroma.

[OmegaVoid]

As far as the notion that all we get of the Prime Warframes from Void Relics is the blueprint, I think that's just because the bits and pieces required to assemble the complete components are irrelevant to the gameplay crafting requirements. Lore-wise I believe we get them, but they are not shown in our in-game inventory as they are not directly used in-game.

In support of this concept, consider that we retrieve complete weapon parts and Sentinal components from the Relics, so they can certainly give up physical objects. Also, the Prime 'frames include a lot of gold in them, but we are not required to provide any gold in the crafting, so the in-game process is certainly leaving some details out!

On 2020-01-12 at 2:01 AM, Birdframe_Prime said:

if Ballas could have controlled Umbra fully then he wouldn't have A) locked him in a lab on the moon for thousands of years, B) on escaping from that moon lab in the current era he wouldn't have had Lotus blow him up, and finally C) wouldn't have let Umbra go around killing his Sentient allies and be forced to command him to 'stop' when Umbra turned on him again.

Well, it's clear from the cutscenes that Ballas has to exert some mental affort to obtain control of Excal Umbra. He's a busy person and wouldn't want to have that distraction all the time, hence the containment cell.

When Umbra escapes in the present day, the intervening centuries of suffering he had endured may have been enough to satisfy Ballas' sadism. And it's simpler just to destroy him than build another containment cell.

As far as letting Umbra kill the Sentients when Ballas confronts him, well the Sentients themselves show little concern over what happens to their "fragments", they seem to view them as disposable tools. Natah was there too, and she didn't do anything to preserve them.

On 2020-01-11 at 12:44 AM, Birdframe_Prime said:

Ballas would (at the very least) have greatly scaled back any new Warframe production, if not stopped it, because of his plan to betray the Orokin. It's unlikely that many, if any, new Warframes were created after Umbra, with the possible exception of any further Umbral style of frames, because why keep helping the people you intend to betray?

Well, since it was the Warframes which in the end were used to kill the Orokin leadership, from Ballas' perspective he's not really helping the Orokin by making as many of them as he can! 😆 So while we know Excalibur Umbra was not amongst the first Warframes, but we can't say for sure he was amongst the last either.

10 hours ago, ES-Flinter said:

Would be hard to have resources for such a long time. (But who knows. Maybe Orokin technology was so good, that it could make you a burger from nothing.)

Or maybe the Zariman was large enough to contain a hydroponics garden with a self-sustaining ecosystem, capable of comfortably supporting the whole crew.

10 hours ago, ES-Flinter said:

But what, if the time in the void work reverse?So the crew did grow back to child. Or even better. Because of a malfunction the crew were exposed to to strong void waves and the one who could survive it, were turned into children.

That would seem to conflict with the Tenno's memory of having interactions with their parents.

Besides, the fact that the Orokin used the Void for faster-than-light travel fits well with the notion that time simply passes faster in the Void; a ship's crew go into cryosleep, travel for decades in the Void, and re-emerge into normal space a few months later.

Though the Void is totally bizarre, so maybe the way it's used for travel is even weirder than that. Like if the navigation is done right, maybe they could come out anywhere and anywhen. In that case you could spend as long as you like in the Void, and come out again at the same time you went in, or later, or earlier. But you'd normally want to avoid coming out in your own past to avoid paradoxes (unless you were trying to complete the Lua Spy mission, of course! 😆).

4 hours ago, Urlan said:

The Zariman itself as described in War Within was victim of a grade A military cover-up; we can't take what the administrator said if Lotus wasn't lying to us at the beginning of War Within.

I'd actually forgotten the details of it, but it's at the end of the Second Dream that Lotus speaks to the Tenno about their memories of the Zariman. And you're right, there's some disparity there.

The Lotus says the Tenno is remembering their time aboard the Zariman before the accident. However, it's worth noting that Natah herself hadn't arrived in the Origin System at the time, so anything the Lotus knows about the accident would be what she learned a long time after the fact. Perhaps she knew the Tenno had been retrieved from the Zariman, but not how they'd come to be aboard in the first place, so she just assumed they'd gone into the Void on the Zariman. Though the Lotus has an established tendency to not be forthcoming with information she believes the Tenno would be better off not knowing about, so it wouldn't be at all inconsistent if she was fibbing slightly either.

Thus an alternative interpretation of Kahleen's testimony would be that the Zariman didn't have children aboard, but encountered the Tenno in the Void and took them in. In which case the statement from her interviewer would also make good sense -- they're as miffed at the Zariman crew having broken quarantine protocol as they are at Kahleen. In this scenario, the ultimate origin of the Tenno and how they first entered the Void (if they indeed weren't born there) is still a mystery.

6 hours ago, Urlan said:

Warframes don't normally have minds, as we are repeatedly told; but Bio-Drones as Ballas stated were intended to keep at least some of their minds

Actually, in the Vitruvian, Ballas records "We set them upon the battlefield, bio-drones under our command. The Warfames... All of them... failures."  I looked up the Sacrifice cutscenes on youTube to make sure I had this verbatim. There's no distiction in these words from their creator between "bio-drones" and "Warframes"; they're the same thing.

4 hours ago, Urlan said:

Warframes don't normally have minds, as we are repeatedly told;

What we're actually told is that only the Tennno were capable of pacifying the Warframes, by "taking away their pain". That implies the Warfames have consciousness, at least until they are telepathically connected to (merged with?) a Tenno via the Somatic Link. I don't think the Warframe's consciousness is extinguished in this process, but merely relinquishes control of their body.

The statement from the "upgraded" Ordis in the Sacrifice quest that the Warframes don't have memories could be due to fact that every Warframe Ordis has encountered was somatically linked to a Tenno. The host's mind has no control of the body, and thus no way of communicating its existance to anyone -- and when not in use, the Warframes are stored in cryostatsis, so the host never normally has control.

And the one instance where a Warfame other than Excalibur Umbra displays autonomy is in the Second Dream cutscene, when the Warfame breaks the War sword. At this point the Tenno is in the Shadow Stalker's stranglehold, and appears to have blacked out, as afterwards the Lotus carries the limp body of the Tenno to the Somatic Link chair. This suggests that the Warfames own minds can regain control of their bodies -- if the Operator loses consciousness.

But the experience of being re-integrated with their infested body would be extremely painful for the host, so they'd relinquish it to the Tenno as soon as possible.

 

4 hours ago, Urlan said:

It would be interesting to know why harvesting the life force of those specific enemies was enough to revive the Inaros warframe to fight us, and if a Tenno or a Void Echo was in control.

The in-quest justification for hunting down those enemies was to "prove" you are Tenno by meeting the required bodycount. If a Tenno was controlling the Tomb Protector, those Vessels' challenges would have been unnecessary. This suggestes that the rebellious Tenno who originally controlled Inaros had left the blueprint in their base ("temple") for the benefit of any Tenno who might later need it. The Tomb Protector is not the original Inaros Warframe then, but a Spectre (i.e. autonomous copy) left as the final test.

I think for the 'frames already known to the Lotus' organisation, we can obtain the blueprints as rewards for completing assassination contracts, but for 'frames unknown to the Tenno faction because they went missing/were destroyed before Natah's arrival, we have to go on quests. Chroma was unknown to Ordis in The New Strange quest, although his Prime can be recovered from Relics in the normal fashion, suggesting the original Chroma Prime was destroyed during the Old War before Natah's arrival and the Chroma we fight in The New Strange was a reproduction (controlled by the Infestation according to its Codex faction, so made by Alad V perhaps).

The blueprints recovered in Sands of Inaros are not accompanied by any original Inaros parts, thus the frame created is a Tenno reproduction, not the Orokin original.

That Inaros was apparently previously unknown to the Tenno faction, suggests both that his original Operator rebelled before Natah came to the Origin System, and probably that they had subsequently perished (since otherwise they could have rejoined the other Tenno after the fall of the Orokin when all the Tenno were revealed as renegades).

And since the Operator and Warframe are physically separate, if the Operator died but the original Inaros survived, the original Inaros would then be an Umbra -- a Warframe with no linked Operator. Since Ballas and Natah hunted down and destroyed the escaped Excalibur Umbra, it seems likely they'd have done the same with the putative Inaros Umbra (unless he had already been destroyed by other causes). If his remains could be retrieved, he also could also be re-crafted.

Same with Titania; we receive blueprints from the Silver Grove quest, but no original parts, so we make a Tenno knock-off version. Recover the original bits and pieces, and we can re-craft the original 'frame.

[Urlan]

3 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

Well, since it was the Warframes which in the end were used to kill the Orokin leadership, from Ballas' perspective he's not really helping the Orokin by making as many of them as he can! 😆 So while we know Excalibur Umbra was not amongst the first Warframes, but we can't say for sure he was amongst the last either.

We can safely say that Umbra Excalibur was pretty darn close to the end, and wasn't part of the warframe project directly. Also, its important to note, the Tenno were the ones that were killing the Orokin Elite and targeting the Executors like Ballas at the Ceremony, not the warframes who are repeatedly presented, even by their schematics as having no will. Ballas also implies - by saying - that Umbra was part of a complicated plotted out suicide by cop, though he was surprised perhaps by the exact how, and bemoans Natah cheating him of that with his current amalgam existence per Chimera.

3 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

Or maybe the Zariman was large enough to contain a hydroponics garden with a self-sustaining ecosystem, capable of comfortably supporting the whole crew.

That would seem to conflict with the Tenno's memory of having interactions with their parents.

 

Rell's comic which shows a scenario from during the Zariman 'crashing against the Void" shows that their being adults on the Zariman isn't really up to debate - though the adults physically being the children's blood parents could be, depending on if they were part of our corpus or we were all taken from Yuvan colonies.

https://www.warframe.com/chains-of-harrow-comic

3 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

I'd actually forgotten the details of it, but it's at the end of the Second Dream that Lotus speaks to the Tenno about their memories of the Zariman. And you're right, there's some disparity there.

The Lotus says the Tenno is remembering their time aboard the Zariman before the accident. However, it's worth noting that Natah herself hadn't arrived in the Origin System at the time, so anything the Lotus knows about the accident would be what she learned a long time after the fact. Perhaps she knew the Tenno had been retrieved from the Zariman, but not how they'd come to be aboard in the first place, so she just assumed they'd gone into the Void on the Zariman. Though the Lotus has an established tendency to not be forthcoming with information she believes the Tenno would be better off not knowing about, so it wouldn't be at all inconsistent if she was fibbing slightly either.

Thus an alternative interpretation of Kahleen's testimony would be that the Zariman didn't have children aboard, but encountered the Tenno in the Void and took them in. In which case the statement from her interviewer would also make good sense -- they're as miffed at the Zariman crew having broken quarantine protocol as they are at Kahleen. In this scenario, the ultimate origin of the Tenno and how they first entered the Void (if they indeed weren't born there) is still a mystery.

 

While it is true, she does ask you what you remember in the end of 2nd Dream which I stated earlier; I am glad you saw it; I was talking about the first almost paragraph right as you get on Lua looking for infiltrators during War Within.

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/The_War_Within/Transcript

While it is true that Lotus isn't forthcoming, she also doesn't aim to directly lie, at least according to DE Steve while Natah herself calls this into question as Lotus is according to that personality just an overwriting of the original Natah when the Sentient Mimic entered Lua's heart to kill us after we were apparently successful in eliminating the Orokin Leadership. The Lotus during Chains of Harrow says that she has complete records of Margulis's own files and Rell for instance isn't in any of them; while we know Rell existed this shows that even Margulis or Ballas altering Margulis's records before giving them to Natah can be the result of a cover-up. We also know that the colony ship had children on it, so anything we hear to the contrary should be taken with suspicion though, you are right that this doesn't prevent us from entering in a timeline we were sent out deliberately and exiting in a reality where we were not, its unlikely since Lotus knows of it enough to at least manipulate and pull our heartstrings with it - though ultimately this too could just be from absorbing Margulis's records of our rehabilitation therapies.

4 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

Actually, in the Vitruvian, Ballas records "We set them upon the battlefield, bio-drones under our command. The Warfames... All of them... failures."  I looked up the Sacrifice cutscenes on youTube to make sure I had this verbatim. There's no distiction in these words from their creator between "bio-drones" and "Warframes"; they're the same thing.

What we're actually told is that only the Tennno were capable of pacifying the Warframes, by "taking away their pain". That implies the Warfames have consciousness, at least until they are telepathically connected to (merged with?) a Tenno via the Somatic Link. I don't think the Warframe's consciousness is extinguished in this process, but merely relinquishes control of their body.

The statement from the "upgraded" Ordis in the Sacrifice quest that the Warframes don't have memories could be due to fact that every Warframe Ordis has encountered was somatically linked to a Tenno. The host's mind has no control of the body, and thus no way of communicating its existance to anyone -- and when not in use, the Warframes are stored in cryostatsis, so the host never normally has control.

And the one instance where a Warfame other than Excalibur Umbra displays autonomy is in the Second Dream cutscene, when the Warfame breaks the War sword. At this point the Tenno is in the Shadow Stalker's stranglehold, and appears to have blacked out, as afterwards the Lotus carries the limp body of the Tenno to the Somatic Link chair. This suggests that the Warfames own minds can regain control of their bodies -- if the Operator loses consciousness.

But the experience of being re-integrated with their infested body would be extremely painful for the host, so they'd relinquish it to the Tenno as soon as possible.

 

You will note in that same line you quote, those frames of war Bio-drones were all consigned to the grave before bringing us into the equation. We interacted with a Rhino bio-drone in Rhino prime codex entry; and then were given over to Margulis for rehabilitation. This led to Margulis calling for Silvana to design surrogates without wills which Ballas also calls out Umbra for now being a sacred surrogate to the Tenno, but with a single burning memory. Ordis isn't having memory of Warframes he encountered having no wills, The Twin Queens call the warframes hollow shells as well, Hunhow isn't confused either, nor are the infested when they constantly try talking to the infested organism they think is attacking them. They all know that nothing is there, because a warframe proper is grown into that shape, no human will because they were never human, just look the part. Hunhow knows this because he was shared the info of the warframe's creation by Ballas; the Elder Queen claims she was involved in creating them getting these fun lines in War Within:

Elderqueen: You have some idea that you're invincible, don't you? Nestled away in that mad Cephalon's crib-
Elderqueen: But you belong to me now. For you see, child, we conceived of these ugly, metal cysts.
Elderqueen: We gave you your precious gifts. And now, just as easily, we take them all away!

Now, she could be talking from the angle of her sister and herself being Orokin Elite, but the knowledge of the warframes not being the Tenno or exosuits worn by the Tenno was info sealed to the Council of Seven (Ballas and his fellow Executors). We know that Bio-Drones, those first generation Warframes if you prefer didn't use Tenno at all, in fact were designed before we were brought into the equation and discarded as a potential long-term tool by the time we were brought in. The link is to have a different controlled mind - us children controlled by a handler and have that control in place to disable either part, body or mind if we weren't needed or also went rogue. Ballas's suicide by Tenno assisted Umbra speaks to his playing up this death by cop scenario as he would know without the puppet master, our strings can't be pulled, while Umbra being a Dax can't bring blade against his superiors as long as he recognizes them as such though maybe that Transference Bolt can convey that through directed will if so, isn't it strange that Ballas can show control through it?

In Silver Grove, we have Silvana and Margulis delighted that the Tenno are able to use the surrogates that we would identify as current day warframes without the flares in Void energy and pain. We also have the Somatic Link protocol displayed as a tease for 2nd Dream showing it was designed for the surrogate connections before Margulis was executed. War Within also states that our Void abilities were blocked to protect us from the Void during those therapy sessions. This means that the entire Tenno manifesting through an anchor and physically jumping around into stuff, or shooting beams and going invisible - besides Rell who left and might have been the one that maimed Margulis - we didn't do that after being handed off to Margulis and then later paired up with arsenals of warframes and trained by Dax like Teshin.

5 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

The in-quest justification for hunting down those enemies was to "prove" you are Tenno by meeting the required bodycount. If a Tenno was controlling the Tomb Protector, those Vessels' challenges would have been unnecessary. This suggestes that the rebellious Tenno who originally controlled Inaros had left the blueprint in their base ("temple") for the benefit of any Tenno who might later need it. The Tomb Protector is not the original Inaros Warframe then, but a Spectre (i.e. autonomous copy) left as the final test.

You might remember that one of the things that proves we are Tenno pretty darn easily to any Orokin Era thingy would be using Void energy. According to the dream created by War Within from Elder Queen and our own mind; Ordis probably should have guidelines to dump us if we ever in fact lost the ability to produce Void energy or use it for Transference. No, the Urns seemed to be reviving the Inaros warframe itself; and filling with the essence collected - Baro even says the Urn is full on the first - while the blueprints are easy. Simaris during New Strange states that any Cephalon has the capability if they try to create blueprints of any weapon or warframe they scan or behold. Trying to show and walk Ordis through the technique. Alad V's mutilated Valkyr is our default because that was the first one since the fall that Lotus or her Cephalons had seen and thus made a baseline blueprint off of that one at the time - its original canon look is the Gersemi - while Lotus does the same with the Void echo of Mirage and Ordis with Chroma parts in New Strange (though now locators since the Blueprints were moved to Junction rewards). We get the blueprints since that is the model of those quests, now that doesn't prevent them from being mass produced models made after a super prototype, but according to most prime descriptions this is unlikely (Ankyros and one or two others imply that the primes are original Orokin high tech that mainline versions are just shadows while others say like Wyrm Prime that they were made as celebratory improved bling for honored Tenno that performed well and interacted with Orokin Elite). Specters have a pixelated look to them, while it could have been changed since release, the Inaros in the Tomb is not (they also identify by saying Specter in their name when they are) but yeah, that could easily be changed to be so if DE desired though that wouldn't explain the statue golem deals ripped from Atlas instead of Inaros. Sand minions from eating a statue used as guardians themselves? Must be some impressive base duration on that one if so I would figure.

Either way, yes Inaros was unknown to us the Tenno, but not possible to be unknown to Lotus; particularly since the quest says that the Tenno had a Chariot (Lander/Orbiter) in the sky. Its more akin to like with Mirage, that yeah, our current organization doesn't have a sample, we get this main copy from the quest, we now do again same as replicating New Strange Chroma, finding parts of Limbo from Excavations, or getting scans of a fossilized Atlas from Jordas Verdict. Primes are primes, we aren't seeing those in quests or we would be getting scans and blueprints of them its just simple cause and effect. Umbra refers to a specific deal by Ballas to torture his Old Dax "friend". but in this case, the Tenno isn't controlling that Inaros least as far as we can tell - lest you figure they are mad - but like New Strange and potentially 2nd Dream's finale - it could be possible for warframes used for a long while to develop void echoes. Titania could have been controlled by Silvana or part of her mind due to the transference filter process, or been remoted by us by all that the quest reveals, Silvana at least thinks of it as the warframe acting on its own, as we guess about our warframe in 2nd Dream, something without will showing a miracle - thus Hunhow's shock as his essence dives insides the true Pakal armor he gave Shadow Stalker and initiates a teleport.

 

[Birdframe_Prime]

21 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

That's not how I interpreted it... Perhaps I'm wrong but I always thought it meant that time passed differently in the Void.

While the Zariman was lost only a few days in reality, inside the Void it was years. Thus the crew of the Zariman relaxed their normal military discipline and had children.

Hence in the Ember Prime Imprint, when Kaleen asks why they put children on a military ship, she is told "We didn't".

That's a fair and valid interpretation, but this presumes that anyone in authority would actually tell the truth about this situation to somebody that's so low on the chain.

I'll accept this one as equally plausible and move on.

21 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

Lore-wise, he's also distinguished by having absconded from the Orokin's Warframe programme and gone rogue.

Harrow also absconded from the Orokin, becoming the corporeal vessel for Rell's disincarnate mind.

Inaros rebelled against the Orokin, and became the protector of the Mars colonists.

And Titania also went rogue.

These though... no.

Umbra was basically created 'rogue', but only in a classification of being more rogue than the others that went that way before him. He was locked away in Ballas' old lab for the thousands of years the Moon was in the Void, so it's less 'going rogue' than 'never was a part of it at all'.

Harrow is canonically a frame stolen from the Orokin by Red Veil. Can't 'abscond' if you're stolen.

You say that Inaros rebelled, but the more Lore that emerges, it's equally plausible that the story of Inaros came from the same period as the main Tenno rebellion, with the stories of how Grendel, for one, took out a tyrant and healed the people after the fall of the Empire. It could be that turning point, one of the many little tipping points, that led to the Tenno agreeing to turn on their masters.

And Titania was just a Warframe, Silvana took her as a means to escape, the true Transference of Silvana's mind happened into the Silver Grove. Although that little switch between 'hate' and 'beloved' in the narrative does indicate that they did come to terms. It's unlikely, however, that Titania herself was a rogue in the way that Umbra was. Maybe the sentience went as far as any of the other Warframes that would pull a sword from their chest to save their Tenno?

I'll point out for Titania too; Every Warframe has a Prime. Every one. Confirmed by DE themselves multiple times.

However... that's not to say that an Umbral style Warframe couldn't exist somewhere out there. I just think that DE are going to do ones that have been in the game since the beginning, or shortly after. The 'base 8' as it were.

(I think this because the base 8 have clear and easy to subvert themes. 'Umbral' Excalibur uses a dark sword and a howl instead of blinding light, so the theme is consistent but subverted. A likely function might be some play on 'burning' Frost, who uses Ice so cold it burns. Or some pun on 'aqua' Ember, with fire that flows like water, or maybe a 'berserker' Trinity, who protects by killing her foes. It's all up in the air until we see something.)

[OmegaVoid]

1 hour ago, Urlan said:

its important to note, the Tenno were the ones that were killing the Orokin Elite and targeting the Executors like Ballas at the Ceremony, not the warframes

Executors like -- but not including -- Ballas. That ceremony itself was probably Ballas' idea... and in fact it's likely the entire reason he struck a deal with the Sentients.

Think about it: if Ballas planned to manipulate the Tenno into slaughtering the Orokin leadership, he needed to get the Orokin Elite -- all of them, at the same time -- into physical proximity to his Warfames.

How to achieve that? By the Warframes (under Tenno control, of course) saving the Origin System by defeating the Sentients, then having a grand ceremony in which the highest Orokin all honour the heroic warriors, of couse!

But what if the Warframes fail to defeat the Sentients? Well, that's easily arranged; slaughtering the Orokin leadership aligns pretty well with the Sentients' own goals, so strike a deal with them! Pitched battles are fought, a great many Sentient fragments are destroyed, and Hunhow feigns defeat and disappears (into the oceans of Uranus).

We'll wake you up, Hunhow, when the Orokin are destroyed, and the Tenno are dead too. Except that didn't happen.

Depending on what you believe about who messed with Natah's head and when, either the Lotus refused to kill the Tenno of her own accord... in which case it maybe sucked to be Ballas, 'cos now he couldn't fulfil his pact with Hunhow... or else Ballas reneged on his deal with the Sentients by rewriting Natah's mind... in which case Ballas wanted the Tenno alive, meaning he was now positioning himself in opposition to the Sentients after all.

1 hour ago, Urlan said:

Ballas also implies - by saying - that Umbra was part of a complicated plotted out suicide by cop,

I don't see that. The closest I can find is in Chimera Prologue:

Ballas: But... she gave me the gift of life!
Ballas: Why would I betray her?

Ballas: Fool! This... this is no gift!
Ballas: She stole my death! My perfect death.
Ballas: Such is her power... over me. Over the devil!

Getting from "she stole my perfect death" to Ballas planning to have died is quite a leap. He certainly didn't seem to expect to get stabbed in the denouement of The Sacrifice.

Also... it makes no sense for Ballas to suicide at that point.

Right after he'd effected the demise of the Orokin, revenge complete, to then join his lost Margulis in the great beyond... that would've made some sense.

But to destroy the Orokin... then kick around for a few more centuries (maybe in cryosleep, maybe not), pop up again to unplug the Lotus and restore Natah to her original form, and then hunt down Excal Umbra and destroy him... what would all that achieve if Ballas was planning to kick the bucket immediately after?

And you seem to be saying Ballas actually planned for the Tenno to reconstitute Excal Umbra, and to then get hunted down by Umbra and have the Tenno assist Umbra in striking the fatal blow? Okay, but it was Natah's voice we heard prompting us to touch the Lotus helmet, which allowed us to see Umbra's demise. If it was Ballas' plan to get a Tenno to resurrect Umbra just to effect his own demise, and Natah was in on it, why didn't Natah let him die as intended?

It seems more likley to me that Ballas had no interest in whether Umbra's remains would ever be found... but Natah wanted us to find them. But that's a whole 'nother tangent.

In Chimera Prologue, Ballas is presenting himself as resentful that Natah had not allowed him to die when he was still "perfect". But Ballas is manipulative, we know this. He may loathe his present Amalgam body, but that doesn't mean he would really prefer to have died. And hey, Ballas is Orokin, he's been body-hopping for all his millennia-long life, so he's surely not stuck with his present Amalgamated form anyway.

In fact his entire monologue seems designed to persuade the listening Tenno that Ballas is somehow Natah's victim (despite her saving his life), that the Tenno are too (despite she was supposed to kill us but didn't), and that Natah deserves to die. And then he gives us the design for a sentient-killing sword.

I have zero idea why Natah saved him anyway, the guy's a total douchebag. 🤮

1 hour ago, Urlan said:

The Lotus during Chains of Harrow says that she has complete records of Margulis's own files and Rell for instance isn't in any of them; while we know Rell existed this shows that even Margulis or Ballas altering Margulis's records before giving them to Natah can be the result of a cover-up.

The simpler explanation here is Rell wasn't in Margulis' files because he never became part of her therapy programme.

Lotus: What are you saying? That Rell is a Tenno? Impossible. All Tenno are known to me. I protect them, as she did.
Palladino: Oh, but not Rell. Margulis cast him out, for he was different. Our foremothers took him in and studied his teachings. We became the Veil. The shroud of his blessed existence.

(In fact, the word "files" is not found in the wiki's Chains of Harrow transcript, so if Lotus ever speaks of seeing files, it's apparently not during that quest.)

3 hours ago, Urlan said:

the Elder Queen claims she was involved in creating them [...] Now, she could be talking from the angle of her sister and herself being Orokin Elite, but the knowledge of the warframes not being the Tenno or exosuits worn by the Tenno was info sealed to the Council of Seven (Ballas and his fellow Executors).

According to Olemedi's poem preserved in the Kuria, the Twins were reviled by the Orokin due to their being reminiscent of clones (the menial Grineer), and were only spared infanticide by their father's influence. I don't see them being anywhere near the top of the Orokin hierarchy.

Being Orokin, though, and also having (and of course later inhabiting) obedient clones of Sectarus Bilsa -- who from the Arid Eviscerator Imprint seems to be assistant to Executor Avantus, and would therefore have very high clearance coded into her genetics (as described in the Guardsman Imprint) -- the Queens may well have been able to learn a lot of the Orokin elite's secrets. They certainly know enough to arrange their own Continuity, the procedure for which seems unlikely to have been common knowledge.

Also, since the moon was recovered from the Void it has been crawling with Grineer, and since Lua was the seat of Orokin power the Queens may have learned much from what they've found there.

4 hours ago, Urlan said:

We know that Bio-Drones, those first generation Warframes if you prefer didn't use Tenno at all, in fact were designed before we were brought into the equation and discarded as a potential long-term tool by the time we were brought in.

4 hours ago, Urlan said:

You will note in that same line you quote, those frames of war Bio-drones were all consigned to the grave before bringing us into the equation. We interacted with a Rhino bio-drone in Rhino prime codex entry; and then were given over to Margulis for rehabilitation.

But there's a contradiction there: if all the autonomous Warframes (bio-drones) had been destroyed, why was there an extant Rhino to be interacted with at all? Either they destroyed all of them then made some more, or they didn't destroy all of them.

The actual line is: "We set them upon the battlefield, bio-drones under our command. 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."

As I read it, this only necessarily implies the destruction all the Warframes which had been "set upon the battlefield"... any Warframes already created but not yet deployed could be seen as falling outside the scope of this statement.

I'd also have to say that the Warframes must initially have been amenable to direction, otherwise they'd never have been sent into battle at all. Their degeneration into raging bestiality must surely have been a delayed development.

5 hours ago, Urlan said:

a warframe proper is grown into that shape, no human will because they were never human, just look the part. Hunhow knows this because he was shared the info of the warframe's creation by Ballas

Sorry, but no. From the Vitruvian in The Sacrifice, what Ballas reveals to Hunhow is:

"there is a hidden half, a secret, that lies within a place forbidden to you and your kind. I speak of the Void.
"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.
"And it was not their force of will - not their Void devilry - not their alien darkness... it was something else.
"It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing --  And take away its pain."

That's all he says about the Tenno ability to control the Warframes, and in fact from this description Transference relies on the Warfame having a mind for the Tenno link to.

How could a Tenno "take away the pain" of a Warframe with no consciousness to experience pain?!

[(XBOX)SapphyreBlue]

Well I don’t have proofs or something that this is true.. but I think that the child’s get there by their own, but the Orokin like give them a way to enter there

[OmegaVoid]

5 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Every Warframe has a Prime. Every one. Confirmed by DE themselves multiple times.

Well if a Prime 'frame is an Orokin original.. then Excal Umbra is kinda sorta a Prime... in all but name.

Sure, there's an Excalibur Prime as well, but we all know that's why Excalibur Umbra was conceived of in the first place. As a substitute Prime.

Nobody's pointing at Excal mains and wailing "they get a Prime and an Umbra!" 'cos everybody knows that the vast majority of them don't and can't have the Prime.

But if the devs start putting in Umbras for 'frames which already have Primes, they'd need to Umbrafy all of them if they didn't want a lot of players to get miffed that their fave got left out.

Unless the Umbral 'frames didn't even come with a single Umbra polarity, and were essentially just re-skins of the Primes. Not sure how well that would go down either.

5 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

I just think that DE are going to do ones that have been in the game since the beginning, or shortly after. The 'base 8' as it were.

(I think this because the base 8 have clear and easy to subvert themes. 'Umbral' Excalibur uses a dark sword and a howl instead of blinding light, so the theme is consistent but subverted.

Except that "umbra" does not mean "opposite" or "subverted", it means "shadow or darkness". You can darken anything up. 'cept maybe Nekros, he pretty dark already.

3 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Umbra was basically created 'rogue', but only in a classification of being more rogue than the others that went that way before him. He was locked away in Ballas' old lab for the thousands of years the Moon was in the Void, so it's less 'going rogue' than 'never was a part of it at all'.

I must confess, the timing of Excalibur Umbra's escape from confinement was something I hadn't retained from the quest. In my mind it could have been anytime between Isaah's death, and Umbra getting blown away by Natah. So yeah, he was more secluded than renegade, you is right.

3 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Harrow is canonically a frame stolen from the Orokin by Red Veil. Can't 'abscond' if you're stolen.

Yes, I misspoke there. It was Rell who absconded. It's not clear from what I've seen whether Rell took Harrow with him at that time, or whether his followers later stole the frame for him as you claim. The wiki says "it is not known how he gains his personal Warframe", so it needs amending if you can provide a reference for your assertion.

4 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

You say that Inaros rebelled, but the more Lore that emerges, it's equally plausible that the story of Inaros came from the same period as the main Tenno rebellion, with the stories of how Grendel, for one, took out a tyrant and healed the people after the fall of the Empire.

Well, Inaros rebelled to stop the Dax taking the Mars colony's children as Yuvan for the Orokin; that wouldn't have been happening after the fall of the Orokin.

And, strictly speaking, it wasn't Inaros who rebelled, but rather his Tenno Operator. Can't 'rebel' if your body is being controlled by someone else. 😄

But, whatever.

4 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

And Titania was just a Warframe, Silvana took her as a means to escape, the true Transference of Silvana's mind happened into the Silver Grove. Although that little switch between 'hate' and 'beloved' in the narrative does indicate that they did come to terms. It's unlikely, however, that Titania herself was a rogue in the way that Umbra was.

This though... no.

Oh, except.

4 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

It's unlikely, however, that Titania herself was a rogue in the way that Umbra was.

After how persuasively you minimised Excalibur Umbra's right to be described as "rogue", I find I must agree that Titania was a wholly different sort of rogue altogether. 

I give you (mildly abridged) Archimedian Silvana's account of what happened after she Transferred into the Silver Grove:

"When the Orokin found out what I had done here, they sent their Dax upon the great trees. Upon me. [gets set on fire] I was dying.
And then suddenly I felt a familiar presence... One by one the mighty Dax began to fall, swatting hopelessly at some unseen menace.
Others were snared [Spellbind is cast... or maybe Lantern, who can ever tell 😆] and then, all at once, shredded by that unseen force.
When the fires subsided, I knew what it was. Titania. My shamed creation."

Titania slaughtered a contingent of the Orokin Dax troops. That's rogue. That's really very rogue indeed.

Titania, mind you. Silvana had Transferred into the Silver Grove. Silvana wasn't controlling her. Sylvana didn't even realise what was killing 'em until the fight was over and Titania was dying.

So, the original Titania... oh, and just quickly

On 2020-01-11 at 7:16 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

(it's unclear if the Titania made by Silvana was a Prime or a Production model)

From the Sunrise Apothic Imprint: "Ballas is beyond pleased... but when I look at what I've built... at Titania, I feel sick creep up my throat." 

I can't imagine Ballas being "beyond pleased" with a low-grade product, or even bothering to look at it at all. (Not entirely convinced the Orokin made anything but Primes either, but whatever.)

So, yeah, the original Titania... was separated from the Warframe project, not Somatically Linked to a Tenno Operator, went rogue to an extent that makes Excal Umbra look merely a bit uncooperative, and displayed autonomy.

Oh, and Umbra's theme is sacrifice, right? I mean, his quest is called "The Sacrifice", innit? Titania sacrificed herself to save Silvana.

If the devs say "we ain't gonna make a Titania Umbra 'cos we don't want to", fair enough.

However, if they say "we looked closely at her lore, and couldn't find anything to support it", I'd be more than a little surprised.

But as you so rightly say...

6 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

It's all up in the air until we see something.

🙂

[Benour]

Lore in warframe... OMEGALUL

Also Excal umbra is complete trash, since this A M A Z I N G umbra just turn off your EB when you switch to operator... You build up your EB combo to decent lvl? Naaah umbra dont give... he just switch from EB to your primary like complete monkey. Yeah i like its stats and umbral polarities but this "feature" is just stupid. 

If you want more umbral warframes, its time to farm more UFs and forma them (like many ppl did already).

Edited January 14, 2020 by Benour

[(XBOX)EternalDrk Mako]

here is hoping for devstream with umbra news soon

[Birdframe_Prime]

17 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

but we all know that's why Excalibur Umbra was conceived of in the first place. As a substitute Prime.

No? Excalibur Umbra was a way to remove a political rival, Ballas goes into this whole thing. The Dax that became Umbra found out that Ballas was going to betray the Orokin to the Sentients, was about to blow the whistle on Ballas, and so Ballas did the one thing that would not only shut him up forever but also punish him for as long as he lived. In this case, turn him into a Warframe that would, without any control, kill his only son as his last 'conscious' act and then be a Tenno's puppet forever with that memory.

I'm actually fairly convinced that the entire sentience of Umbra and his change of powers was not a part of Ballas' original plan either. We've seen Lore examples of Ballas describing how a strong mind can warp the results of creating a Warframe, and so Umbra's mind was strong enough that while he did change into an Excalibur, he changed into one with awareness and with a power to fight his greatest enemies; the Sentients.

Umbra is certainly what I'd call a Unique frame, one with strengths that derived from the individual that was used to create them. It ties in with that line from Ballas about taking their best people, willing or not, to be subjects. The uniqueness of Warframes from each other is striking and I would say a 50/50 between the powers that Ballas was trying to create and the individual personality that they were using as a host for the Helminth Infestation.

Take Mirage as an example, look at the Prime; not so much the powers she displays, but how she displays them. When using her Eclipse, she glows in the dark and shines in the light, her powers are about emitting light and creating illusions from it. Her base-version's helmet even looks like a deep sea Cuttlefish, which has natural bio-luminescence. Ballas could have been trying to create a frame that played with Light powers, similar to the way Excal can blind, but also have some form of camouflage and holographic nature. The Prime Trailer, however, talks about how the subject laughed and twisted that design, and instead of just light and shadow, became a harlequin. Light and shadow, yes, but with confetti and prisms and lasers and laying traps for unsuspecting enemies.

So we know that it's the person, as much as the Infestation, that produces the powers.

17 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

But if the devs start putting in Umbras for 'frames which already have Primes, they'd need to Umbrafy all of them if they didn't want a lot of players to get miffed that their fave got left out.

Sadly, this is not the case. DE came right out and said it on the DevStream; there will be other Umbra style frames, but they are going to be 'special' and so not all frames will have an Umbra. All frames have a Prime, only a few will get an Umbral version.

Disappointing, but if that's their plan we won't change it by complaining.

17 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

Except that "umbra" does not mean "opposite" or "subverted"

I think you misunderstood my point... Umbra does mean 'shadow', but my point was the Excalibur and Excalibur Prime use 'light', a blade of 'light'. The theme of Excal is a Swordsman frame, it's in his passive and all his abilities, but Excal has a shining blade that blinds enemies. Excal Umbra is a shadow version of Excalibur, using a dark blade and blinding enemies with a Howl, not a flash of light, that's the reason for him being 'Umbra'.

That's what I mean by a subversion. And that's why I put in about the other frames using the same power, but with the theme subverted. Flowing Fire, Burning Ice and so on. I actually fully expect there to at least be a Mag and Volt with an Umbral style, while Ember and Frost would be good, they're a little too obvious for choices.

Moving on.

17 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

Yes, I misspoke there. It was Rell who absconded.

Eh, I wouldn't say he did either. The Veil protected him, and chained his Harrow in the temple so he could permanently Transfer into it to preserve his life, protect people from the Man in the Wall. But before that he was cast out by Margulis for being different.

It's completely unclear as to whether he actually had his Warframe by then or not, but one thing is pretty clear; he did obtain a Harrow frame from somewhere. What you do have to note is that it's not Harrow Prime in the quest. It's regular Harrow.

And this does make a case for the Titania one too;

17 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

So, the original Titania

I'll give you that a Titania frame did display sentience and defend Silvana. But what do we retrieve from the Silver Grove? Production model Titania, the non-Prime version.

I genuinely don't think that Ballas let others create new Unique Warframes. He's the kind to take all of that on himself as a matter of pure pride and selfish spite.

However, here's a thought; what if Silvana was tasked to make the Production Model Titania? What if the only reason we have the base Titania is because Silvana designed a more cost-effective version that could be produced more efficiently than the Primes would have been?

Does this actually mean that all of the others were doing the same? All of the base Excaliburs, Mags, Volts and so on had to be made by somebody, and the modifications that gave the exact same powers, for less cost of materials, and for only a slight loss in something like Armour or Sprint Speed or total Energy pool... Those are a task that Ballas would definitely not have done himself.

I don't see Ballas soiling his mis-matched hands with non-Prime tech, but I do see him being very pleased when somebody then understands it enough to make another that's not-as-good-but-passable. Like a crappy teacher that's happy that his student can perform the task, but prove he's still the teacher by the student not doing as well as it could be done.

And what this does is lend some real credence to the whole 'all of the Warframes could be sentient like Umbra' theory. It definitely lends credence to the idea that the ones before the Tenno came along were the same kind of Warframe and were more 'drones' in the sense that they were under vague guidance from Transference Bolts to go be set on the battlefield. They were supposed to be super-soldiers, but the only 'orders' they could give were to point them at the enemy and to tell them to fight. That's why the Warframes could even turn on the Orokin at all, because without the full force of Tenno Transference, they weren't under proper control and could 'go rogue'.

Although... at that point it's more just 'reverting to normal' ^^

More than that, it's probably why the Orokin 'committed them to grave' too. The only way to stop a rampaging Warframe that has its sentience back is to kill it.

This is an exciting little line of thought now...

The idea that a non-Prime frame was created by Silvana and still went berserk in a rather tangibly aware state in defense of her friend... The fact that our own Warframe tore out the War from its chest to defend the Operator...

Oooh, this could get interesting. Could it be that unlike Umbra the other frames we create simply didn't have enough of their original memories to maintain sentience? And that if they were given the right kind of contact with their mind from Transference... the 'reversed flow' that we used on Umbra to see inside its mind... which... ooh! Which Silvana must have used too, because she could sense the presence of Titania's mind there when she tried out Transference! Maybe that's the key there, the ability to find the mind that's asleep in there. We could actually 're-awaken' our own frames and see inside their minds!

I'll leave that line of thought there for now, because it has more ramifications and explanations for other weirdness going on with the Tenno too. What do you think?

[OmegaVoid]

On 2020-01-14 at 9:48 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

Eh, I wouldn't say [Rell absconded] either. The Veil protected him, and chained his Harrow in the temple so he could permanently Transfer into it to preserve his life, protect people from the Man in the Wall. But before that he was cast out by Margulis for being different.

From the moment they were found on the Zariman and Kahleen took a Void Blast to the face, the Tenno were recognised as dangerous, and quarantined. They were not free to come and go as they pleased.

Margulis attempted to rehabilitate them through therapy, to give them the emotional equilibrium need to control their Void powers. Rell's Aspergers syndrome, however, made her techniques useless for him, so he was excluded from her therapy programme. Rell took this badly, feeling rejected, 'cast out'.

Rell was as potentially dangerous as the other Tenno, and would certainly not have been released from quarantine. Ergo, Rell absconded.

Well, he had to; he's warned everyone he's met so far about The Man in the Wall and nobody's done anything about it. He has to find more people to tell, until he tells someone who'll listen.

On 2020-01-14 at 9:48 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

It's completely unclear as to whether he actually had his Warframe by then or not, but one thing is pretty clear; he did obtain a Harrow frame from somewhere. What you do have to note is that it's not Harrow Prime in the quest. It's regular Harrow.

It's not stated, but we can draw some fairly strong inferences. After Margulis was blinded, the Tennno were put into cryostasis to avoid any further incidents. It's then that Margulis conceives of Transference Therapy; she wants to continue the therapy, but the only way to interact with the Tenno while they are in the cryopods is via a Somatic Link.

Then the military co-opt Sylvana for their Warframe project (essentially they steal Margulis' idea, and her staff... and probably her specimens and notes), after which Margulis conceivably might have taken some of the Tenno out again for therapy sessions, but Rell would not have been among them.

So the point where the Tenno are put into cryostasis is a terminus ante quem. Rell could hardly have escaped from cryostasis.

That means he could not have been a Warframe Operator. There are only two obvious ways he could have obtained a Warframe, then. Either Rell obtains a Somatic Link and steals a Warframe, or his Red Veil followers obtain warframe schematics, plus a sample of the Helminth virus, and fabricate one for him.

I'm going with the second option for two reasons:

Firstly, I don't subscribe to the "production model" theory. I believe the Orokin created only Prime 'frames, and that the non-primes are created by others who lack the Orokin manufacturing expertise. As you say, what we see is not a Prime, ergo it was built for Rell by Red Veil.

If you provide a reference to establish "production models" as canon, I'll change my mind on that. But it doesn't change this...

It'd be much easier to smuggle blueprints and a test-tube out of a military establishment undetected than a whopping great Warframe. 😃

On 2020-01-14 at 9:48 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

what do we retrieve from the Silver Grove? Production model Titania, the non-Prime version.

we get blueprints obtained by Ordis' scans of Titania's remains during the Silver Grove quest. Crafted by us using humble Tenno-made forge. What we scanned was a Prime; what we built was... close but no cigar.

On 2020-01-14 at 9:48 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

It definitely lends credence to the idea that the ones before the Tenno came along were the same kind of Warframe and were more 'drones' in the sense that they were under vague guidance from Transference Bolts to go be set on the battlefield. They were supposed to be super-soldiers, but the only 'orders' they could give were to point them at the enemy and to tell them to fight. That's why the Warframes could even turn on the Orokin at all, because without the full force of Tenno Transference, they weren't under proper control and could 'go rogue'.

Well, the intention was that their minds would survive the Infestation. Dax soldiers, but tougher, stronger, and faster.

When it appears to working on the test subjects (worthless commoners, one would suppose), the Orokin proceed to dose the Dax volunteers they have selected.

Excal Umbra, for example is lucid for a while despite being riddled with infestation. It's not clear how long after infection the amnesia kicked in, but Ballas has clearly been waiting for the right moment to provide him with that "one burning memory" at the point when he's losing all the old ones.

Most Warframes then, are implicitly left with no declarative memory at all, because nothing remarkable is happening at the crucial time.

Motor skills, procedural memory, presumably are retained or they'd be completely useless (i.e. they could still shoot a rifle... if you could persuade them to do so).

As it was, they were pressed into service by using the Somatic Link, but excessive exposure of the brain to Void energy induces violent psychosis (as per the Zariman adults). The controllers could take shifts, but the Warframes... it may have been supposed that they had no minds left to be harmed.

It raises the possibility that what caused the first Warframes to run amok was not the Helminth... but the Somatic Links intended to control them!

On 2020-01-14 at 9:48 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

Could it be that unlike Umbra the other frames we create simply didn't have enough of their original memories to maintain sentience? And that if they were given the right kind of contact with their mind from Transference... the 'reversed flow' that we used on Umbra to see inside its mind... which... ooh! Which Silvana must have used too, because she could sense the presence of Titania's mind there when she tried out Transference!

I believe the Somatic Link always works both ways.

Ballas: "somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing--and take away its pain."

Pretty clear then that the Tenno perceives the Warframe's consciousness, and the host voluntarily relinquishes control which implies the host is likewise aware of the Tenno.

The reconstituted Excalibur Umbra rejects the Tenno's first attempt at Transference because, unlike other hosts, he has an agenda of his own to persue.

And the Tenno gets a vivid memory, instead of the usual sense of some inchoate presence.

Ordis sees it as different from usual, since from his external point of view Transference consists of the Operator's mind going into the Warframe. In fact the Operator's mind is exactly where it's always been; it's just controlling a different body.

On 2020-01-14 at 9:48 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

So we know that it's the person, as much as the Infestation, that produces the powers.

I'd say the form of the abilities is 100% provided by the host's consciousness, and the power to make it happen by the Tenno's Void energy.

What the Helminth is providing is a powerful body, and a host consciousness which is a blank slate for conditioning and free from mental distractions.

It's nearly what Margulis hoped for when she recruited Sylvana for her Transference Therapy project; a clean slate which wouldn't contaminate the Tenno's mind.

Margulis aimed for an ethical proxy for the Tenno, since Margulis was presumably working on subjects who were already Infested.

The non-volunteer Dax used in the Warframe project are straight-up unethical. 

And the folks we grab in our Capture missions... well they're enmies, so we'd otherwise just kill them outright.

And they can at least go through the entire process under sedation; they don't need conditioning to shape the Abilities, as that's what we craft the Neuroptics for. 😃