#The Zariman Ten Zero

[flamingphoenixfox]

Hello again, Tenno! Let's talk Easter Eggs! Specifically, Warframe DE Logo Easter Eggs! I just recently found the DE logo hidden in Duviri (quite by accident as I've done with all but the one hidden in the Zariman), and wanted to share screenshots of my findings!

But then it occurred to me, "gosh wouldn't it be cool and helpful if I compiled images to help people find all of the hidden DE logos?"

AND SO BELOW THE CUT ARE DIRECTIONS AND SCREENSHOTS TO DO JUST THAT!

Just to warn you: this is a long post since it's essentially a step-by-step for finding all the logos in all five areas!

Enjoy!

Welcome to Cetus! You're Landing Craft has just dropped you off onto the platform by the shore! See that cliff face off to your right? If you want to find the DE logo you need to go climb on top of that!

Yeah, in fact you need to go this far inland (to the rock I'm standing on)!

It's right here on the edge of this rock!

Next area!

Welcome to Fortuna (my favorite hub ♥)! Bask in the wonderful bisexual lighting!

When you are done basking jump on up here to this little balcony! It's the second balcony up (the third floor if you count the ground floor as the first one)!

The DE logo is hidden on side facing inward!

And onward we go!

Welcome to the Necralisk! It's a bit pustule-y and gooey but there is still some old Orokin architecture sticking out of the infested flesh-scape here and there! Like this pillar! Here - I'll throw my Xoris for you so you can see what I'm looking at!

Climb on up and - TADA! There it is! A nice and simple find! That can't really be said about the next one though.

Oh boy here we are...

The DE logo hidden in the Zariman - the one I struggled the most to find, I thought I had rubbed by face against every wall and structure, but apparently I had missed a spot. This is the only one I needed to look up to find. This is the elevator that leads out to the rest of the Zariman - where we do the Zariman missions.

I thought I had checked this area thoroughly enough but I think that disconnected wall panel always caused my angle coming out from the elevator to just miss it. See where I'm standing? Notice how it seems a little darker there? I certainly didn't.

There's an opening to - what would you call this - a maintenance port? Regardless, let's head in past the overgrown vines.

It leads into an elbow passage and into a little room.

Looks like another area one or more of the Zariman children used to hide. Of course, no area in the Zariman is complete without the ominous graffiti!

And right on the side of the box here is the logo! Even though I couldn't find this one without help I really enjoy the concept of them being a bit more hidden.

Like the last one!

I stumbled across this one by accident when I was in Captura gathering references of the mirror and portal frames for a Duviri-inspired piece I'm working on.

I happened to notice what looks like a window in the Kaithe's stable and totally expected the overgrowth to be a solid object when I jumped at it.

It wasn't. Queue shock and confusion. At first, I thought it was just a hole leading over to the plant area - a silly short cut. I walked in a little further.

No, this is an enclosed cave. A secret! A nice little den to hide in!

Wait that's-! WOAH I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THEY WOULD HAVE A HIDDEN LOGO FOR THIS AREA! That's so cool and fun! I love this hiding spot for it! The perfect amount of context clues to make you suspicious and intrigued by the area if you are looking! This one was by far my favorite to find!

Anyways,

That's all of the DE logos (that I'm aware of)! I'm looking forward to the interesting places they will think to hide the next ones! Hope you enjoyed my guide (and the silly retelling of how I found the one in Teshin's Cave)!

Thanks for reading!

[karagna]

Been deep in the Warframe sauce recently, thinking a LOT abt my Operator - Veya

[captain-fanattic]

i stopped mid-quest to do this as fast as i could. and it's only funny to me. i do not care

[tomc4t]

“Ever get that feeling you're stuck? Spinning inside your little wheel. Only to find... you're right back where you started. And so it goes. Day by day, year by year, until you're dead... inside. You feel nothing. You're just a prisoner trapped in the spiral of someone else's dream...”

Drifter

[morallygreyvigilante67]

Okay so I recently stumbled across a fan theory for Warframe that honestly makes a lot of sense. That being that Kaleen became Ember Prime.

I know this has probably been talked about a lot, but the thought won't leave me alone so here we are.

so, the three things I'm going to be talking about in relation to this theory are:

< The disappearance of the Zariman Ten Zero

< Origin/Nature of the warframes

< Kaleen

The first two points are both pretty lengthy so I'll only be talking about the parts that are relevant to the theory. Also, it goes without saying, but spoiler warning for the overall story of Warframe.

The disappearance of the Zariman Ten Zero

Admittedly, the disappearance of the Zariman Ten Zero itself doesn't have much to do with the theory. I'm only really bringing it up because of how the incident was treated.

To put it briefly, the Zariman Ten Zero was a colony ship that was sent on a Void Jump to the Tau System with the intention of, well, colonizing it. Something went wrong, and the ship disappeared without a trace. It was assumed that the crew had perished.

Some time later the ship re-emerged, seemingly untouched. The only survivors being the children that would eventually become the Tenno.

Publicly, the incident was covered up, and the Zariman was reported to be a military ship and that there were no children on board.

How does this link to the theory? I'm getting to that.

Origin/Nature of the warframes

Again, I'm not going to go too in-depth here.

To put it simply, warframes were - are? - created by injecting the Helminth strain of infestation into host bodies. Initial attempts proved to failures, at least, until the development of Transference technology which would allow another person (notably, the Tenno) to project their consciousness into the host bodies.

Some people volunteered for the project (Gara Prime), while others were forced (Excalibur Umbra). But one thing that seems consistent is that the warframes themselves lose their free will entirely, or at the very least it was significantly reduced.

Kaleen

Kaleen was the principal investigator of the Zariman Ten Zero's disappearance. Initially she assumed the disappearance was the result of a mechanical failure, informed the families affected, and closed the case.

When the Zariman re-emerged Kaleen reopened the investigation, during which she was burned and blinded by one of the children after breaking procedure.

Kaleen was burned by uncontrolled void powers, not a warframe since - at this point in time - warframes as we know them hadn't been created yet, not to a point where they would be in active use since the program wouldn't be successful until some time after this incident had occured.

So, what does all of this mean?

From what I can see, Kaleen is only mentioned in Ember Prime's codex. The codex makes no mention of Ember Prime, which seems kind of strange. The only other codex I can think of that does this is Rhino Prime's but his at least references him (or, at the very least, what can be assumed to be an earlier attempt at creating him) though not by name.

I can't see why else Kaleen would have been mentioned in Ember Prime's codex if there was no connection.

So this begs the question, why turn Kaleen into a warframe?

Simple, Kaleen was in charge of the initial investigation into the Zariman, she was the one who reopened the investigation, the one who found the children who would later become the Tenno.

The Orokin wanted to keep as much information as they could about the Zariman (and the Tenno by extension) a secret. Kaleen was someone who already knew too much. And, as I mentioned earlier, warframes effectively have no - or limited - free will. An extreme method of keeping someone silent it may be, but if you look into the origin of Excalibur Umbra, it's not too much of a stretch to assume the Orokin would do something similar here.

[a-tenno-called-prin]

Void Storm

I adore the skies of Duviri, the Zariman looming in the background, anchored to the land. A lost ship in a tumultuous ocean. A reminder of what once was, and what is to come.

I took this photo as an experiment. I wanted to know what color data I could take from a game, since real cameras with large sensors are able to capture a large amount of data that isn't obvious when the raw photo is taken. I was pleasantly surprised to see many of the details in the land were still present. You can even see the greenery! I couldn't get as much detail out of the Zariman itself as I would've liked but I appreciate the silhouette.

You know, sometimes I forget that someone made this. Sometimes I think "yeah, this has just been there". It's so beautiful.

Here's the raw photo, in case you wanted to see the difference. I edited this one in Lightroom.

[operat0r]

[hpheisler]

i have been once again playing too much warframe so i wanted to share the fansong i wrote earlier this year again about my favorite warframe: gyre!

well, more about the zariman ten zero in general. but gyre was there.

[ritens]

[wf] Nothing Is As It Was 5. Spoonful of Sugar Makes The Poison Go Down

[previous] - 2.8k words

It’s been three weeks since Kyn and Lane’s stint through the resurfaced smelly shores of Earth, since the time drifter was last seen outside a warframe. He hasn’t been able to figure it out and whatever Kyn had suggested Lane try, has bore no fruit. The operator even attempted to push the drifter out of the frame with force but instead ended up controlling Lane as though he were an unoccupied warframe. Just like Kyn had already suspected. At this point they’re certain it’s not transference.

Though Lane has managed to break doors, vases, cups, chairs and even bulletproof glass, he appears to be an otherwise useless warframe with no abilities. He looks like a Limbo Prime but lacks the wit of one. It’s no surprise. He’s a stranger to the rift and the best he can do is use the improvised sword fighting techniques that he’s picked up in his foggy life. Luke has taken it upon himself to teach the drifter at least something regarding the potential that riftwalkers normally possess despite the drifter’s lack of mathematical understanding. In the end he seems to be best at wielding melee weapons. So Kyn and Luke made sure to provide him with a pair of Kronens and the Nepenthe Ogris for some ranged action.

Because of this Kyn had to bring Lane to an acquaintance’s Helminth to have the drifter slash warframe patched up. They had to take care of the hopefully temporary vessel no matter how inconvenient it may be. The injuries mattered.

It was a nightmare to get Lane to sit still in the chair. Confused, scared and unaware of his own strength he caused a lot of damage. All for nothing too, because the fix was so quick he didn’t even notice it.

—

“There should be a registry of some kind. A list of all the classes and pupils. We could start by asking Melica.” Luke narrates the course of action as they get out of their landing craft and onto the floating corpse of the Zariman Ten Zero.

One evening after Lane has gone to bed, Luke pulls Kyn out in the camp before their orbiter to put forward a previously untested idea - they should try and search for answers regarding the story of operator Lane on the Zariman. It could give them an idea on how to help the drifter with his current predicament, and perhaps, eventually reverse the change. Of course Kyn isn’t a big fan of this. Luke’s reasoning is sound, it makes sense. It’s just outside Kyn’s comfort zone.

The last time they wandered through the abandoned halls and classrooms of the Zariman they cleared up Kyn’s own questions. He was finally able to put the memory of his own parents to rest.

They had sent him on the ship alone on purpose and stayed behind themselves. And the whole time he thought they were around, just didn’t want to see him. He grew up resentful. Back then he didn’t understand why. He still doesn’t. What kind of monster sends their child alone to Tau? That failed and afterwards they still didn’t put in the effort to check if he’s even alive. No matter how he looks at the past, his parents still end up being pieces of shit in his eyes. Truth hurts.

Luke chuckles at that. “It’s not like we have anything else to do.”

Kyn follows his warframe, with hesitation in each step.

“This would take forever. There are so many tenno out there. So many classrooms.” he sighs, “Lane doesn’t exactly look unique either. He’s pale and has almost white hair. Many kids looked like him.”

Both of them walk up to the first cephalon console they see. Melica lights up when they come close enough. The cephalon immediately addresses Kyn and tells him to stay out of trouble. She lives in the past and still sees him as a pupil despite him being all grown up. This means that she’ll likely avoid giving him any background information on other ‘schoolmates’.

The Limbo Prime waits for his operator to walk next to him, then takes the other’s hand in his own. “I miss having a purpose. Try to think of this as a 1500 piece jigsaw puzzle. There’s a pretty picture to be revealed.”

“How do you know it’s pretty?” Kyn looks into Luke’s glossy blue orb. He sees his own reflection staring back at him and pulls his hand out of Luke’s grasp. “How do you know none of the pieces are missing?”

“I don’t. But we’ll find that out. We don’t necessarily need the whole picture, just enough to understand what’s going on.” Luke blinks his imitation of an eye and Kyn turns away to hide a hint of a smile. Luke has always been good at convincing him.

Luke pats him on the shoulder and speaks up. “Cephalon. How many students by the name of Lane are aboard the ship?”

“Greetings, director of advanced biomechanics development unit 3. There are 57 Lanes on the Zariman.” Melica responds.

“Oh that’s less than I expecte- DIRECTOR?” Kyn stares at Luke in disbelief. “I thought you were a mere volunteer with a slight background in biology??”

Operator and his warframe exchange looks at that. Both of them are thinking the same thing. Lane is not their guest’s original name.

“Hush.” Luke waves Kyn away and continues interrogating the cephalon. “Do you have full body scans? How many of them have heterochromia and three moles on their left cheek?”

Melica’s light dims for a moment as she runs through her data. “There are no Lanes whose appearance would match your inquiry.”

“That makes things a bit more complicated.” Kyn crosses his arms thoughtfully. “Maybe try asking how many students share physical details with him. I hadn’t thought of the moles myself.”

Luke nods. “He has a couple scars on his upper body from what I saw during our first meeting but those are unreliable and likely timeline specific.”

“Cephalon. Same details but black hair.” Luke makes another order. Kyn raises his fake eyebrows at that. Smart. The warframe variant of Lane has a black ponytail. Maybe there’s more to that.

The warframe turns back to the cephalon. “How many students have blue and green heterochromia, three moles on their left cheek, one on their right, white to grey hair.”

“Apologies, director. There are no matches.” Melica responds quicker than anticipated this time.

Melica runs through data once more and then lights up with a promising response. “There are two students whose appearance matches your inquiry.”

“Names.” Luke’s tone remains commanding.

“Leander Coeth and Elna Warren.” Melica states as well as provides a helpful hologram of the two students. Kyn feels like a rock has been shoved down his throat upon hearing the name of one of the two pupils.

“Cephalon, coordinates to Leander Coeth’s dormizone.” Luke intends to inquire Kyn about what went down between the two tenno later. 

“How could I miss this. The eyes and the strange curls of hair. Leander is Lane. We were classmates.” Kyn frowns.

Luke turns to Kyn. His operator sports an aura of discomfort. “One of the kids you bullied?”

Kyn nods. “The one I singled out. It’s complicated.”

—

The dormizone is a ransacked mess and provides no meaningful information for the two investigators to collect.

“I remember Lane lived together with his cousin and her parents. He had no family of his own.” Kyn ponders out loud while rummaging through some trash in a desk drawer. He briefly stops to look at a couple half-decent drawings of kavats and other creatures. He and Lane shared similar hobbies it seems. Art has always been a passion of Kyn’s.

“What’s the cousin’s name? Maybe we can find her and learn more about the fate of operator Lane that way?” Luke suggests. He’s not particularly interested in going through the junk in the dormizone and instead has opted to stand guard by leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed.

“Yeah. And they were probably teenagers. Unless they weren’t put into stasis for whatever reason.” Kyn furrows his brows in barely contained disgust. He closes the drawer he was going through and presses his hands onto the surface of the desk.

“About that… I realised something about the locket I picked up from the cave under the truck where we found warframe Lane’s body.” Kyn turns to face the slacking warframe. “It has an old picture of the cousin in it. Kadden Ria in her Zariman getup.”

Luke blinks. “Oh… Nurse Ria of the Temerarious clan. That’s… less than ideal. So both of them were turned into warframes. And both died in the same war.”

Both go quiet for a moment. Then suddenly they get up and straighten themselves out as if their minds got linked. Both have the same question in mind.

“Are there records of the tenno who slept on Lua?”

—

There are. And they found no mention of Ria nor Lane in them. So the two were either taken in as volunteers in the warframe infestation manipulation project shortly before the time the tenno were placed in their pods. Or maybe turning Lane and Ria was some kind of a last ditch effort during or after the fact. If only Luke was able to remember his life before he was turned. They may be investigating Lane right now but taking his chances with Melica brought forth information confirming that he had a hand in what he himself has become. Director… How many souls has he tormented?

Struck by another dead end Kyn and Luke are now contemplating making leaflets of the warframe Lane to ask around if anyone knows him. They’re sitting in the camp outside the orbiter when Lane catches them in the act and tells them to quit it. After all, his body is not his mind and no matter what contacts he may or may not have had in the timeline of the body he now possesses is of no consequence to his being as a whole.

“It’s fine. I will… figure it out. But if there is no way back, then I’m ready to live with this steel flesh.” Lane sits down by the fire between Kyn and Luke. The two put away their unfinished leaflets.

“Do you have any plans of your own yet?” Luke asks.

“I don’t know how to make plans.'' The drifter mumbles in response as he picks up a stick and begins drawing spirals in the ashy sand before the fire pit. “With survival necessities like food out of the way. I suppose I could work on things I’ve always wanted. I would still like to have a home of my own. Maybe join a crafts club or something. But that doesn’t exist in this timeline anymore. Who even has the time to knit when you have enemies to fight off all the damn time?”

The taller Limbo Prime observes the shorter one with renewed interest. Was he meant to stay this small or did he really not get the chance to grow up? The human body of the drifter was equally short, but it’s not known how the other timeline worked with all the looping going on.

“We received a dormizone from the Holdfasts who take care of the Zariman Ten Zero. We’re not utilising it, so if you’d like a place away from us, we could give it to you.” Luke proposes.

The operator immediately butts in. “That’s not a great idea… But.. ugh, if anything, know that you have a place here. Since you’ve already cleared out our dusty storage room and made it liveable.”

Drifter remains quiet. It may be haunted but it’s a different Zariman, right? Nothing of his past is there. At least that’s what he’d like to believe. He is undeniably curious though and could use more time away from this haywire couple. One moment they’re bickering, the other they’re scheming, and the third their hands are suddenly all over each other. Yeah, Zariman sounds fine. It’d be an adventure to explore and shape the dormizone into a cosy little place.

“You’re going to have to drop me off though.” Lane’s response is short and straight to the point.

—

The warm shower has got to be the new best thing Lane has ever experienced. To think he said the same thing about chilly river water just 5 weeks ago when he fell from the sky. Of course, Kyn and Luke’s place also had its perks, but he had to let the two guys know when he needed the bath so it could be prepared in advance. And that caused some level of discomfort and lack of personal autonomy.

Lane spends the next night on the Zariman. He wakes up hungry, with hair in his eyes, and a major need to have a leak. He’s back in his human body without a clue as to how that may have happened.

He flushes water down the toilet and looks at himself in the bathroom mirror. He looks the same as he did before the merge. The seaweed smell on his clothes is still ripe. So this body went into some kind of stasis while he was a warframe.

Speaking of personal autonomy.

While cooking up a meal for himself Lane thinks about how convenient the warframe body was regarding basic human inconveniences. No hunger or thirst, no sweat, no getting numb cheeks from sitting too long in a dumb pose.

Quickly he looks down at his legs to make sure he’s still in his shorts. All is as it should be. It’s just the arms that have shifted. “Huh…”

“Fuck!” he shouts as he steps away from the stove with oil bubbling in the pan. Some of the hot oil has landed on his exposed hands. Immediately he thinks about how this would be inconsequential if he had warframe hands.

The drifter snatches a towel to wipe the oil off. When he puts the cloth back he notices his arms have changed to steel flesh out of nowhere.

Instead of panicking Lane decides to make use of the situation by cracking a condroc egg and tossing the contents of it on the pan without any fear of receiving more oil burns. He does the thinking about the hows and whys while scrambling his egg on the pan with a fork. The change can’t be random so now Lane is backtracking his thoughts that might have triggered the event.

With a sigh of disappointment he tosses some salt onto his lazy scrambled egg, stirs it some more and then plops it onto a clean dish. The drifter brings his breakfast to the table and sits down. He picks up the fork but now his hands feel inconvenient to eat with.

“I wish I had the hat.” he attempts to summon the hat that his alternate body has. Nothing happens.

“Hat, please.” Still nothing. Lane even touches the top of his head to make sure, just in case the hat ends up being somehow weightless.

“It’d be useful to have the human hands now…” Lane thinks to himself as he shoves a piece of egg into his mouth. Just then his arms briefly lose feeling, and visibly shift to a human form. The fork falls to the ground with a clatter. 

The drifter swallows his food and gets up from his seat. “I got it! I think I got it?”

The fork will now do its part in being a willing test subject. Lane looks down at the metal utensil and steps on it. In his mind he is focusing on the requirement of protection and as a result the fork ends up being flattened by a metal sole rather than a fleshy pink foot.

Suffice to say drifter Lane hardly gets anything done this day as he spends most of it by coming up with reasons to shapeshift. It’s a useful skill he feels he should hone to perfection.

The drifter shouts an enthusiastic “WHOO!!”

“It’s not about what I want. It’s about what I need.” he comments and bends down to touch his metal knees, as well as to pick up the poor fork. When he gets back up, his legs then quickly shapeshift back into human ones. In his mind he justifies it as needing comfort.

Other than that he manages to get rid of all the dust in the dormizone and unpack some belongings that Kyn and Luke have so kindly provided him with, including the locket with Ria’s portrait. He’s not sure how or why Kyn thought it’d mean something to him but he’s thankful nonetheless. His mother’s shawl and now the locket are all that’s left of his family.

He may be alone now, but he feels like things aren’t impossible to wrangle into place anymore. And that’s worth something.

[previous]

[zestysthoughts]

Zariman Ten-Zero was an inside job. #neverforget

[luxcafess]

Can we learn a bit more about the two versions of Vahagn?

Yes absolutely!! I'll try to sum some stuff up as best I can

After being rescued from the Zariman Ten Zero, Vahagn had been subject to an orokin scientists experiments to cultivate a new strain of infestation. As a result, Vahagn is forced to live with a mostly symbiotic form of infestation in his body.

It does cause a lot of pain, so he prefers to stay in his warframe (Nidus) when he can.

After waking up, he doesn't remember anything that happened and has devoted his life to studying the infestation in order to understand.

He tends to be very serious and unapproachable and hard to get along with, but he is extremely loyal to any friends he does have and is willing to protect them at all costs. He likes to come off as having a calm and collected demeanor, but is extremely prone to violent outbursts.

((Spoilers if u haven't played Duviri))

Drifter, on the other hand, had a very different experience and life after the Zariman Ten Zero. Being in a constant, endless loop of deaths has caused him to have a very nihilistic point of view.

After being freed from Duviri, Drifter has a very oddly cheerful demeanor. His biggest downfall is that he goes through life with the attitude that he is invincible. He puts himself in danger and generally thrill seeks to a life threatening degree, not really caring about what the outcome might be.

He prefers to not use warframes as much, just bc he's really not used to them. He loves the abilities they give him though. (I have yet to decide which is his favorite warframe to use though... I have too many favorites)

He's also a bit of a hopeless romantic.

The two share a lot of qualities as well, but overall they have lived two very different experiences.

This is much longer than I planned, I very much enjoy talking about him. I hope its coherent, I'm not great at putting my thoughts together but I'm working on it.

[stealingyourbones]

Submitted Prompts #135

I know I tend to send in DPxDC prompts, but today I had A Thought.

I've been playing Warframe again, lately, and I've been grinding for the Operator Affiny things (thank you Zenurik Focus, for blessing me with boundless Energy with which to commit chaos :D )

And a thought struck me: Operators use Transference to pilot a Warframe. It comes from their Void powers, granted to them in an accident, where their ship was about to dimension-jump into the Void. This overlapping of dimensions made the Tenno into something Other (hilariously, they're called Tenno because they were from the Zariman 10-0. Ten-Zero. Ten-O. Tenno) with extra-dimensional powers, among which is a beam of energy from said dimension. Sound familiar?

What I'm getting at here is: Immortal Danny finds himself transported into the Zariman after the tragedy that befell it, and since The Void and the Infinite Realms are neighbouring extra-dimensional planes of existence, he feels right at home with the survivors (canonically, the adults all went insane, while the more adaptable children survived with powers) and helps them with their powers.

Eventually the Orokin find them, as in canon, and take them in as their Tenno Warrior caste. Their Praetorian Guard, of sorts, and build the Prime Warframes for the children to inhabit and pilot.

Danny goes along with it, because hey cool space bio-armor that he can power with his abundance ecto-energy. Maybe Pandora and frostbite might want to take a look, too.

His Warframe? Banshee Prime

Shit happens, as one might say, and as the Tenno are put into cryo-sleep by the the Lotus (Space Mom!!!!) Danny goes back to the Realms, after his vacation is done.

Eons later, the Tenno rise again, to a shattered and warring Solar System.

They reestablish their Relays, and their presence once more brings order and peace to the System. And as the Order once again grows, as more and more Tenno wake up, Teshin, the Last of the Orokin Dax (the Royal Guard) tells them of Banshee Prime, and her incredible powers over sound and voice.

As the Tenno pilots reawaken in their stasis pods in Lua, one remains missing. Tenno across the System all wonder where everyone's favorite older brother went, and what happened to his Banshee Prime Warframe that he always lovingly maintained and repaired himself.

One, the Harrow pilot, peers into the Void, as he typically does, and finds a trace leading to another dimension other than the Void where the Moon had been hidden, with their pods in it.

Essentially, a whole legion of high school murder-inclined feral teens go on a trip to the Ghost Zone to bring back their older brother, so he can once again tell them of the stars and their meanings. They think he would like to have words with some people, and the Main Character has spotted the Lotus look to the stars with grief in her eyes as she wonders on her wayward child's whereabouts.

Danny, for his part, has grown up into his Fenton Brickhouse genes (not being in a stasis pod will do that to you) and is ruling the Realms along with his Council of Ancient, and generally getting his new powers as the Ancient of Space under control, like he's done before with his basic ghost abilities, and later his ice.

What he didn't expect, was for his old siblings to knock down the doors to his Throne room and crowd him, all screeching about how come he grew up when they're all stuck as kids still, and why dies he look so different, and so many questions that he gets a little overwhelmed.

When Clockwork (grandpa), Pandora (mom) and Frostbite (dad) turn to him and his baby siblings, and say Danny really should take a break "for your own health, Your Highness. You're overdue a vacation!"...let's just say the System was ready for the Tenno. Alad V was ready to face them in battle and experiment with their Warframes (the Valkyr lore is horrifying if you pay attention to it).

No one was ready for Phantom and Banshee Prime to take the System by storm, leading an army of feral children with murder-hobo inclinations

[atmosphericradar]

Analyzing the Timeline of the Tenno Schools

-- SPOILERS AHEAD! --

There isn't a lot of concrete information that Digital Extremes has released about the Tenno Schools (or "Ways") in Warframe. Here is what I know so far (as best I can w/ help from the Warframe Wiki):

Tenno Schools are martial arts disciplines. A School instructs a Tenno in a specific style of fighting, focused on harnessing Tenno Void powers in unique ways.

There is no mechanical restriction of Warframes or weapons for any School; a disciple of any Way may use any tools at their disposal.

The five Focus Schools are: Madurai, Vazarin, Naramon, Unairu, and Zenurik. Training in these Ways unlocks new Void abilities for the Tenno, as well as improvements to pre-existing Void powers. This training also unlocks various synergies between the Tenno and their Warframe, allowing each to improve the other.

The Rough Timeline of Events Preceding the Beginning of Warframe (pre-Vor's Prize quest)

Albrecht Entradi creates the Reliquary Drive, enabling spacecraft to make faster-than-light Void Jumps to arbitrary locations in space. The player reveals this history by reaching max rank with the Necraloid Syndicate. The creation of the Reliquary Drive inspires the Orokin Empire to embark on a project to colonize the nearby Tau solar system.

The Orokin Empire send terraforming robots to the Tau System, ahead of their primary human-carrying ark: the Zariman Ten Zero.

The terraforming robots defected while terraforming the Tau System, becoming the Sentients.

The Orokin Empire develop the Warframes using the Infestation. Ballas explains in his Vitruvian records during The Sacrifice quest that he created the Warframes to fight the Sentients, because the Sentients could control the combat robots the Orokin Empire would have otherwise used to fight the Sentient invasion.

The Zariman Ten Zero fails its Void Jump catastrophically. During The War Within quest, the Grineer Queen and the player's Tenno narrate the events of the Zariman Ten Zero incident: the adults were driven violently insane, and the children killed them to survive, ultimately leaving only the children alive on the Zariman. These children, who had been changed by their exposure to the Void, are now known as the Tenno.

Margulis prevents the Orokin Empire from killing the Tenno. In The Apostasy Prologue quest, the Lotus says that Margulis worked with and studied the Tenno (likely healing their trauma from the Zariman Ten Zero incident).

Margulis was killed by Ballas. Her work with the Tenno and their void-based abilities was used to develop the Transference process.

Ballas used the Tenno and Transference to control the Warframes.

The Sentients invade the Origin System. The Tenno, Warframes, and the Lotus fought the Sentient invasion known now as the Old War.

During The Prelude To War quest we see a memory of the Old War, where the Lotus confronts Erra on Lua with six Tenno by her side. At this time, the Tenno can be seen producing Void Beams without Amps. This void attack appears to be the same Void Beam as from Transcendence (the Operator's primary attack pre-The War Within quest).

According to the Shadow Stalker's Codex entry, after the Old War had concluded and the Sentients were defeated, the Orokin Empire held a system-wide victory ceremony in honor of the Tenno. During this ceremony, the Tenno simultaneously assassinated the Orokin leadership across the Origin System, toppling the Empire.

Note that the above timeline intentionally avoids talking about the order of events surrounding the Lotus. I don't believe straightening out her complicated timeline is critically necessary for talking about the Tenno Schools.

Evidence for pre-Old War Tenno Schools

I could not find any clear textual evidence of Tenno Schools existing simultaneously with the Orokin Empire, as of 2023.

It is possible that the five Focus Schools somehow evolved from pre-existing fighting styles which pre-date the existence of the Tenno. The Dax may have a martial tradition involving five methods of combat which was passed down to the Tenno, though there is no evidence to support this. It is also possible that an Orokin-era civilization or society had a spiritual or martial tradition which centered five methods of being, although that is purely speculation.

Evidence for post-Old War Tenno Schools

This is where all of the knowledge of the Tenno Schools in Warframe comes from, as of 2023.

The Tenno Schools become available after The Second Dream quest is completed. This quest reveals that the Tenno are children with Void abilities, Operators of the Warframes and not the Warframes themselves. This revelation opens up the Tenno Schools immediately. It is unclear if the Tenno know the Ways of these Schools innately. There is no direct evidence to suggest the Tenno learn of these Schools through some off-screen method.

A player can switch between the Ways of each School at will. When a Tenno changes Ways, they lose all of the abilities granted to them from their previous Way. The only exception to this is when you "unbind" certain abilities from the School, allowing your Tenno to keep the unbound power regardless of which Way they are currently practicing.

This implies that the Schools are like martial arts schools: only a master of one style of fighting can benefit from trying to mix-and-match with other styles on the fly. That said, there is nothing stopping anyone from practicing many disciplines; just fight with discipline at a time for maximum effectiveness. Note that there is no hard evidence in the game to suggest that Tenno exclusively have Void powers from only one Focus School. It would seem that any Tenno can have powers from any School, so long as they train in the proper Ways.

Tenno Clan Dojos have many tools for combat training, and even a specific room for sparring. It is unknown if the Tenno Dojos act as a major training ground or place of learning for the Tenno Schools in-universe.

I have found no evidence for Tenno-aligned humans without Void powers practicing the Ways of the Focus Schools.

I have found no evidence to suggest that The Man In The Wall has any influence over the existence or Ways of the Tenno Schools, or any influence over the specifics of how Void powers manifest.

Conclusion

Based on the evidence I have gathered, it seems as though the Tenno Schools are a post-Orokin-Empire creation. It is unlikely that the Tenno Schools were adopted from a separate pre-existing culture. Two options for the genesis of the five Focus Schools are supported by the text:

One or several of the earliest Tenno to awaken from cryosleep were the ones responsible for creating the five Focus Schools. The Void powers, abilities, and synergies are split between the Schools because of differences in combat philosophy first and foremost. Secondarily, it may be difficult for an adolescent to manifest or control all of the Void abilities from all of the Schools at once, and separating them into smaller practices keeps things manageable.

Something inherent to the nature of the Void separates the powers and abilities of the Tenno into five groups. The philosophies and combat styles of the schools follow from how the powers cluster, or perhaps the headspace a Tenno needs to be in to access that cluster of abilities.

Nothing about the Tenno Schools prevents their use by Tenno who do not have the ability to perform Transference unassisted. In addition, a Tenno School does not require the use of an Amp. Because of these two factors, Tenno Schools could have been active during the Orokin Empire era. It's possible that the Tenno Schools originate from techniques (therapeutic or supernatural) developed by Margulis during her time working with the children of the Zariman, though there is no evidence to support this theory.

Additional thoughts under the cut!

Non-Focus Tenno Schools

While I posited that such a thing could exist, there isn't a lot of evidence for non-Focus Tenno Schools. Below is a list of things which could be or could have been Tenno Schools separate from a Focus, depending on your interpretation:

"The Old Ways": A mysterious and nondescript collection of Tenno fighting techniques which seem to date back to the time of the Orokin Empire. Teshin is fond of speaking of "the Old Ways" when training Tenno, and is likely trying to impart lost knowledge of those "Ways" onto the Tenno. The flavor text in the Nikana mentions the Old Ways. The flavor text of the Glaive also mentions "dating back to the first Tenno", connecting to the Nightwave mission "The Old Ways".

The Stalker and his Acolytes: Neither the players nor the Stalker himself is sure if the Stalker and/or his Acolytes are Tenno. The Stalker is described in his Codex entry as holding the rank of "Guardian" during the Orokin Empire, and is never identified as a Tenno or even as a Warframe. Although neither the Stalker nor his Acolytes use any void powers, if they are Tenno their general immunity to Warframe abilities and unusual powers could be indicative of a Tenno School unique to them.

Non-School Tenno Organizations

Tenno Schools are fighting disciplines. They characterize what techniques a Tenno uses to fight, but not why they fight or what causes they fight for. A Tenno Clan, for example, is not a Tenno School. The Clan is made up of many Tenno, whom may all individually practice combat styles from one or several Schools. Below is a list of things which very likely aren't Tenno Schools:

The Six Faction Syndicates: Steel Meridian, Arbiters of Hexis, Cephalon Suda, The Perrin Sequence, Red Veil, and New Loka. They may be major political or philosophical groups within modern Tenno society, and they even have their own weapons, but they do not teach combat methodology.

The "exclusive order of Tenno assassins" mentioned in the flavor text of the Karyst.

[voidtongued]

I assume youre not much of an oc type of person, but did you have any like backstory or smth planned for Rev Tal?

Oh buddy you have no idea how wrong you are about me not being an oc person. I have a spreadsheet of like 40-ish ocs. This here blog voidtongued used to be a full on warframe roleplay blog but. most of my rp parners went inactive in terms of the writing aspect (we still chat and play the game and talk about how much we miss role-playing from time to time but a lot of us are. adults with full time jobs now and it makes it difficult to do that)

ANYWAY. Short answer is yes. Long answer is beneath the cut lmao

Rev Tal is a Venusian-born Tenno, raised by people who would later become some of the first Solaris. They were on the Zariman Ten-Zero, and after the void jump accident their possible existences diverged into The Operator and The Drifter. Blah blah, events of the game story quests with some minor canon divergence (Rev Tal being far warmer to the Grineer in any situation because they recognize the average Grineer trooper as a brainwashed soldier and as much of a victim as they are, etc), and slowly began to develop an intense distrust bordering on hatred of The Lotus. After the events of The Apostasy Prologue, they effectively renounced the Lotus and became a full-time Arbiters of Hexis operative Tenno, preparing for the coming Sentient invasion.

Things... Changed after The New War, with the apparent death of The Operator, a rift opened to Duviri, where the Drifter had been. Drifting. Surviving. Trying to find a way out and back into the reality they were "originally" from. The Drifter learned how to navigate the Void's reality and unreality, and has had dealings with the Murmur that left them changed and bitter. During the events of The New War, the Drifter and the Operator met face-to-face and realized that they were technically two parts of a whole individual, now styling themself Big Rev to differentiate from the child Rev Tal had been.

Big Rev is the best of both worlds - The Operator's energy and drive to succeed tempered by The Drifter's perspective and adult emotional maturity.

I've written two fics on ao3 from. forever ago. regarding Rev Tal's story - How to Make a Martyr and Voidtouched. HTMAM was written after I finished the Sacrifice iirc and was determined to un-fuck the in-game depiction of Rell and TMITW in Chains of Harrow, and Operation Hostile Mergers was the impetus for me writing Voidtouched (iirc Hostile Mergers dropped like, while I was writing it and I went back and reworked some things? it's been like three+ years i do Not remember). I was gonna write more, but I got busy with school and life and my brain, computer, and hands decided to explode and I had to take an extended break from the game. I'm back now though, and very behind, and I keep toying with going back to what was going to be the third installment in Rev Tal's story, the Guardian's Song, which would've gotten into their backstory more formally, but with the number of things that have changed with TNW and the Duviri Paradox and now Whispers in the Walls and eventually Warframe 1999. I'd have to do a LOT of reworking and i dont. wanna.

[venture-through-the-mist]

Petals May Wilt (But We Can’t Let Them Wither)

The New War is over. The System is saved, for now. Yet, a new challenge arises, the issue of ‘the Lotus’. With her mind fragmented from Ballas’s abuse, can she begin to coexist with the other two voices that now begin to drown out her own?

Natah and Margulis have been awakened into a world that is distinctly unfamiliar. They are not who they once were—in more ways than one. But who is the third voice sharing their mind, and why is she so uncomfortably familiar—for one of them, at least?

Chapter 2: Cloying Deception, Immortal Devotion

TW: There are just a couple warnings that I want to address for this chapter before we get into the story.

Non-graphic mentions of the canon-typical abuse, manipulation, and other nonsense that comes with Ballas’s character.

Somewhat graphic character death (no gore though). In the interest of not giving spoilers, all I’m going to say on that is that the Jade Light really doesn’t seem like a great way to die.

With that out of the way, the fic begins under the cut.

Childhood is a gift. She’d always known that. She would often look back at her own, fondly recalling the warm embraces of her parents, their pride as their daughter rose in her studies, easily surpassing her peers. It was a simpler time, yes, but one that she kept close to her heart. That proved especially useful when her training began, when she crossed that bridge that separated the child from the scholar. From the Archimedean. 

She’d always held more love than she knew what to do with.

She found herself fascinated by the world around her, by the people, by the life. Her peers jeered when they learned of her adoration for Earth’s long-ruined ecosystem. She felt sorry for them, sorry that they couldn’t understand what it was like to have a passion for something more ancient than themselves. She spent her days huddled in the library, nose-deep in ancient texts, fingers carefully turning weathered pages, eyes straining to read the faded ink within. Her mind was always hard at work, as was fitting for her station.

All her love, her devotion, her passion…That was what captured his gaze.

Perhaps she was too naive when it began. Perhaps she didn’t want to see past his honeyed words. She was young, she had never had time for romance before, she had always been too busy with her studies. It was so easy to fall into his web. 

It would have been so easy to keep loving him. And yet, the cracks soon began to show.

She was not a prized Kubrow to be paraded around whenever it pleased him. She had work to do. But renouncing him publicly would mean consequences, ones that, as she saw how her colleagues stressed before each Symposium, she wasn’t sure she wanted to bear. She argued with him in private, but her concerns were always dismissed with a wave of that too-large hand and veiled threats. Even with that, she hoped he would see her side, that the Executor would look past his gilded throne to acknowledge her. 

Even then, she still loved him. Didn’t she?

Then, the lost Zariman Ten-Zero was found. She watched in horror as the emaciated, feral children were escorted roughly off the ship. Her heart shattered as they cried, as they lashed out at the hands that poked and prodded and tried to make sense of how they’d survived. Her childhood memories swam in her mind, the warmth and comfort now tasting bittersweet, tainted by the knowledge that these poor children had their own youths ripped away from them. She returned to her texts that night, glancing at the painting at her desk, its rounded petals—similar in color to the Nyth gems that he sometimes bought for her, usually to make ‘peace’ after an argument—seemingly curled in an embrace. It was then that she knew what must be done.

She loved the Executor, but she cherished them more.

Even when the accident took her sight, she didn’t allow her heart to harden. She only felt sorrow that she wouldn’t be able to see their sweet faces ever again. She never knew what happened to the one that had struck her, but she never again heard his timid voice. Not that first time she forced the Lorists to allow her to visit them, nor during any of the trips afterwards. She suspected her ‘lover’—could she truly keep calling him that?—had something to do with that, though she kept quiet.

The webs of doubt tangled deeper in her mind after that first argument. How dare he call them ‘Devils‘? How could he be so cruel? They were only children. She had already witnessed enough of his false promises, she had already been forced to experiment on these children—her children—not to heal their traumas, but to turn them into weapons, to fight a war that they had no part in creating. Shame on him. Shame on all of them.

The betrayal she felt when he read her sentence nearly shattered her, but she stood strong, her back tense, unwilling to show regret for her sin of compassion.

As the Jade Light burned through her skin, as she felt the searing pain seep into her quickly-weakening bones, as her mind began to drift, the Scholar made her choice.

She would not let him take her love. So, as her hearing began to fade, as her heart began to give out from the emerald energy scorching through her cells, she thought not of her lover, of the Executor who had caused this madness. No, she thought of her children, her sons and daughters. As her muscles finally failed to keep her upright, as she tumbled lifeless to the ground in that cold, heartless room, those watching were greeted by a defiant smile stretched across her soft, Void-scarred face.

The Scholar’s children would soon know the endless extent of her devotion.

Yet, it seems her legacy was just as undying, for the Orokin would once again toy with fate. Of course, tampering with what’s written never works out in the meddler’s favor, does it?

Margulis awakens once more, confusion racing through her mind. Why isn’t she alone? Why can’t she feel the agony that should be overtaking her every thought?

‘What’s going on? Where am I?’

[tictak47]

I need to yell into the void about the Orokin and how they are represented in Warframe

**spoilers ahead for warframe**

I don't know how tumblr works but i know there is A GENEROUS text limit so im going to use it

The orokin empire SUCKS! this isn't new or shocking information they were HORRIBLY authoritarian and violently cruel, but what I think DE does well is portraying them as ARROGANT and WILDLY foolish. So often in media (and in real life) are cruel and oppressive empires portrayed as, yes evil, but also as “cold and calculating” in this strange way that almost glorifies them. The Orokin do NOT get this, they were literally the architects of their own downfall at so many points in the story and are depicted as doing things that are SUPER foolish, but were done because the Orokin were so arrogant they could not FATHOM their empire falling.

The sentients are the best example of this, they are kind of the poster children for things made by the Orokin rebelling against the Orokin. They are not the only ones however. the Corpus and Grineer also fought against the Orokin, the Orokin messed around with the Infestation and that DID NOT end well, and then last but not least we have the Zariman Ten Zero. the people in that ship KNEW that the jump would not work out, to the point that the agricultural biomes were sabotaged as a way to make the Orokin call the jump off. Did they call the jump off? NOPE! The Orokin constantly ignored the concerns and punished anyone who spoke against them. To the Orokin, admitting they made a mistake or were wrong was NOT an option, it was never an option. they constantly played with things wildly beyond their control and thought they could get away with it because their egos were so absurdly large they thought they were gods. EVERYTHING was about power to them and they needed to constantly project that power, even if how they went about showing power bit them in the ass down the line.

The dax had to be obey anyone who had Kuva, the grineer hated them, the corpus hated them, the sentients hated, the tenno hated them, everything the Orokin made or enslaved despised them with a passion. And like the arrogant and short sighted fools they were, the Orokin couldn't see how they were constructing their own downfall. The Orokin are so consistently portrayed as these wildly arrogant fools that couldn't see the VERY OBVIOUS threats directly in front of them. NO ONE respects the Orokin and that's the point. their empire was so wildly oppressive and cruel that their downfall was made inevitable through the unending oppression and evil they reveled in. They are not depicted as these super intelligent entities who made a few mistakes, they are portrayed as an empire full of cruel monsters so high on their own superiority complexes that it made their fall an inevitability that they themselves could never have seen coming due to their own arrogance.