#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!

[dryococelas01]

Just finally going through warframes narrative proper, and I have to say: considering what happened to the adults on the zariman, the turn of Natah must be extra traumatic to the poor operators.

Not the first time they have felt the adults in their life turn against them.

Not sure if I have the best understanding of the lore yet (chimera prologue done) but still.

[countwytchula]

“We shall not fear to take the leap, across the gulf to fare.

Though all betwixt is dark and deep, a home awaits us there.”

Little Zariman Ten-Zero void jump accident piece because delicious, delicious angst.

[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

[cambriancrew]

Listened to a fan song on repeat so long that my brain decided it would be preferable to just have the character from the song in my brain.

Bonus points for it having a repeating refrain telling the character to wake up. Character woke up alright.

Why do we all have to argue over system origin shit when we could be making jokes about the origins of our headmates and/or our systems as a whole. I visualized picking up and putting down a blorbo like a cat and my brain decided that was good enough reason to grant said blorbo consciousness. How is that not just fucking hilarious

[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.

[elfhunk]

i'm just saying if you love WARFRAME and CRYING you should listen to my vocaloid fansong about the zariman ten zero.

[oscargender]

I’m crying I don’t understand warframe lore at all. Not even a little bit. Like at first I thought all Orokin were giant and blue and had one long arm (see Ballas and the Deimos Entrati)(I just assumed the Deimos Entrati were blue before getting infected) but then Albrecht shows up and he’s normal sized and symmetrical and only kind of gray??? Huh?? Well it turns out high-ranking Orokin just liked being big and blue with long right arms. Nothing inherent to being Orokin. So suddenly I’m doubting everything I thought I knew and I’m reading every characters’ lore pages because maybe they’re Orokin when I assumed they were human. And so I eventually end up on the lore page of the Zariman Ten Zero and I was like huh. Why would the Orokin fill a colony ship with humans? Weird. Like REALLY weird. REALLY SUPER WEIRD. WHY HASN’T THIS OCCURRED TO ME BEFORE. SO IN A PANIC I GOOGLE “IS THE OPERATOR HUMAN” (something I took for granted for many many years. nothing is safe) AND IT TURNS OUT THE OROKIN ARE HUMAN!!! THEY JUST HAVE A CASTE SYSTEM! AND THE PEOPLE AT THE TOP ARE CALLED OROKIN!!!!!!! BECAUSE IT’S THE OROKIN EMPIRE! what the fuck

[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

[noizybreadstick]

Ever since Warframe 1999 dropped I have been chronic. I wanna crossover Warframe and Baldur’s Gate 3, my two favourite things atm, but I need to catch up on my Warframe lore. For now here’s me spitballing.

Gale being an Orokin scholar and fascinated by The Void. Being one of the first attempting to see if The Void has any potential to aid the Orokin. Mysta as his benefactor and lover. She was of much higher standing. Of course it all ends with a bang and Gale ends up with a piece of Void in his chest.

Astarion being at the behest of an Orokin Cazador. As The Old War continued it was unsafe until a new opportunity presented itself. Cazador needed a weapon and an unwavering slave and attempted to turn Astarion into a Warframe. Astarion managed to escape.

Wyll being one of the children to survive the tragic fate of the Zariman Ten-Zero. Having to survive where everyday is life or death then returning to a world that hates and fears you. After the discovery of Transference and the Warframes Wyll became a great warrior and hero.

Halsin is a Grineer defector. Rebelling against the Queens and the Grineer’s brutal expansion across the Origin System. His main focus is on Earth where he tries to push back against the Grineer overtaking the nature that blooms there.

All I got for now <3

[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

[unic0rncrazy]

Meet my Warframe crew: the Operator

Name: Luason

Pronouns: He/Him, sometimes it/its

On first meeting, Luason appears perfectly put together, professional, and when appropriate cheery. He helps the people that need helping, and stops the people that need stopping. He appears unshakable and fearless, always friendly to the innocent and an unstoppable fearless opponent to the cruel.

Of course, those few who are close to him know this image of a perfect, idealised hero is little more than a facade. Luason cares, and he wants to do what's right, and that's about where the connection ends. He is, after all, a young teen. A child. Traumatised and scared and with the weight of the Origin System on his shoulders, disassociating half the time to try to cope.

Backstory under the cut! I accidentally a wholeass short story instead of the notes I was gonna put so, buckle in I guess?

________________

Before the accident, the experiments, the rebellion, the being in stasis on Lua for generations, Luason was a pretty active child. Constantly in trouble for running, for climbing on everything in sight, for playing rough and tumble too much with the Dax boys. He didn't see why he had to be prim and proper, why he had to dress the way he was told. Dresses were stupid, they got in the way and snagged on things, and the hell did "ladylike" and "manners befitting of an Orokin girl" mean anyway?

He was five the first time he tried to tell them he wasn't a girl.

He was nine when they finally listened. When they finally accepted the name he chose.

He still wasn't allowed to play with the Dax boys, some stupid rules about caste and rank, but at least he was allowed to play with the other Orokin boys. They were snooty, but they weren't any stronger than him. After all, they hadn't been running off to wrestle with boys who were training to be warriors.

That final year before the Zariman... That was the only truly happy year of childhood he was going to get.

He was excited to explore a new world. He focused on the lessons he was getting on this ship, excited to experience a voidjump for himself. Excited for all the new things he'd experience and learn. Then... everything went wrong.

He tried his best to stay strong for the other children, to help them, someone had to as the adults went insane...

To this day, he still has nightmares about the Zariman Ten Zero. About the copy of him with black eyes and a wrong smile and the hand that offered their salvation. About the screams the other side of the barricade as the adults tore eachother apart in their madness...

He tried to stay strong still for the others as they were experimented on, turned into warriors and tools for the Orokin who now saw them as Other. After all the Orokin taught him, taunted him, hurt him... After all the lives they threw away fighting a foe of their own creation... It wasn't hard to turn his warframe's blade on them in turn.

And then... all was black.

________________

It awoke in a daze. Stumbling forward, metal skin feeling warm sunlight for the first time in how long?

The handle of a blade, a bow, a set of throwing knives... They fit smoothly in its palm.

The voice guiding it... Something seemed familiar about her. She called it child. Was she its mother? That felt right.

Things ran at it... attacked it. It fought back, combat as easy as breathing. Mother told it well done. Told it to run when there were too many. It found a ship. The ship Cephalon activated, called it Operator.

Operator... That felt familiar. And this body of metal skin and swift movement felt right too... But the body was not its, was it? It was something else... but what? It didn't know. All it knew was it was the Operator of this "warframe", that its ship Cephalon was called Ordis and had waited a long time for its return, and that the Lotus was its mother.

Over time it found it could flow between Warframes. It tried a few, they all fought different but they felt the same. Empty. Until one that Ordis called Banshee.

It recoiled in shock when the frame greeted it, nearly loosing control altogether. Then, tentatively, it answered back. Ordis told it this was unusual, but it disregarded the warning and continued to talk to this unusual Banshee. Quickly, it became friends with this Banshee. As It made friends with her, their abilities improved. There was an edge with this frame that replied, it felt Alive and things flowed that much better. It quickly decided it vastly preferred this to the empty frames.

One day, answering a Tenno distress signal, the pair found a Trinity frame abandoned. When Operator tried to shift into her to see if she was still operational, it was greeted with two words, weak and desperate. "help... me...". It immediately promised to help, moved back to Banshee, picked up this Living Trinity, and took her home to repair.

________________

In time, Trinity returned the favour. The Lotus directed it to retrieve something important from Lua, and it took Trinity for the job. She could keep herself alive against enemy fire, and she held it in her mind in a way that made it feel safe. Something told it that it was going to need a guardian on this mission.

Together they fought their way through to a strange device. They triggered it as they approached. Their vision flicked with static and then... everything went black.

It fell on the ground. Weak... so weak... It couldn't stand, it could barely raise its body on its arms. Something was wrong, it was alone in this body yet the mind it inhabited didn't feel empty. It looked down and didn't see metal skin, instead seeing a skinsuit, strangely familiar, over an oddly small body. It looked up and saw Trinity standing there, seemingly in shock. It crawled towards her, reaching out, trying to connect, and she tiled her head looking at it. She pointed to it, then to her head, then signed a question. "Operator?" It nodded, and she stepped forward to pick it up. As she lifted it it put an arm around her to stabilise itself in her arms, and as it put a hand to her spine it found itself able to connect to her again.

Trinity carried it home, in this strange, weak, body. When the Stalker tried to attack it she saved it. She put it in the chair. She stood guard whilst the Lotus came to speak to it. She stood guard still as its... his... his? His. As his memory returned.

________________

His memories only took a few days to return, as his brain slowly awoke from the long dream. His strength, however... That took a lot longer, and a lot of work. To his day, he's still not as strong as he used to be, and he still gets tired more quickly than he used to.

Some days he feels like himself, Luason. Other days... Other days it's still just the Operator, and its own body feels strange, too small, too weak, too fleshy. Sometimes he starts out feeling like Luason, and then something will be too scary or upsetting or stressful or overwhelming or... just generally too much to deal with, and it's the Operator again. It can cope with everything more easily when it's the Operator, everything feels more distant then. Less bad. The more he has things under control the more comfortable he is as Luason.

He's trying to be Luason more, he knows the disassociation isn't healthy. But some days it's the only thing between him and breaking, and with the fate of the Origin System on his shoulders... He can't afford to break.

[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.

[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.