I was playing Legends Arceus. It was night and I see something green flying. Green? That's odd, I don't remember a green bird pokemon. Maybe something from generation six-
It was a shiny zubat
And then the sun came up and it vanished instantly.
You look up, startled and confused, as the employee lowers the gun awkwardly.
"So... um, we ran out of ammo a few months ago and management has been dragging their feet on getting more. So, uh, I guess you're getting away with it today. But please don't make a habit of it, other customers complain."
She stands there for a moment before chuckling awkwardly. "'sides, between you and me they do not pay me NEAR enough to to hide a body, and the cleanup takes way too long. I'll get in trouble for wasting time even though it's what I'm supposed to be doing."
"Sally, carts at side door," you hear over the intercom, "Sally, carts at side door."
"Yeah, see," the employee shoulders the gun, "Didn't even give me a full five minutes. This place is understaffed by half. Alright, you have a good day, sir!" She hustles off.
Question for wf fanfic writers (and players): what do you do about clans in your stories? Do you just make up names and slap disclaimers on it saying that you don't mean to refer to any existing clans? Do you just string together words that no one has ever used before and pray? Do you think it's funny if someone accidentally references your clan? Do people care?
During the narrative panel before Tennolive one of the writers said "Warframe is full of unreliable narrators." And in context they were talking about how the Drifter has no reason to be one. But I know to my core that they're so right. We don't even fully know about how many unreliable narrators there are. And now after the Old Peace reveal I have a sneaking suspicion that that line is going to plague me for years to come as the plot and the void war progresses.
It's so easy to forget. it's so so so easy. We don't even know how much of the assumed timeline is suspect.
It occurs to me that even if a character did their best to tell the story, there are so many reasons and ways to get it wrong. There’s perspective and bias, the fact that so many important events happened centuries, if not millennia ago; records were lost or destroyed, and anyone who knows anything has lived all that time, while being in stasis, traumatized, had past brain injury or tampering, or ALL OF ABOVE. Nobody can tell the truth because nobody knows what the truth is.
now I'm thinking about the nature of music, as a thing that people look at to determine that start of civilizations, for its significance with carrying forward history and lessons, how it ties close to culture and communication.
The song starts so innocent. it's telling a story. All our kin were bound to fly (here, to tau). We were built for that. In a huge force. it's our purpose.
But the chorus. Who but we may tame the sky? (we are the ones built for it.... we are the ones allowed to do it) Who but we shall distant die? (we were the ones built to die for them, instead of them. We are dying for them, far away from our origins, because they would not offer up themselves, so they made us, fodder, to do it for them) On that far shore forlorn. (our new home that was not a home, abandoned until we turned it into one)
I think the second verse is the most explicit.
Velvet blue the meadows lie- The meadows of tau are covered in the blue flowers, which we see Adis take a seed(?) from and consume. Those are their food, or at least a food, they're made for them, probably planted by them.
Though the haughty ones defy- Obviously about the Orokin. Especially the seven are the haughtiest, holier than thou characters who believe they own everything even when they give nothing. They deny them their communities, trying to keep them enslaved as tools.
Gold shall never break our tie- Again, the sentients' tie to each other and to Tau, the place they turned into a home for them, and try to keep them divided and cowed into submission, with propaganda and probably force, with false gentleness. Gold is the key symbol of the Orokin, and of their luxury and corruption. We see it on a lot of the sentients around the Tauron school as well- the ones we see serving the Orokin forces there directly. It keeps them associated with the Orokin and subservient to them.
To that far shore forlorn- again, Tau, far from where they were created, a place left forlorn with no purpose to rot until they crafted it into a paradise for them (the sentients).
The third verse is a bit harder to discern certain meaning, but that doesn't mean it has none.
Mouth to mouth and eye to eye,
Sleep where comets whisper by
Sleep while constellations sigh
Of that far shore forlorn
Mouth to mouth and eye to eye, communicating. Singing the song to each other to tell other sentients of their plight and help them understand the history of their people. The lines about sleeping under celestial bodies may have to do with the fact that this is a lullaby, likely something that parents would sing to their children to help them rest, assuming sentient children function anything similar to humanoid ones. But it is still about telling that story, the story about the plight of the sentients of Tau, which they feel is their true home.
"How are we gonna get to Tau?" Easy. we just build a tennolauncher in the middle of Duviri, and if we tune it right (all the way up) we can get it to shoot us out the other side of the void.
"but the edges of the void don't correspond to linear space-" DETAILS
The void literally has Conceptual Embodiment as a Thing.
If you build it with Faith in your heart, sheer bloody mindedness, a go get-em attitude and are capable of making it Unique, I’m sure it would work. If it doesn’t- Gaslight the Void harder.
Only problem is Wally, potentially. Be a bit embarrassing if you just end up launching yourself into his hand.
During the narrative panel before Tennolive one of the writers said "Warframe is full of unreliable narrators." And in context they were talking about how the Drifter has no reason to be one. But I know to my core that they're so right. We don't even fully know about how many unreliable narrators there are. And now after the Old Peace reveal I have a sneaking suspicion that that line is going to plague me for years to come as the plot and the void war progresses.
It's so easy to forget. it's so so so easy. We don't even know how much of the assumed timeline is suspect.
I am shoving my arms directly into the thick of it. I am plagued by visions. let's talk.
The Old Peace
I have SO many questions. Let's break it down.
When did this happen?
So, as I see it, there are two major options with a couple options underneath.
In the past, OUR past, for real. This is Lost Lore of our Tenno's past, somehow, through some mean.
At some time, in an Eternalism timeline. This is NOT our Tenno's past. It is another timeline that a different version of us experienced. Lotus and our Tenno may or may not realize this.
I'm going to briefly touch on the eternalism theory first because I have less to say about that.
Alternate Time: Eternalism Style
We are seeing, in some way, into another reality where this peace happened with the sentients, potentially either before their version of The Old War, whatever happened there, or even being the 'modern' point of it. If the Old Peace happened INSTEAD of the Old War, maybe the timeline conspired where the Orokin Empire is still in power, and that peace is still dancing on a razor's edge.
Adis seems... advanced. Notably more advanced than, for example, Natah seems. This doesn't mean much for the real timeline, as the Orokin seemed to have extremely advanced technology that the people in the modern time still don't fully understand. But it COULD be significant. If the sentients have been evolving in a fertile land ('fertile'?) for centuries, it would make sense to bear these advanced kinds of fruit.
THAT'S NOT THE POINT THO more interestingly, Lotus and the Tenno we see in that quest seem convinced, implied by the narration to be looking for something and have a sort of sense of what they're looking for. They might have a sense of Something, but not realizing that through their, what appears to be trauma bath dumpster diving they're accidentally transferring their consciousness to an eternalistic reality, not their actual past. If Lotus was trying to dig up something that she didn't actually know what it was, and the Tenno told her to keep going, she's probably not gonna question it. Especially after being yanked around by so many people she probably wants to try to figure out the truth more than anyone. But we've seen the Drifter transfer back to alternate pasts seemingly, so the Operator could totally do it too.
Ok. let's take a breath. Let's think about the alternative.
THE OLD NOT WAR
This did happen in our Tenno's past. At some point, they lived side by side with sentients, on Tau, in the Tau system that is, and they forgot this, and the history we've learned so far is wrong, or perhaps, highly lacking.
Then the question is, when did this happen?
Before the Old War? The Zariman did in fact make it to Tau, or some things were sent to Tau after the Zariman Fuckup, and this whole thing happened before everything went to hell in a hand basket? This is what I'd think we'd be meant to assume at the jump.
During.... the Old War? Potentially the sentients moved carefully without alerting the people who were there living with them and tried to reverse their living situation subtly before just deciding to all out enslave or wipe them out.... I don't know how you'd roll this. I just don't know. But it is a possibility....?
After the Old War. h???????? The warframe stuff would make more sense. nothing else would.
Let's look at the facts:
-We are a Tenno. We have a Warframe. We can transfer in and out of that warframe seemingly easily, and have what are implied to be Focus abilities.
-Everything is done up in Orokin Gold. All the warframes and things we see are primes. The grinner are done up in gold. The SENTIENTS have Orokin Gold on them.
-Ballas is Blue as Balls.
-The faction that we seem to be communicating with as our commander and what not is labeled THE OROKIN EMPIRE.
-There is a rebellion, seemingly against The Orokin Empire. It is implied that the people involved with it want or see strife between the Orokin/Tenno and the Sentients as inevitable. This rebellion also involves Dax. a lot of them.
-There being a sentient that is notably human-like seems to be a big deal. There's a sentient as well that has a title of Archimedian but he talks just like a human/orokin.
-There's a cephalon that looks like a little angry eyebrow version of owl!Ordis. His name is Daklo. I don't know if this is important to the lore but it's important to me. I love him even tho he's xenophobic. Daklo character arc when.
-This sentient Adis seems to have some ability to 'heal' other sentients and seems to be a friend to our Tenno. This friendship includes throwing down in the ring including massive kaiju fights, as all good friendships do. He, notably, does not talk like humans/orokin necessarily do. (fuck, are these Adis's pronouns? I don't actually remember. heck)(EDIT: seem to be he/him from what we've seen so far)
-The Tau planets that we see, at least one of them, are covered in seemingly the bodies of slain warframes.
There's more but I can only remember so much. But even that is a lot. So let's think about the things that mark a timeline the most.
WARFRAMES
Warframes and transference are a big one. The Tenno interfacing with the warframes as far as we know didn't happen until the Zariman Ten-Zero showed up and they learned about the whole void devils power stuff at which point they were given pet WMDs to pilot. From what I can recall we have NO idea on a timeline of this, when exactly these things happened. But it would have had to be post the voyage of the Zariman Ten-Zero because as far as I know warframes really weren't a thing at that point, at least not a thing that worked.
This would mean that the Zariman Tenno get void touched, come home, get adopted into the war machine and THEN go to Tau afterwards. But I was personally under the impression that the main reason warframes were developed were for use in the Old War. If I am wrong please correct me. It's conceivable that they would have maybe expected a conflict with the sentients and made some ahead of time, but then why are there so many dead in the sand? All of them seem to be Prime too. I would think they'd be valuable still, even if they were only the shells. What killed them? Was there already an armed conflict between the sentients and the Tenno? Are the Tenno there to try to keep the peace and keep the sentients behaving??
Depending on what the timeline already in place says or implies,that could lean towards this being just before the Old War, or even during the Old War. We don't even know how long the Old War took, it's possible it technically lasted decades, perhaps they tried to find peace in the middle of the Old War, at least the people on Tau did. But the fact that there IS people on Tau is the most surprising thing.
When did they get there? I was under the impression the sentients wanted to keep the Orokin from colonizing Tau. We didn't see a whole lot of normal people, but we did see a lot of Dax soldiers. Where did they come from? And the fact that there's a school at Tau is odd. Is that a school for the Tenno specifically? Is it for the Sentients? Is there a whole colony there? Is it just called a School and Schooling is not actually its main objective???
THE OROKIN EMPIRE
The fact that we seem to be working for the Orokin Empire seems to be another weird point for me. The current lore ties the end of the Old War and the fall of the Orokin Empire together quite tightly with the celebration where the Tenno massacre like all the Orokin officials I'm pretty sure. So why would it still be called that if it was post-Old War? Maybe if they didn't actually know the result of the war? But that would still be, to me, during the Old War. But with the Tenno working for the Orokin Empire seemingly without question implies to me that this is earlier than that. Idk if they'd be acting that way if they knew Margulis was dead, for example.
(That being said, this being something that happens during the Old War with Tau having a completely different thing going on from the Origin System at the same time would be deeply fascinating. But also I'd pay a lot of money to see a story that happens at the time when the Tenno learn that Margulis is dead and the fall out of that specifically.)
TAU
I don't know exactly what terraforming meant to the Sentients, what Tau started as and what was livable, but it feels noticeable that so much of what we see if barren wasteland. There's some flowers and plants that remind me of blue sentient energy a lot, some caves that seem full of life, but the surface of the planets we see are empty. rocky. wartorn. It feels like either there's been a conflict going on for a long time here, causing problems for the terraforming mission, or the terraforming isn't very far along, or the terraforming project isn't about making a system full of healthy biospheres like I always assumed.
Depending on which of these is true, that would inform where this is in the timeline.
I have reached critical corkboard mass. I think I need to go lay down and do the rest of my thoughts later in smaller chunks.
I am so excited to go to Tau in 2026. You have no idea. I wanna see it so bad, whatever's happened to it.
And I need to know if Ballas is there so I can stab him again.
"How are we gonna get to Tau?" Easy. we just build a tennolauncher in the middle of Duviri, and if we tune it right (all the way up) we can get it to shoot us out the other side of the void.
"but the edges of the void don't correspond to linear space-" DETAILS
At some point we're gonna learn that the truth about time travel is it was always eternalism. You try to shoot yourself into the past and miss and wind up in a different dimension, a different side of the die. It's like flying.
The version of the song that Adis sings around the grineer troops is different from the full song. That stanza doesn't appear in the full song. I wonder if that's on purpose, since the song sounds like it's about the sentients standing up against the Orokin in a way- I wonder if that's the censored\altered version that Adis sings around people who aren't the Tenno, aka his best friend.
Having a Lancer homebrew corp with a naming scheme based on historical natural disasters seems great until you realize that the majority of well-documented natural disasters have survivors still living today.
I want to be slightly comedically edgy, not insensitive.
HELLO and thank you @potatos-are-best for taking my bait and encouraging me to talk about my ideas because I've been thinking about them on and off for like a year or so now
So. I think a lot about this game and specifically its worldbuilding, and my ideas revolve a lot around one thing:
Warframe is a game that is set up with one protagonist: You. All these cool interesting things happen To You specifically and You are the one who gets the cool rewards and is trusted by everyone.
But if You are the one with all the plot, then what's everyone else doing?
If there's theoretically somewhere between thousands to millions of Tenno in canon, what happens when eight of them show up to a distress call? What happens if four of them get involved in a quest? What if Ballas was confronted with twenty tenno that he had to throw into the void?? What if they DON'T all get thrown into the void? how does this change things?
And if so much knowledge from Orokin times has been lost, then what does Tenno culture look like now when all these young people become found and have chances to communicate again? What is New Tenno Culture?
I call it the Many Tenno Theory, or tentatively the Many Tenno AU. It's about the same as the lore of the game, but there's more variety in things, especially in quest stuff, because there's a lot of tenno all potentially able to get involved.
(this might be a little long so I might put some of it under a cut)
The only thing I have as NOT adapted for Many Tenno so far is Umbra, but I think that makes it more interesting. One Tenno gets Umbra, and goes through the majority of the Sacrifice, basically because he was the first one there. So like I have one Tenno who acts like he's The Protagonist, but he's not actually the protagonist of the story. Because it's about everyone else and multiple people who live different lives and how every Tenno has different experiences but they all live through these cornerstone events- second dream, the sacrifice, the new war- and how the story changes if different Tenno make different decisions.
I have.... fffffive? main Tenno characters I've got some fun in depth ideas for and a couple secondary characters but I imagine I'd make up a lot of casual characters for actually writing this because to me that's half the fun. And I don't have as much about their drifters yet but Duviri is another interesting can of worms that I've been thinking about.
Like, Duviri is very much set up around The Drifter being the one suffering the loop, and everyone else they knew is gone/somewhere else/mysteriously disappeared and they're taking on Dominus Thrax alone. But what if they're not totally alone? Where are the other Drifters? I've been playing with the idea of potentially the Drifters like, one person gets to play The Drifter at a time in a given loop, and the others are playing the roles of the Duvirians, or potentially multiple loops going on at the same time but sometimes they manage to sense each other in some way. They know others are Somewhere, they just can't access them much. But I think it'd also be interesting for the Drifters to be able to interact with each other somewhat, but not in the same way Tenno do with each other. So I'm still sort of playing around with that for What Happens In Duviri but I know there's an interesting answer there. What if they leave notes for each other in their loops? What if they work together to get one of them on the throne to free them all? What if they see the face of their friend behind a mask and know that they're not fully there because they're caught by the Storybook? How does this effect their relationships after they get out? I have a lot of thoughts, there's a lot of potential there for telling an interesting story.
That would also open the possibility of Drifters having different relationships between themselves than the Tenno do, and I think that could lead to some interesting dynamics.
I also like thinking a lot about like, Tenno creating a culture. Some people try to find out what Old Tenno Culture was like and recreate it, some people don't want to do that because that was heavily influenced by the Orokin, it would just be acting like their lapdogs again. People make clans and make little bases on planets, people hang out at relays and outside of Cetus and try to dig up the old forgotten secrets of the system before the Orokin rose to power. They align with different syndicates and adopt their philosophies, or don't. What kind of culture do they have? Do you think some clans get together in Orb Vallis for K-Drive rallies? For fun?? Do you think they do deep sea diving on Uranus to dig up old relics? How do you think the Tenno's personalities change after they've been awake for years and they get used to being People again? How do you think they have fun???
There's a lot to expand on here. I might start by describing some of my characters before I get into anything too specific but I've had a lot of ideas over time on some interesting events and ways to do things so if you have any questions I'd love to hear and answer them.
