r/WarframeLore • u/razzy1319 • 8d ago
Were there any Warframes that worked without Tenno? Were the warframes active after the collapse until the start of the game?
I'm getting confused when a Warframe has lore.
First, when a Warframe is described as doing something monumental, is it a tenno controlling the Warframe or is it the person before being made into a warframe? Like Ivara with the Hunt or Atlas with the Asteroid.
Or with Dagath which is the source of the confusion. Dagath was a Dax that was made to be a warframe and then killed but survived. They hunted their master after being revived. So, was the Dax hunting their former master or was the tenno assigned to Dagath hunting them?
Second, there are some Frame lore that describes Warframe actions after the second dream. I think Gauss and Grendel are hunting orokin. So are Tenno still actively using Frames and hunting Orokin and taking orders from Lotus while in the second dream? The sequence in the dark refactory quest confused me a bit because she sealed them in the second dream to protect them from the Sentient invasion of Lua?
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u/Street-Awareness4541 8d ago
Ok so its kinda a mix when mentioned in lore but sacrifice gives us a good ans
"We took our greatest, volunteers or not, and polluted them with these cultured reagents. They transformed. They became Infested..." Ballas: "... but only just. Their skin blossomed into sword-steel. Their organs, interlinked with untold resilience. Yet their minds were free of the Infested madness. Or so we thought. We set them upon the battlefield, bio-drones under our command."
The frames original ones not the ones we craft atleast were humans with wills and in nearly all prime trailers we can see ballas mocking someone or other and punishing by making them frames
The ones we craft are copies of copies helminth strain bring the only biological part of it we do not consume humans to make them helminth kinda loves/is scared of us and the
Some times its a operator in control but again its never mentioned when is which the case since for most operators are non existant its a secret of a long dead empire for them the term tenno or warframe is swapabe as far as i understand
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u/ciel_lanila 7d ago
There is some gray area with the copies and copies. We technically built Umbra in the Forge after he was killed. HIs will and mind strong enough to help us create him a new body.
A scene I'm not to yet in the story to speak of first hand, but I've read people mentioning a protoframe going "rap tap tap" and using Rellisms. Suggesting that through the helminth strains a shared consciousness can exist. Of course, this could also be part of the answer as to why frames rarely show signs of sapience. Maybe the more "copies" of a specific frame the more whatever is left of the person is spread thin if they don't have the mental strength to focus on one individual frame.
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u/razzy1319 8d ago
I just remembered we do see a creation of a frame through the protoframes. Curious more is how Flare is interacting and speaking with his infestation. One could assume that the infested madness is when they don’t get along and it reflects more the human’s trauma.
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u/YellowGrowlithe 7d ago
Also, flare is a good example of the strain being somewhat timeless. Lizzy tells of the future, for example.
Relatedly, Leon talked about how he heard Rell through their connection to Harrow, such that he even perhaps ended up with a connection before he was ever infested because of how the strains link users across time and space.
So its not so farfetched to say "yeah, we didnt make it with humans in our 3d printer- and yet, because of the infestation- this warframe has all the same memories and connection to consciousness of the original frames."
Very theseus, much Ship.
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u/Bannedfordumbshit 8d ago
I think it's just the first generation frames (people infected with the warframe strains) that are sentient, everything foundry made isn't. Some of those first generations are probably still running around doing their thing, obviously the whole Stalker family for one, Umbra to an extent, there's a likely chance Dagath is still out there, etc. But there are others that are piloted by the tenno definitely, although it's unlikely we'll ever know which because it iust doesn't matter tbh
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u/huntressofwintertide 8d ago
Given we have an entire crypt dedicated to dagath I'd assume she's dead unless it's just to fit her "spooky" aesthetic
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u/Bannedfordumbshit 8d ago
I just assumed it was for the aesthetic lol, it is a Halloween thing (i'm pretty sure anyway). Nothing really pointed to her being dead in the story or anything, but unless they decide to tie it into a story i doubt we'll really know. Maybe her prime?
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u/DatLoonArt 8d ago
I can imagine her Prime Halloween release:
“So she is risen from her Crypt, made herself a new face & is ready to PUNISH”2
u/huntressofwintertide 8d ago
Perhaps...but what did she make her face from...also nights of naberus is my favourite time for Warframe
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u/DatLoonArt 5d ago
I mean, Helminth is right here ;3
But it also could be some unfortunate soul.1
u/huntressofwintertide 4d ago
But helminth is friend...
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u/Leosarr 7d ago
Initial warframes (that is to say, the first person to be turned into a warframe) are sentient ; they served as template for mass production. Mass produced warframe are mostly empty with just bits of personality left inside
Some of those sentient warframe are still around ! Like Excalibur Umbra & Stalker
The problem the Orokin had was that sentient warframes tended to get rebellious/crazy, something that wasn't helped by the Orokin growing tendency of turning people into warframe as a punishment, and piloting empty warframes was an entire other can of worms
Ballas devised a stopgap solution with the Ascaris key ; something that burrows into a warframe and allows one to forcibly pilot them - but it didn't turn out suited for mass production. That's the orokin relic Vor hits you with at the start of the game !
Anyway once the Tenno returned they were able to calm the rampant warframes and pilot all of them (sentient or empty) so the Orokin finally had their army
Tldr : The very first warframes worked without Tenno and most are gone now. Warframes built afterward are mostly empty puppets.
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u/EragonX322 6d ago
I thought this was the right answer. I’m just seeing people mixing umbra lore onto the rest. Only pain soothing being done was for umbra
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u/SpecialIcy5356 7d ago
Warframes without operators basically go feral and just start attacking anything and everything around them with no co-ordination or tactics, just "I must KILL" energy. any time a Tenno does something incredible beyond just raw murder they would have an operator, unless specified otherwise.
Dagath was a feral frame, the process which turned the Rider into a warframe likely kept the memory of how the Orokin they served wanted to kill her horse and didn't save her in the conventional sense when she was fatally wounded. after killing Corphel and Irilia, the Rider does what feral frames do and starts going around killing, but with a penchant for tying to kill Orokin over regular humans (though anyone caught empty handed on Naberus is also fair game apparently), Grandmother only escapes because she let the Rider have her official name, Dagath. it's possible at some point that a Tenno might have eventually controlled her before we did, but the legend of Dagath is already known by this time, and it is possible Dagath went without an Operator until she was finally destroyed.
Gauss and Grendel were hunting Orokin after the Naga Drum ceremony which is the moment the Tenno betrayed the Orokin and killed the executors and emperors. not all of the orokin were present at the ceremony (lower ranked minor lords etc.) but they had to kill every last one or otherwise the empire would continue to function, so after the Night of the Naga Drums, the Tenno spread throughout the system hunting the Orokin. the Naga Drums were just the beginning of a longer campaign to eradicate the Orokin entirely (but some of them, mainly Albrecht, the Entrati family, Roathe and Ballas, survived)
the dark refractory stuff is happening way after the tenno are awoken, the Refractory is just a machine that lets you relive repressed memories (like the Animus in Assassin's creed, but it's your memories, not your ancestors.)
the Tenno were hidden in the Reservoir and Lotus then arranged to have the moon where it is based (lua, earth's moon) thrown into the Void (most recent story quest explains how she did it, I won't spoil) so that the Sentients couldn't reach it. but then Hunhow order Stalker to go there and kill the Tenno: Stalker works for a sentient but is NOT a sentient so he can access the resevoir on Hunhow's behalf, we have to escape the resevoir to avoid stalker.
hope that clears some stuff up.
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u/razzy1319 7d ago
Timeline stuff is still a bit hazy. Is this right?
- Old war is happening
- Tenno are woken up from the first dream to control Warframes
- Old Peace is established and ended
- Tenno almost kills Ballas so Margulis sends the Tenno to the 2nd dream
- Orokin about to win the old war
- Ballas Betrays them, sends sentients to Lua Resovoir
- Lotus sends Lua to the void.
- the orokin “win” the war
- Tenno enacts the night of the naga drums
- Tenno continue to hunt the orokin remnants during the collapse while in the second dream in resovoir in the void.
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u/SpecialIcy5356 7d ago
pretty much. AFAIK though the children were more or less awake for a time after the incident and the orokin were trying to figure out what to do with them, until one day, as noted in Rhino Prime's codex, a Tenno managed to calm a Rhino warframe prototype that went feral, simply by touching it.
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u/LimboMain2020 7d ago
If I remember right, Drusus purposefully blurs that line between Frame and Operator. Sorta in a way that both deserve the glory for their part in it. Most warframe legends are legends for a reason, their stories are not entirely true but not entirely False either. At the end of the day, I'm unsure how much the distinction really matters.
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u/JustAnArtist1221 6d ago
Yes, there are independent warframes.
No, not every warframe in lore is independent, but that doesn't mean they're all Tenno operated.
Dagath does not have an operator in her lore.
The Second Dream is not the Tenno being asleep. It's the Tenno being put under so deeply that they can't tell they're not the warframe. Yes, Tenno are actively hunting the Orokin throughout the Collapse. If you look at order Leverians, you'll get major hints because some of these stories are warframes specifically being offended by children being exploited, such as Nezha and Ash. That indicates that they're Tenno. Others may just be the warframes, such as Lavos.
The Dark Refractory storyline doesn't conclude that the Tenno are put in the Second Dream for the invasion of Lua. It was to protect the Tenno from being held accountable for the fallout on Perita. The excuse was that they needed to be placed under because of the pain they suffered from their Void powers, which may have been true to an extent for most. The invasion of Lua wasn't planned until after Margulis was killed. The Tenno were being threatened by the Orokin to be disposed of because they couldn't be controlled.
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u/FoxInDistress 7d ago
There's the quest where we find a chroma without an operator and I think is still just roaming
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u/Vanessa_Camburao 5d ago edited 5d ago
The fully sentient ones are mostly the primes IIRC in lore, which would be the original "this was the person we turned into warframe X, then grabbed their blueprint and mass produced it"
With some very specific exceptions such as harrow,jade,dagath or umbra, the normal ones we own are mass produced empty shells with small bits of human concinouness.
They are somewhat concious but kind of surrender control to the operator to be able to function if that makes any sense, the obvious exceptions for this are Umbra, Sevagoth, Stalker and Jade
If they're working on auto mode for too long, they eventually either go berserk or stop functioning, which is why the orokin first began pairing tennos with the frames
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u/Impossible-Cherry439 8d ago
Warframes are sentient, but from my understanding, they are mostly dormant and open to being controlled. I think I heard somewhere that being controlled takes their pain away. So warframes moving on their own isn't too unheard of. We even see it when our warframe pulls the War sword out.
The tenno have been in a cryopod since the end of the old war. Either 'some' of the tenno are awake and doing missions or none of them are awake. Regardless, they all still take orders from the lotus.