Sandbox / Zuxtron

Holdfasts (Spoilers!)

Let all the System see that the Zariman is defended.

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.

—Zariman Pledge

When the Zariman Ten-Zero was trapped in the Void, most of the adult crew was corrupted and possessed by the influence of the Man in the Wall, becoming the strange and hostile Void Angels - but a few possessed enough Heroic Willpower that, while they were heavily mutated, they did not answer the call of the Angels' Hive Mind and instead became odd beings who retain their human memories. When the Tenno come to investigate the song of the Angels, they quickly contact their old peers and serve as much-needed guides to the ghost ship.

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• Absent-Minded Professor: Archimedean Yonta. She's quite chipper about things like the Angels singing like something big is coming, describes her head as "noisy" at times, opens conversations with Techno Babble, struggles to remember greetings and farewells, and reacts like she forgot she was talking to someone mid-conversation.
• Admiring the Abomination: As an Archimedean, Yonta is naturally curious about the supernatural phenomena on the ship. Gaining reputation with the Holdfasts consists of handing over Voidplumes, fragments left behind by the Void Angels and other horrors roaming the ship, for her to study.
  Look at all the precious little nightmares!
• Aerith and Bob: Their names run the gamut from completely fictious (Yonta) to recognizable but odd (Hombrask and Cavalero, though the former seems to come from the spanish word "hombre" - which means "man") to normal (Quinn and, before she turned into a void angel, Kira).
• The Atoner: Most of them have regrets for their lives, but Quinn takes the cake for willfully glassing dissenters aboard the ship, some of whom are stuck as Cephalons forever. Rank 5 has them each commit to using the rest of eternity to atone.
• Body Horror: Each of the Holdfasts has swirling silver markings covering half of their faces, indicating the level of Void corruption they've undertaken; full corruption results in submitting to the Void's "song" and imbibing energies from the Reliquary Drive, causing the rest of their bodies to be twisted into Void Angels like Kira and the rest of the crew. This corruption is progressively undone as they "drink of your light" when you rank up with them, indicated by the marks diminishing. After Rank 5, they appear to be fully human with unclouded minds, though they're still ghosts bound to the Zariman.
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • The six other colony syndicates exist as pairs — one accessible to all players once they unlock the social hub and associated landscape, the other only available after the player completes The War Within due to requiring access to Operator powers. As accessing the Zariman requires completing The New War, which is chronogically seven quests after the events of The War Within, there is no paired syndicate to go with the Holdfasts.
  • Additionally, most syndicate's Operator-only vendor provides customizable outfits for the Operator. The outfit for the Holdfasts is rewarded at the end of the Angels of the Zariman quest, with the purchasable parts actually being materials (the Voidshell Cosmetics have customizable materials).
  • Every one of the major colony syndicates has a cosmetic armor set that's associated with them, but the Holdfasts don't; instead, they have the Raptwing and Seraphayre Ephemeras that add the appearance of Void Angel-like armor to your Warframe.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The Holdfasts are not being metaphorical when they describe themselves as ghosts; each one of them died in the chaos after the Void Jump incident, but the Void kept them conscious in death and their Heroic Willpower allowed each to retain their sanity until now. At Rank 4 they even tell you how they all died: Hombask was torn to pieces by the Void-addled crew, Cavalero pulled an explosive Taking You with Me to save the children, Quinn was blasted to ash by Zariman children due to Poor Communication Kills, and Yonta gave herself the Jade Light.
• Dark Secret: Each of the remaining Holdfasts have one related to their roles aboard the Zariman, as discussed each time you rank up. Each weighs heavily on their minds:
  • Yonta was the Archimedian who calculated the Void Jump and overrode concerns from amongst the crew about the dangers of the unprecedented range, denouncing the dissenters all as traitors to the Empire. Even now she insists she could get the jump right if she could do it all over again, despite not knowing what went wrong the first time.
  • Hombask was one of the resulting insurrectionists, who personally sabotaged the agricultural biomes to space all of the plants on the ship in an attempt to have the mission called off. She failed to realize that the Orokin would just be willing to let the whole crew — even the children — starve for the journey if the mission was otherwise successful.
  • Cavalero was a security officer who rounded up insurrectionists to "make examples" of them. Quinn was his superior and held the "Crystal Index", a tablet used to select people to glass and provide the ship with Cephalons. According to Cavalero himself, Quinn used to be very similar to the Orokin in their way of thinking.
• Enemy Without: Downplayed: Yonta's childhood anxieties have taken the form of Skittergirl, a Void manifestation shaped like teenage Yonta, who regards her as a mild embarrassment. She is usually helpful, but in Void Floods she enjoys stealing the Vitoplast and Energy from the Tenno for her own amusement.
• Evolving Weapon: The Holdfasts and the Tenno aren't the only things the Void twisted — they also affected the weapons on the ship, turning them into Incarnon weapons. While the original weapons were ceremonial (the Laetum, the Incarnon pistol is outright stated to be a confetti gun), their new forms are significantly more deadly. Completing certain tasks allows you to further enhance their forms.
• Godzilla Threshold: The Zariman was not supposed to have weapons aboard it. The potential risks if the Reliquary Drive were breached, however, were dangerous enough that the Orokin included automated weapon systems to protect said drive.
• Mission Control: Each Holdfast acts as this for a mission type in the Zariman. Quinn manages Void Cascades, Archmedian Yonta manages Void floods, Cavalero manages Extermination and Void Armageddon and Hombask manages Mobile defence missions. Cavalero will also temporarily take over mission control should a Void Angel be triggered during any Zariman mission.
• No-Sell: The Holdfasts were the few adults that weren't driven mad by the failed Void Jump. Unfortunately for them, the maddened adults vastly outnumbered them.
• Living Relic: Of the Orokin middle classes — their numbers include one Archimedian, what's implied to be a security guard, a woman in charge of homesteading, and whatever caste that Quinn belongs to.
• Our Angels Are Different: By the time the Tenno reach the Zariman in real space, the majority of the Holdfasts have succumbed to the song of the Void and become Void Angels — Angelic Abominations with tentacle-like wings, scythes for hands, no faces, and special powers provided by the Void.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Holdfasts are Technically-Living Zombie versions of ghosts, being unable to leave the Zariman and able to teleport around it at will, contacting people telepathically.
• Psychic Powers: Weaker than the Tenno, but still present. The mostly use these for communication.
  • Teleporters and Transporters: They're also capable of teleporting around the ship and opening portals to allow the Tenno to fast-travel around or back to the Chrysalith.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Yonta figured out how to take the Zariman to Tau system in one jump - disable the safeties in the sequence. This in turn allowed the Void uncursion on the ship, and we know the rest of the story.

Kahl's Garrison / Veilbreakers (Spoilers!)

If Narmer make Veils, Kahl and Blue Girl break them.

"Who help Grineer today? Not Queens. Not Vay Hek. Tenno and Blue Girl help brothers. Other brothers still have Veil. So Kahl break. This camp little. But soon, it get big. You see. Kahl not afraid. And now Kahl not alone."

—Kahl-175, Veilbreaker

Thought lost at the start of the New War, Kahl-175 was not killed by the Sentients... instead, he suffered with the despicable brainwashing device known as the Narmer Veil. With the death of Ballas, he was finally freed, but upon realizing neither the Queens nor Vay Hek came to rescue him, he grew disillusioned towards the Grineer military hierarchy, and cast off his ties with them. Instead, Kahl now fights for his "brothers", leading a resistance force not unlike Steel Meridian, freeing captured prisoners who still labor under the Narmer Veil. He does so with the help of the Tenno, the adventurous Daughter Entrati, and a profane Australian Solaris known only as Chipper.

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• A Day in the Limelight: The Veilbreaker quest is this, with Kahl breaking out of a Murex and freeing captured Narmer prisoners, before finally forming his Garrison faction to destroy the Narmer remnants.
• Arch-Enemy: Kahl-175 to Pazuul, the Narmer remnant leader. To a lesser extent, he has also sworn vengeance against Vay Hek and the Queens, who abandoned him and untold numbers of other Grineer to the Sentients.
• Awesome Aussie: Chipper's dialogue is scattered with Commonwealth slang. As he's heavily implied to have criminal leanings and was sent to the Fortuna penal colony, he's very strongly coded Australian, which is rather appropriate for a Solaris.
• Beware the Nice Ones: They're all decent folk, what with Kahl being a Gentle Giant, Chipper being...er, chipper, and even Daughter is always willing to help in her own somewhat ostentatious way...but woe be unto anyone whom crosses their path that supports Narmer...or worse, is a member of Narmer itself.
• Camp Cook: Kahl and his crew are eventually joined by Horrek, an Ostron who was freed from Narmer holding cells and decided to stay at the Garrison. He can usually be found stirring a big pot of mystery-meat stew (mostly Kuaka) and waxing philosphical. His comments suggest he was captured by Narmer because he got blackout drunk, did something stupid, and his wife locked him out of the house. Three straight days of being in a Narmer drunk tank was apparently not enough to get back in her good graces, so he's at the Garrison.
• Defector from Decadence: Kahl defects from the Grineer army because they left him and hundreds of other clones to die in Narmer service. He even points out that Vay Hek's plans would bring more Grineer into the world, but that the world would be ruined and not worth living in as a result.
• The Dreaded: Chipper apparently has this reputation among his former Corpus compatriots; one of his stories is that he did time in an isolation tank, and kept getting weeks added to his sentence—not because of any new crimes, but because his jailers were terrified of being the poor chump that had to let him out. And Chipper's tone of voice implies that there was one hell of a reckoning when his release finally came.
• Escort Mission: Getting a Defense stage during an Archon Hunt Will task you with defending Chipper while he scans for the Archon’s location. Chipper has a kitgun and is very much willing to open fire on Narmer forces, and it’s in your best interest to avoid letting them take him down.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: The three primary Garrison crew are uneven by design. Kahl's Grineer Lancer uniform has mismatched shoulders, where one has an empty slot for his Deployable Cover—the other shoulder was nearly blown off, along with half his face. Chipper did custom-mods on his own body and is plastered in uneven, unique Solaris body parts. Daughter Entrati is an Orokin, a species which grew one of their arms to a strange, distorted extent, leaving the other normal sized.
• Friendly Shopkeeper: Chipper is, um, chipper considering the circumstances in which you meet him. He gleefully greets even unfamiliar Tenno with enthusiastic charm, all because Kahl vouched for them. That said, he claims he did not get the name because of his 'sunny disposition.'
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: All three of your major Garrison allies are kind of mouthy and rude to one another at first, but you get to see them genuinely working together to oppose Narmer and save people.
• Jumped at the Call: Daughter, Kahl, and Chipper are all-in on the idea of fighting Narmer the moment it's brought up; they may disagree slightly on methods, but they agree that stopping Narmer is a worthy goal and they immediately contribute to it in their own ways.
• Karmic Thief: Chipper takes this perspective on the team and the questionably-obtained goods you can get in his shop, as most of them are liberated by Kahl from Narmer stockpiles.
  Chipper: Stolen? Perish the thought! Spoils of war, mate.
• La Résistance: To Narmer, being most focused on disrupting Narmer cells and directly attacking their facilities.
• Mad Doctor: Chipper, just a little. He makes it quite clear that he's talented at modifying everything, including himself, which is to say he cut off his own limbs (including his own head) to upgrade them.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: After being abandoned to the Narmer Veil for years, Kahl has had it with the Kuva Queens, Vay Hek, and all of the Grineer army hierarchy, rejecting them entirely and forming his own resistance cell. Chipper joins out of gratitude to Kahl, but also to spite the Corpus who left him and many other Veiled Solaris hanging.
• Monster Roommate: Kahl sets up his Garrison right outside the Drifter's camp, leading to the amusing prospect of both Kahl and the Tenno being monsters to each other—Kahl as a decaying clone warrior whose race is dedicated to killing and enslaving others, the Tenno as a Void-warped semi-human abomination who by that point has slaughtered Grineer in the thousands. They are both perfectly cordial to each other.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Kahl to the Grineer and Daughter to the Orokin. Both reject the oppressiveness of their respective empires and aspire to do good things and help those in need, particularly those enslaved by Narmer.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Whatever happened when Kahl got off the Murex did not go over well with Daughter and Mother Entrati. Kahl apologies sheepishly for bringing his clone crew to Deimos. Also, whatever Chipper did to himself—we don't see the results, but it's apparently unnerving to other Solaris (possibly because of how risky it was).
  • A line of dialogue has Horrek ask Kahl when Daughter will send them more polyps because he wants "[his] world to undulate again", to which Kahl replies negatively, and says Daughter said that "[Horrek] knows what he did".
• Professor Guinea Pig: Chipper proudly claims he 'did his own mods,' which is to say he augmented himself with his own custom cybernetic enhancements... which means he had to test out all the limb removal and reprogramming the unique parts he uses without anyone else's help, or having tested them on someone else first.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Oh boy are they ever. Mission Control is the youngest daughter of a family of infested Orokin. The Do-Anything Soldier is a scarred veteran clone with a big heart lurking under a gruff exterior. The Friendly Shopkeeper is a cheerful scavenger who wonders why people are so concerned he cut off his own head. Later additions include an Ostron Chef, a Corpus Crewman, and a female Grineer Arms Dealer. Finally, they're campground roommates to Void-touched Child Soldiers.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder: During the Prison Break mission, when Daughter points Kahl to a Bolkor transport, she asks if he remembers how things turned out the last time she flew one with him as the gunner. He answers that "[he] rescued his brother and escaped", which is also true.
• Self-Surgery: Chipper is a Solaris who, in lieu of going into debt, opted to just augment himself. This includes removing his own limbs and head and installing all the necessary parts. He mentions a lot of screaming on his part.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Chipper is introduced having his Narmer Veil removed... followed by him swearing vigorously at Kahl for using such a dangerous device without fine-tuning it first. The rest of his dialogue is peppered with a variety of Minced Oaths.
• Transhumanism: In a weird way, each member of the Garrison represents a type of potential human growth beyond natural limits: Kahl is genetic engineering, Chipper is cybernetic augmentation, Daughter is organic mutation, and the Tenno is psionic/empathic talent. At the same time, however, they deconstruct the traditional ideals of transhumanism by embracing their more human aspects in their efforts—Kahl and Chipper outright reject their respective factions of the Grineer and Corpus, because they were treated as disposable and subsequently forgotten by their leaders when captured by Narmer. Daughter, who is arguably the closest to this trope by way of herself being Orokin, who blew past The Singularity long ago, doesn't outright reject her family, but she does reject the Narmer cult, which is essentially an modern continuance of the Orokins. And the Tenno...well, if you've gotten this far in the story, you know damn well what the Orokin did to the Tenno—and what the Tenno did to the Orokin in return. Each forms genuine bonds with each other and become close comrades, as opposed to the Orokin (read: the original transhumanists of the story), who would have used and discarded them without a second thought, much like the Grineer and Corpus had done to Kahl and Chipper, respectively, simply because they were "below" them.