WMG / Warframe

As a WMG subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Lotus' mission was to turn the Tenno against the Orokin

.With the revelation that Lotus is a rogue Sentient, the nature of her "mission" is obvious. If the "last sequence" she refused to perform was to destroy the Tenno, the first stages of it were clearly to subvert the Tenno and use them to destroy their masters, as recounted in the Stalker's testimony. The Tenno were invincible in battle and defeated the Sentient invasion (despite taking casualties such as Mirage) so the only way the Sentients could win was to subvert them. Lotus was meant to destroy them after using them to destroy the Orokin, making their victory complete, but she refused, preferring to keep them for herself as her children.

• Confirmed.

Infested Ancients are Orokin-created footsoldiers from the Old War

Ancients, as many have already commented here, do not resemble any of the Corpus or Grineer enemies we see in the game. Also, they are the only Infested enemy that is also seen as controlled by Orokin technology in its Corrupted version. What if that is their natural state? What killed or captured the first Grineer or Corpus to make Corrupted versions of them? It certainly couldn't have been the traps alone. We already know that the Orokin created Lephantis to fight in the war, so we already have confirmation that they "built" infested for use in the war.

So why not Ancients? They don't use technology that could be subverted by the Sentients, they're pretty tough and come in a few Eximus alternate versions, and they can be controlled. This answers the question of why the Ancients don't look like they're based on anything else - they were built from the ground up! That explains their name too - after the end of the war all the remaining controlled Ancients stayed in storage, ready to pounce on intruders. They also have an organic steering-wheel like growth we see similar to Frost Prime's face plate and Corrupted masks.

• It's looking unlikely. Synthesis lore indicates that the Ancient Healers only started appearing after the Tenno betrayed the Orokin, when members of an Orokin healing caste inadvertently succumbed to the Infestation. Furthermore, the gold ornamentation seen on the Corrupted Ancients is more than likely the same neural interface seen on all the other Corrupted enemies, not a growth.

The series takes place post-Mass Effect, after the Destroy ending.

(Ending spoilers for Mass Effect 3, obviously)

• In the aftermath of Shepard's sacrifice and a great deal of technology being lost, along with the Mass Relays, and with the Reaper war leaving planets in ruin and no longer distracting the many organics from in-fighting, it's not long until another war springs up. Earth is still reeling from being the hardest hit of the Reaper war, and with much of the Alliance in tatters, rebel groups begin picking up steam in the resulting chaos. The remnants of Cerberus that managed to stay in the Solar System, still indoctrinated to the Reaper cause, begin to band together and link up, holding on to the data that they gained from Sanctuary. With the Alliance's hands tied, they're able to convert desperate civilians and rebel groups to their cause by indoctrination. Over time, Cerberus' weapons and armor improve, while they refine their research, making breakthroughs in cloning, flooding Alliance military with dumb human clones that are just as strong, durable, and hulking as the krogan - if not faster. Soon, the bulk of Cerberus are easy-to-control clones, and they manage to take over a ruined Earth.
  • Somewhere else, the shattered remains of the extra-judicial corporations that avoided the Citadel as much as they could decide to salvage what little there is they can find of the Reapers, and begin attempting to make AI from scratch once more. They plan on taking Earth for their own means, as well, ruling it as a corporate utopia. Using "orokin" - really Reaper tech - to Indoctrinate survivors to manufacture Reaper-based tech and AI-controlled robots, as well as managing to reverse-engineer Mass Effect relays to fashion a transport array through the system, called the Solar Rail, they begin to attack Cerberus's forces and dominate whatever other colonies that survived the Reaper war.
  • As for the Reapers themselves, they unleashed a last-ditch attempt to "preserve" organic life, in their own twisted way. What's known as the "Technocyte plague" is spread from the use of Reaper artifacts, a more potent and faster alternative to Husks, to destroy any organic who comes in touch with them.
  • And what's left of the Alliance forces and stranded aliens in the solar system are slowly being re-awakened by a secret resistance force, only known as the 'Lotus'...

Zer0 is a Warframe.

Do I even need to explain this one? Zer0 not only looks similar to a Warframe, his illusion power is similar to some of the 'lower key' things a Warframe can pull off and he comes stock standard with a sword just like all the other Warframes (save the ones that go for hammers, but I digress).

• Instead of being Sculpted Physique like the rest of the Warframe, Zer0 obviously wearing a standard sci-fi form fitting suit and a slightly pointy back helmet, though.
• Jumping off of this, the Corpus are either the distant past or distant future of Hyperion. Both factions use robot weapons platforms in conjunction with squishier cybernetically-enhanced humans and flying support units that can create shields.

All Warframes are just advanced Nanosuits.

• Jossed. They are puppets made of infested flesh, remote-controlled by Void-touched Operators.

All the enemy factions are shout outs and take that to other games

Each enemy that you take out by the dozen is based on a popular game series.

Grineer: Krogan from Mass Effect and StarCraft Marines.

Infested: Left 4 dead and Deadspace. Possibly even the Flood from Halo.

Corpus: Maybe the Protoss from StarCraft.

• ...It would probably be more accurate to say that the enemy factions are based on the enemy factions initially present in Mass Effect 3's multiplayer, which features very similar baseline gameplay:
  • Grineer=Cerberus; both are armies of human soldiers with cybernetic augmentation, and they both feature "riot shield with pistol" units.
  • Corpus=Geth; both are armies of robots that use small, flying drones, generous amounts of shielding and often back up their rapid energy attacks with stagger/knockdown attacks.
  • Infestation=Reaper; both are armies of zombified members of other factions in the universe, swarm the players in large numbers, feature little in the way of armor or shields for the rank-and-file but heavy armor for the more powerful "leader" units, an overarching vulnerability to fire and unusual status effects that can quickly kill an unprepared player.
• While Warframe came out a year after ME3, it is much more likely that the devs simply followed the popular Used Future/High-tech/Organic designs that are a staple of most sci-fi factions since Starcraft.

All the leader speak Simlish due to them being the most genetically degraded.

At least for the Grineer, the Corpus all speak Simlish.

• Most likely Jossed, since many of the bosses aren't speaking Simlish anymore.
  • Furthermore, the common enemies do speak Simlish, in a complete reversal of the original theory.

The series takes place in the PAST, not the future.

The Tenno deal devastating blow after devastating blow to both the Corpus and the Grineer. Eventually, the Grineer either are wiped out by the Tenno or degenerate to the point that they all perish. The Tenno use Orokin technology to terraform Earth and make it habitable again, deciding to restart their society on it and hanging up their Warframe suits in hidden locations across the world. The Corpus, seeking a less hostile market, leave to other parts of space, or are killed off by the Tenno. Certain Corpus members who overcome their brainwashing remain on Earth to colonize it, although on different parts of the world from the Tenno. Gradually, the humans forget about the Warframes and neglect Technology because it's arguably the reason behind many of the game's problems. Over time, each separate group of humans develops into its own civilization, and things go from there.

• Possibly a joke, but the developers have stated on a live stream that Hayden of darkSector was the first of the Tenno, which would put a crack in this theory if Dark Sector took place in present day.
• Given the extensive colonization and terraforming of the remaining planets and other celestial bodies in the solar system, the theory seems unlikely.

The Lotus is an AI.

In mobile defense missions she says "Plug me in". Not plug my 'hi tech hacking whatchamacallit' into the network. plug me in.

• Could be a man-machine interface like in The Matrix, Shadowrun etc.
  • This is very much likely, as her new-ish animated image appears as a woman attached to numerous thick wires.
  • The existence of Cephalons casts some doubt on this theory, although not enough to completely disprove it.
  • Confirmed as of Echoes of the Sentients and the Natah Quest - she's a rogue Sentient.

The Lotus was one of the Grineer Ruling Sisters.

She never really goes into her reasons for anything but certainly has a big problem with the Grineer. We know the Grineer are power-seekers who want to control everything, and Captain Vor refers repeatedly to the Ruling Sisters who are, presumably, in charge. The Corpus also refer to Lotus as 'traitorous' in one of their transmissions. And while most of the assassination targets make sense, a few of them, namely Vay Hek and Tyl Regor, stand out as being people with little to no military importance. Vay Hek is just a politician and Tyl Regor is a researcher trying to cure the Grineer genetic deterioration, which seems important until you realize the deterioration doesn't stop them from cloning soldiers anyway. But they do make sense if Lotus were a rogue Grineer - The best way for her to get power without needing the other ruling Sisters would be to hijack command of her own force - the Tenno - and use them to get rid of the competition for Orokin artifacts, namely the other Grineer and Corpus. Vay Hek is a senior politician, and likely an old one, and he may very well know too much for Lotus to be comfortable leaving him around while killing Tyl Regor ensures the Grineer can't be cured of their deterioration, resulting in an eventual bloodless genocide with her the only Grineer left standing. So why would Lotus survive when all the other Grineer are dead, and why would she want to use a plan that could take thousands of years to work? Because, like General Sargas Ruk, she went the cybernetic upgrade route, but with the greater resources of a Ruling Sister (and possibly some help from Corpus) she was able to succeed and become completely technological, rendering her immortal as well. She wants the General dead as well to make sure he doesn't succeed, that way she can be sure to have no competition.

This means her stated reasons for wanting some of the assassination targets dead aren't her real ones. They are, instead:

• Councilor Vay Hek knows too much and has to die before he connects all the dots about who Lotus is.
• General Sargas Ruk is potential competition if he ever 'ascends' to a purely machine state like she did.
• Tyl Regor needs to die to make sure the rest of the Grineer eventually die, too.
• Sgt. Nef Anyo originally sold Lotus her first Tenno soldiers. Killing him means she can seize the rest of them for free.
• The former boss of Pluto wore a hat that looked very similar to the Lotus' own.
  • Disturbingly, she refers to a Tenno hibernation pod in the defense missions as "equipment."
  • This may be untrue, as Grineer lore states that the sisters consist only of twin Queens. Unless they struck her from the record for her betrayal...
  • The Corpus refer to all Tenno as "traitorous" because they worship the Orokin and their technology. The Tenno are responsible for wiping them out.
  • Jossed as of Echoes of the Sentients and the Natah Quest - she's a rogue Sentient.

There is more than one Lotus. You've been talking to more than one.

In one mission successful message, she mentions the "Lotus will be pleased with us." Also, at least for the Grandmaster rank, clicking on Rank gets a reverb that sounds like multiple Lotus talking to you.

• In missions where she suddenly "changes her mind" and tells you to kill everyone on a ship; that's the group overriding the initial Lotus's orders.
• Possibly Dummied Out or Retconned, recent updates have changed her message to "I am pleased".
• There's a fan theory somewhere that explains the Retcon as Lotus becoming more accustomed to a Hive Mind
  • Jossed as of Echoes of the Sentients and the Natah Quest - she's a rogue Sentient, and the Sentient hive mind scares the shit out of her.

The Orokin had interactions with the Forerunners.

Look at the orange glow of the de-materializing Capture targets and tell me that isn't a Composer in action.

• Warframes are just an evolved Combat Skin.
• And the Tenno being Composed uploads would explain their being able to Body Surf between Warframes with ease.

The Warframes are alive.

Tenno seem to be hermaphroditic or possibly even unisex organisms/energy beings due to their ability to equip any Warframe and gain or lose various sexual characteristics. However, when the Lotus refers to the Warframes she uses phrases such as "he is a force to be reckoned with" or "use her wisely"- the Tenno don't have genders, but the Warframes do. It's possible that the Warframes aren't just high-tech suits, but some kind of symbiotic, artificial organism initially engineered by the Orokin.

• Possibly Jossed, and yet at the same time possibly Confirmed by 'The Second Dream'. The story reveals that the 'Tenno' are not within the Warframes at all, the Warframes are just puppets or empty shells controlled by the Tenno from a distance using a Somatic Link, and supposedly not alive at all. However, at the climax of 'The Second Dream', the Tenno Operator dangles helplessly from the Stalker's hand after their Warframe is impaled by the War sword that contains the Sentient Hunhow, but just before the Stalker can kill the player, the Warframe seems to come to life on its own and tear the sword apart, forcing the Stalker to flee. So while the Warframes don't contain the Tenno, they may yet still be alive in their own right. Rhino Prime's Codex entry also hints that the suit may contain some kind of living organism.
  • Supported somewhat by some of the Queens' dialogue in the War Within. They refer to the Warframe that you are using as "[the child's] Infested puppet indicating that the Warframes may be similar to the Infested which will likely lead into the lore for the Infested door on the ship and the upcoming Infested Warframe.
• Warframes can be seen bleeding in combat, especially when suffering from slash damage, and during the Second Dream your Warframe bleeds from its stab wound. Also, while the Jackal taunts you, it states that you are an "organic threat", so it is likely.
• Technically confirmed. The warframes indeed have an organic component, which is an infested core controlled by the Operator.

The playable Tenno are the last remaining descendants of the Orokin.

In a very Assassin's Creed-esque way, the Tenno are capable of using Orokin technology (artifacts, Cells, Catalysts, Reactors, Primed weaponry) to its higher capacities due to their Orokin blood. If Lotus isn't a Tenno herself, this would give an interesting twist as to her reasons for using the Tenno.

Going off of this, Stalker is not only not a Tenno, he isn't even a descendant of the Orokin, but of their enemies the Sentients. This would explain how he is able to find and kill the Tenno so easily: Sentient technology designed to track down, counter and destroy Orokin tech. Doesn't it seem coincidental that he is not only equipped to kill Tenno, but that he came into prominence soon after they awakened? Unless the Lotus woke him up around the same time to use him to collect Orokin technology...

• The Stalker half is Jossed by his Codex entry.
• This one's really iffy. The Corpus are descended from the Orokin that survived the massacre by the Tenno, but they've lost much of their former culture and technology in the process. Meanwhile, the Second Dream reveals that the Tenno are Orokin teenagers who were passengers on a ship that had an accident in the Void. They've been in cryosleep since the Old War, remotely piloting the Warframes to channel their powers while in hibernation. While Stalker's nature is still ambiguous, it seems likely that this is the case for him, too; in any case, he's definitely not of Sentient origin, although he does ally with them during the quest.

Warframe is Hotline Miami Recycled In Space.

You are awakened by a mysterious party and sent to complete missions that usually involve killing lots of people in gory, violent ways for little more reason than your quest-giver's say-so. The more you learn, the more you gain a nagging suspicion that maybe you're the real villain of the piece...

The real identity of the Stalker is Zer0 from Borderlands 2.

After coming into contact with the Eridians, he gains supernatural powers, granting him the ability to teleport (and leave behind a puff of smoke). And so, he ventures into the Sol System in search of new challenges, and of course, sees the Tenno as a worthy foe. The in-game reason behind him attacking Tenno is stated as avenging a particular boss, who, more or less, is an apathetic person/entity, but then again so is Zer0. Also, his frame is also black, just like his default color scheme (albeit his head is more sinister looking). And last but not least, one of his class mods in Borderlands 2 is called "Stalker".

Alad V will be a future Assassination Target.

Alad V, the Corpus executive responsible for Operation Arid Fear, is the only person on any side in Warframe to have ever noticeably caused the ever-calm Lotus to lose her cool. All throughout Operation Arid Fear her voice betrays the fact she's seething mad behind her usual calm demeanor and at times it almost sounds like she's pursuing the Corpus scouts specifically to spite Alad's planning. The whole 'eyeless slag' comment certainly didn't help things, either. Lotus is going to order the Tenno to assassinate him eventually whether it's useful to her objectives or not simply because she hates him that much.

• According to the developers, Alad V will end up being the closest person to knowing the true nature of the Warframes... other than the Lotus herself.
• Alad V is certainly significant as he was also the mastermind behind the previous Operation Sling-Stone.
• Confirmed as of Update 11: Alad V can be fought on Themisto, Jupiter as the planet's standard boss. Update 15.5 added in a second boss fight against his Infested self, Mutalist Alad V, on Eris, accessible after completing the Patient Zero quest.

Tenno Eventually Stop Listening To Lotus And Join Different Factions.

From running tasks with no specific information or explanation as to why Lotus wants you to maul a ship full of Corpus workers or steal a few data masses to accepting certain suicide missions where no one will leave alive (survival missions where you only "win" by letting your oxygen supply run out) the Tenno begin to question why they're even working for Lotus as well as her motivation for wanting to wipe the Grineer off the map. Receiving no reply and not wanting to end up like the groups of Tenno covering for "Alpha Team" by dying of asphyxiation, they break off from the Lotus's command and seek other work, to which Lotus responds by sending Tenno still loyal to her to assassinate these "traitors".

The few Tenno that have abandoned Lotus decide they've no choice other than to join the Grineer. The Corpus'd want to rip their Warframes to pieces and take whatever they can salvage, they're not crawling back to Lotus, they can't join other Tenno as they don't know which ones to trust, and standing alone would get them killed by the Lotus-loyal Tenno. Although skeptical at first to see a Tenno want to join them, the Grineer realize these guys are for real and start accepting more and more of them into their force. They deck them out in Grineer heavy armor, give them some weaponry, and pit them against the Corpus and other Tenno that're hungry for some Grineer blood.

Seeing the teal, large-shouldered Tenno under Grineer command rip through their workers like wet tissues, the Corpus decide, "Alright, we've got these Tenno corpses here, instead of butchering them for parts of their Warframes and selling them on the black market, why don't we cut in some of our technology, make some Tenno-cyborgs, and make them fight for us?" Accomplishing exactly that, the Corpus now have their own variant of Tenno to combat the Grineer as well as hold off the Lotus.

Meanwhile, while the Infested are chewing on Corpus, Grineer, and now Sentinels, they also decide to posses some of the Lotus's former forces and turn them into their own. Now you've got an Infested Rhino tanking loads of damage shambling alongside an Ancient Healer and an Infested Volt sending armies of Chargers dashing towards you at ludicrous speed.

So, now you've got the tanks of thick armor and Orokin technology, commandeered by the Grineer, pit against squishier, but equally-lethal, robot-Tenno working for Corpus also fighting off the infected zombie space ninjas controlled by the Infested who are also trying to take down the Lotus's Tenno, still adamant to wipe out the Grineer and Corpus forces and their new Tenno allies.

• Zigzagged with the Syndicates. The Tenno are free to support any of the six conflicting factions, but all six are still opposed to the Grineer and Corpus, and the Lotus still takes precedence in the chain of command.
• Confirmed, in a different way. after Apostasy Prologue and specifically in The Sacrifice, the Lotus isn't the same Lotus as we knew it. Since Apostasy Prologue, the "Lotus" is merely Ordis posing as Lotus to comfort the Operator.
  • Zigzagged again. As of The New War, Lotus/Margulis/Natah is back in control of our in-mission communications, but we can choose which of her incarnations (Lotus, Natah, Margulis, Eidolon, Radiant) we wish to have in our ear, and thus what faction (Orokin, Sentients, Tenno, Eidolon) we want her to be.

The Stalker is just a guy with a twisted sense of balance and order

He only attacks those who have killed bosses. Then, once he executes his target, he leaves.

Why is he so crazy? Maybe he dated Nyx once.

• Jossed with the new Codex entry, which shows that he hates the Tenno because they betrayed the Orokin.

The "new" Lotus is the true Lotus, and the one who's been with the Tenno through Closed Beta and Open Beta is a separate woman slowly assimilating into the real Lotus' consciousness.

Just like the Tenno, the Lotus has lain dormant, asleep for centuries. In order to awaken the Tenno and fight back against the Grineer and Corpus that have destroyed all she had, a woman who lead the resistance manages to break into an Orokin tower and assumes the mantle of the Lotus to get rid of the two factions once and for all. At first, it was simple - wear the hat, act like a noblewoman, pretend to be a mighty tactician, making some mistakes here and there like saying 'The Lotus will be pleased" instead of 'I am pleased'.

The Neural Sentry for the Tower, however, is different.

The woman eventually finds her voice changing, memories she didn't have yesterday flooding her mind. She feels herself becoming the mask. This would explain why she weaves in and out of a modulated voice, along with her newer voice clips.

• As of the Natah quest, Jossed. The Lotus we know today is the same Lotus who led us during the Old War - and the same Lotus sent by the Sentients to destroy the Orokin and the Tenno.

The Orokin were the bad guys, and so is Lotus.

The Orokin and Sentients were different cultural/ideological factions of the same species- in the same way humans divide themselves based on nationality. The Orokin were a hierarchic culture that focused more on pragmatic, manipulative, even fascist methods while the Sentients had a deeper sense of honor, justice and equality. These conflicting ideologies escalated to all-out war, with the Sentients likely trying to correct some wrong the Orokin caused for the sake of progress (such as creating/deploying the Neural Sentry against an unsuspecting lower class to keep them in line). The Orokin, true to their pragmatism, unleashed the long-contained Technocyte Virus upon their enemies, and when that failed, turned to the Tenno, a small faction of deadly but untested warriors. The Tenno fought the Sentients, but even as they wiped out their enemies they came to understand their reasons and adopt their philosophies (and seeing a few of them mutate into Ancients couldn't hurt either- Golem did say, after all, "We are your flesh"); in the end, the Tenno turned and slaughtered the Orokin as well. The Stalker was a lone Inspector Javert among the Tenno, possibly even The Dragon to the Orokin leader (thereby sticking to his beliefs that the Orokin were incorruptible and the traitorous Tenno were to be punished); he might have even been the first Excalibur, if not a prototype. The Lotus was an Orokin survivor, possibly even the one who originally locked the Tenno away, and has now awakened them to prepare the galaxy for the return of the Orokin Empire (purging the Tennos' cryopods such that their memories would be lost was calculated). The Lotus leaks information on Tenno whereabouts to the Stalker to dispose of them when they get too close to finding out the truth (as they might after the various exposition-filled boss battles)- or if they simply survived a suicide mission- and he complies to his lone master.

• Because let's face it- the Lotus is accented with gold. Gold only represents one thing in Warframe; she just toned down on the white.
• Bonus points if the Sentients end up being based on samurai.
• Cephalon Simaris lore confirms that the Orokin absolutely had it coming, and that Lotus was not only not one of them, but in large part responsible for wrecking their shit.
• As for the Lotus she's a Sentient who defected to defending the Tenno so she's arguable the only non-evil character in the setting.

The Orokin were human, so were the Sentients, and the Tenno were mind-controlled.

Alright, so, recap of what we know: mysterious race Orokin fight mysterious race Sentients, Orokin find that the Void mutates members of their race, and use those mutations plus super-tech to make kick-ass soldiers. With me so far? Cool. Since the Tenno pretty much look human, and since we know they used to be Orokin, we can then infer that the Orokin were also human. Now, on to the theory.

The Orokin and the Sentients were both human. The conflict between them wasn't an alien invasion or an attempt to conquer, it was a civil war. The Orokin embarked on the standard campaign of dehumanizing your enemy that seems to happen in most wars, and were either wildly successful or the war went on for so long (or both) that people actually stopped thinking they were the same race. So, they fight. The Orokin start to lose. Then, they find out that this Void thing mutates people and gives them people superpowers. Then, they find a way to turn these mutants into Super Soldiers. Awesome! But what's even better than Super Soldiers? Mind Controlled Super Soldiers! You wouldn't want your soldiers who were deliberately exposed to potentially torturous and traumatizing events that gave them superpowers to walk around without control bolts, would you?

So, the Tenno, wearing those nifty control crowns you can see on the Corrupted, start to fight the Sentients. Maybe they even go along with the control crown thing, were told they prevented the Tenno from going crazy because of their experiences. But then, in the process of their fights, the Tenno discover that their adversaries aren't aliens at all, they're really other humans fighting for... something. Survival, maybe. And suddenly, a heroic campaign to protect the human race from extinction turns into good ol' genocide. The Tenno (or most of them, at least; see below) want to stop. But those fancy crowns won't let them; the Orokin programmed them to keep killing Sentients until there's nothing left.

Eventually, the war is over, and the Tenno come home hailed a saviors by the public. But, there's a problem: the Tenno are no longer under Orokin control. Maybe they found a way to subvert the crowns; maybe the Orokin forgot to program in a "don't turn on your creators" subroutine; maybe all commands were only programmed in light of the war, and with the war over the Tenno became free again. Not sure. But in any case, the Tenno come back, pretend to still be loyal soldiers, and, once they get close enough, skewer their former masters. The Tenno go on a rampage, killing both the Orokin scientists who brainwashed them and the leaders who ordered it to happen. Eventually, everyone who knows how to make or work the advanced technology is dead, and the Orokin survivors are scattered, beginning a dark age that leads to the rise of the Grineer Empire and Corpus company, while the technocyte plague the Orokin developed for war runs out of control.

So the Tenno got their vengeance. But they still have those crowns, and they don't want someone else coming along and figuring out a way to program them again. So they try to remove them; problem is, they killed everyone who would know how, and their own attempts have... unpleasant consequences. Namely, massive brain damage. Eventually, through trial and error, the Tenno find a way to remove the crowns and stick themselves into healing/stasis pods that slowly repair their damaged brains. Problem is, complete amnesia is still a side effect, and the healing takes time. Lots of time. So, the Tenno make preparations to initiate healing en masse and leave someone behind to watch out for them. Like the Lotus. Or someone who the current Lotus killed before taking her place. Or something. So, time goes by, the Lotus is replaced or controlled or decides it would be awesome to use her former comrades for personal game, and so upon awakening the amnesiac Tenno lies to them and uses them for her own gain.

But what of the Tenno that didn't disagree? The ones who thought the Orokin were right, brainwashing be damned? Well, they stay active while the rest of the Tenno go to sleep and forget themselves, watching the system, or even the galaxy, descend into chaos and develop a bitter hatred for their traitorous comrades. They call themselves the Stalkers (yes, they, I refuse to believe it's just one guy) and wait for the Tenno to wake back up. Because they don't want the Tenno to die peacefully in cryosleep, oh no. They have to suffer. So they watch, and wait, and try to protect the remnants of Orokin civilization that humanity has become.

I might come back and clean this up later, I realize it's kind of a mess as is.

• Whatever the the Sentients are, they definitely don't seem to be human in the Tombs of the Sentient trailer.
  • Those could easily be Corpus-style proxies.
  • Turns out the Sentients were terraforming A.I.s who were only trying to help, while the Orokin were definitely evil.
  • The Sentients weren't human, but it seems the Orokin were. The Corpus formed out of the remnants of the Orokin Empire, and the Sentient Hunhow mistook Alad V for an Orokin.

It's not "Orokin", it's "Awoken".

• Unlikely. The Conclave Annihilation matches involve the player collecting a substance called "Oro", the "soul", which is in part responsible for the Warframes' Resurrective Immortality. It's possible that the name of the species is quite literal - Kin bound by Oro.

Hayden Tenno is the Stalker

Hayden Tenno is confirmed to be the first Tenno. Seeing as he was likely rescued by the Orokin at some point and possibly their first in command, it would make sense that he would be loyal to them. Similarly, the Stalker's frame resembles the Excalibur, confirmed to be the first Warframe. He could be something of a Super Prototype, which is why his powers would later be used and adapted to other frames.

• Most likely Jossed. The developers have decided that darkSector is no longer canon, as the lore discrepancies have grown too large. The Second Dream in particular is pretty destructive towards this theory; the Tenno are officially named for the Zariman Ten-Zero incident, which gave them their powers, and they've been remotely piloting the Warframes all along, rather than wearing them as a suit. While it's still not clear what Stalker's deal is, he's more than likely similar to the Tenno.

The Grineer and Corpus factions will suffer from infighting and split into to smaller groups.

We've already seen that Corpus don't necessarily work out all of their inner conflicts peacefully during the Alad V event where Frohd Beck was willing to sell Alad V's location out. Players will notice that the crewmen in Jupiter, where Alad V is located, have differing main weapons and proxies at their disposal compared to the main bulk of the Corpus, showing the split within the faction.

Sargus Ruk and Vay Hek also seem to be at odds with each other as a result of Hek's releasing of the Grustag Three. Sargus Ruk explicitly calls Hek out on this move and basically condemns Hek to whatever fate befalls him.

It seems more likely that with the upcoming Proxy Wars system as told by DE, that Tenno can choose these splitting branches of the Corpus and Grineer as one of the factions that they will support.

• Confirmed as of the launch of the Syndicates (the final form of the "proxy wars"). The Steel Meridian are a mix of Grineer deserters and regular humans who wage guerrilla warfare against the Grineer and Corpus in order to protect the peaceful colonies scattered about the solar system, while the Perrin Sequence are a splinter group of former Corpus merchants who believe that peace will bring more prosperity than the war profiteering that the mainstream Corpus engage in.

The Stalker was originally a zero-tech

He built his suit out of Tenno he sniped. He may also have later shared the Dispel tech with the Corpus, or the other way around.

• Jossed, not to mention impossible, as the Tenno are mot wearing the suits in the traditional sense, thus he couldn't have built one. More importantly, the Stalker's codex entry also contradicts this.

The Sentients were Hiigarans or XCOM.

The lore says the Orokin were forced to resort to the Tenno because the Sentients just reverse-engineered everything else that was thrown at them. Who else would fit better than these gods of ganking enemy tech and turning it on the original users?

• Nope, just AI's.

The current Tenno are greatly weakened from their strength during the Old War

During the original Mirage's last stand, she ran out of energy, had a ship dropped on her, lost her shields, and just kept killing - even when reduced to fighting barehanded. A modern Tenno, especially a squishy caster like Mirage, would die near-instantly in such a scenario against high-level foes. And Mirage was doing this vs the Sentients, not the pathetic (in comparison) Grinner, Corpus, or Infested.

The Grineer Queens are degraded clones of an Orokin woman

From the very beginning, they have been a clone race. This also explains why there are two queens rather than one. An old Orokin female corpse was thrown into one of those clone machine things to make the queens, and the leftovers were used as the basis for Scorpions, Heavy Gunners, Ballistas, and individuals like Sprag, Ven'kra Tel, and Kela de Thaym.

• Possibly, because when you scan all of the Kurias you get a poem about the twin queens that implies that they are/were Orokin.
• Jossed by War Within: the Twin Queens are Orokin who have been playing Grand Theft Me to survive for centuries, and since Grineer bodies are inferior, they want your human body.

Some Grineer have an eye (or two) replaced to let them see Tenno energy

Hence why Sprag perceives the Tenno as "shiny bugs" - because she is seeing their true auras and innards.

Chroma's dragon pelt used to be a separate Infested entity

The original Chroma used to just be the regular, Oberon/Excalibur-like warframe you see when he takes off the dragon hide. At some point during the Sentient war, the original Chroma (who perhaps had simpler, color-based abilities) was called on to dispatch a big, dragon-ish Infested beast that had gotten out of control. The Warframe's organic technology and the Technocyte virus apparently have much in common, so cunning Chroma flayed the fallen Infested monster, and integrated its remains into his Warframe, boosting his abilities to the powerful elemental ones he uses today. The pelt was copied into the non-Prime versions of the Chroma warframe when they were manufactured, and so the dragon warframe came to be.

Heavy Infested are infested Orokin.

The Infested are an amalgam of twisted, warped Grineer and Corpus, with every common enemy in the faction semi-obviously being an Infested version of another unit. Except the Ancients, who stand alone. Their name implies their age, as does their armor type, Fossilized, but they're too common to be designed for the war like Lephantis was. We also know many Orokin ships failed to flee and got trapped in the warzone, giving us the Orokin Derelicts, universally infested. Thus, the Ancients (including the Boiler and the Broodmother) are neither infested Grineer nor infested Corpus, but rather the Orokin who were trapped aboard the derelicts and consumed by the Infestation.

• Confirmed in part by Corrupted Ancient Synthesis entry.

Within the Warframes are homunculi grown from infested tissue

Both Lephantis and the Jordas Golem repeatedly insist that the Tenno are "our flesh" and "the same" as the infested. With the reveal that the Warframes are puppets remote-controlled by the Tenno from afar, yet still somehow alive as seen when your Warframe acts independently to save you from the Stalker at the climax of The Second Dream, the obvious conclusion to draw is that within each Warframe is a vat-grown living body created by the Orokin by shaping cloned flesh infused with the Technocyte virus to give it life.

• Alternatively, there's no "inside" - the whole Warframe is this, all the way through.
• Either way, they are the same stuff, the same nanite-infused cyborg flesh, in the sense that an elegant table of saw-cut, sanded and polished wood, designed as an aesthetic and functional whole, and one made by nailing found sticks and lumber together, by someone who's heard of tables but never seen one, are the same.
• Seemingly confirmed by The War Within, with the young Queen explicitly calling the Warframe an "Infested puppet" controlled by the Zariman child.
• Jossed by The Sacrifice. Warframes are created by infecting Dax soldiers with Infested material, transforming them into the Warframes, with some even retaining memories of their former selves.

Phobos was terraformed in the image of Mars-That-Was

Phobos in-game greatly resembles the original environment of its mother world, aside from the part where they both have breathable atmospheres and normal gravity. Perhaps Phobos was terraformed by those homesick for, or wishing to preserve, "Red Mars".

• Jossed: They reassigned the Arid tileset to Mars and gave Phobos the Asteroid tileset in the Specters of the Rail update

The first Warframes were Power Armor, not remote controlled drones

.In an In-Universe case of Technology Marches On, the first warframes were exoskeletons housing the Tenno children, and due to the Tenno taking fatalities such as Mirage and Limbo, switched to the current model of Warframes, remote controlled drones that are less powerful than the original, but could always be repaired/rebuild, as a Tenno who is killed is gone, but a dead next generation warframe can always be recovered and revived/repaired. This explains why the original Mirage was much, much more powerful than the current version, and why her loss was so catastrophic for the Lotus, as she saw one of her adopted children die, not just the destruction of a weapon that could always have been rebuilt like current Warframes are.

• More likely, the connection between the Tenno and their Warframes were originally way stronger, allowing them to channel way more Void energy. Unfortunately this had a side-effect where the destruction of the Warframe caused a backlash that also killed the Operator, as seen with Mirage, Limbo and Gara. Because of this, after the war against the Sentients was over, the Lotus fiddled with the settings so that the destruction of a frame no longer caused harm to the Operator, but it also caused them to be less strongly tethered to them, so they are less powerful. To compensate, the Tenno formed four man squads, leading to today's state of affairs.
  • Either way, the Power Armor aspect is very much jossed after The Sacrifice. Warframes are Dax soldiers who were transformed by a special strain of the Infestation.

Teshin is selling Conclave footage to Darvo.

That guy is freaking loaded, able to pay you more than 50000 credits on a good Conclave match, as well as unique mods. Where does he get all the money? He sells the footage to Darvo, who then sells it to the colonies (for those enjoying superpowered fights), or on the Black Market to the Grineer (who love watching Tennos tear each other apart) or the Corpus (possibly to resell it, or for the same reasons).

• Maybe the graneer and corpus, in addition to entertainment, study it,as usually there unable to get good footage of tenno in combat, as whatever would be recording them usually don't last long once they show up

The Lotus contains part of Margulis within her.

It's not a coincidence that the two have the same voice and motherly attitude towards the Tenno. Margulis' main contribution to the Orokin war effort was perfecting Transference. "The Silver Grove" reveals that Transference was able to be used for more than just creating a link between Zariman children and the Warframes (Archimedian Silvana used it to become a tree) and it's implied that creatures linked via Transference will pass similar attitudes onto one another (as Silvana felt "an evil ink, staining [her] mind" when piloting Titania, and the rogue Titania later decided to defend Silvana's forest to the death). It's entirely possible that Margulis, rather than put her surrogate children in the line of fire, attempted to take the easy way to win the war and simply use her own invention to brain-jack the enemy Hive Mind, or at least use one unit to infiltrate and destroy their fleet. While she didn't completely succeed, the one Sentient she linked to, Natah, inherited some of Margulis' personality, particularly her attitude towards the Tenno; this provoked the Sentient to consider that she could no longer bear her own children. Margulis was executed by the Orokin because they didn't approve of the risk she took and the subversion of their plans for the survivors of the Zariman Ten Zero — or perhaps out of fear she turned over Orokin secrets to the enemy and received some of the Sentients' hostility in return. When Natah broke away from the Sentients, Ballas accepted her into the Orokin ranks because she was all that was left of the love he once knew, and charged her to guide the Tenno, who accepted the aid of the familiar voice. And of course, when the war ended and the Orokin attempted to dispose of the Tenno out of fear they could turn on their creators like everything else they made already had, the Lotus did the motherly thing and turned on the Orokin, warning and convincing the Tenno to fight for their lives.

• This is a beautiful theory, and definitely explains some things that would otherwise seem contradictory. In the War Within, the Lotus talks about how all traces of the Zariman children except for their physical presence was erased, yet somehow she knows enough to answer some of their questions, including some of the revelations that Teshin gives in the War Within. Since the Lotus is a Sentient A.I. there's no other way she could have known this information, since without digital records, the information does not exist to her.
• Jossed. The Lotus is only using Margulis's appearance to convince the Tenno to trust her, but is not actually related to Margulis in any way.
  • Perhaps not, if the Apostasy Prologue is anything to go by. Ballas quite specifically calls the Lotus 'Margulis', even when though the Lotus denies it at first, and claims he will not abondon her again. Perhaps the details of this theory will not line up, but its overarching idea may yet hold water.
    • The Sentients can subvert technology integrating it to improve themselves, the orokin had technology to upload peoples conscious into technology(also trees apparently) to act as ais and sometimes use it on criminals as we see with Ordis, Margulis was a criminal and Lotus is a sentient whos job would have been made easier by integrating such an ai

Warframe suits are a combination of armor and a brain-dead body.

In darkSector, Hayden Tenno equips a version of the Excalibur Warframe about ¾ through the story. The suit stays on him the rest of the game, and later on, one of the bosses is Nemesis, which is now a variant skin for Nyx.nAdditionally, Hayden is infected with the Technocyte virus, from which he didn't go insane only because he had congenital analgesia (inability to feel pain). He never did get cured, though.

On the Warframe side, we know now that the Warframes are remotely controlled by the Zariman Ten-Zero children. However, the suits have been seen to be somewhat sentient, perhaps only applying to instances where the danger to themselves or their controllers is near annihilation-levels, like against the Stalker in Second Dream. We also know that the 'frames have some infested infliction (Jordas states as much, plus it's much more prevalent with the recent Nindus 'frame and room), and finally, that the Orokin were the ones to create them for the superpowered Zariman children, using the Technocyte Virus in some way.

My theory is this: the Warframes aren't empty, no; instead, originally, the Warframes were just that, hollow suits of armor created by the Orokin. But sincethe Zariman kids couldn't put them on, or they had no way to just switch between them, the Orokin chose a soldier from their ranks, each one having very specific mindsets and abilities, and used the same Mind Control technology they used on Ordan Karris or something similar to essentially make those soldiers "brain dead", creating vegetables that had no conscience of their own, yet leaving their instincts and muscle-memory intact (hence why the frames could react when stabbed by Hunhow's sword; the threat of death made them instinctively react and attempt to save themselves). Next, they would outfit the body with a Warframe suit that best fit the abilities of the soldier. And finally, they would inject small doses of the Technocyte Virus (or feed, or however the hell the virus spreads) into the body and the Warframe, with both eventually fusing into a single being that the Zariman children could control like puppets and whose abilities would be significantly amplified by the Void powers of the children piloting them.

In short, the Warframes are a fusion of bodies and armor, the original bodies being powerful soldiers with certain outlooks on life (such as Rhino, Excalibur, Frost, Vauban), or important figures (such as Nyx, who could've been an Orokin psychological expert; Mag, who could've been a famous Orokin engineer; and Valkyr, heavily depending on what her outlook on life and Void Imprint was before being tortured by Alad V). Each of them was rendered brain dead, then fused with a frame that fit their ability, and finally given to the Zariman children to power up with Transference, amplifying their instincts and muscle memory to become actual supernatural abilities (except for Vauban, that Badass Normal bastard). In the case of Nindus, since his blueprint is from an Old War Relic, then perhaps his frame is created by injecting too much of the virus into the body, creating a body more in-tune with the virus itself than whatever the original body was.

• For extra sprinkles on this cake: perhaps that's exactly what happened to Hayden, years down the line. The Technocyte Virus eventually overcame his body, fusing it with the Excalibur suit he wore, yet he either
  • a) still remained sane due to the inability to feel whatever pain this caused, or...
  • b) became brain dead as the Technocyte Virus overtook his mind.
• If/when he died, his body could have been found by Orokin scouts on Earth, giving them a prototype to reverse-engineer.)
• This could also give context as to why the Warframes have idle animations fitting for each of them (if it's not just the Zariman children wanting to roleplay): the Transference ability has been shown to connect the minds of both parties, as shown in The Silver Grove by Silvana saying she felt "an evil ink, staining her mind". When the Zariman children use Transference on the 'frames, the only things left in the Mind of the original bodies are their instincts, muscle memory, and general outlook on life that their powers are based on, and as such, the Zariman children start acting like the originals when transferred in.
  • The only problem I see with this theory are the Quest Frames, such as Limbo or Inaros. I can't really see how to fit them into this theory.
    • Maybe Frames weren't brain dead to begin with, but ended up that way due to years/decades/centuries of being unused? Originally they were intended to be companions to the Zariman children, working in tandem as a team. But after they were frozen for an untold amount of time, all the frames that were still alive at the moment just sat there, maybe guarding them, maybe doing something on their own. But inevitably, all of them went senile, and lost their minds and memories, with only instincts remaining intact

The mysterious entity at the end of The War Within will be the focus of the next Storyline quest

They will take the role of Big Bad (At least of the quest, similiar to Hunhow) or at least be mentioned in the Quest. Additionally, to take a guess on what it may be, it may be a personification of the Void itself, and/or the (metaphorical or not) 'Father' of the Tenno.

• Additionally, they may have something to do with Umbra Warframes

The Arbiters of Hexis are a Hive Mind

The leaders of the Arbiters always appear together in transmissions, where, if you notice, their heads sway in unison, while in Rathuum, they will demand you to bring the location of the defectors to ME (the leader), implying that they possess a single mind.

The Sacrifice will give you the choice to give up the Operator's physical form.

As Ballas says, "their life... For yours. However, you give up your body, or your morality as the titular Sacrifice. Perhaps it will be the only way to prevent the Man in the Wall from taking over?

• Unlikely, since Plains of Eidolon will add Operator Armor that you will have to craft, it'll be pointless to waste such a feature.
• Actually, possible, since the new form of transference and the promised Warrior-Operator in Eidolon may be the Operator giving up their original body and only able to manifest it through a type of inverted transference, becoming mostly energy.

The Tenno are dead. the Man in the Wall is whatever revived them and gave them void powers, is keeping them alive, manifests with the mannerisms of their father, and is either along for the ride or an agent of chaos and malice.

• The 'Sacrifice' may be a loss of something to keep the Man in the Wall at bay. Or losing body parts, a la Xenoblade Chronicles X

The Zariman Ten-Zero incident was not an accident, but rather a deliberate Orokin experiment into void exposure on humans of various ages.

The Zariman is said to be an accident, but there's also implications of sabotage in The War Within, so considering what we know of the Orokin? It's certainly not out of the question.

The Stalker at some point became one of the loyal operatives of the Orokin government before the end of the Old War.

There's a reason he's so hung up on the Tenno turning on the Orokin but not the Grineer finishing the job - he was a loyal operative. His codex entry implies that he was separate from the Tenno during the celebration that turned into a massacre, and he realized that the Tenno were up to something but lost his nerve, preventing him from warning his masters before it was too late. He may have also been a plant on the Zariman. Either way, he's pissed that the Tenno killed his superiors, who he likely was basically brainwashed into being loyal to.

Hunhow will restart the Old War after Apostasy:Prologue

Learning that his daughter, traitor or not, has been kidnapped by Ballas, a genuine Orokin, will drive him over the edge.

• Motivation definitely jossed. In The Sacrifice, Ballas was revealed to be collaborating with the Sentients during the Old War, having revealed the secrets of the Warframes and location of the Reservoir to Hunhow. His appearances also imply he was working for the Sentients during Apostasy: Prologue. In addition, Natah seems to have returned to her Sentient form and says "Mother, I am coming home." during the end of the quest, implying that content related to the Tau system, home of the Sentients, is coming in a future update. Perhaps the Old War will still restart, though.

Ordis is a Brain in a Jar

Alright, so we know the Orokin were big on biotech. They used tree roots for power conduits and data cables, they built their towers out of flesh (which, incidentally, implies that the white floors and walls inside those towers are likely not marble but rather ivory, grown in situ), their society was built upon the backs of a cloned slave labor force, their first response to the Sentient threat was a biotech plague, their second response organic combat golems encased in armor. The list goes on. We also know Ordis used to be a human before being turned into our ship AI as punishment for betraying his masters. Knowing all of the above, do you think the Orokin would've uploaded his mind into some lifeless silicon chip? No, of course not. That's not the way they did things. His original human brain is still intact, kept in a jar somewhere in the bowels of our ship.

The first Warframes were sentient

either made from some of the tenno, the original transference was permanent or possibly completely separate project entirely that were merely retrofitted to act as hosts for the tenno, excaliburs codex entry describes the frames being built around the tenno not built frames for them to wield, as would be a more accurate description of what we do in game, and in the background for all the warframe quests they are treated as individuals and the fact theres no other way to get those frames, gara is the unums guardian not there tenno, you are discovering the fate of a specific limbo to craft it , titania herself fought to defend the grove ect, these original frames would then be used as the basis of the empty shells the rest of the tenno would use, this also explains why your warframe moves on its own during the second dream, the original warframes are like Rell, conscious split, but rather then forming spectral entity's these fragments reside in each copy of themselves, too split to exert much influence on the tenno piloting them (although this could give an in universe reason for the idle animations being unique to each warframe and matching there personality nomatter what tenno is piloting them, because its a bit of the influence from the original frame changing how the tenno acts just slightly) but seeing a tenno about to be strangled to death they managed to focus enough to move on there own

• Confirmed in The Sacrifice. Umbra is still sentient enough to move on his own.

Umbra was the name of the Dax Soldier that became Excalibur Umbra

Fairly self explanatory. Though somewhat unlikely since Ballas seems to have actively been trying to dehumanize Umbra, it seems odd that he would choose to refer to his creation not even by the name Excalibur, but by Umbra. It would be like calling a Warframe by the name Prime. An odd choice when there are numerous Primes out there.

Baro Ki'Teer buys his merchandise from working Orokin vending machines he finds.

Why else would he demand Orokin coins in addition to credits? As for why we can exchange Prime parts for said coins, let's not think about it too hard.

• Maybe, some of those machines can accept the parts back in exchange for coins? Kinda like getting a refund.

Lotus isn't Margulis. But she believes that she is.

Ballas is implied to be the last state of Orokin "evolution", a body-less godlike being that doesn't even use the continuity process like the Grineer Queens did. And it seems like, throughout the years, he has lost his mind. As a result, when he saw the Lotus, he became convinced that she is Margulis, despite simply being a Sentient that took her looks mostly to comfort the Tenno. Ballas, though, in his madness, decided that she is Margulis, and made her accept that she is Margulis via outright bullshit Orokin mind control. Instead of driving her into despair like the Queens seem to like to do, he instead made her sincerely believe that she is Margulis.And hopefully? It is up to us to help her become herself again. Because I really can't imagine DE just remaking all the bloody mission notifications and dialogues.

The Man in the wall Mimicked the Lotus' call in the beginning of the Sacrifice

The man in the wall said it was good that the operator remembers Isaah's death the way they did. It's almost like he expected this. I think he mimicked the Lotus' voice to put the Tenno on the trail for finding Umbra. He had to have known from the very beginning. synchronizing with the Umbra warframe while he still had memories of his son's death would lead to the tenno internalizing and misremembering Isaah's death as if they did it. That's why the Man in the wall had been wearing the Lotus' helmet during the chimera quest. It's meant to symbolize that the Lotus never put the Tenno on the trail for Umbra, it was the Man in the Wall. As for why he wanted the Tenno to obtain the Paracesis, The sentient slayer. I predict that he knows that Tenno will eventually have to kill the Lotus, their own surrogate mother. No matter what the circumstances, they can't 'want' to kill her. I predict that he's counting on the Tenno's matricide to finally break them, corrupting their minds with despair until only HE remains. Just like the Red Queen wanted to become the Tenno in The War Within, The Man in the wall, wants to take over the bodies of the Tenno. But, like the Tenno can fight off the Red Queen's continuity, it's possible for the Tenno can fight off the Man in the wall. As for a permanent solution, I have no idea. What do you guys think?

The Shadow Stalker is a Warframe, and will eventually be playable.

Near the end of The Second Dream, Hunhow says the Stalker still hates 'them', seemingly referring to the Orokin as a whole. However, he may be alluding to the fact that he hates Tenno specifically, and is simply being controlled by an Operator.

It would explain why he can come back ad nauseum, as well as some of his capabilities— he's been seen wall-running by some players, something which only Tenno are able to do. Plus, a few Dev Streams have shown member of Digital Extremes piloting the Stalker (and they even invited a few attendees to Tennocon to make it happen), so some interface for making him controllable is there.

If he does become a frame, they'll probably be simply called "Stalker", and have a theme of shadows.

Before the Grand Finale ever happened, most, if all is not possible, warframes will have their Umbra variant, complete with their own story.

Nora Night is a Cephalon masquerading as a human.

Cephalons are/were actual humans/orokin who had their memories modified and their consciousnesses transferred into the Cephalon weave. "Nora" may be a Cephalon who has some form of access to pre-Orokin archives, which is why she quotes Jean-Paul Satre. In Arabic, the name "Nora" derives from the masculine "Nur", which means "Light", and the physical manifestations of most cephalons appear to be hard-light constructs. Might be a bit of a stretch, but its' food for thought nonetheless.

• Jossed barely, as of the Glassmaker finale - Nihil tries to "glass" Nora into a Cephalon before and during his boss fight, but fails.

Nora Night has connections to the Corpus, and the Solaris in particular.

What little we see of her animations show her with seemingly cosmetic attachments on her body that pulse with light in sync with her speech. This is a fairly unique quirk, as the only two entities that do so regularly are Cephalons and the body-modded Solaris of Fortuna. Her speech about revenge suggests some of this as well—the idea of long-game revenge is not wholly out of character for the Corpus.

The Duviri Paradox update will incorporate time travel.

Because it's been too long since DE introduced it as a possibility with the Lua spy maps and then proceeded to never bring it up again!

The Zariman Ten-Zero never escaped the Void

Not the real one, anyway. What came back was a copy, as were the Tenno. Juvenile copies of the adult crew. The trailer for The Duviri Paradox shows an adult soldier who might be an older version of the Operator who stashes a gun for him. Analysis of the background indicates that there's some sort of large Orokin ship there, maybe the Zariman.

• As of The New War, Jossed. The Zariman did escape the Void. However, the Void's nature means that it is also possible to access a universe where the Zariman didn't escape the Void, which is the home universe of the Drifter, an Alternate Self of the Operator.

Nora Night is an ex-Tenno

Her cryo-pod wasn't on Lua (other batches are mentioned in game sometimes), she was thawed out earlier than the PC, got into trouble and earned a lot of valuables and influence, just like them, then started to grow older and lost all her warframes and means to make new ones, so she decided to semi-retire. That would explain her knowledge about Tenno and Orokin customs, at least.

Parvos Granum has no idea whether Nef is truly his biological son or not

But neither he really cares, because he considers the whole of the Corpus his children, in a classical "blood of the covenant" way.

The Lotus wasn't lying when she said that she saw nothing after the fight with Ballas

She meant that literally: she saw nothing. That grinned menacingly at her and recited a Requiem sequence, then laughed triumphantly. Sentients are still machine intelligence, so, like cephalons, they cannot perceive the Man in the Wall properly. The pause was her not hesitating, but trying to find the words.

Executor Tuvul tried to perform Continuity with Voruna's Operator.

Drusus notes a sort of recognition in one of his salvaged images for Voruna's Leverian, and in the other, she's cradling the child as she returns to her ship. We know that it's difficult for Operators to walk or perform Transference right out of stasis, and that Tuvul had to keep this secret, so it can't have been a normal Yuvan, but Lua also has the Reservoir; a whole facility of Tenno, ripe in stasis. If Voruna's Operator was to be Tuvul's impromptu Yuvan, he may have been trying to turn Voruna against the other Tenno.

The odd monsters seen in the 1999 update teaser seem to be a proto-Infestation, and the update proper is a Canon Welding with Video Game/darkSector

From what we’ve seen of the teaser, the monsters share a combination of technological (thanks to the computers and wires seen strewn about) and organic (thanks to all the Meat Moss connecting the computers together), and they share animations with the Infested Runners and Ancients. Now, the Technocyte Plague is called that for a reason, being able to corrupt technology as seen with Jordas and the Mutalist enemies. Yet the monsters seem more overtly technological, in contrast to the organic growths of the modern Infested. Added with the man in the Excalibur suit, Arthur, one poster in the area having a man resembling Dr. Metzger, and his ally Aoi possibly performing Mag’s Polarize, it’s highly likely that the 1999 in the trailer is around an alternate version of the events that took place during the original Technocyte Plague outbreak.

• It looks like 1999 will be a Setting Update remake of darkSector, because the lore heavily drifted apart between the games.

Grandmother was a sportswoman.

Specifically, a K-Drive pro-skater. That's how she got acquianted with Yareli. That would also make her neither scientist, nor warrior, as the Son attests. Also, having to work for living and having little holding of her own would make her less of an oppressor, enough for Dagath to spare her.

There will be a quest in the future where all Corpus-related characters fight.

Parvos Granum, now ready to take on the mainstream Corpus with his new army of followers, will ask the Tenno to help him in his fight against the Corpus. Ergo will assist the Corpus of Glast while Frodh Bek who survived the assasination attempt during the Ambulas boss fight, will send his army to fight back against Parvos while Nef and Alad have their own agendas during the whole battle for the leadership of the Corpus.

Potential translation of The Man In The Wall’s line at the end of The New War and Whispers In The Wall

.After much debate over what was truly said, the latter quest reveals what T Mi TW said.

VOULL NE XATA VOK, MARA LOHK?

We have translations of Xata (Truth) and Lohk (Void) and Mara is the placeholder name for the Operator, who is a teen at best. Voull sounds very similar to Oull, a Requiem Mod that fits as any other mod, with a description of seeing a multitude unfold from countless faces with a static picture of an eye seen when killing a Lich/Sister of Parvos and shifting through the other Requiem Mods in the mod menu, or perhaps seeing the Truth (or in Voidtongue, Xata). There are no direct translations for Ne and Vok, but can be inferred or are meant as conjugations.

As such, a proper translation would potentially be:

DO YOU SEE NOW, CHILD OF THE VOID?