Okay, let's talk about Daklo, the angry wet owl of a Cephalon introduced in The Old Peace. His chief defining personality trait is that he really hates Sentients. This is how he's introduced:
I have an immediate problem with this conversation: there's a third option here that goes unspoken. For the entire quest.
It's been a very long time since Stolen Dreams (ohmygod it's been ten years), but let us revisit. Maroo is introduced having pillaged an Arcane Codex from an Orokin Derelict. No one really understands what that is. She was hired by Tyl Regor, who thinks the codex might be a cure for cloning decay, but she broke her contract after the Corpus, thinking it's an Orokin treasure, outbid the Grineer. After selling the real one to the Corpus and leaving a fake one with the Grineer, her deception is uncovered and she has to go into hiding.
This is where the Tenno come in. The Lotus offers Maroo protection in exchange for helping them recover all six of the Arcane Codices through a series of Spy missions. Ordis starts researching the Arcane Codices, but interestingly he has this to say about one of them:
"They're absolutely beautiful. Composed with such elegance and grace, I have never seen anything like them. Is there even an Operator capable of writing anything so perfect?"
My guy hasn't been awed by code like this since The Limbo Theorem, which came out the year prior. In the final mission, the player returns to the Arcane Machine from which Maroo stole the first Codex. The player loads in all six and executes the code, then this happens:
Stolen Dreams is followed by The New Strange, almost immediately. They were released like six weeks apart. The New Strange begins with Simaris contacting the player for help in rescuing his research Sentinels from the Grineer. The Lotus repeatedly asks for an explanation, but Simaris is so evasive about his Sentinels' investigation that, after the player frees his Sentinels, she immediately directs them to steal the Grineer's security logs in a Rescue-turned-Spy mission.
Back at the orbiter, the Lotus reveals the security logs were heavily corrupted but she managed to retrieve fragments of a "biological nature," suspecting this fragment might be what Simaris was interested in. Ordis performs an analysis on the biological signature. A message from the same voice heard in Stolen Dreams plays, but this time Ordis is kind of affected by it:
The player is directed back to Simaris for an explanation, but he refuses to reveal anything until the player has completed three synthesis scans for him of an Arid Lancer on Mars. I recommend the Capture mission, personally, it's the fastest. Once finished, Simaris will decipher the biological signature found in the Grineer security logs:
Simaris immediately wants to synthesize the source for his Sanctuary and creates a blueprint of a beacon for the player to lure it out. Back at the orbiter, Ordis constructs the beacon in the Foundry, and this happens:
First of all, yes, that line actually does change from "All is silent and calm" in Stolen Dreams to "All is silent in the calm" in The New Strange. Those lines are a direct translation of Popol Vuh, where it is translated as "All is silent and calm." These messages are voiced so it's not a mistake on the player's end. It doesn't really matter, though; what does matter is that Ordis is badly affected by this message and Simaris has to shield his somatic routines.
Simaris tracks the source of the transmission. The player is sent to complete a Mobile Defense on Europa while the Lotus hacks the local network for information. Afterward, the Lotus identifies the biological signature as Chroma. She believes Chroma, having gone to both sites where they'd previously recovered the Arcane Codices from the Grineer and the Corpus, is covering someone's tracks. Ordis suggests returning to the Arcane Machine in the Orokin Derelict the player visited at the end of Stolen Dreams.
On the way back to the Arcane Machine through the portal room on Mars, Margulis and Simaris discuss how Chroma is not being controlled by the Tenno. (The Second Dream will come out like nine months after this quest.) The player arrives to find the Arcane Machine now totally destroyed. Chroma reappears and is invulnerable. Margulis warns the player not to engage and Simaris demands the player synthesize him. After the player scans him, Chroma vanishes.
Simaris instructs Ordis to extract a blueprint from the scan. Ordis does so but isn't able to find a new lead on Chroma's trail, so Simaris reveals he possesses another Arcane Codex and knows the location of a second Arcane Machine. The player is sent through a portal room on Europa to a different derelict, where they find an undamaged Arcane Machine and must defend it against three waves of Corpus attackers. By the way, Simaris's Sentinels—three Helioses (Heliosi? Heliei?)—are scanning a Sentient relic on top of the machine that goes basically unmentioned.
Chroma returns to the Arcane Machine. Simaris and Ordis argue over what to do with Chroma during the Defense: Simaris wants to synthesize Chroma, putting the Operator in harm's way, but allowing Simaris to determine who is operating Chroma, while Ordis wants to spare the Operator by just scanning Chroma, which would free Chroma from his mysterious assailant's control. The player ultimately scans Chroma, freeing him from control.
To this day, the playerbase argue over who was controlling Chroma. I personally think it was supposed to be Praghasa, because the voice better matches the Praghasa that we hear in the New War teaser than the Hunhow we eventually hear for ourselves in Natah. The Lotus also believes Chroma is covering their tracks, and he's targeting the Arcane Machines, which transmit Sentient messages. ("The womb in the sky" is how Hunhow will describe the Lua Reservoir to the Stalker during the Second Dream's opening cinematic.) And finally, Chroma is the Sentient-hunter. His kit involves changing status types to combat Sentient adaptibility and his pelt is explicitly a Sentient trophy. As The Old Peace shows with Uriel, the Sentients can be very vengeful towards those who've personally wronged them.
But that's not why I'm going through this. What matters is that Ordis is affected badly by a Sentient message. Not only is this not the first or last time that a Cephalon will be badly affected by the Sentients, this isn't even the last time Ordis will be badly affected by a Sentient.
Octavia's Anthem is perhaps the best and most obvious case of Sentient aggression against a Cephalon. A conversation with Cephalon Suda on the Relay prompts her to direct the player to rebuild a Mandachord and reconstruct Octavia's anthem. Suda is largely herself during the initial quest to find the parts for the Mandachord, but she starts displaying forgetfulness almost as soon as it's done crafting.
The player is then directed to Uranus to find the anthem's first fragment. Suda becomes more and more forgetful, to the point that Ordis is concerned she's suffering a parity drift. After finding the fragment, Suda recalls hearing the anthem on Lua, but at the end of the mission on Uranus, Suda suddenly says this:
"Who are you? What do you want? Oh no. It's happening again..."
Throughout the quest, Simaris argues passionately that Suda has been corrupted and should be destroyed before whatever's affecting her can spread to them through the weave.
Ordis is immediately against this idea. He believes Suda just needs help, so the player is directed to Lua to find another fragment of Octavia's anthem. Suda has already forgotten why they've come to Lua and has to be reminded by Ordis, only to forget again immediately afterward. She realizes to her sorrow that her corruption is not benign right before the player is attacked by Sentients. Suda is then taken over by Hunhow:
Suda: Sentients?! But how did they know... What? He's just an Old War memory... Get out! I won't let you take—
Suda-Hunhow: —My body, my children, I am here.
Ordis: Hun... Hunhow?! Operator, Hunhow's doing something to Suda. He's in her mind.
Ordis tells the player to find another fragment of the anthem, which they find and recreate through another Hydraulus. Suda-Hunhow orders his Sentients to destroy the Hydraulus, saying:
"Silence the anthem. Silence the Warframe whose malign pitch can cross the gap itself."
"The gap" is how Hunhow refers to the Void. The music allows Suda to return to herself long enough to tell Ordis where the final music fragment is before Hunhow takes over again, assaulting the player with an endless wave of Sentients all the way to extraction.
With Suda's knowledge, Ordis directs the player to an Orokin Tower in the Void to find the final musical fragment of Octavia's anthem. Ordis hopes playing the Hydraulus will help Suda remember herself, but this time it doesn't work, so he instructs the player to use the Orokin Tower's reactor energy to amplify the music. Suda-Hunhow sends his Sentients to interfere with the reactor and prevent the tower's amplification of the anthem:
"My body" and "my children" are how Hunhow refers to his Sentients. Anyway, the player must defeat all the Sentients to finish the tower's overdrive, but it works, and Suda returns briefly to herself. In the end, Ordis chooses to go into her datascape to try to rescue her from Hunhow. Finally, the player must go to Simaris for help entering Suda's datascape and confront Hunhow themselves. By recreating Octavia's anthem on a massive Mandachord, they drive out Hunhow and restore Suda to parity.
So, when I first played this quest, I thought it was kind of odd that Hunhow hated the anthem as much as he does, because the Night of the Naga Drums is famously the night the Tenno slaughtered the Orokin. Isn't that what the Sentients wanted? Death of the Orokin? And the answer is twofold. First, not only was the most famous massacre in history coordinated by this anthem, but it reached across the gap. It could reach Tau.
The second is that the Sentients still consider the Tenno to be their enemies, even after they slaughtered the Orokin:
Later, during The Maker, Erra's dialogue indicates that he doesn't consider the Old War to have actually ended:
Erra: Mother's gone. This is all that remains. But you have her fire. And more. You can finish what she started...
Natah: Finish the war.
This makes sense to me, because Natah famously did not carry out the last sequence of her mission: to destroy the Tenno.
Other than Octavia's anthem presenting a significant threat to the Sentients, why do the Sentients target Cephalons? It turns out this is part of the Sentient war strategy against the Tenno. The first and most obvious advantage is that, without their ship Cephalons, the Tenno will be blind.
The second is that Cephalons are a treasure trove of useful information. In the Void, when the player activates the Hydraulus after amplifying it once, the music briefly reaches Suda and this exchange happens:
Suda: Ordis! I remember—
Suda-Hunhow: —nothing. Now I will reach across the weave and claim you, one who is called Ordis.
Ordis: I... remember... I remember a secondary system nearby. Operator, we need more power!
Suda-Hunhow: I see you. Does your child puppet know of your true nature?
Ordis: No, I am not that person... I am a Cephalon.
Suda-Hunhow: Ordan Karris, the beast of the bones.
As Simaris has repeatedly warned, Hunhow is able to reach Ordis through the weave from Suda. "I remember" is what Suda says whenever Hunhow begins affecting her, and "I remember" is what Ordis says, voice distorted, as Hunhow begins affecting him. Ordis manages to avoid corruption, but Hunhow says, "I see you," and begins talking about Ordan Karris. The implication is that Hunhow has acquired the knowledge from Ordis that he was once Ordan Karris.
How much Hunhow knew about Ordan prior to this moment is unknown, and it hasn't been made clear when Ordan Karris was active except that he was glassed prior to the Second Dream. (The timeline is a little odd, but Ballas introduced Ordis to the Operator immediately after glassing him, and in a later fragment, Ordis recalls, "But then your long sleep came, and I waited.") What we can tell is that Hunhow pulled data from Ordis during that brief intrusion and filled in whatever he didn't know.
But finally, the most important advantage to dominating and erasing a Cephalon:
According to the Crewman Synthesis Imprint, the Sentients were created by Archimedean Perintol—who, fun fact, lends his name to the Tau moon of Perita, where the Old Peace takes place. Perintol crafted the Sentients to have a specific weakness to the Void:
I tried to catch my breath and speak, “The crossing to the Tau system is perilous. Adaptation and replication are the only way a terraforming journey can be made. They will build an interstellar rail as they travel, they will adapt to the host planet and prepare it for our arrival. They will save you.”
Tuvul peered down at me, “And when it completes its task, what will prevent it from turning against us, as the Seven Principles say?”
“The flaw.”
Tuvul’s eyes narrowed, “The flaw?”
“The Void is poison to them. Once they have reached Tau they will be marooned there. To travel the rail here would destroy them."
Hunhow uses Suda's energy to protect his body, his children, from the poison of the Void, allowing them to attack the player while they hunt for the anthem's last fragment in the Orokin Tower. This would let the Sentients "cross the gap."
During the Old War, Hunhow destroyed the extrasolar rail that connected the Origin System to Tau. Through a propaganda broadcast that plays during the weekly Veilbreaker mission, Pazuul states:
"My father severed the worlds, sundered the link we had forged with Tau in the days of our enslavement."
Another one concludes with:
"Let Narmer draw unto herself, all things. Veils to swallow the mind, vessels to swallow the body. A mighty maw to swallow all, and bear us to Tau, as one."
Not only are there Sentients still on Tau—although it's been repeatedly stated that this will not be the Tau that our Operator remembers—but the Sentients in the Origin System long to return home to Tau. It isn't clear how many Sentients Hunhow could shield through Suda, but he was able to shield an entire mission's worth, so it's not an insignificant number—and that was just with her. He can corrupt other Cephalons through the weave, and with them, he could allow Sentients to cross the Void without suffering its poison en masse.
Cephalons can be badly affected just by Sentient broadcasts.
Without their ship Cephalons, the Tenno are data-blind.
Sentients can corrupt Cephalons and spread that corruption like a trojan virus through the weave.
Sentients can access data from the Cephalons they've contacted, even if they're not fully corrupted.
Sentients can use a Cephalon's energy to protect themselves and other Sentients from the Void's poison.
So, Daklo. Remember Daklo? This is a post about Daklo.
THIS NEVER COMES UP. OH MY GOD, IT NEVER COMES UP.
As a Cephalon, Daklo has actual, canonical reasons to hate and fear Sentients and they never come up. Not once. Suda-Hunhow states during Octavia's Anthem, "Another Cephalon made null as we prepare," indicating that he's done this before. Octavia's Anthem is unlocked right after The Second Dream. Attacking Suda is the first thing Hunhow does as soon as he receives confirmation from the Stalker that the Operator is awake, and the Cephalons, even Simaris, are totally unprepared. Hunhow is pulling from his old war strategies while preparing for a new one.
During The Old Peace, Daklo has three conversations with the player. The first one in front of Caliban Prime:
Daklo: Disgusting, isn't it? Orokin gold - wasted! I wonder... which of you would this aberration attack first?
Adis: Stupid.
Daklo: Watch your mouth, void-lugger.
The second one after the player has returned from killing the Dactolyst:
Daklo: Tenno. I know you're loyal and you want this to work, but you know it as well as I do: there is something deeply amiss with the Sentients. If they're so proud of who they are, then why do they want to be human so badly? And every time they try, it's just off, isn't it?
The last one is when the player returns with Uriel during the climax of the quest, which plays out like this if you let him live:
Daklo: Tenno? Dear Void... I saw it all!
Operator: What did you see?
Daklo: The Grineer were prepared. They knew. The moment Ballas announced the treaty was dead, they opened fire!
Operator: Get out.
Daklo: Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you.
When Daklo questions who Caliban Prime would attack first, the Operator or Adis, it's clear he's mistrustful because Caliban is partly a Sentient construct. But any other Cephalon would have cause to fear a third answer: them. Hunhow's wartime strategy is to target Cephalons to blind the Orokin/Tenno, harvest data, erase the Cephalons, and move onto the next through the weave. But Daklo doesn't consider that, because his single defining character trait is "prejudiced." There is so much more interesting history between Sentients and Cephalons and instead all we got is "void lugger."
While everyone else has at least understandable concerns about the peace treaty, Daklo is reduced to a small racist owl. He should have given voice to the very real concerns the Cephalons would have about the Sentients who corrupted them, stole their data, and erased them, and instead he's mad that they... don't pass well enough for human. Like, was this needed? Is the quest improved by bigotry against the Sentients? Do you feel like you have a better grasp of the political tension between Orokin and Sentients knowing there's a bigoted epithet against Sentients and a Cephalon used it?
As much as I enjoyed The Old Peace, Daklo is the weakest part. His entire characterization is a missed opportunity for something more interesting.
