#warframe codices

The fact that Gara was a rather tame Glass Samurai-themed Warframe, with Revenant being a (eventually Eidolon-corrupted) guard Warframe meant to take her place should have made whatever story that accompanied them rather meh, by Digital Extremes standards. On paper, a warrior of glass and an undying guard doesn't seem too exciting. And yet, DE cooked the most insane lore about a Dax willingly offering herself up to become a Warframe, knowing the truth behind the creation process, not just the Orokin propaganda the populace was fed about them. An act of sacrifice for the greater good, sacrificing her humanity in order to better protect the one she cared for most: The Unum. And when the final Orokin Tower was besieged by a colossal Sentient in the dying days of the Orokin Empire, with no other Warframe or Tenno left to oppose It, Gara remained in Cetus to deliver unto that Sentient a terrible and final ruin at the cost of her own life, knowing her death would be worth it if it meant the people of Cetus and (perhaps most importantly) the Unum would live. And when she died, killing the Sentient in the process, 3 individual pieces of that Sentient broke off in the explosion and continued to flow with esoteric energies— energy from a race born beyond our Star. And this allowed those three fragments to rise from the dead‚ mindless Eidola incapable of ever threatening Cetus again, but still with incredible power that needed to remain in check. And so The Unum, “That Woman in The Wall”, used her power to see above the narrative— to see all of time and all facets of reality concurrently— to imagine herself a Warden who could watch over the Eidola forevermore, using their undying Eidolon power against them. Through the power of the Void and her command over conceptual embodiment, the “fatherless aberration” that is Revenant Prime was born onto The Eidolon-moh, the Warframe who would continue Gara's and The Original Warden's vigil over these undead creatures. Do you see how insane they managed to make the story of two rather basic, thematically unrelated Warframes??

Archimedean Javi's story is so insane that I had to be the one to break it down on the wiki to make sure it was done justice. Javi was an Archimedean who practiced alchemy and transmutation, real sciences by the time the Orokin Empire reached its Neo or Axi era. This science was feared by the Orokin due to the combination of alchemy and transmutation having the theoretical capability to fundamentally break the strict hierarchical caste system that allowed the 'True Orokin' (blue bitches who stole the bodies of normal humans from the lower castes to achieve functional immortality) to rule the empire, uncontested. And Javi was the greatest Archimedean of these sciences. It was feared that his mastery of these sciences could allow him to create fortune enough to rival that of Orokin Judges using simple elements. After all, the last master scholar of a truly arcane science (and a literal nobody at that) became veritable Orokin royalty and to this day, House Entrati still stands as the last remnants of Orokin life in Sol. Even more worryingly, it was feared that Javi's mastery over transmutation could theoretically allow him to survive even the Jade Light itself: that which was meant to be the most final of deaths, a sentence unavoidable. Light which canonically claimed at least two Warframes, forgotten to history, and almost claimed Ivara, whose ability to survive her trial earned her the honour of being Primed.

Javi in particular was feared so much by the Orokin that he was imprisoned in Dabaoth-Kra, which had the brutal, alchemic Lavos as its guard. However, this would backfire. Javi continued his alchemic and transmutation studies while imprisoned. Most of the Orokin ignored it, writing his texts off as illegible nonsense from a crazed Archimedean facing a death sentence. But Lavos took interest in what Javi was doing, in what he was saying with his alchemic scrawlings. Lavos understood him and was learning from him. They were communicating with one another in a language only they understood. Over time, Lavos— a once hardened prison guard— began to soften. This behaviour, both from Archimedean Javi and Lavos, alarmed the Orokin, so they decided to push up Archimedean Javi's execution. See, he was sent to Dabaoth-Kra for a specific reason: they thought that if he might be able to evade death by Jade Light through self transmutation and alchemy, then having an alchemist Warframe concoct a solution that would result in the complete and total lysis of all his living cells would solve that problem, right? No possibility for his ashes and leftover gore and bloody mist (frequently listed byproducts of a death by Jade Light both in Codices and Leverians) to reconstitute themselves if there is nothing left behind. Smart, if a bit paranoid. Except, like always, the Orokin failed to account for the Tenno (and their willingness to aide Archimedeans + turn on the Orokin at the earliest and safest opportunity). And so came the day of Archimedean Javi's execution by order of the Orokin warden of Dabaoth-Kra (Lavos was just the enforcer acting on behalf of an Orokin, a running theme, hence why Euleria 'Mother' Entrati called the Tenno “Orokin thug[s]” when they first met). Lavos was assigned to carry out Javi's execution via “cellular reversal”, which would result in the complete and total cellular breakdown of Archimedean Javi, which would in theory make it impossible for him to use his arcane sciences to cheat death. This was the true reason the Orokin had sent him to death row at this particular prison. Lavos hesitantly carried out the cellular reversal as ordered, reducing Archimedean Javi to nothing but liquid. Success. But as the Orokin jailers cheered at Javi's demise, Lavos took the liquid remains of Javi and transmuted them into a snake, which slithered up his left arm and integrated itself into Lavos, while a second snake— formed from Lavos' own flesh— manifested and coiled itself around his right arm. As the Orokin jailers looked on in horror at seeing that Lavos had not only learned transmutation from Javi, but had performed it on him to bring him back as a snake, now integrated into his very Warframe, Lavos proceeded to unleash Vial Rush upon them, killing them all. Lavos was forever changed. Just as Archimedean Silvana lives on in The Silver Grove, having permanently transferred her mind into the forest itself and its terraforming apparatus, Archimedean Javi lives on as a separate mind working in concert with Lavos. As Lavos' codex entry states: “The serpents of Lavos encourage him as he transmutes the battlefield... to harness the secret of invention.” And this very same gestalt of Lavos and Javi would go on to use his newfound power over transmutation and alchemy to gild himself, to elevate himself to Prime status. The only Warframe to become a Prime by their own hand. The Warframe who only exists because fear drove the Orokin to persecute the greatest scholar of alchemy and transmutation and to do it in such a convoluted way that it directly resulted in their fears coming true (Javi, in the end, transcended the Orokin hierarchy he was bound to by becoming a Warframe and then once again by becoming a Prime Warframe, who helped fell the empire), all because they unjustly attempted to kill an innocent Archimedean (without Jade Light).

And then there is the loyal Warframe who continued to serve House Entrati even in death on Deimos. A composite of three separate Warframes who were lost to the Void in service to the Entrati, Warframes who— in death— eventually found one another and helped make each other whole once more. A family unto themself. A Warframe who transcends the binary. And interestingly, a Warframe who doesn't simply utilize Void energy to power Warframe abilities, but a Warframe who commands Void power itself. Abilities that directly link to Xata, Lohk, Fass, Ris, and the Void. A Warframe who passed through The Wall of Lohk as three separate frames and returned as one. Capable of conceptually embodying weapons and tapping into the power of Untime. Their first ability, Xata's Whisper. Xata — Truth: “Where it all began”. Could Its Whispers in the Walls be true? “VOULL NE XATA VOK, MARA LOHK?” Should we listen to Xata's whispers? What the Indifference says to us?? Much to consider.

Dagath literally gets an entire room in your Dojo where her dead body rests in peace and Grandmother (formerly Dagath Entrati) narrates her entire life story from start to finish. From Dax to Warframe. From horse being killed to head being blown off. To raising from the "dead" thanks to Warframes having undying traits. And killing her abusers and becoming the inspiration for the headless horseman.

AND THEN THERE'S HILDRYN AND BARUUK WHO GOT NOOOOTHING. HILDRYN'S LORE IS SO EASY IT COULD WRITE ITSELF BUT THEY GAVE HER NOTHING OUTSIDE BALLAS WANTING HER TO BE HIS SHIELD MAIDEN AND BARUUK IS SUCH A UNIQUE WARFRAME WITH SUCH UNIQUE ABILITIES AND THE MOST AMOUNT OF DAMAGE REDUCTION ANY SINGLE FRAME CAN ACHIEVE (EVEN WITHOUT HELMINTH) WHICH MATCHES HIS PACIFIST STYLE, YET HE DIDN'T EVEN GET A PRIME TRAILER TO GIVE US CRUMBS OF WHAT HIS DEAL IS. NOTHING TO EXPLAIN WHY HE IS THE ONE PACIFIST WARFRAME! His entire kit revolves around disarming + sleeping enemies + letting damage phase through him until his patience— his restraint— is worn away and then he calls upon the Serene Storm to unleash the Desert Wind, an Exalted Weapon that is technically not an Exalted Weapon by DE's own admission. According to the codex, Baruuk himself (his hands) is essentially Exalted and he's using his eroded restraint (anger) to force air into his hands and then project it outward. Paired with him punching and kicking, you get Aang if he was off his shits. He's literally airbending. His "weapon" is AIR, powered by his rage. His design and 'pacifist focused' ability kit are based on ancient Palestinian priests/Nepalese monks. He has one of the most unique Warframe kits with one of the most unique and powerful Exalted melees. A play style that necessitates sparing the enemy before he can unleash his full power. So much potential! And they did NOTHING with my boy lore wise. Genuinely so sad that Orb Vallis Warframes (including Garuda BTW!) were just skipped over. And we've been promised Garuda lore for like 8 years now (did we ever get it??)

Consider, if you will, Ballas. A man who claims wholeheartedly that he loves someone he sentenced to death, and then spends the next millennia deflecting blame for her death onto the society that he was the literal ruler of, and onto the children who she died defending. Only for us to realize that he never actually loved her, he loved the idea of her. He loved being loved by her. And he wanted all of that for himself. He wanted to monopolize Margulis, but she loved the Tenno. And he hated that. So when the time came, and Archimedean Margulis begged Executor Ballas to use his influence as one of the Seven Emperors of the Orokin Empire to save her, to help the Tenno, he instead signed her death warrant:

“Seven hands raised! For your apostasy, the judgement is... death.”

And instead of throwing herself before the Executors and renouncing the Tenno in hopes of saving herself, as Ballas suggested, she chose to die standing proud as the sole defender of the Tenno:

“My daughters, my sons... I want you to know, my last thoughts are of you.”

And Ballas hates Margulis for this. He hates the Tenno for this. He convinces himself that the Orokin Empire is the reason Margulis died and that it needed to be felled for this (The Orokin Empire 100% needed to fall for hundreds of unrelated reasons and would have eventually fallen without his betrayal, but he guaranteed its fate as "revenge" for something that he was totally complicit in). He acts as though he is the victim here. Not Margulis, nor her now twice-orphaned children. Him.

“None of them truly understands how much I lost, when I lost her. Nor by what subtle art my dead love now lives, within another's gleaming skull. So tonight, we shall celebrate. In her honour, and mine.” (this shit was sooo fucked up it made me gag)

And so, when the Sentients begin The Old War (a preemptive strike to protect Tau Ceti from impending colonization vis-à-vis the Zariman 10-0), he defects from the empire and conspires with Hunhow, Sentient Destroyer of Worlds, leader of the Sentient armada. Together, they devise a plan. In comes Natah, the Great Sentient Queen, daughter of Hunhow. A mimicry Sentient, sent to Ballas to infiltrate the empire as a double agent. And who does Ballas make Natah become? A facsimile of Margulis. Except this time, he has complete control of her. Except, no. No, he didn't.

“She wanted children of her own. Natah was the daughter, until I destroyed her. Now I am the Lotus. Now, I am the mother.”

And so, after the Tenno Absolution Ceremony— celebrating the "defeat" of Hunhow and the end of The Old War— ended in the infamous slaughter at Terminus, kick-starting the Tenno Rebellion and the fall of the Orokin Empire, Lotus recalls her newfound children, puts them into cryostasis, and phases Lua out of real-space to protect the Tenno and herself from potential Orokin and Sentient retaliation (which was a very real threat as seen in The Second Dream/Apostasy: Prologue).

Ballas must have been absolutely seething for the millennia that the Tenno and Lotus were out of his reach on Lua. Until he eventually convinces himself that it was fine, actually. Eventually, he would find a way to get to Lua. And he would get his 'Margulis' back. And everything would be perfect. He just has to be patient. When next he lays eyes on her, all will be right as rain.

“Forgive me.”

“For what? I am not who you think I am.”

“-But of course you are. Imprisoned, just as she was. I will not abandon you again, Margulis.”

*uses Void magic to disorient then abduct her*

Except, when he abducts Lotus after Lua returns from the Void following the events of The Second Dream, he realizes that Lotus is her own person, a gestalt formed from the combination of the Natah and Margulis personae. So, he factory resets her precepts back to Old War values, back to how she was when she first came to him as Natah. The end goal? At the time, molding her into the perfect Margulis. But before things can go any further, Umbra and the Dreamer impale Ballas with skiajati. He thought his power over Umbra to be absolute, himself to be untouchable, but failed to account for the simple power of a third party moving Umbra's arm for him. Arrogance was his downfall. Shocking.

Natah comes running to his side to save him. Now his plans are a mess. He's injured. And resetting Lotus effectively gave her retrograde amnesia and reestablished her connection with the rest of the Sentients. But this is fine. So long as he can manipulate her into rallying the remaining Sentients in Sol and force her to start a new war against her will, he can take control of the subjugated solar system when all is said and done. And then, when he is the one supreme ruler with no one powerful enough to oppose him, he can rip out all that remains of "The Lotus" and "Love For The Tenno", and can craft himself a perfect, subservient Margulis. Except no version of Margulis or Lotus could ever exist without their love for the Tenno. And when he realizes this, when he gets sick and tired of the Tenno and of Lotus resisting him, he decides to destroy the Sun, to kill off all life in the solar system, a literal man child throwing a temper tantrum on a galactic scale because despite having an entire solar system under his complete and total control, he cannot make the facsimile of his dead love submit to him and he cannot kill her kid, the one thing that will always be loved by her more than him.

... ... ...

Of all the codices and stories we've heard about pre-Operator Warframes, only two are of the Helminth-Human Hybrids going on a maddened rampage. And of those two, only one was described as having gone truly feral. I speak, of course, of Rhino Prime. He Charged and Stomped the security team sent to subdue him into nothing but bloody mist and gore. And he was feasting on said gore with barely a coherent thought behind his eyes. The only thing that stopped him from killing the man complicit in his torture, the man he was in the middle of charging, was the Tenno. The presence of the Tenno Operators soothed the wild beast. And with that, the Orokin finally realized they had a way to control their then-defunct Warframes. And yet, despite this known ability to soothe out of control Warframes, the moment Umbra is “equipped” after being remade, he immediately screams and rips the Operator that tried to link with him out of his mind. A complete 180° from both the Rhino codex and our understanding of Warframes up until this point.

Remember how The Man in the Wall antagonized the Dreamers after The Sacrifice? Ordis had every right to be concerned about the negative psychological ramifications of our transference flow into Excalibur Umbra being inverted back into our own mind:

Ordis: “Operator, you need to stop this! You could suffer permanent harm from Umbra's memory. What if you internalize all this?”

‎

A warning that fell upon deaf ears. But as it turns out, Ordis was cooking with his analysis.

Dreamer: “I killed him... Isaah.”

The Indifference: “Did you now? Is that how you remember it?”

Dreamer: “Yes...”

The Indifference: “GOOD.”

‎

The Man in the Wall finds our internalization of this memory as our own— the internalization of this trauma— as being good. It is framed as being a favourable turn of events for It. Why?

Well, thanks to Archimedean Margulis, we know that the intensity of their pain, the strength of their power, and their ability to control their power are all positively correlated to the amount of emotional distress they had suffered and the severity of psychological trauma they had endured during their time aboard the Zariman 10-0. This was the breakthrough Archimedean Margulis had been looking for. The mental and emotional state of her children governed their newfound abilities. This left her with a seemingly impossible goal: figuring out how to heal a mind ravaged by the unfathomable horrors it had been subjected to. And as Teshin revealed, Margulis had to get creative, because she could not find a way to sever their link to the Void.

Teshin: “Margulis lied to you: a lie of omission. She did not cure the Zariman children— she 'erased' them. My only hope is that truth still lingers inside you, buried within your mind. The power and the misery... of the Void.”

‎

The children of the Zariman could not be cured in the traditional sense. However, knowing how their power worked, Margulis was able to suppress their Void power as much as possible by creating memory gates, sealing away all recollection of their time aboard the Zariman 10-0. It would weaken their Void connection to the point that the children would stabilize and could control their previously uncontrollable abilities. This was part one of her three part solution. First, seal the problematic memories to "dull [their] sensitivity to the Void". Next, put them into The Dream. Finally, link their minds to surrogate bodies that could contain their Void power such that they would be able to lead normal lives and eventually reintegrate into society.

Margulis: “This will stop the Voices from taking hold. You will have to dream, my angels. Dream... not of what you are, but of what you want to be.”

‎

In The War Within, the Dreamers were able to break free of the mental hold The Twin Queens had on them during Continuity by undoing the memory blocks Margulis had placed on them. This caused their traumatic memories to resurface, and the Void power that had been suppressed along with them was able to manifest once more. This rediscovered power gave the Dreamers the strength needed to reject Continuity and cut their transference link to save themselves. As Teshin said:

“Your repressed memories and powers have returned, fused with your Tenno abilities, amplifying them. You've outgrown the cradle. Now your Transference is innate.”

‎

But this increase in power came at the cost of now remembering the horrors and the trauma of the Zariman. And at the end of the quest, The Man in the Wall makes Its first canonical appearance. Why? Simple: the Dreamers had reestablished a proper connection with the Void. With this increase in their Void power, they were now once again visible targets for this entity. Operator Rell was able to trap one of its façades in a transference loop within his Warframe because he had never entered "The Long Dream". Unlike his fellow Operators, he was aware of this entity from the very beginning, unlike the other children who entered The Dream, allowing him to fight It to his very end.

The Indifference: “You mad at me, kiddo? Did you forget? You're nothing without me. You owe me.”

‎

So, it's clear that trauma and pain are instrumental in both the strength of the Void within the Tenno and the ability of The Man in the Wall to manifest itself. At least, this is how the narrative presents it. So for The Man in the Wall, the Dreamers internalizing MORE trauma, trauma that does not rightfully belong to them, is great. It strengthens their power and also Its hold on them. This would explain why The Man in the Wall has instigated some of the most emotional quests out there and done so in a way that is intentionally emotionally damaging. Not only did these events go on to further traumatize the Dreamers, but the sequence of events that occur due to It leading them around eventually culminated in the opening of a Void portal big enough to attract the attention of (another form of) It in Sol, triggering a renewed attack by Its Murmur, who seek to strengthen the Threads of Khra, which would allow It to get a big enough foothold in reality to (presumably) break/pass through The Wall of Lohk. And as Teshin plainly states:

“The Void Angels are assaulting the Undercroft, tearing rents in its fabric. Undo what their claws have done. If the Void Angels break through the Wall, their Master will be freed. We cannot allow that to happen.”

‎

‎Similarly, Archimedean Yonta offers:

“Something I wasn't sure existed has burst through the Albrecht Membrane, and right now the Zariman is plugging that hole. The Angels are clawing at the Albrecht Membrane, creating ruptures that will saturate the area with Void. Failure to seal those ruptures immediately will result in, well, total reality failure. Not good. This typically results in death.”

‎

Teshin, alongside the Drifters in the Void, and the Holdfasts, alongside the Dreamers in the Zariman, are fighting a tireless war on two fronts, both with the same goal: to prevent The Void Angels from tearing through The Albrecht Membrane/The Wall of Lohk to keep The Man in the Wall from breaking through into their world. Meanwhile, the Cavia are fighting to prevent the Murmur from achieving the same result beneath the Entrati Void Research Enclave— the seat of the Void in material reality. Keeping this entity weakened and out of our reality is of paramount priority, emphasized across three major updates.

From what we see in Whispers in the Walls, although trauma, pain, and coldness seem to empower this being, love, compassion, and kindness seem to weaken and/or placate It.

This leads to the question I found myself asking in Jade Shadows. Did transferring into Jade result in the Dreamers internalizing what occurred in her final moments the way they did with Umbra? And if it did, was what they internalized a positive memory (à la the miracle of life from someone who fought hard to achieve it) or a negative memory (from being forced at bladepoint to give birth only to subsequently die during the childbirth... as a teenager).

I can't say which way the Dreamers would lean (from an endonarrative standpoint); however, I do know that this would be a fantastic tidbit to canonize and explore alongside the Umbra memory. If using the positive interpretation, it could be the antithesis to the internalization of killing “their son” (Isaah) by internalizing a new memory of “giving life to their son” (Sirius). This may very well have been the angle DE was going for (since Umbra is explicitly mentioned for the first time ever since The Sacrifice, immediately before this sequence of events occurs) even if the execution was left wanting. I think it would be so cool if the narrative doubles back and discusses this, its implications, and how even something as disconnected from The Man in the Wall as Jade Shadows could ultimately tie back into it, just like The Sacrifice, and finally talks about things like the negative internalized emotions associated with being forced to give birth at bladepoint only to die in the process as a teenager and how that has to be insanely damaging— to say nothing of the guilt you'd feel from not being able to save Jade despite all your effort (before dying with her). I'd also like to see us (preferably Loid or Lotus) properly address how The Man in the Wall seems to feed off of all this internalized trauma.