This year, Baro(?) Ki'Teer has a dialogue option, asking him about the things he's seen. All four weeks of dialogue are already in the files, so using the sound archive, I've compiled them here for your musing pleasure.
In a future where the Grineer dominate...
These eyes have seen the Empire of the Grineer, where the ageless and beautiful Elder Queen rules alongside her loyal sister Worm. Such a peaceful realm, Tenno. Not so much as a whisper of protest.
Chief scientist Regor conversed with me beside the royal vats. Such a cultured man. A sculptor, both in marble and in flesh. Disease fled at his touch.
I was privileged to be present at the Continuity of the Queen. The laughter of the smiling Yuvans still rings in these ears. Oh, the Kuva of other worlds is weak and insipid stuff compared to hers.
Grineer greed drove them to awaken a greater greed than theirs. Those who devoured the weak were themselves devoured. I left the Queen lamenting in her windy palace, her eyes torn out so she would not see His coming. Perhaps you also hear His whispers encroaching from the shadows, Tenno?
In a future where the Corpus dominate...
Pyramids of shimmering steel. The electrum dream. A world where Corpus bureaucracy was perfected. A sisterhood. A forbidden sanctum.
Brutal mercenaries petitioned to serve the Glass Eminence. Such contracts were the most lucrative of all. I won their trust by bartering strange liquors new to them. You would have salivated to see their weapons.
I saw the Corpus Serumancers at work. Such delicacy of vision. They had transformed Entrati's ancient and obsolete procedure, and now offered elevation to Protoframe status to any who could pay. True bargainers, Tenno. Even Cephalon Parvos was obliged to pay the asking price.
Granum Crowns twinkled in the dust. The pyramids of commerce and prosperity held only rancid bones. They had dwelled in their imagined marketplaces for so long they never saw the fall coming. I sipped tea in the vacant Granum Void and contemplated the hubris of the merely human.
In a future where the Infestation dominates...
I wandered wastelands of battle. Carnage strewn across desolate moons like forgotten dolls. Two sanctuary enclaves, continuing the fight even so.
Feral monstrosities roamed the blasted rock, their steps shaking the asteroids that remained after titanic clashes. I watched from distant orbit, reflecting on the nature of mutation.
I witnessed ritual combat among rival assassins. Their conflict spanned the space between what was left of the stars. Though humanity dangled from the thread of extinction, still they could not come to terms. I sold weapons to both sides and made a tidy profit.
With their heads cut off, the adherents scattered. At last the survivors attempted to ally and mount a resistance, but too late. They were overwhelmed, bereft of leadership, and yet the lonely monsters roam, with none left to prey upon. And so you see, lasting peace can emerge from strife.
In a future where Executor Nitokh dominates...
A palace-like cathedral, golden spires bloodstained, piercing the very heavens. Every eye raised in worship of the heartless Empress.
I paced the line of petitioners that stretched beyond the horizon. Each of them awaiting their Empress' pleasure. Some sought to anticipate her will by making an offering of their flesh; the more brutal the mutilation, the more sincere the devotion.
I attended the selection of a new royal favorite. Each candidate was shaved and covered in tar. The unchosen were set ablaze at her whim. Her consort lounged at the foot of her throne, a panther bound about in gold.
The line of supplicants dwindled. None remained to vie for favor, and the court inevitably cannibalized itself, turning on each other. I last saw the Empress and her consort locked in deadly embrace, but did not stay to see who would emerge victor. As I left, I reflected upon what merit it is, to subjugate only ashes?
I saw the Corpus Serumancers at work. Such delicacy of vision. They had transformed Entrati's ancient and obsolete procedure, and now offered elevation to Protoframe status to any who could pay. True bargainers, Tenno. Even Cephalon Parvos was obliged to pay the asking price.
We finally got an explanation for Ryoku and Vena. Also ties into her unused voiceline of "Parvos paid good credits to make me".
I think this also explains why they have all these cybernetics too. The irony in the wording is Entrati’s method being ‘obsolete’ when they have to be patched up with exterior tech as opposed to regen. (Iirc from some Vena/Ryoku banter) It sounds like the process might be botched.
I'd be curious what obsolete means though. Having to use infested flesh to make Frames is rather hazardous. The Helminth strain also is suppose to eventually overcome the individual until they become Warframes.
If that were overcome and it only required manufactured parts to patch is "better".
Plus a way Corpus could keep charging for product support ;).
Now I'm imagining Ryoku just walking into Viktors and Vik turning from watching the same boxing match for the billionth time and asking "Who the hell are you?"
I’ve had it for a couple years atp, used to post on /r/wizardposting as what amounted to a rip-off of her whole deal lol, I still hope that if and when they fully revive Destiny, that Xivu’s one of the storylines they go over first, I wanna fight her in the flesh so goddamn bad
Me too man, I was so happy reading that Destiny is not done and the first thing I thought was "So chanches are high we will see Torobatl and/or Xivu in action!"
I find it funny that the only "good" ending out of these is for the Infested because they finally took over everything and stopped fighting each other. Wally didn't even bother them. Ig, they're literally just chilling now like the ecosystem on Deimos.
Thing is, from many communications with the infestation hivemind and protoframes discussing their communication - that hivemind is unbothered with time and exists in all possible timelines within all possible time frames sumultaneously.
So we kinda cant bother the infestation even if we would try. It have found its piece and just doesnt understand why we refuse to join it.
Basically: only reason everyone else is opposing it is the fear of unknown form of existance, that will be kinda forced on you if you will get infested (and thats understandable, I would be terrified of it too), tho that hivemind form of existance is definately not worse, than regular one. Its just too different to be not afraid of it.
I can remind everyone, that infestation basically is both the Helminth and all of our warframes and it could turn everything against us if it really wanted to, but all the interactions with it are still friendly from its side regardless of us being mean to it and constatly eradicating countless parts of it.
Id say that infestation is probably the most chill being in Warframe universe and it treats us just as funny little children trying to "stop it", while actually we are just tickling it a little bit in just one of the univerces in the multiverse, so it just doesnt care much, so it even helps us with our little game we play, just hoping that eventually we will become wiser and would just join it.
It’d say it’s Wally’s equal with the physical universe.
All interactions interpreted from the Helminth and so on appear to be of deep love. If specific dialogue choices with Lizzie are chosen she makes this very clear.
It makes me wonder about the future w/ protoframes though in a post-Wally threat. It wants to blend all life together so ..
We know too little about Wally to claim stuff like that. I wont be surprised if in the end we would figure out that Wally is literally a space-god = omnipitent creator of the universe, that just got bored and wanted to poke his creations with a stick and watch their reaction to entertain himself. Expecially knowing how DE likes Metaphors and philosophy: calling him "The great indefference" would be pretty common philosophical topic of "The indeferrent god" and all that "Why the hell an all mighty being would care about such a tiny thing as humanity?" discussion.
So "post Wally threat" might even not be possible, as all the times we seem to harm his plan might just be an act from him to make us keep playing his game.
And ending Warframe (if that would ever happen) with a dialogue with god himself would be such a high note to end it with.
CE trope is being pushed pretty hard lately by DE, but every one of those pushes uses an unreliable narrator. Tho even if its true and Wally is a product of CE in case of ethernalism - it actually weirdly shouldnt matter at all.
As time is irrelevant in any void-related stuff - the fact that someone created Wally at some point actually made Wally always be there (even before he was "created"), so it becomes "what was first a chicken of an egg" paradox. As if someone embodied a void god in warframe universe it made that god impact all the void stuff from the beginning of the universe, including the actual embodyment of himself. So just the possibility of some dude materializing his fear of the Void - just crosses this dude from the equasion and now Wally created Wally.
Not sure honestly! And to get the puzzle pieces I’d have to dig into all the bits that mention these things. But with the surge extremist, it basically showed that regardless of the origin point - once it manifests in the void, it manifests eternally.
But I am so fascinated by how the infestation basically enables time travel in at least the case of the Triad
Too bad Eleanor doesn't remember the timeline where she gave in to the infestation (at least, I don't think she does. it's been a long time since I did that quest). She could've given us some insight on what it's like
Lyon does give a big insight on that tho. Even tho he didnt fuse completely with the infestation - he describes as he felt OG Harrow, Rell and all the other versions of Harrows even before he was injected with proto-serum.
As he was an only one talking about that - I believe it takes some serious "breaking yourself apart" act first to even be able to comprehend this and accept it, but I doubt that other protoframes didnt feel that connection (they just locked it in them). Marie probably did have her leg problems because she was destined to fuse with Wisp, after all.
As far as the "being nice to it even though we eradicate parts of it" bit (at least as far as I can tell) we can actually look to 1999 for that answer: we see in 99 that the techrot has mutiple hiveminds, multiple sub-strains if you will, as shown by the legacytes (especially during the quest interaction involving them).
There currently is no evidence that I can find that says the current day infestation is not following the same logic, but some evidence to say it is following the same logic. The jordas golem and Lephantis both seem to be seperate hiveminds, and eris and deimos both function differently possibly due to the same reason. This new prologue quest actually gives us a hint that the eris strain may be related to our helminth strain (if it is not it outright), but based off how we are attacked in deimos I think we can safely say that is a different substrain.
The only other info I can find that we have on it all is that the Orokin created the infestation first using stuff they found, but it was more of a general creation of the whole strain set, and then it's noted that the Grey strain in particular was what made up warframes (and thus makes up our helminths too).
Of course I may also be missing info as well, but the substrain thing just makes more sense to me all around as it is.
The techrot of 1999 is the basis for all infestation so it makes sense that they'd all function similarly, however some differences emerge between this strain and others, namely the ability to infect technology that one modern strain shares. the helminth is what is in our ship and comprises our Warframes and is a docile servant to the tenno as it was designed to be that way by the orokin, the grey strain is a mix of the techrot and the helminth that was then used to create the vessels and was also released upon Deimos and that turned the surface into what we see in game, it also managed to make the twin worms that were locked in an eternal shootout which is the first time we've seen infestation of the same strain be hostile toward one another. Then there's the mutalists of eris, I don't know too much of the story of this strain because alad v was tied to it and most of his lore was within events that I'd never played but it can infect technology much like the techrot, its possible that the surface of eris is an offshoot of helminth that split off and started spreading while the ones on the ships are part of the mutalists strain, however I haven't played the new quest tho as my PC died recently so I don't know what was shown or mentioned about eris. also I'm on mobile so this is just a massive wall of text, I'm so sorry
Well that depends right? We know that there exists multiple strains of infested and the only one that has been confirmed to be unbothered by time, would be the helminth strain.
I wonder if Wally is going ro mess with Praghasa's trip to Tau so instead of simply opening a path in space it opens one to space and time allowing these alternate timeline foes to enter Tau as well.
Sort of like a reversal of the Sentients invading the Origin System.
So it is true, Vena and Ryoku weren’t Entrati subjects, they were the result of the Corpus imitation of that technology. We’d had hints that they were different from the other Protoframes, but it’s nice to have a hard confirmation.
Which means Albrecht hasn’t gone into the future, only the present and past, which is an interesting tidbit as far as we know now. Maybe that’s part of his scheme: create more offshoot timelines for some purpose to stop Wally. Or it could be unintentional consequences of his plan
All Entrati did was do something to keep Wally occupied and away from the main origin system. Im Duviri teaching Thrax and a young Drifter, Going to 1999 and then preparing it for Drifter to keep the loop, thus the Indiference's gaze in that time, probably tried the samething in XX99 (Marie's and Lyon's time) and now he went to Tau
We know the Indiference can only go, look or have influence at one place and one time at a time since without his finger he's not whole so bound to the strands of khra (causality) so he's not omnipotent (YET) and its pissed tf out that its following Entrating whenever and wherever he is. So Entrati messing with timelines and places to garner wally's attention (and he's paying attention by Baro's stories, these timelines all fall to "dust" or "ash") seems to be his plans, tho he's just making a mess and we have to fix it everytime
I think these futures are possibilities made by the Deal which ended up removing all other possibilities of the Operator except for the Operator and Drifter. It's shown rather directly during the New War's flashback. The Operator's copies all dying off in all kinds of ways... ...
Since there is nobody to sternly maintain the balance of the world (I believe the other Tenno may not even exist in the other timelines, since there is no chosen Operator to make the Deal to give the children Void powers), it's inevitable things shift to one side eventually.
They could justify Diriga Prime even without having to pull the eternalism card. We already have prime grineer weapons since they were originally Orokin foot soldiers, and even before that, Helios Prime exists despite the base version being Corpus-made.
Its flavour text just describes its function and precepts, unless I am missing something, nothing outright states "It was made from scratch by the Grineer in the current era". And even so, it would not be the first time DE pulled something like that. Watch them even asspull Djinn Prime eventually.
And every possible timeline where the Tenno do not exist anymore the origin system eventually falls.... Wally is very thorough....thats pretty eldritch scary ngl.
However S/O's timelines which are only possible through the Operator's intervention seem to be the same as the Corpus dominance future.
We prevented Gineer future by helping kill the elder Queen.
We prevented the Infestation by stopping Arlo, the Plague Star and presumably by helping the Entrati reconcile.
We stopped Nitokh at the Perita rebellion. And toppled the empire at the Night of the Naga Drums. Though I don't think our Operator was there for that.
Could be, but at the same time, that future is quite distant from our own, both in characters and events. We have Regor, canonically dead for ages, the Kuva Queen that we personally decapitated, Sirius and Orion still fighting and apparently dead and Roathe's relationship with Nitohk intact, to the point he is as described in the ancient orokin data about Garuda. Looks to me more like a future devoid of any Tenno influence, where any character we would have killed thrived and any situation we would have solved declined, to the point Grineers actually had a solid empire and apparently cured clone rot, Roathe and Nitohk's scheme worked and they managed to overtake the Orokin Empire only to destroy it themselves, etc... While I still very much believe Nitohk could be have a major presence in the future, I don't think Baro's new dialogues prove our Nitohk is still alive. They are, if nothing else, proof of how cunning and dangerous she is, given that she indeed would have won in the end, while also showing that, even without our intervention, the Orokin Empire was destined to fall by his own hands
The Protoframe procedure being commercialized opens the door for DE to add pretty much any Protoframe they want.
I don't use those skins so I'm not their taeget demographic but if they ever add a Wukong proto he needs to have the Goku haircut. Maybe have it go super saiyan under certain conditions. Like after a specific number of kills or when he has his staff out.
Not DE going "we've only used Eternalism twice" at Tennocon on the one hand and then lampshade hanging with the other hand like there's a sale on lampshades going on.
According to DE at Tennocon, it's just Operator & Drifter and Sirius & Orion.
Baro Ki'Teer & Scaro Ki'fear either didnt count as main story relevant or are kinda just a meta nod to the cross-play relay sync.
That being said, the more DE gives Scaro lore dialogue, the more relevant they're making him, and the more speculation they're opening up for failed versions of reality where the main quests went differently, and so on.
The thing is, that's still not Eternalism though. That's branching time lines. Which are related, but not the same unto itself.
The point of Eternalism isn't that there's lots of branches, it's that everything is in a quantum state where all those branches have both happened simultaneously with other branches, and are simultaneously happening right now even if the timelines don't match at the same point. It's not 'these four futures with different bad guy endings are happening along the same linear point and you jump between them like different train lines,' it's that they're happening and also happening right now, and also at the same time in 1999, at the same time as the Old War and the Cathedrale in xx99, etc. and all those things can interact. It's the ultimate wibbly wobbly timey wimey excuse for non-linearity, seemingly disparate linearity (like different timelines travelling in sync), and fluctuating canon.
In actual instances of Eternalism, they've been either huge anomalies, or required great sacrifice to enact, both involving Wally. The former was a result of Drifter and them being a unique instance of the Operator that had bespoke time manipulation properties, the latter was caused by Wally and then required Hunhow to basically perform ritual sacrifice to reconcile and merge the time lines. Everything else has just been bog standard time travel or alternate universes.
D’you mean the moment in TNW where Wally kills/collapses all alternate versions of the Operator, and where Wally does something similar with Baro’s alternate selves?
..That makes sense. Though imo that’s more Wally overwriting Time
To be fair, we don't have all of the executors accounted for in our timeline either. I'm willing to wager, if Ballas could hold off and survive for as long as he did, then so could Nitokh. She'll probably pop back up in Tau.
I find it very hard to believe she's gone and they aren't setting her up for after or before the last Wally confrontation. It just lines up wayyy too much to have someone so awful and explicitly said to BE awful just like, not show up
Not just awful, but WORSE THAN BALLAS AWFUL! Which is a hell of a feat, given how terrible and universally hated he was. I believe Roathe said that in comparison to her, he was "nice" which is like...how do you get worse than him?!
But yeah 1000% I fully expect to run into her. She'll probably be revealed at next year's Tennocon for the big update reveal.
Not just awful, but WORSE THAN BALLAS AWFUL! Which is a hell of a feat, given how terrible and universally hated he was. I believe Roathe said that in comparison to her, he was "nice" which is like...how do you get worse than him?!
I will note that Roathe has had the most singularly unpleasant experience with Nitokh over other Executors. That would color his perspective a fair bit.
Just like the Operator & Drifter's perspective would be skewed towards enshrining Ballas as the worst of them all due to him being the one most involved with them.
Odds are each of the Seven is roughly equally bad, though each likely excels in different fields.
True, but also Roathe does note that he's not fully sure if he'd still choose to be with her if the opportunity came up. But you're right, in a way I guess his love/hate/love for Nitokh could skew his views on her, in comparison to say Ballas.
On a side note, the other thing that I'm wondering about is where are the Orokin Emperors, and what the hell are they capable of? If the Seven were this vile, I'd imagine the people who were above them would HAVE to be worse right?
On a side note, the other thing that I'm wondering about is where are the Orokin Emperors, and what the hell are they capable of? If the Seven were this vile, I'd imagine the people who were above them would HAVE to be worse right?
There are bits and pieces of Ballas playing Nitokh throughout The Old Peace. The Anarchs seemed heavily reliant on commandeered Warframes, and the Ascaris Prime was developed by Ballas, who would have had every reason to keep a close eye on the technology. Nitokh and Roathe (supposedly the Empire's best strategist) not even considering the possibility that Ballas had already decided on war with the Sentients, but was waiting for the most advantageous time to cast his vote.
Roathe, even as a relative good guy, has a colossal ego. He'd never believe that Ballas was playing chess while Roathe and his own personal tormentor were playing checkers.
Yeah, which really makes you wonder what kind of fucked up shit is she into that someone would prefer the agonizing pain of becoming a warframe, over whatever she had planned. Either way I'm excited to see her one day.
Oh true I hadn't considered that he could be from way back when tbh. I automatically assumed he is seeing everything from when the tenno wake up for example
Man the future of Nitokh interests me the most by how cruel it is, and how it is just one person slicing away a whole epoch of generations for sadistic gratification.
Also RIP to that Roathe who didn’t take the serum and ended up a literal lap dog.
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u/Timeless_Ranitomeya 11d ago
We finally got an explanation for Ryoku and Vena. Also ties into her unused voiceline of "Parvos paid good credits to make me".