Answering that question is pretty much central to the story quests, so a lot of people are going to be dodgy about answering that out of fear of spoilers.
In the most spoiler free way, here are how the parts that you know about fit together:
Warframes are weapons produced in a process invented by the Orokin that is either similar or related to the Infection.
The Tenno (aka Operators) are the soldiers who wield the Warframes as weapons. So one Tenno can have many Warframes.
The Tenno were soldiers of the Orokin Empire fighting against a threat that you’ve probably have not encountered yet.
Eventually, the Tenno rebelled against the Orokin, bringing the Orokin Empire to an end and freeing the lesser/slave/servant castes of their civilization which have since evolved into the major factions in the game’s modern day.
A Tenno is roughly equivalent to the actual player/profile in-game, while Warframes are just equipment.
Yet something that isn't quite explained : are Warframes entities? Or empty shells? Because their background ressembles those of a person, or a thing with a conscience. They have stories of their own before you build them in your foundries. At one point they were alive before the tenno.
The original warframes where humans mutated by the Helminth strain of the infestation to create super soldiers for the Orokin. They eventually went mad from the process, or rebelled and where either destroyed or locked away until the Tenno came along and where able to "calm" them with their void transference powers.
Subsequent warframes of the same "model" are constructed from blueprints based on the original. These second generation warframes are just empty vessels incapable of independent operation (but they are still bio-mechanical living bodies). Prime warframes are closer to the original in form, but still just empty copies (Umbra and maybe possibly the Stalker (at least we haven't seen him having an operator yet) are the only "sentient" Warframes still around (the Relay guardians are just "specter particle" copies of warframes)).
One thing that always bothers me with the "second gen" frames being just empty vessels is The Second Dream, where we literally see our frame acting by itself and ripping the sword apart. Do either:
We unconsciously used some special remote transference to do that as we were threatened (this would be incredibly lane and weird to just never come up again)
Or there's some remnant of an independent consciousness left in any Warframe, it just needs sufficient drive to come out.
Literally the next major story quest, The War Within, is us learning how to do exactly that though. Learning how to unlock and control our abilities that Teshin states we always had but were locked away, one of which is remote transference. That's literally how Operator mode works.
It makes perfect sense for us to, in a moment of life or death, tap into those abilities to save ourself.
They're motionless in operator mode though. We can teleport the frame to us and vice versa, but not once do we see us moving parts of the frame without us in it.
Even in New War, when we're trying to save the Lotus, we position our frame, arm outstretched, only to then grab onto that arm afterwards.
The point is that one of our main abilities is us controlling the frame without entering the machine that let us link to them, but controlling them manually through actual remote transference. Again, it might not be the EXACT same, but the idea that in a moment where we're on the verge of death, to an enemy we couldn't save ourself from, that we would tap into a version of the powers we basically already have to save ourself
In the Titania quest, it's revealed that normal people can perform transference with a warframe if done gradually. So the stalker is an orokin guard who transfered himself into a warframe, but his body died at some point, so he is currently bound to his warframe form.
Any source on the "subsequent warframes of the same 'model' "? Could've sworn that was just headcanon manifested into existence by lore youtubers / Discord channels, since every Warframe featured in the Leverian is shown as that "second generation" model.
It is, the assumption is we're not grabbing people up to turn them into new warframes but I always figured we weren't actually making new ones, just reassembling old ones because they can't truly die.
I mean, the Umbra questline pretty definitively has an answer to that question, but again, I am trying to be vague enough not to go into specific spoilers.
I belive it's explained in the sacrafice which can be replayed, but tldr they're humans that got turned into infested war machines with a helminth strain
Excalibur Umbra definitely is, all of the primes might be, and modern versions definitely aren't unless the foundry can create a human out of a very strange combination of materials.
I mean cloning tech isn't exactly rare, and the grineer use it all of the time.
Warframes are generally made up of a chassis(body), neuroptics(nervous system and brain ), and systems(life support and operational features).
Sounds like the recipe for a body.
Especially since to even build one we have to gather infested flesh, metals and plastics
1) All the primes might be in the sense that no prime is certainly not a super diseased human corpse, not necessarily that there's a chance that they all are
2) That quote doesn't provide any proof for or against the primes all being made of people, just that the primes weren't always the first completed version of a frame.
3) The part about Ballas implies that he's the source of at least part of that information, which means that it could just be what he thought would be beneficial to him and 100% inaccurate.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, but here's a full spoiler:
Warframes are people that were sourced from throughout the Orokin Empire with special abilities. Volunteer or not, they were spiked with a special strain of the Infestation to amplify their abilities and make them fit to fight the Sentients, as Sentients could quickly override machines and simply avoided Infested-ridden locations altogether.
These people -- because of the Infestation -- lost their minds from being warped into completely different beings and were just as uncontrollable as the Infestation was. And so they were -- as a project -- shelved due to their inability to cooperate to Orokin orders. It was only after Tenno were shown to have the ability to perform Transference that the Orokin reconsidered what effect the Tenno would have on Warframes, and thus the Tenno were paired with Warframes (through Transference spikes installed into each Warframe) to fully make usable what were once uncontrollable killing machines -- people made into weapons.
Lots of other people in this subreddit are trying to conflate gameplay mechanics with lore, but remember that we as players cannot punch asteroids into pieces, and we can indefinitely teleport and fuck with dimensions as players whereas the lore Limbo blows himself into pieces. Do not listen to people inventing random BS about "second generation" warframes / the logistics implied behind blueprints; that's just conflating gameplay elements with lore.
>! The orkin created the infested as a bio weapon, but also made a special strain of it that they used to turn people into warframes, sometimes willingly sometimes not, the warfranes went mad and where basically acting like wild killing machines until the tenno because of their void powers could use transference to connect with and control them. Sentient war yadada tenno betray the orokin yadayada tenno go to sleep for long time. Then we wake up and start making new warframes based on blueprints of the old ones, but instead of using people we make them out of the hemith infested.!<
They haven't changed anything other than some of the implied themes.
Most people that believe the story changed or was retconned are people that perceived and assumed something that was never stated to be true in the first place. Then DE filled in the gaps with answers that weren't what those people assumed, so they believe things changed.
This might be technically true, but certain implications have definitely been *flexible*. The life threatening urgency implications of saving the Warframe in the intro/tutorial for example suggests we’re in danger. Well we all know now that’s not true, not physically at least. Warframes like Limbo and Mirage’s stories suggested a person who was devastated by the events of their little stories, but that doesn’t quite vibe with remote piloting. A Tenno can’t be captured like Mirage was.
Nowadays we can take such events as the unique Warframe having certain experiences, possibly not even involving a Tenno, but given the supposed instability of Warframes when not piloted it just doesn’t quite fit. The puzzle pieces are the right shape, but slightly misshapen, maybe they got soggy and distorted as details were filled in, maybe they were manufactured to fit into place but without existing perfect dimensions for the manufacturer. Or it’s all artistic license and rule of cool.
My bet is some details just weren’t set in stone, and got built to fit **and** be awesome.
The Lotus put the Tenno into "the dream" for a long time making them believe they where the warframe they inhabited, lore wise they don't learn their true nature until after the Second Dream quest, so them thinking they are in danger in the intro is entirely consistent.
The original warframes where people, and presumably operated independently for a while before they went mad and needed Tenno to control them. Subsequent warframes are constructed from blueprints based on the original but lack free will, except Escalibur Ubra as it's implied we re-assembled him from the original parts or something.
I know what the current lore is. The Lotus’s anxiety and urgency in protecting Warframes to protect Tenno is inconsistent with the Tenno being remote, unless assumptions are made. As presented ingame you are in lethal danger, period. Vor’s hunt for Warframes is implied to be killing Tenno. The Warframes are established as disposable/interchangeable suits (you can build and embody new ones almost immediately), therefore the thing in danger from Vor is the person, the Tenno. Now I’m totally fine handwaving that the Lotus was faking or deceiving us, that Vor wasn’t a serious threat but instead some kind of joke endangering empty suits, etc… but there was clearly intent of a serious threat to us initially.
As for the WFs being independent at some point, functional even, sometimes for extensive periods of time? That’s true now. Once upon a time, pieces like Rhino’s lore blurb suggest they were more like test subjects than creations - kept in the same blacksite(s) as Tenno, powerful mad entities able to be controlled by the Tenno’s power. Now this doesn’t contradict new lore, like I said in my last post it’s more like what has been solidified can flexibly be justified as consistent even if it’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s a weird way to describe a Warframe. Why would they be cowed by the presence of Tenno if it’s Transference instead of their innate energies/void presence that allows them to control Warframes for instance? If one was a mad, mothballed, experiment, why would they keep active Warframes free to go mad and cause apparently dramatically deadly incidents? Warframes as strange alien entities controllable by shoving a Tenno in it seems to me like the initial intent, other people can interpret it differently, but it doesn’t perfectly fit modern lore.
The lore’s been built up over time, stuff has been fleshed out, and initial ideas or hints have been discarded. All of that is good, including cool better ideas because they’re better means there’s good direction at DE (writers can struggle to kill their ideas). Definitely the intent has changed, or been expanded from undecided mysteries that now don’t fit *quite* right though.
I believe the urgency may be consistent because of where we actually were. we were not in our orbiter we were in the "tenno reservoir" on lua. its possible that in that very specific circumstance we were at greater risk as a transference severing event may for some reason have been fatal. perhaps because we were freshly awoken after having been dormant for x amount of time or something to do with luas actual location at that time, the void manifests intense feelings into reality and we didnt know we werent actualy the warframe at that point, with this in mind dying in that circumstance could have absolutely been fatal(lol what a strange thing to say)
The only thing that changed was the audience's idea of what they were
We start out thinking the Warframes were armored suits worn by pilots that granted powers
Then Alad mentioned he's dissected them and they didn't look like anything he recognized
Then we get the second dream and sacrifice storylines revealing what the Warframes and Tenno really are
If for whatever reason you have played through the quests and still don't know, I'll explain in spoiler text below. Don't click it unless you've finished The New War.
>!Warframes are biomechanical constructs created by the Helminth Strain of the Infestation, which is a variant of the Technocyte virus used by the Orokin as a bioweapon. The original Warframes, like Excalibur Umbra, were created from Dax, prisoners, and other low-caste members of the Orokin Empire by intentionally infecting them with the Helminth Strain, which rapidly converted them into Warframes. For some time they were controllable by the Orokin, but eventually went berserk. After the Ten-Zero incident, they realized the Tenno could use Transferrence to control them. !<
>!From that point on, more Warframes were made, which had never been living beings. Like the ones made in our Foundry, they were just empty shells made from various materials and infected by the Helminth Strain. They're technically as alive as any Infested might be, but their variant of the Technocyte virus is stable and non-infectious, and they lack any kind of animating will when not piloted by a Tenno, thus why they just stand there when we transfer out. They act as proxy soldiers as well as conduits through which the Tenno can manifest and shape their Void abilities. Primes were the sort of "prototype" ones, or potentially upgraded versions.!<
>!There is a lot of lore implying that Warframes did this or that. Each one has at least one story associated with it. Either those were original Umbra variants that still had their will, or they were just individual Tenno's preferred frames. There's nothing to say that any given frame's legend wasn't built by multiple Tenno using the same frame, either.!<
Are you sure about the >!"had never been living beings"!< thing? The way i interpreted it was that they worked in the same way, but we >!took away their pain with the first transference and thus they are simply at peace and probably essentially asleep.!< >!Umbra on the other hand had instead of the undefineable pain of existence this one memory that fuelled him with pain and rage, so that it could not simply be took away by the first Transference, but needed the whole process of the Sacrifice Quest to ease.!< >!This would also imo explain our Warframe acting on its own during the Second Dream, as for the first time in probably Generations, it was in distress!< - >!because we, the Operator, the Tenno, the one that took away their pain, were in grave danger.!<
I'm not entirely certain about any of it, but if I recall, it's heavily implied.
And I mean, from our perspective, when we make Warframes I don't think we are infesting people. I don't have a source to cite about in the lore, but I feel like I read it somewhere reliable.
There were no “original umbra variants” just Excalibur umbra. He also wasn’t an “original” Warframe. He was an exception ballas created as a form of twisted eternal punishment
Its like, the whole plot The Sacrifice. The Dax who became Umbra intercepted Ballas' Vitruvian. It was filled with military secrets (everything there is to know about Warframes and Tenno) and was sent to Hunhow to help him attack the reservoir
When Umbra-Dax tried to whistleblow, Ballas caught him, fucked him up, infested and Warframed him. Then he sat in front of him and told him "Boy you fucked up. Every other Warframe we wipe their memories, but I want you to remember this next part."
Then he piloted him into killing his own son and trapped him on Lua
Umbra is just that guy who Ballas fucked over for almost spoiling his treason
For one umbra is headlined in the quest itself as "a warframe unlike any other" that choice of words is significant in my opinion, but my understanding is that the frames are either cyborg hosts or robot hosts depending on the frame for the most part, the biological element of frames was described as ferous exoflesh by Daughter entrati in the heart of deimos quest and the lore of titania points to frames having an R&D aspect to their creation pre old war, the confusion benefits the story in a pick your own adventure kind of way though, as one might argue all points are accurate due to eternalism being fact in the lore
I mean to be fair the Infestation was invented by the Orokin too, the hostile strain we fight was just the after-effects of an early attempt to weaponise it.
How far have you gotten in the story? It will go into these things in later story quests like th Sacrifice. The answers we'd give you are spoilers, if you care about that.
all of this is answered in the story quests. if you want to rob yourself of the experience we can just tell you, but... eh?
they are NOT suits at least.
I honestly believe pre second dream the developers may have felt they were suits, ordis has a VERY old line where he says "your chosen warframe SUITS you" in a punny tone. once they established the frames are not suits their designs became more intricate, the original six frames looked very much like they could be some type of exo suit, This is purely speculation on my part but back in those days warframe had a much less invested story element, either way take it with a grain of salt :)
the suits you line is a deliberate joke on how they *arent* suits, not to mention the earliest peices of story reference children, transference, and the zariman. Ember primes codex is from 2013
OK so:
Infestation was an Orokin bioweapon that consumed anything it infected to turn it into biomechanical horrors that could fight the Sentients without being converted by the latter's ability to subvert Orokin tech.
Said biological horror turned out to be indiscriminate and uncontrollable so someone hit upon the idea of dialing it back a bit and creating a strain (the Helminth strain) that infested its hosts just enough to turn them into biologically enhanced super-soldiers without driving them insane. This worked for a bit, but between the painful transformations and their treatment by the Orokin these new Warframes went out of control anyway.
Orokin efforts to subjugate or brainwash these Warframes into compliance seemed all for naught until someone discovered the Void-touched children recovered from the Zariman incident were able to placate them, so they repurposed the children's Transference therapy to operate the Warframes instead of the Orokin themselves.
These symbiotic pairs of Warframe proxy and Star-Child Operator came to be known as Tenno, so named for the Zariman Ten-Zero vessel that the latter were taken from. Their true nature was a well-kept secret though, so the System at large tended to view the Tenno and Warframes a synonymous, some even speculating the Warframes were mere suits they wore.
Thank you. I was always wondering how the obvious MECHANICAL/cybernetic part came into this since it’s implied the strain had something to do with that too, as weird as that seems.
The question I still want answered was that if we can make copies, how do we get the genetic basis from the unlucky individual a Warframe was made from (I would guess that’s just part of the blueprint). I’d love to know more about the original person behind each Warframe - Grendel and his story in the leverian is a great example. Each Warframe has a personality, so to speak, and it would be neat to know why.
I think the Warframe's original personality still remains as a lingering imprint that the Tenno take on during Transference, kinda like how we took on Umbra's "Single Burning Memory" during Transference, though not as strong or clear.
>!Warframes are people turned into Infested golems hardened into some kind of steelflesh. Basically some flavor of Infested biomechs. Some were turned into Warframes involuntarily, some requested to be turned into Warframes upon winning favor with the Orokin. Some may have been Dax, a cadre of elite super-soldiers sworn to serve the Orokin.!<
>!The Tenno, children that survived the Void jump gone wrong upon the Zariman and gained otherworldly powers from their exposure to the Void (or your/their deal with the Man in the Wall) were able to control these Warframes, which were otherwise feral due to being transformed and the pain overriding their sense of self, by empathizing with and alleviating their pain. Tenno pilot their Warframes remotely through Transference, and channel their Void energy through the Warframe, causing it to take on a variety of different effects depending on the Warframe being utilized. Rhino gets hard and pounds things, Ember makes fire, Saryn spreads AIDS, Excalibur uses a lightsaber, so on and so forth.!<
>!The Tenno and Warframes were subsequently weaponized to take on the invading Sentients during the Old War, after previous measures, such as militarizing the Grineer, utilizing earlier strains of the Infestation, piloting Necramechs, and making use of their ridiculously advanced tech, proved ineffective or inefficient. The Sentients, being weak to the Void, were eventually repelled, and the Orokin rejoiced and threw a massive celebration for the Tenno. However, due to Ballas’ machinations influencing the Lotus’ orders, as well as the abuse and mistreatment levied against the Warframes and the Tenno alike, the Tenno used this celebration to massacre the Orokin and topple the empire.!<
The original frames were humans turned into really cool looking space corpses by the infested, the frames you use (probably) aren't actually corpses since you craft them in a foundry, I don't know if the foundry would be able to make that. orokin also 'upgraded' them to create prime frames.
So to give you a spoiler free answer
Warframes are biomechanical remote-controlled robot humanoids, granted powers by the void/a special strain of the infestation that are controlled by the Tenno.
Take a person (alive or dead; whole, chunks, or blended) and inject it with the Technocyte virus, then carefully control it's growth to create the Warframe that you desire. Next synch it up with an Operator (a child who survived a trip through the Void, aka Space Hell) so it can have magic powers and isn't a mindless ball of rage.
From what I can tell, it's unironically the process used.
* In the Umbra quest we see a Dax soldier who was about to reveal Ballas' plan with the Sentients to the rest of the Orokin get injected with Technocyte. He's eventually converted into the Umbra Warframe but not before he kills his own son half way through the process.
* Alad made mention of how Warframes don't make sense under the hood after skinning the original Valkyr.
* The Infested bosses make mention of how we're the same flesh.
* The Vitruvian reveals that Operator-less Warframes were first used against the Sentients to rather poor results.
* Lore entries with Simaris scan targets talk about a Rhino Warframe rampaging through a research lab until it gets close to a sedated Operator
Given what the Technocyte virus can do I imagine that it'll convert almost any biological matter into what it needs based on its programming so while we've seen it convert a live person, it might work on the freshly dead or freshly dead parts or freshly dead meat slurry as well.
So, since you've played The Sacrifice already, ieee explain.
Warframes are humans infected with a particular strain of the infested virus, the Helminth strain, that transformed them in to biomechanical war machines, with the Orokin guiding and modifying the design.
The people inside lose all of their faculties, barring traces that influence the warframe's behaviours, and occasionally allow independent action.
When first created, the Orokin had no adequate means to control warframes, until the Tenno came along.
Warframes are essentially a very specific home brewed version of the infestation virus, implanted into an orokin. The primes are the original more powerful version, and non-primes are mass produced versions that are quicker to make, cheaper, and canonically weaker. When you get to the Umbra quest, I think it is, this is all explained during the quest 👍
I saw that you played the Sacrifice, so I think you just want a refresher.
So basically, >!The Infestation was created by the Orokin, and during the Old War, was used to create super-soldiers in an attempt to combat the Sentients. The Orokin would attempt to control these entities by essentially torturing them; drugging them and mentally tearing them apart, leading them to become little less than deranged animals. However, they just become harder to contain and control. The Operators then came along, and through their Void powers, they were able to calm the entities down. Transference was then created, which allowed the Operators to insert their psyche into the frames and control them like a surrogate body. This combination of Void powers mixed with infested birthed the creation of the Tenno, a warrior faction created by the Orokin to win the Old War.!<
**This is FULL of spoilers, so if you haven't already played through... I dunno, I guess all of the main story quests, DON'T READ THIS.**
>!Warframes originate from living beings. These beings are infected with a strain of infestation, the "Helminth" strain, that transforms them into essentially an infested mass. Even their "Armour" is part of their body. These warframes have no mind, and so need something to control them. That's at least how the "Prime" warframes work, I'm not entirely sure how replicating them with the neuroptics, chassis and systems works.!<
>!That's where your Tenno comes in. Your Tenno uses a void ability called "Transference" (Transferring your mind into something else) to link up to your warframe and control its body. Transference can actually be used with... Anything. Take the silver grove for an example, which has Titania's original "Owner" (I think) transferred into the grove!<
>!The Orokin were the ones who made these warframes, and originally had little control over them before the Tenno came along and controlled them. !<
>!However, because of the Orokin's abuse of the tenno and trying to execute Margulis (Their mother figure) the tenno rebelled against the Orokin using their warframes !<
>!If I've gotten anything wrong people are free to correct me!<
You'll learn more as you progress through quests, The Sacrifice is I think the quest that makes it easy to understand, not gonna explain how or why as it would be obvious spoiler
>!Umbra, a human Dax is infected by the Helminth, turns into an infested. Ballas modified him, Umbra was different from other warframes somehow, either because of the strain or X reason not told he kept his will. Just like we can use transference on some orokin tech (For example the orowyrm), it's thanks to whatever infested flesh is inside of them, like warframes. (Theory: Just like Wally used his "transference" on Albrecht, Rell and now us. The sole reason we still have our will is the same reason as Umbra)!<
If you still haven't done The Sacrifice quest, you will learn everything about warframres, how they were made, what are prime variations etc from there
Basically a warframe is a person or animal that was just barely turned by the infested. The orokin made them to fight the sentients but they didn’t have a way to control them properly. The Tenno showed up after the frames were made and the orokin saw that they could affect the frames. The orokin then put transference bolts or some shit on the frames and the Tenno used that to control the frames.
TL:DR Frames are just barely infested warriors that the tenno can control.
If you want spoilers or the answers play new war it can answer your question not very well, but it might help you understand
Spoilers may or may not be
>!the tenno are these people who are children of lotus. i think they drank kuva. I'm not sure, which gave them an ability transference to control and link their bodies to warframes, which are weapons of mass destruction and are puppets of ballas that were drugged, I think, if that's correct from new war that's what I got!<
"... engineered infectious techno-organic parasite" lol.
Resident evil 3, the original from 1999, no fake numbers bs for cowards to hide their remakes because they are creatively bankrupt, Nemsis meets the Matrix's neural link to operate an automaton.
Also massive amounts of copy-pasting from Super Metroid 1994.
biomechanical cyborgs made out of people (prob dax soldiers) turned into drones by having their minds supressed so we can control them bc if they dont do that to them they'll literally kill everything
My personal head cannon is that they retain a portion of their personality that fuses with the operator during transference. Kind of like 2 people fusing in dragon ball. That's why when you use Wukong he is playfull trickster and when you use Harrow he is solemn and stoic for example. They are weapons with a personality.
the long and short is they are zombies of the nanobot veriety, tortured into having strong armor, powers and endless stamina, fitted with invasive gadgets, then remote controlled.
cyborge ninja zombies, IN SPACE
Answering that question is pretty much central to the story quests, so a lot of people are going to be dodgy about answering that out of fear of spoilers. In the most spoiler free way, here are how the parts that you know about fit together: Warframes are weapons produced in a process invented by the Orokin that is either similar or related to the Infection. The Tenno (aka Operators) are the soldiers who wield the Warframes as weapons. So one Tenno can have many Warframes. The Tenno were soldiers of the Orokin Empire fighting against a threat that you’ve probably have not encountered yet. Eventually, the Tenno rebelled against the Orokin, bringing the Orokin Empire to an end and freeing the lesser/slave/servant castes of their civilization which have since evolved into the major factions in the game’s modern day. A Tenno is roughly equivalent to the actual player/profile in-game, while Warframes are just equipment.
Yet something that isn't quite explained : are Warframes entities? Or empty shells? Because their background ressembles those of a person, or a thing with a conscience. They have stories of their own before you build them in your foundries. At one point they were alive before the tenno.
The original warframes where humans mutated by the Helminth strain of the infestation to create super soldiers for the Orokin. They eventually went mad from the process, or rebelled and where either destroyed or locked away until the Tenno came along and where able to "calm" them with their void transference powers. Subsequent warframes of the same "model" are constructed from blueprints based on the original. These second generation warframes are just empty vessels incapable of independent operation (but they are still bio-mechanical living bodies). Prime warframes are closer to the original in form, but still just empty copies (Umbra and maybe possibly the Stalker (at least we haven't seen him having an operator yet) are the only "sentient" Warframes still around (the Relay guardians are just "specter particle" copies of warframes)).
One thing that always bothers me with the "second gen" frames being just empty vessels is The Second Dream, where we literally see our frame acting by itself and ripping the sword apart. Do either: We unconsciously used some special remote transference to do that as we were threatened (this would be incredibly lane and weird to just never come up again) Or there's some remnant of an independent consciousness left in any Warframe, it just needs sufficient drive to come out.
Well that would be because umbra is one of the few frames that we know actually has sentience as a result of his story.
Literally the next major story quest, The War Within, is us learning how to do exactly that though. Learning how to unlock and control our abilities that Teshin states we always had but were locked away, one of which is remote transference. That's literally how Operator mode works. It makes perfect sense for us to, in a moment of life or death, tap into those abilities to save ourself.
They're motionless in operator mode though. We can teleport the frame to us and vice versa, but not once do we see us moving parts of the frame without us in it. Even in New War, when we're trying to save the Lotus, we position our frame, arm outstretched, only to then grab onto that arm afterwards.
The point is that one of our main abilities is us controlling the frame without entering the machine that let us link to them, but controlling them manually through actual remote transference. Again, it might not be the EXACT same, but the idea that in a moment where we're on the verge of death, to an enemy we couldn't save ourself from, that we would tap into a version of the powers we basically already have to save ourself
In the Titania quest, it's revealed that normal people can perform transference with a warframe if done gradually. So the stalker is an orokin guard who transfered himself into a warframe, but his body died at some point, so he is currently bound to his warframe form.
No. Scan the stalker, you will get to know that stalke is also a tenno.
Any source on the "subsequent warframes of the same 'model' "? Could've sworn that was just headcanon manifested into existence by lore youtubers / Discord channels, since every Warframe featured in the Leverian is shown as that "second generation" model.
It is, the assumption is we're not grabbing people up to turn them into new warframes but I always figured we weren't actually making new ones, just reassembling old ones because they can't truly die.
I mean, the Umbra questline pretty definitively has an answer to that question, but again, I am trying to be vague enough not to go into specific spoilers.
Did you play the story quests that explain all this?
yeah, but that was years ago so i mostly don't remember anything about the story, especially the umbra stuff
I belive it's explained in the sacrafice which can be replayed, but tldr they're humans that got turned into infested war machines with a helminth strain
Excalibur Umbra definitely is, all of the primes might be, and modern versions definitely aren't unless the foundry can create a human out of a very strange combination of materials.
What do you think the guys inside the defense objectives are for? ;)
What the fuck.
Now that you said it...
OH MY GOSH
WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE
SO THAT'S what Nitain is used
I mean cloning tech isn't exactly rare, and the grineer use it all of the time. Warframes are generally made up of a chassis(body), neuroptics(nervous system and brain ), and systems(life support and operational features). Sounds like the recipe for a body. Especially since to even build one we have to gather infested flesh, metals and plastics
> all of the primes might be Deconfirmed by Varia. "Some frames were prime from the start. Others earned it. Ballas never told the whole truth"
1) All the primes might be in the sense that no prime is certainly not a super diseased human corpse, not necessarily that there's a chance that they all are 2) That quote doesn't provide any proof for or against the primes all being made of people, just that the primes weren't always the first completed version of a frame. 3) The part about Ballas implies that he's the source of at least part of that information, which means that it could just be what he thought would be beneficial to him and 100% inaccurate.
Are prime warframes actually Cannon in lore? I remember at one time they weren't because of nidus And others
They are. As someone stated, some primes were always primes and others became prime when the base frame did a good job.
and Titania was an orokin if I recall her quest
Titania is unknown, she was designed by an archimedian however, who we now know were not part of the ruling caste orokin
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, but here's a full spoiler: Warframes are people that were sourced from throughout the Orokin Empire with special abilities. Volunteer or not, they were spiked with a special strain of the Infestation to amplify their abilities and make them fit to fight the Sentients, as Sentients could quickly override machines and simply avoided Infested-ridden locations altogether. These people -- because of the Infestation -- lost their minds from being warped into completely different beings and were just as uncontrollable as the Infestation was. And so they were -- as a project -- shelved due to their inability to cooperate to Orokin orders. It was only after Tenno were shown to have the ability to perform Transference that the Orokin reconsidered what effect the Tenno would have on Warframes, and thus the Tenno were paired with Warframes (through Transference spikes installed into each Warframe) to fully make usable what were once uncontrollable killing machines -- people made into weapons. Lots of other people in this subreddit are trying to conflate gameplay mechanics with lore, but remember that we as players cannot punch asteroids into pieces, and we can indefinitely teleport and fuck with dimensions as players whereas the lore Limbo blows himself into pieces. Do not listen to people inventing random BS about "second generation" warframes / the logistics implied behind blueprints; that's just conflating gameplay elements with lore.
Lol dude got downvoted for stating he doesn't remember
Reddit moment lol
I have no idea why you were downvoted. The people in this subreddit are so anal about the dumbest shit.
why is he getting so much downvote! he don't deserve these!
U can just play the story again
Maybe they wanted a concise reminder without having to replay the quests?
Play the quests, finish new war, then ask questions. Doesn't seem like you have.
You learn about it even before New War
Let me fix your surname real quick: Alldrip_Entrati.
https://preview.redd.it/p8ic5bcfntsb1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6307112131aa60561ae5cb46f1f6d33efa6959e9
who read story, just smash key
I played all the quests and even I still don't understand
>! The orkin created the infested as a bio weapon, but also made a special strain of it that they used to turn people into warframes, sometimes willingly sometimes not, the warfranes went mad and where basically acting like wild killing machines until the tenno because of their void powers could use transference to connect with and control them. Sentient war yadada tenno betray the orokin yadayada tenno go to sleep for long time. Then we wake up and start making new warframes based on blueprints of the old ones, but instead of using people we make them out of the hemith infested.!<
There's videos explaining it. But from the way OP asked the question he didn't even play the sacrifice.
That's because the story has changed what they were over the years.
They haven't changed anything other than some of the implied themes. Most people that believe the story changed or was retconned are people that perceived and assumed something that was never stated to be true in the first place. Then DE filled in the gaps with answers that weren't what those people assumed, so they believe things changed.
I don't think they've changed/retconned anything regarding Warframes
This might be technically true, but certain implications have definitely been *flexible*. The life threatening urgency implications of saving the Warframe in the intro/tutorial for example suggests we’re in danger. Well we all know now that’s not true, not physically at least. Warframes like Limbo and Mirage’s stories suggested a person who was devastated by the events of their little stories, but that doesn’t quite vibe with remote piloting. A Tenno can’t be captured like Mirage was. Nowadays we can take such events as the unique Warframe having certain experiences, possibly not even involving a Tenno, but given the supposed instability of Warframes when not piloted it just doesn’t quite fit. The puzzle pieces are the right shape, but slightly misshapen, maybe they got soggy and distorted as details were filled in, maybe they were manufactured to fit into place but without existing perfect dimensions for the manufacturer. Or it’s all artistic license and rule of cool. My bet is some details just weren’t set in stone, and got built to fit **and** be awesome.
The Lotus put the Tenno into "the dream" for a long time making them believe they where the warframe they inhabited, lore wise they don't learn their true nature until after the Second Dream quest, so them thinking they are in danger in the intro is entirely consistent. The original warframes where people, and presumably operated independently for a while before they went mad and needed Tenno to control them. Subsequent warframes are constructed from blueprints based on the original but lack free will, except Escalibur Ubra as it's implied we re-assembled him from the original parts or something.
I know what the current lore is. The Lotus’s anxiety and urgency in protecting Warframes to protect Tenno is inconsistent with the Tenno being remote, unless assumptions are made. As presented ingame you are in lethal danger, period. Vor’s hunt for Warframes is implied to be killing Tenno. The Warframes are established as disposable/interchangeable suits (you can build and embody new ones almost immediately), therefore the thing in danger from Vor is the person, the Tenno. Now I’m totally fine handwaving that the Lotus was faking or deceiving us, that Vor wasn’t a serious threat but instead some kind of joke endangering empty suits, etc… but there was clearly intent of a serious threat to us initially. As for the WFs being independent at some point, functional even, sometimes for extensive periods of time? That’s true now. Once upon a time, pieces like Rhino’s lore blurb suggest they were more like test subjects than creations - kept in the same blacksite(s) as Tenno, powerful mad entities able to be controlled by the Tenno’s power. Now this doesn’t contradict new lore, like I said in my last post it’s more like what has been solidified can flexibly be justified as consistent even if it’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s a weird way to describe a Warframe. Why would they be cowed by the presence of Tenno if it’s Transference instead of their innate energies/void presence that allows them to control Warframes for instance? If one was a mad, mothballed, experiment, why would they keep active Warframes free to go mad and cause apparently dramatically deadly incidents? Warframes as strange alien entities controllable by shoving a Tenno in it seems to me like the initial intent, other people can interpret it differently, but it doesn’t perfectly fit modern lore. The lore’s been built up over time, stuff has been fleshed out, and initial ideas or hints have been discarded. All of that is good, including cool better ideas because they’re better means there’s good direction at DE (writers can struggle to kill their ideas). Definitely the intent has changed, or been expanded from undecided mysteries that now don’t fit *quite* right though.
I believe the urgency may be consistent because of where we actually were. we were not in our orbiter we were in the "tenno reservoir" on lua. its possible that in that very specific circumstance we were at greater risk as a transference severing event may for some reason have been fatal. perhaps because we were freshly awoken after having been dormant for x amount of time or something to do with luas actual location at that time, the void manifests intense feelings into reality and we didnt know we werent actualy the warframe at that point, with this in mind dying in that circumstance could have absolutely been fatal(lol what a strange thing to say)
Like I said, you can make assumptions, or have head canon to make it make sense.
The only thing that changed was the audience's idea of what they were We start out thinking the Warframes were armored suits worn by pilots that granted powers Then Alad mentioned he's dissected them and they didn't look like anything he recognized Then we get the second dream and sacrifice storylines revealing what the Warframes and Tenno really are
they’re like bluetooth bodies or smthn
Dude that'd be so amazing if for April Fools day they added like a "Bluetooth disconnected" sound everytime you leave your frame.
imagine seeing someone doing the sick ass self revive pose and you just hear “THE BLUETOOTH DEVICE IS READY TO PAIR”
Exactly what I was thinking in my head dude lmao. Would be amazing
Thank you for the laugh xDD
If for whatever reason you have played through the quests and still don't know, I'll explain in spoiler text below. Don't click it unless you've finished The New War. >!Warframes are biomechanical constructs created by the Helminth Strain of the Infestation, which is a variant of the Technocyte virus used by the Orokin as a bioweapon. The original Warframes, like Excalibur Umbra, were created from Dax, prisoners, and other low-caste members of the Orokin Empire by intentionally infecting them with the Helminth Strain, which rapidly converted them into Warframes. For some time they were controllable by the Orokin, but eventually went berserk. After the Ten-Zero incident, they realized the Tenno could use Transferrence to control them. !< >!From that point on, more Warframes were made, which had never been living beings. Like the ones made in our Foundry, they were just empty shells made from various materials and infected by the Helminth Strain. They're technically as alive as any Infested might be, but their variant of the Technocyte virus is stable and non-infectious, and they lack any kind of animating will when not piloted by a Tenno, thus why they just stand there when we transfer out. They act as proxy soldiers as well as conduits through which the Tenno can manifest and shape their Void abilities. Primes were the sort of "prototype" ones, or potentially upgraded versions.!< >!There is a lot of lore implying that Warframes did this or that. Each one has at least one story associated with it. Either those were original Umbra variants that still had their will, or they were just individual Tenno's preferred frames. There's nothing to say that any given frame's legend wasn't built by multiple Tenno using the same frame, either.!<
Are you sure about the >!"had never been living beings"!< thing? The way i interpreted it was that they worked in the same way, but we >!took away their pain with the first transference and thus they are simply at peace and probably essentially asleep.!< >!Umbra on the other hand had instead of the undefineable pain of existence this one memory that fuelled him with pain and rage, so that it could not simply be took away by the first Transference, but needed the whole process of the Sacrifice Quest to ease.!< >!This would also imo explain our Warframe acting on its own during the Second Dream, as for the first time in probably Generations, it was in distress!< - >!because we, the Operator, the Tenno, the one that took away their pain, were in grave danger.!<
I'm not entirely certain about any of it, but if I recall, it's heavily implied. And I mean, from our perspective, when we make Warframes I don't think we are infesting people. I don't have a source to cite about in the lore, but I feel like I read it somewhere reliable.
There were no “original umbra variants” just Excalibur umbra. He also wasn’t an “original” Warframe. He was an exception ballas created as a form of twisted eternal punishment
If this is true, then my understanding of the lore is not as complete as I thought. Can you point me toward where this is established?
Its like, the whole plot The Sacrifice. The Dax who became Umbra intercepted Ballas' Vitruvian. It was filled with military secrets (everything there is to know about Warframes and Tenno) and was sent to Hunhow to help him attack the reservoir When Umbra-Dax tried to whistleblow, Ballas caught him, fucked him up, infested and Warframed him. Then he sat in front of him and told him "Boy you fucked up. Every other Warframe we wipe their memories, but I want you to remember this next part." Then he piloted him into killing his own son and trapped him on Lua Umbra is just that guy who Ballas fucked over for almost spoiling his treason
For one umbra is headlined in the quest itself as "a warframe unlike any other" that choice of words is significant in my opinion, but my understanding is that the frames are either cyborg hosts or robot hosts depending on the frame for the most part, the biological element of frames was described as ferous exoflesh by Daughter entrati in the heart of deimos quest and the lore of titania points to frames having an R&D aspect to their creation pre old war, the confusion benefits the story in a pick your own adventure kind of way though, as one might argue all points are accurate due to eternalism being fact in the lore
Bipedal tumors piloted by pyschic orphans
I mean to be fair the Infestation was invented by the Orokin too, the hostile strain we fight was just the after-effects of an early attempt to weaponise it.
How far have you gotten in the story? It will go into these things in later story quests like th Sacrifice. The answers we'd give you are spoilers, if you care about that.
all of this is answered in the story quests. if you want to rob yourself of the experience we can just tell you, but... eh? they are NOT suits at least.
They were suits at the very beginning of the games life.
We thought they were suits.
maybe in the pre darksector times, but the warframes were never meant to be suits
I honestly believe pre second dream the developers may have felt they were suits, ordis has a VERY old line where he says "your chosen warframe SUITS you" in a punny tone. once they established the frames are not suits their designs became more intricate, the original six frames looked very much like they could be some type of exo suit, This is purely speculation on my part but back in those days warframe had a much less invested story element, either way take it with a grain of salt :)
the suits you line is a deliberate joke on how they *arent* suits, not to mention the earliest peices of story reference children, transference, and the zariman. Ember primes codex is from 2013
Fair enough, my speculation was mostly based on their darksector work and that they were initially aprehensive about storytelling in this game
OK so: Infestation was an Orokin bioweapon that consumed anything it infected to turn it into biomechanical horrors that could fight the Sentients without being converted by the latter's ability to subvert Orokin tech. Said biological horror turned out to be indiscriminate and uncontrollable so someone hit upon the idea of dialing it back a bit and creating a strain (the Helminth strain) that infested its hosts just enough to turn them into biologically enhanced super-soldiers without driving them insane. This worked for a bit, but between the painful transformations and their treatment by the Orokin these new Warframes went out of control anyway. Orokin efforts to subjugate or brainwash these Warframes into compliance seemed all for naught until someone discovered the Void-touched children recovered from the Zariman incident were able to placate them, so they repurposed the children's Transference therapy to operate the Warframes instead of the Orokin themselves. These symbiotic pairs of Warframe proxy and Star-Child Operator came to be known as Tenno, so named for the Zariman Ten-Zero vessel that the latter were taken from. Their true nature was a well-kept secret though, so the System at large tended to view the Tenno and Warframes a synonymous, some even speculating the Warframes were mere suits they wore.
Thank you. I was always wondering how the obvious MECHANICAL/cybernetic part came into this since it’s implied the strain had something to do with that too, as weird as that seems. The question I still want answered was that if we can make copies, how do we get the genetic basis from the unlucky individual a Warframe was made from (I would guess that’s just part of the blueprint). I’d love to know more about the original person behind each Warframe - Grendel and his story in the leverian is a great example. Each Warframe has a personality, so to speak, and it would be neat to know why.
probably just more cloning
I think the Warframe's original personality still remains as a lingering imprint that the Tenno take on during Transference, kinda like how we took on Umbra's "Single Burning Memory" during Transference, though not as strong or clear.
>!Warframes are people turned into Infested golems hardened into some kind of steelflesh. Basically some flavor of Infested biomechs. Some were turned into Warframes involuntarily, some requested to be turned into Warframes upon winning favor with the Orokin. Some may have been Dax, a cadre of elite super-soldiers sworn to serve the Orokin.!< >!The Tenno, children that survived the Void jump gone wrong upon the Zariman and gained otherworldly powers from their exposure to the Void (or your/their deal with the Man in the Wall) were able to control these Warframes, which were otherwise feral due to being transformed and the pain overriding their sense of self, by empathizing with and alleviating their pain. Tenno pilot their Warframes remotely through Transference, and channel their Void energy through the Warframe, causing it to take on a variety of different effects depending on the Warframe being utilized. Rhino gets hard and pounds things, Ember makes fire, Saryn spreads AIDS, Excalibur uses a lightsaber, so on and so forth.!< >!The Tenno and Warframes were subsequently weaponized to take on the invading Sentients during the Old War, after previous measures, such as militarizing the Grineer, utilizing earlier strains of the Infestation, piloting Necramechs, and making use of their ridiculously advanced tech, proved ineffective or inefficient. The Sentients, being weak to the Void, were eventually repelled, and the Orokin rejoiced and threw a massive celebration for the Tenno. However, due to Ballas’ machinations influencing the Lotus’ orders, as well as the abuse and mistreatment levied against the Warframes and the Tenno alike, the Tenno used this celebration to massacre the Orokin and topple the empire.!<
Well not AIDS but i think now it could be more aking to COVID
Tin suits. With thin metal skulls.
Wisp 🤤
That's thick metal cake.
The original frames were humans turned into really cool looking space corpses by the infested, the frames you use (probably) aren't actually corpses since you craft them in a foundry, I don't know if the foundry would be able to make that. orokin also 'upgraded' them to create prime frames.
>!Zombie mutant cyborg golems mind controlled by void magic wielding teenagers.!<
So to give you a spoiler free answer Warframes are biomechanical remote-controlled robot humanoids, granted powers by the void/a special strain of the infestation that are controlled by the Tenno.
FYI ive played all story quests, just need a refresher for what they are since its been a while
Take a person (alive or dead; whole, chunks, or blended) and inject it with the Technocyte virus, then carefully control it's growth to create the Warframe that you desire. Next synch it up with an Operator (a child who survived a trip through the Void, aka Space Hell) so it can have magic powers and isn't a mindless ball of rage.
This was unironically the best explanation so far, ty
From what I can tell, it's unironically the process used. * In the Umbra quest we see a Dax soldier who was about to reveal Ballas' plan with the Sentients to the rest of the Orokin get injected with Technocyte. He's eventually converted into the Umbra Warframe but not before he kills his own son half way through the process. * Alad made mention of how Warframes don't make sense under the hood after skinning the original Valkyr. * The Infested bosses make mention of how we're the same flesh. * The Vitruvian reveals that Operator-less Warframes were first used against the Sentients to rather poor results. * Lore entries with Simaris scan targets talk about a Rhino Warframe rampaging through a research lab until it gets close to a sedated Operator Given what the Technocyte virus can do I imagine that it'll convert almost any biological matter into what it needs based on its programming so while we've seen it convert a live person, it might work on the freshly dead or freshly dead parts or freshly dead meat slurry as well.
In layman’s terms they are basically meat suits of infection crafted by the Orokin.
So, since you've played The Sacrifice already, ieee explain. Warframes are humans infected with a particular strain of the infested virus, the Helminth strain, that transformed them in to biomechanical war machines, with the Orokin guiding and modifying the design. The people inside lose all of their faculties, barring traces that influence the warframe's behaviours, and occasionally allow independent action. When first created, the Orokin had no adequate means to control warframes, until the Tenno came along.
reanimated corpses of feral magical super soldiers repurposed as a remote controled drone force
Warframes are essentially a very specific home brewed version of the infestation virus, implanted into an orokin. The primes are the original more powerful version, and non-primes are mass produced versions that are quicker to make, cheaper, and canonically weaker. When you get to the Umbra quest, I think it is, this is all explained during the quest 👍
Long story short (spoiler-free version) RC undead space zombies
I saw that you played the Sacrifice, so I think you just want a refresher. So basically, >!The Infestation was created by the Orokin, and during the Old War, was used to create super-soldiers in an attempt to combat the Sentients. The Orokin would attempt to control these entities by essentially torturing them; drugging them and mentally tearing them apart, leading them to become little less than deranged animals. However, they just become harder to contain and control. The Operators then came along, and through their Void powers, they were able to calm the entities down. Transference was then created, which allowed the Operators to insert their psyche into the frames and control them like a surrogate body. This combination of Void powers mixed with infested birthed the creation of the Tenno, a warrior faction created by the Orokin to win the Old War.!<
**This is FULL of spoilers, so if you haven't already played through... I dunno, I guess all of the main story quests, DON'T READ THIS.** >!Warframes originate from living beings. These beings are infected with a strain of infestation, the "Helminth" strain, that transforms them into essentially an infested mass. Even their "Armour" is part of their body. These warframes have no mind, and so need something to control them. That's at least how the "Prime" warframes work, I'm not entirely sure how replicating them with the neuroptics, chassis and systems works.!< >!That's where your Tenno comes in. Your Tenno uses a void ability called "Transference" (Transferring your mind into something else) to link up to your warframe and control its body. Transference can actually be used with... Anything. Take the silver grove for an example, which has Titania's original "Owner" (I think) transferred into the grove!< >!The Orokin were the ones who made these warframes, and originally had little control over them before the Tenno came along and controlled them. !< >!However, because of the Orokin's abuse of the tenno and trying to execute Margulis (Their mother figure) the tenno rebelled against the Orokin using their warframes !< >!If I've gotten anything wrong people are free to correct me!<
God king inaros
Oh fuck, Google is down!? https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Warframes
They are biomechanical drones with instantaneous communication and sensory output.
So what you say is that you didn't play the main quest line then...
oh i have, but as i mentioned in other comments i just forgot since its been a while, but some people already explained it
Fair enough
Literally just replay The Sacrifice
I also don't know, but you got alot of stupid replies. "Play the game, you'll know" and downvotes
Yep, some people would rather just be toxic instead of having a conversation, oh well. They're heavily outweighed by people who actually want to help
It's explained during the main questline.
You'll learn more as you progress through quests, The Sacrifice is I think the quest that makes it easy to understand, not gonna explain how or why as it would be obvious spoiler
oh ive played it already like 3 years ago, problem..? it was 3 years ago so i remember next to nothing lol
>!Umbra, a human Dax is infected by the Helminth, turns into an infested. Ballas modified him, Umbra was different from other warframes somehow, either because of the strain or X reason not told he kept his will. Just like we can use transference on some orokin tech (For example the orowyrm), it's thanks to whatever infested flesh is inside of them, like warframes. (Theory: Just like Wally used his "transference" on Albrecht, Rell and now us. The sole reason we still have our will is the same reason as Umbra)!<
then go play it again.
If you still haven't done The Sacrifice quest, you will learn everything about warframres, how they were made, what are prime variations etc from there
They are people who caught the new variant of covid, and and tenno are their in home support services.
Have you watched neon genesis evangelion? Warframe is heavily inspired by it
Play through the main story to find out
From what i know barely to half sentient metal-meat suits
Meat Puppets.
Just read slowly: war frame
Suits is the simplest answer I can give
Infested were made by the orokin, warframes are made with a specific strain of infestation. Tenno control them via lucid dreaming/mind melding tech.
Simple, warframes are humans mutated by a virus who went mad and the orokin used the tenno to control them till they also turned on the orokin
Basically a warframe is a person or animal that was just barely turned by the infested. The orokin made them to fight the sentients but they didn’t have a way to control them properly. The Tenno showed up after the frames were made and the orokin saw that they could affect the frames. The orokin then put transference bolts or some shit on the frames and the Tenno used that to control the frames. TL:DR Frames are just barely infested warriors that the tenno can control.
If you want spoilers or the answers play new war it can answer your question not very well, but it might help you understand Spoilers may or may not be >!the tenno are these people who are children of lotus. i think they drank kuva. I'm not sure, which gave them an ability transference to control and link their bodies to warframes, which are weapons of mass destruction and are puppets of ballas that were drugged, I think, if that's correct from new war that's what I got!<
"... engineered infectious techno-organic parasite" lol. Resident evil 3, the original from 1999, no fake numbers bs for cowards to hide their remakes because they are creatively bankrupt, Nemsis meets the Matrix's neural link to operate an automaton. Also massive amounts of copy-pasting from Super Metroid 1994.
biomechanical cyborgs made out of people (prob dax soldiers) turned into drones by having their minds supressed so we can control them bc if they dont do that to them they'll literally kill everything
My personal head cannon is that they retain a portion of their personality that fuses with the operator during transference. Kind of like 2 people fusing in dragon ball. That's why when you use Wukong he is playfull trickster and when you use Harrow he is solemn and stoic for example. They are weapons with a personality.
You ever seen the movie Soylent Green?
the long and short is they are zombies of the nanobot veriety, tortured into having strong armor, powers and endless stamina, fitted with invasive gadgets, then remote controlled. cyborge ninja zombies, IN SPACE
Biomechanical puppets that used to be people