The Tenno: Ancient warriors awakened from millennia of cryosleep
In short: In the far future of the Origin System, players pilot biomechanical combat units known as Warframes. But these machines are merely shells. The true pilots are the Tenno—survivors of a long-lost colony ship who gained supernatural abilities after a harrowing journey through the trans-dimensional Void.
The narrative of Warframe is deeply rooted in the collapse of the Orokin Empire, an ancient civilization that once ruled the Origin System. Seeking to preserve their empire as resources dwindled, the Orokin attempted to colonize new star systems by sending ships through the Void, a dimension enabling faster-than-light travel. They sent self-replicating machines called Sentients ahead of the colonists to terraform these worlds. However, the Sentients eventually turned on their creators, sparking the Old War and leading to the empire's downfall.
These warriors belong to the Tenno, a group that endured the Zariman Ten Zero colony ship's transit through the Void. While the adult passengers succumbed to madness during the transit, the children survived, eventually entering a millennia-long cryosleep on Earth. These survivors, known as the Tenno (a derivative of 'Ten Zero'), were eventually awakened by a guide named the Lotus, a Sentient named Natah who rebelled against her own kind to protect them.
This connection to the Void allows the Tenno to use a process called Transference to telekinetically control their biomechanical Warframes. Players first command these fighting units before eventually mastering the Operator—the actual physical body of the Tenno. This shift reveals a complex web of legacy, where the remnants of the Orokin Empire, such as the militarized Grineer clones and the profit-driven Corpus, continue to fight for control of a fractured solar system.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Warframe
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