The Larunda 3 Fashion Show

I’ve been to fashion shows before. I watched my sister take part in one. But nothing has been as weird as the fashion show I saw the other day.

Let’s start from the beginning.

So I was messing around in Warframe. I’d just unlocked Ceres and was bitching to Davjo about how much I hate this damn Boltor gun I made. It’s so inaccurate. And slow to fire. And slow to reload. With a mediocre clip size. Yet I have to see the damn thing through to level 30 for maximum efficiency. Davjo mentioned he was going to a FashionFrame thing over on the Larunda Relay. In the third one, apparently.

With nothing else I needed to do, I shrugged and decided to follow him.

Of course, only owning two frames – Volt and Volt Prime, I decided to go with the straight upgrade. Volt Prime’s colour layouts are more… liney than Volts. I actually prefer Volt’s default look. Remove the weird knees, give it claws, a tail and my standard Rethan head shape and Volt could easily be made to look like Arkay from the Phoviverse. Okay, Teekay was the original electricity character, but still.

I didn’t do that though. It was a fashion thing though, everyone would be looking at me. I needed to look nice. Volt Prime it was.

Normally, most relays are somewhat busy. After all, it’s the only area in Warframe where you can see other players and not get shot at. Larunda 3 though was almost full. Apparently, this fashion thing was a fashion contest, with platinum prizes on the line! A weekly event run by the regular visitors to Larunda 3, with prizes and judges and strict rules and all sorts.

The rules were simple.

• The contest takes place on the very top of the relay, where the Founders’ thingies are. Judges and non-contestants stand on the elevated areas while contestants gather below.
• If you’ve won before, you can’t win again with the same colour scheme/Warframe and there is a delay before you can win again.
• All participants are to gather in the center. The head judge calls out a contestant, by the colour and name of their Warframe, e.g. Red, White and Green Rhino Prime.
• All other participants leave the center, and the chosen person poses. When ready, the head judge will call for everyone to rate the chosen person out of 10. The head judge will then give a final score, combined from their own score and an average of what everyone says.
• When a final score has been given, the chosen player moves out of the center, and all other contestants may gather in the center again for a new person to be picked.
• This continues until all contestants have been picked and/or the judges have had enough. Those who were not picked at all will get a chance at the next contest.
• The player with the highest score wins.

Normally, that’d sound somewhat intimidating. Or hard to organize. But as I entered the relay and saw the contest going on with my own two eyes, it was almost… eerie. Everyone did as they were told. There were very little problems or anything like that. The sight of about thirty brightly coloured Warframes silently walking into the center of a tower, then walking away again, then back in and out and all that was genuinely curious. And creepy.

In fact, one of the only problems was fixed incredibly briefly. Apparently ‘Black and Gold Volt Prime’ doesn’t mean ‘Black and Yellow-Gold Volt Prime’ but ‘Navy and Gold Volt Prime’. I stepped back and let the other Volt Prime get judged, but the other Volt Prime didn’t get a great score anyway because he kinda sort of looked like a blue and gold blob. Most of the time though, it’d just be someone who was AFK for a moment and hadn’t moved away, or two people with very similar colour schemes and the same Warframe.

In the end, some super popular person who’d popped by ended up winning, but it was their second time entering. Some of the Warframes on display though were absolutely beautiful. Some were a bit hit and miss. Others were nice but were ruined by an ill choice of colours or by weapons that clashed with the rest of them.

All in all though, everyone was very sporting. While everyone was judging and between waves, we’d all have friendly chats and things like that. Tennogen came up a lot, as did the super edgy style of black with red highlights. I didn’t get chosen to be judged in the end, but that doesn’t matter.

It was a ton of fun, and it wouldn’t be possible if the Warframe community wasn’t so great.