Happy Birthday Excalibur Umbra

Today, 15th June, is the day that the Sacrifice was released and Excalibur Umbra became accessible to pretty much everyone who had been keeping up with quests. Today is the day that we could all get Excalibur Umbra and calm his pain.

But the more I think about it, the more I realise just how messed up that whole mess was. The Sacrifice Quest, that is. The Sacrifice involved finding bits of Excalibur Umbra, scanning them and throwing the parts into your foundry to basically resurrect the poor blighter. What’s weird though is that the Operator and Ordis think they’re both just going and making a new Warframe. You’re not doing that at all, you’re bringing a conscious being back to life.

Because Excalibur Umbra is conscious and alive and filled with agony and horrible memories. Ballas specifically targeted the poor person who later became Excalibur Umbra because this fellow discovered that Ballas was plotting with the Sentients. But at the same time you discover that how Excalibur Umbra was made is how ALL the original Warframes were made. At least that’s how the Primes were made, we don’t know if this applies to modern Warframes as well. Possibly.

Really, it’s not that much of a surprise that Umbra kicked us out and tried to kill us. Those crescents on his arms seem to be the perfect shape for pinning people down and murdering them.

The only difference between Umbra and a normal Warframe was that he was given a specific memory to haunt him and was never calmed down and tamed by the Tenno. Because us Operators have some sort of ability to calm the Warframes down so we can control them. I’m not sure if this is a magical ability or not or if it’s simply the ability to empathize with them, but Umbra went without that for so long. In fact, he might have been roaming around for hundreds of years, trying to find Ballas and failing, only to eventually succeed and get blown up by Natah.

It was a hard journey though. Excalibur Umbra had to relive all those memories. This time round though, we helped comfort him and help him through the pain.

This had a weird effect on us though. As far as Umbra is concerned, he knows he killed his own son, but he can live with that pain now.  The Operators though now believe that THEY also killed Umbra’s son. Even though we weren’t there. We shared the pain to the point that we saw everything through Umbra’s eyes and believed these memories to be our own.

But in the end, Umbra sort of got what he wanted. He got to stab Ballas in the stomach, with our help. He finally found peace. Kinda. In a way. Better than being on your own, I guess.

Actually, now I think about it, today is also the day Excalibur Umbra died, blown apart by an angry Natah. So technically… it’s Excalibur Umbra’s funeral too…

So happy birthday AND happy death day, Excalibur Umbra!