Last time I sat down and chatted about Warframe lore, we stopped at the end of the Sacrifice quest. That was… a while ago. But rather than go through all that old lore again, I’ve decided to just skip ahead and start talking about the lore for the New War, which is supposedly the next big thing. So sit down and strap yourselves in because we’ve got quite a bit of stuff to talk about.

A warning before I start: This article CONTAINS SPOILERS. It is discussing a huge amount of newer lore, which newer players might not be able to access yet.

If you have not finished the Sacrifice, look away now.

Anyway, with that out of the way, let’s begin.

Before and After the Sacrifice

So, a quick recap. Before the Sacrifice quest, you see a vision in which the Orokin known as Ballas takes the Lotus away, causing her to abandon you as the Tenno center of command and leaving her helmet behind. They disappear through a portal and bugger off. Ordis creates Purple Lotus as a backup because DE didn’t have enough lines ready to replace Lotus entirely.

After the Sacrifice, you see Sentient Natah claim she’s going home, taking Ballas with her. She seems pretty fucking pissed and she did totally try to kill you.

Chimera Prologue

In Chimera Prologue though, you find out that everything wasn’t all love-y dove-y between Ballas and Natah. Ballas is… well, to put it nicely, fucked up. He’s been turned into, as the quest name suggests, a Chimera. Part Orokin, part Sentient. He’s fucking pissed. Natah ruined his “perfect death”.

Ballas wanders around complaining, saying how he hates how Natah tricked him and the Tenno. He makes a massive sword, calls it a Sentient Killer and gives you the blueprint, heavily suggesting you use it to murder Natah.

Hostile Mergers and The Ropalolyst

In the mean time, other things are happening. When Natah said she went home, she didn’t. Instead, she hovered around the solar system and managed to trick Alad V into working for her.

Using the Ropalolyst and a Mimic, Natah’s Sentients posed as Corpus Investors, saying they wanted to work with Alad V. Alad V, being broke, agreed to it, only to realize that he was being forced into making Sentient-Corpus hybrids – Amalgams. The Tenno show up and destroy the Ropalolyst, who had been controlling Alad V and watching his every move, but not before Natah gives a large monologue in your face.

Unlike other Sentients, she claimed she was born to be an infiltrator. But she clearly wasn’t a good infiltrator because she claims that the Orokin captured her and brainwashed her into being a figurehead for the Tenno. This is the complete opposite of what the Lotus originally claimed, that she “felt bad for these poor children”.

Sentient Anomalies

After the events of the Ropalolyst and Hostile Mergers, the Tenno uncover a Cephalon and parts of a railjack. Through a large community effort, the Tenno start building their own personal ships. Cephalon Cy is rebooted and put back to work running said ships.

As the Tenno wander out into the Veil Proxima though, they spot Sentient Anomalies. Scouter ships, gathering information. We don’t find much inside these ships (apart from Sentients) but we do find weird, eerie, singing crystals.

Erra

The Erra mini cinematic was accessible by smashing those aforementioned singing crystals, but now it’s just available via the quest menu.

This cinematic shows Tenno and Sentient fighting in a massive war on the surface of Lua, revealing some new types of Sentient. We then go to a magical lake underneath Lua’s surface, where the Lotus is surrounded by a pose of Tenno and is confronted by Erra. Erra goes on to explain that he’s family and that Natah has something wrong with her and that the Tenno are leeches. Natah responds by claiming she is the Lotus and that the Sentients are the enemy. Erra is attacked by the Lotus and her Tenno sidekicks and everything fades to white.

The Unnamed Cinematic

With the coming of Operation Scarlet Spear, we are treated to a new cinematic.

This one though is a bit harder to digest. We find out a lot of things. Natah’s mother is dead and Erra wants Natah to finish the war that their mother started. Natah says that she remembers some things but not other things. She remembers fighting Erra on Lua, but is under the impression she killed Erra. Erra definitely like he’s alive (even if he sounds a bit different) and explains that “what the Makers did” to Natah will take time to heal.

Meanwhile, Ballas is kinida just cowering around in the background, but his facial expressions are all over the place.

At the end though, Erra grows impatient and somewhat throws Natah into some sort of machine to start powering it. That’s where the scene ends, and nothing about it seems particularly willing.

Scarlet Spear

And thus starts the invasion proper. The Sentients are amassing in Veil Proxima and they’re sending Condrixes to Earth to scan for information. Sentient attacks are becoming more and more common.

Little Duck and her ‘connections’ though have been monitoring the situation for ages and have come up with a plan. Using OpLinks, Tenno squads on Earth damage Condrixes and scramble the information the Condrixes are sending to Murex ships in Veil Proxima. The garbage data, pushed by Tenno on their Railjacks, confuses the Murex ships and forces them to flee.

But this is clearly the beginning of something more.

Which would be fine, but we have a LOT of unanswered questions and there’s a LOT of plot holes.

Like, how the fuck did Natah’s mum die? We hear her speak in the preview segment that announced the New War last year. We don’t even know what anyone’s actual intentions are. In the latest cinematic, Natah seems hesitant while Erra seems more angry. And what the fuck is Ballas doing?

Then there’s other questions. Why the fuck is Sargus Ruk, a formerly smart Grineer, being an anti-sentient denier and blaming the Sentient attacks on the Tenno? Why is Little Duck leading the Operation and not Teshin, who apparently didn’t believe Little Duck’s mention of Sentients, despite having been preparing for the New War for decades?

But more importantly, why are the Sentients invading again? I don’t remember. Is it to kill everyone? For revenge? To reclaim their home? To finish what they started? And if they are just invading, why are they scouting for information? Why are we getting this trickle of attacks rather than a full blown attack?

Who the fuck knows any more?