What is Warframe’s Lore? A Very Simplified Version of Warframe’s Lore in 500 Words
Warframe’s lore has always been a complete clusterfuck. There’s no other way to describe it. The events throughout Warframe are nothing but confusion and madness, with a lot of puppeteering. In the past, I’ve made very long posts about Warframe’s lore. But today, we’re going to really simplify everything. Because, frankly, if you can’t narrow it down to 500 words, why bother?
Big Mean Orokin Empire
Originally, there was the Orokin empire. It covered the whole solar system. The Orokin rulers considered themselves perfect and covered everything in gold. Everyone beneath them was a tool to be used. There was always a perfectly tailored punishment for traitors.
But the Orokin sucked up all the solar system’s resources. They decide to send some adapting machines to a nearby solar system to terraform it, so the Orokin can move there one day. As a fail-safe, the Orokin make it so their teleportation system, the Void, sterilizes and weakens these adapting machines, and it’d take forever for them to return to the solar system without it.
Big Nasty Sentient War
The adapting robots become known as the Sentients. After a while, they decide they don’t want the Orokin to ruin this new solar system. The Orokin are pissed and a war breaks out. The Sentients adapt to all the Orokin’s attacks. The Orokin then combine infested, formerly-human golems with a ship full of kids with powers from a failed teleportation event and create the Warframes, powered by the Tenno.
The Tenno beat the Sentients back. But the Sentients have a ‘spy’ among the Orokin, Natah, who convinces the Tenno to kill all the Orokin when the war is over.
The Tenno Go To Sleep
Natah, now called the Lotus, puts the Tenno to sleep. Everyone else fractures. The Grineer, former slave-clones, take over as much as possible. The Corpus, a capitalist cult, exploit people and make profit. There are pockets of infestation occasionally. Everything descends into chaos and pockets humans barely scrape by.
The Tenno Wake Up
Vor, a Grineer leader, has been killing sleeping Tenno. But when his attempts to control a Tenno go awry, vast numbers of Tenno begin to wake up. Guided by the Lotus, they start pushing back against the Grineer and Corpus, leveling the playing field.
These Tenno rediscover that they are not actually the Warframes, but control them. Earth’s moon, an Orokin bastion, suddenly reappears. The Grineer Queens try to kidnap Tenno to steal their bodies, but only make them more powerful. Some idiot wakes up a sleeping Sentient on Uranus, but the Tenno blow it up. And then they blow it up on the internet as well.
Sentients come back
Ballas, a surviving Orokin, does something to the Lotus, thinking her to be a reincarnated lover. She turns back into a Sentient and goes home. Then she comes back with a Sentient army. And tricks a Corpus guy called Alad V to make human-Sentient hybrids.
The Sentients declare war and want to kill everyone. The Tenno drive off the first raid, but the Sentients will be back.
On the Outskirts
All the while, other Tenno are helping people elsewhere. They repel infested attacks, capture zombie Sentients on the Plains and disrupt Corpus and Grineer exploitation. By destroying the big projects they make, like Balor Formorians, Amalgams, Razorbacks, Profit-Takers and Exploiter Orbs.
But a Tenno’s work is never done.
And that’s exactly 500 words summarizing Warframe’s story. Sure, I’ve missed a lot, but who needs details? Not me, of course! As long as you’ve got the gist of it, you’re fine.