Albrecht Entrati

Hidden behind a door that can only be passed through by Tenno is a strange device. Maintained by Loid, this clock has… something to do with the Void. While it looks like a massive Ayatan sculpture, apparently it is some sort of clock. A massive mystery lies before us, involving both the Void and the mysterious Necramechs. But, more importantly, we have… memories lying around. Circling the edge of this great clock are runes. Some may remember them as the Requiem Mods we use to kill Liches. These are messages from Albrecht Entrati, the father of Mother and the head of the Entrati family.

Before we start, another spoiler warning.

Just a small one, this time. Because this far less… I don’t know, informative than the whole spiel about the Entrati family members. This is more hardcore lore but, frankly, none of it even makes much sense. It’s more of a teaser of what’s yet to come.

Notes from a Scientist

There are eight ‘Vitruvians’, eight nodes in total, each of which tells part of a story, each one named after a ‘requiem’. These words are actually old Orokin words that have English translations. The Vitruvians are very similar to the small cut scenes seen within the Sacrifice. An image with data and patterns flowing by, narrated by an Orokin.

In this case, Albrecht recorded eight of these, talking about how one of his experiments opened the floodgates to Orokin travel and technology. We start with how the Orokin realise that, despite being immortal, they’ll die alongside the sun, and that we have a constant thirst for travel. Albrecht has been looking into this ‘Void’ place as a means of escaping the solar system, but so far his attempts have been fruitless. He’s reached the point where no one has faith any more, aside from his daughter and maybe his cat.

Disaster and catastrophe

Albrecht then goes on to describe what happened on what was probably his last experiment. Becoming reckless because of his failures, Albrecht uses himself in his experiments and finds himself traveling into the Void.

Somehow, disaster strikes and the glass bell he’s using shatters, causing Albrecht to fall into the Void itself. Rather than falling into nothingness though, he finds himself both in and not in his own lab, as if it had been ripped from reality and trapped there with him. And while he’s there, swimming in a sea of glass and rubble, floating in an inverted, timeless space where the sky is white and the stars are black, Albrecht sees someone. Himself.

Albrecht does the reasonable thing and gets the fuck out of there, running away from the hand reaching out to him, screaming without a voice, begging for the portal behind him to be closed, writing his demand in his own blood.

And this is how we got all our tech.

“For each passing day, there grew a tumorous idea. It was minute in those early days: The pale reaching digits severed on the floor… studied with reverence, with greed. And it swelled in the latter days: the regal domes, the Rail dedications, the unholy Zariman parade.”

Albrecht’s discovery rocked Orokin society and gave them a tool with which they hoped to leave the solar system. As he states in the Netra Vitruvian, what he learned that day was the building blocks of the Orokin empire. By the way, that tool wasn’t just the entry into the Void, but also the fingers that had been severed by the portal closing behind Albrecht.

Unfortunately, Albrecht was haunted by what he saw, and never really recovered from what happened. And what we are left with are, yet again, more questions than answers.

We garner some shreds of extra information though.

Really, the better way to look at Albrecht’s Vitruvians is to realise what new data we got. We discover just how much of modern Orokin travel technology is based on what Albrecht did. And we also get a hint of a timeline. It seems that the Orokin actually discover a path to immortality before they discover faster means of transportation. Continuity and Kuva both are common Orokin items before the travels of the Void are.

What surprises me the most though is that we actually get a very small peak into pre-Orokin history. There are mentions of ‘oil and smoke’, of ‘light-coil thinkers’ and, most surprisingly, ‘radiation wars’. Suggesting that there was some sort of nuclear war that happened before the Orokin came into existence.

We also get… confusion.

Namely, how Mother is looking for her father. But her father is almost certainly dead. He claims as such in his Netra (Decay) Vitruvian. Albrecht concludes to top taking Kuva, to cease his Continuity, and to die. All this time, Mother hasn’t caught glimpses of her father, she’s been seeing the Man in the Wall, the personification of the Void itself. And we all know that the Man in the Wall mimics the appearances of others. Just like how the Void has reached out to the Tenno, maybe it is reaching out and trying to break free via other beings as well.

Maybe that is why Loid doesn’t want Mother to know about what he’s working on. Because he knows the truth. Albrecht is dead, but his legacy is eternal. As is the Man in the Wall and its foreign influence.

Or maybe Albrecht Entrati was right all along. Maybe he never escaped the Void. Maybe the Man in the Wall escaped in his place…