The Sentients had won. They had turned our weapons, our technology, against us. The more advanced we became, the greater our losses. The war was over unless we found a new way. In our desperation we turned to the Void. The blinding night, the hellspace where our science and reason failed. We took the twisted few that had returned from that place. We built a frame around them, a conduit of their affliction. Gave them the weapons of the old ways. Gun and blade. A new warrior, a new code was born. These rejects, these Tenno, became our saviors. Warrior-Gods cast in steel and fury striking our enemies in a way they could never comprehend.
Excalibur was the first.
Excalibur was the first.
— Orokin 'Warframe' Archives
"Well well well. Another tenno. This ain't my usual line a work, y'understand. I'm not from around here. But I got a fast tractor and know how to jump a rail, so a new friend in Cetus set me up with all this. Name's Little Duck: fortune hunter, rail agent and the girl your Mumsie warned you about. And, now, somehow, the local Quill-endorsed purveyor of amps and assorted paraphernalia. So, what'll it be?"
— Little Duck
"We had created monsters we couldn't control. We drugged them, tortured them, eviscerated them... we brutalized their minds... but it did not work. Until they came. And it was not their force of will - not their void devilry - not their alien darkness... it was something else. It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... and take away its pain."
— Ballas, regarding the Operators and their connection to the Warframes
"Dream. Not of what you are, but of what you want to be."
— Margulis
"The trick to doing the impossible is to get out there and bloody well do it!"
— Old Man Suumbat
"You like stories? Someone like you, Gara, faced up to an Eidolon - might as well have been a god - never blinked, saved a world. See.. the value of stories isn't in telling you there are monsters, Stardust. It's in showing you they can be kicked square in the down-belows."
— Ticker
"My warframe is strong!"
— the Operator, many, many, many times over.
"We're out of the night and into the dawn. Still hangin' on in a System on fire, thanks to the good work of people like the Tenno. That's a thank-you, from Nora to you. Wherever you are."
— Nora Night
"Sometimes you get stuck. Sometimes you go numb. The color drains away. You stop trying, and that just feeds the spiral going down. Maybe you'll get lucky one day. You see yourself in the mirror and snap out of it. But for some of us... it takes more. A friend. A stranger. A story. A helping hand."
— Drifter
"VOULL NE XATA VOK, MARA LOHK?"
— The Man in the Wall in his signature Voidtongue, of which we can only translate a few words. We know "XATA" means truth, "MARA" is DE's internal name for the Operator, and "LOHK" means Void.
Song Lyrics
We All Lift Together
Cold, the air and water flowing
Hard, the land we call our home
Push, to keep the dark from coming
Feel the weight of what we owe
This, the song of sons and daughters
Hide the heart of who we are
Making peace to build a future
Strong, united, working til we fall
Cold, the air and water flowing
Hard, the land we call our home
Push, to keep the dark from coming
Feel the weight of what we owe
This, the song of sons and daughters
Hide the heart of who we are
Making peace to build a future
Strong, united, working til we fall
And we all lift
And we're all adrift
Together, together
Through the cold mist
Til we're lifeless
Together, together
Sleeping in the Cold Below
So it's into the Void
Now me girls and me boys
From Mother's hands we go
We'll be be sailing to the sun
Till the voyage is done
Then we'll be sleeping in the cold below
Sisters! Below, below
We're going where the winds don't blow
Yes we're all bound down
To the deep and we'll be
Sleeping in the cold below, below
Sleeping in the cold below
Our sailing ship
Is for the hard and the quick
We roll our load and go
There's a living to be made
Or there's Hell to pay
When you're sleeping in the cold below
Sisters! Below, below
We're going where the winds don't blow
Yes we're all bound down
To the deep and we'll be
Sleeping in the cold below, below
Sleeping in the cold below
There's a man on high
With the Devil in his eye
And a golden hand, I'm told
It can hurt you, it can hold you
He can kick you or console you
When you're sleeping in the cold below
Sisters! Below, below
We're going where the winds don't blow
Yes we're all bound down
To the deep and we'll be
Sleeping in the cold below, below
Sleeping in the cold below
Oh Sisters you
So wise and true
When it's my time to go
Won't you lay me down
Under Granum Crowns
And I'll be sleeping in the cold below
Sisters! Below, below
We're going where the winds don't blow
Yes we're all bound down
To the deep and we'll be
Sleeping in the cold below, below
Sleeping in the cold below
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
Now me girls and me boys
From Mother's hands we go
We'll be be sailing to the sun
Till the voyage is done
Then we'll be sleeping in the cold below
Sisters! Below, below
We're going where the winds don't blow
Yes we're all bound down
To the deep and we'll be
Sleeping in the cold below, below
Sleeping in the cold below
Our sailing ship
Is for the hard and the quick
We roll our load and go
There's a living to be made
Or there's Hell to pay
When you're sleeping in the cold below
Sisters! Below, below
We're going where the winds don't blow
Yes we're all bound down
To the deep and we'll be
Sleeping in the cold below, below
Sleeping in the cold below
There's a man on high
With the Devil in his eye
And a golden hand, I'm told
It can hurt you, it can hold you
He can kick you or console you
When you're sleeping in the cold below
Sisters! Below, below
We're going where the winds don't blow
Yes we're all bound down
To the deep and we'll be
Sleeping in the cold below, below
Sleeping in the cold below
Oh Sisters you
So wise and true
When it's my time to go
Won't you lay me down
Under Granum Crowns
And I'll be sleeping in the cold below
Sisters! Below, below
We're going where the winds don't blow
Yes we're all bound down
To the deep and we'll be
Sleeping in the cold below, below
Sleeping in the cold below
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
Luscinia's Opera (Duviri Paradox)
Dominus! O Dominus i raka cantamneo!
His curse upon you, su vatasa shabra - zu heruvash!
Nuum kore, O exalted. Nuum Thrax ika!
Haroun, haroun
Ashen in silence desolare
He la, me la, in sleep
Ma non amorti eu
Isala eu vision, eternally
O Mathila i lo volati laaa
Mi nio, mi nio, cocopela
(Ooo, coralia)
Mi nio, mi nio,
Cocopela! Fibreli! Ma tu sivelo!
His curse upon you, su vatasa shabra - zu heruvash!
Nuum kore, O exalted. Nuum Thrax ika!
Haroun, haroun
Ashen in silence desolare
He la, me la, in sleep
Ma non amorti eu
Isala eu vision, eternally
O Mathila i lo volati laaa
Mi nio, mi nio, cocopela
(Ooo, coralia)
Mi nio, mi nio,
Cocopela! Fibreli! Ma tu sivelo!
Other Texts
The Requiem Poem
From brooding gulfs are we beheld
By that which bears no name
Its heralds are the stars it fells
The sky and Earth aflame
Corporeal laws are unwrit
As suns and love retreat
To cosmic madness laws submit
Though stalwart minds entreat
In luminous space blackened stars
They gaze, accuse, deny
Roiling, moaning, this realm of ours
In madness lost shall die
Carrion hordes trill their profane
Accord with eldritch plans
To cosmic forms from tangent planes
We end as we began
By that which bears no name
Its heralds are the stars it fells
The sky and Earth aflame
Corporeal laws are unwrit
As suns and love retreat
To cosmic madness laws submit
Though stalwart minds entreat
In luminous space blackened stars
They gaze, accuse, deny
Roiling, moaning, this realm of ours
In madness lost shall die
Carrion hordes trill their profane
Accord with eldritch plans
To cosmic forms from tangent planes
We end as we began
