Tenno

"The Tenno are descendants of an ancient and mystical civilization of lost warriors from the Orokin era on Earth. Preserved in cryopods for centuries, the Tenno now awaken to a new war, fighting and resisting warring factions as the sole bearers of the Orokin-created Warframes.  While the memories of the Tenno have faded over time, their mastery of guns, blades, and Warframe exo-armor has not.

Fragments of history suggest that discipline and chivalry are the cornerstone values of the Tenno: is this true today? The Tenno are emerging into a world unfamiliar to them. One sees a noble warrior, building his strength against an oppressive regime. Another sees an opportunistic mercenary, exploiting the Warframe's superiority for wealth. Regardless of their future, the Tenno stand united against a common foe, loyal only to each other."

- Warframe Official Website

"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."

- Orokin 'Warframe' Archives (Excalibur Codex Entry)

The Tenno are the faction controlled by the players. Each player is a Tenno with a suit of armor called a Warframe. The combat abilities provided by Warframes are vastly superior to both the Corpus' high technology and the Grineer's vast numbers; even the most inexperienced Tenno can fight their way through hordes of basic foot soldiers alone, and teams of experienced Tenno can best even the deadliest enemy threats.

Awakening from deep slumber to a hostile world, the Tenno know little of themselves.

Each Tenno bears a primary weapon, a sidearm, and a melee weapon. Their arsenal includes rifles of various types, shotguns, pistols, swords, and exotic melee weapons such as staves, axes, and power gauntlets. Different Warframes offer their own unique powers, ranging from Volt's burst of superhuman agility, to Frost's deadly avalanche. Also, Warframe armor's modular nature allows for major upgrades and wide customization options. Utilizing the arms, armor, and powers at their disposal Tenno squads have adapted to wildly different situations using only a moment of downtime between missions.

Weaponry


The Tenno have created a huge amount of "home grown" weaponry and equipment - much of it descended from Orokin counterparts, but some of it original. Tenno weapons in general tend to feature smooth lines, symbolic design, and an "organic" shaping that gives them a sleek, predatory look. Tenno weapons are actually among the most commonly available to players.

Lotus


Upon revival from cryostasis, the Tenno is guided by a figure known as the Lotus. Asserting preservation of her people by any means necessary, the Lotus dispatches and guides Tenno through missions of espionage, sabotage, defense, extermination, interception and rescue. On these missions, the Lotus guides Tenno using audio commands transmitted from an unknown location. Like the rest of Tenno culture, she remains shrouded in mystery, though the Natah quest sheds more light into her origins and motives.

Some weapons bear the Lotus emblem to distinguish them as being unique or Tenno-altered, while other weapons bear the symbol simply as a trademark of Tenno construction. Hostages liberated during Rescue missions appear to be human, and wear jumpsuits that bear the Lotus emblem. It is suspected that these hostages are human, or are unarmored Tenno.

Orbiter
The Orbiters are spacecraft used by the Tenno to travel throughout the Solar System to and from missions. They also act as the Tenno's mobile base, carrying all of their various equipment and arsenal of weapons. An Orokin AI called Ordis acts as the main computer for the Tenno's ship.

Origin
At the height of their Empire's reign, the Orokin became embroiled in a war with the Sentients: a creation of theirs long ago sent to the Tau System to prepare for colonization, whose advanced technologies allowed them to quickly adapt to every attempt by the Orokin to defeat them. Desperate to find a means to attain victory, the Orokin exhausted every method that could to defeat the Sentients in battle.

One such means came about from an incident long before the war, during the so called "Void Era", when a ship called the Zariman Ten Zero became involved in a void-jump accident that sent it lost in the chaotic subdimensional space known as the Void. When the ship reemerged from the Void and was recovered years later, the only survivors found were children, whose exposure to the Void's energies had twisted and changed them, giving them inexplicable powers and abilities. Feared and reviled, the survivors of the Zariman nonetheless were of great interest to the Orokin.

Initial experiments on how to harness the children's powers though led to several fatal accidents, which showed the danger their uncontrolled powers could wreak both on themselves and on others. It was the work of an Orokin researcher named Margulis that led to a breakthrough; through dreams the children could focus and control their powers. However, this research would then be taken from her after she was executed for trying to protect the children, and used to create a process known as Transference; the children's consciousness's and powers could be remotely channeled through a surrogate body called a Warframe: a specially-made techno-organic humanoid battle frame designed to enhance and focus the children's powers, using a device known as a Somatic Link. Not only did the process grant greater control over their powers, but with no fear of self-destruction the powers could be used to their fullest potential. The survivors would be placed in Somatic Link pods in a facility known as the Reservoir located on the Moon, to control their surrogate bodies in a secure location away from their enemies.

These operators, newly-christened as the "Tenno", were taught the ways of war. With the combination of advanced technologies and esoteric powers the Tenno began to turn the tide against the Sentients, allowing them to vanquish the Orokin's enemies across many battles.

The end of the Sentient threat should have been the end of the Orokin's struggles, but it was not to be. For unknown reasons, as the Orokin were celebrating their victory by bestowing the Tenno with honors, the Warframe-clad warriors struck, destroying the Orokin's leadership and throwing the empire into chaos, an event that would herald the end of the Orokin Empire.

In the backdrop of the Orokin's collapse, the machinations of the Sentients continued; a plan had long been hatched to infiltrate the Orokin and destroy the Tenno. The agent given the task, named Natah, grew close to the Tenno she was supposed to destroy. Betraying her own kind, Natah used her considerable powers to hide the Moon within the Void, keeping the Reservoir and the Tenno they hold hidden from the Sentients, and the Warframes scattered throughout the Origin System were made to sleep in cryostasis. Natah, taking on the mantle of the Tenno's caretaker and guide, remade herself as the Lotus, keeping watch over the sleeping Tenno until the time they would wake once again.

Trivia

 * The plural of Tenno is just Tenno.
 * Each Tenno behind the Warframes have official concepts and ideas to what they look like as stated by Art Director Mynki in Devstream #4 which may or may not be revealed in the future. These concepts may also be subject to change throughout development.
 * With The Limbo Theorem and DE sources indicating the Tenno have the ability able to wear multiple Warframes this concept may have been scrapped.
 * The enemy faction in-game have a wide variety of insults with which they have addressed the Tenno.
 * The Corpus to refer to the Tenno as "The Betrayers":
 * The moniker "Betrayers" seems to be partially explained by the Stalker's Codex entry, in which he claims that the Tenno slaughtered their masters at the Mercury Terminus in the aftermath of the Great War.
 * This is further explained by the Anti Moa Synthesis, which reveals the Corpus originated from within Orokin society and became little more than scavengers after its downfall, explaining why they - and not just Stalker - see the Tenno as betrayers.
 * The Infestation has referred to the Tenno as "hollow shells".
 * The Grineer currently have the largest number insults directed for the Tenno.
 * Councilor Vay Hek and Sprag refers to the Tenno as "insects" and "shiny bugs" respectively.
 * Tyl Regor consistantly calls the Tenno "lizards" (along with "leech", "worthless ugly freaks", and "bloody worm").
 * Possible note of worth, the Stalker refers to himself, and the others gathered around him as 'low guardians', making distinction between the low guardians and the Tenno. It is possible that the Tenno were regarded as 'high', or the highest, guardians of the Orokin. From the in-game description of the Misa Syandana Prime, we also know that there were Temple Guards as well.
 * Tennō (天皇) means in Japanese "Divine Emperor". Additionally, in the Buddhist faith, the Four Heavenly Kings (四天王,  Shitennō)  are four guardian deities who watch over each cardinal direction.
 * In the Profit trailer, Alad V insulted the Tenno as "mute peasants" for humor, referring to the fact that Tenno have never been heard speaking verbally.
 * This comment was once led to speculation that the Tenno as a race may be mute, but witih dialogue options with Simaris and Darvo now in the game this theory seems to have been debunked.
 * Nova's Profile describes her existence as the result of "Tenno High Council" research, indicating that there is or was some sort of Tenno governing structure.
 * The "Tenno High Council" may also just be a reference to the Design Council, a select group of players mostly consisting of Founders that can vote and provide opinions on concepts and designs made by Digital Extremes before they are released to the public. Nova was the first Warframe created from the Design Council's input.
 * In the prologue added in the recent update 14, Vor states that the Ascaris is nearly attached to the Tenno's spine. This implies that Tenno are biological and possess at least some biological structures that are analogous to those present in humans.
 * The Second Dream quest reveals that Warframes contain the surrogate body inside, that capable of withstand Tenno powers. This explaines "attached to the spine" sentence.
 * Previously, there was much debate about whether the "player character" was a single Tenno switching frames or multiple Tenno, each with their own personal frame (ala an MMO character select screen, all individual but all technically existing at the same time). Since the release of The Limbo Theorem and Ordis asking the Operator (the player character) to exercise caution when they "occupy this frame" is can firmly be said that the player is a single Tenno, and that they are indeed switching Warframes.
 * Shortly after this reveal there was some debate about whether or not Ordis was breaking the fourth wall, but in a Reddit AMA Steve confirmed it was not.undefined
 * The Second Dream quest reveals that Warframes are remote controlled battlestations, definatly containing techno-organic elements inside (as was mentioned by Lotus "the surrogate, capable of withstand Tenno powers"; meanwhile the Operators have ability to take control of one Warframe at the time via Somatic Link or direct connection (touch).
 * Also, early in-game all or most of the Defence missions used "WARFRAME CRYOPOD" which was presented as lifesupport pod, contained humanoid-beings in jump-suits, similar to one, that Relay Personnel and Syndicate's Agents wear. This fact may or may not suggest, that cryopods was holded the surrogates, who was made for use in "Tenno-Warframe"-link.
 * The name "Tenno" dates back to the Hayden Tenno character from Digital Extremes's previous game Dark Sector. Warframe often uses concepts, art styles, names, and other materials from Dark Sector, due to it being a spiritual successor to the game itself.
 * The Tenno seem to sit in 'seiza' position, a form of Japanese sitting style.