Parvos Granum

"The System shall change. No more clutching at sunk costs, imposed ideals, hand-me-down hopes. No, we are better than that. The Corpus shall know a violent restructuring, but with time enough to face the impending threat from Tau with renewed and absolute vigor.

Or not. Perhaps the rot is too deep. Perhaps the father should abandon his children. Perhaps it is time for a new philosophy."

—Parvos Granum

Parvos Granum is the original founder of the Orokin-era Corpus merchant cult and the inventor of Specter technology. As part of a deal he made with the Orokin, he received the Protea Warframe as a bodyguard. He was presumed dead for millennia after being betrayed by the Corpus Board of Directors, where an assassination attempt resulted in his ship being lost during a faulty Void translation.

Lore[edit | edit source]

Origin and the Corpus Tenets[edit | edit source]

Main article: Fragments/The Tenets

"Fear not poverty. Poverty is the bitter soil in which sweet desire blossoms."
"Fortune despises the idle man. Stasis is death. Always move forward."
"Be envious. Covet. Then take what you desire."
"Deception is the sword of wisdom. Be wise."
"Beware the idle man who would lull you back into idleness."
"Contentment is idleness. Desire inspires action. Nurture all desires."
"Money begets money."
"Charity is power. More charity is more power."
"Shun sentimentality. It is a weakness that binds the idle man."
"Fulfill desire and others will follow."
"Ours is the grasping golden hand. We are desire. We are Corpus."

—The Tenets

A younger Parvos, from his research log.

Parvos Granum grew up during the height of the Orokin era, together with his brother Cladius. They lived with their father on a small farm as grain farmers, the same as dozens of generations of their family before them. After years and years of back-breaking manual labor, one-day Parvos left for the nearby Orokin city. He was awestruck by the decadent splendor of their gem-encrusted gold and ivory architecture, flaunting their wealth accrued through their greed upon the simple living people like himself and his family. As he shouted "I take what I am owed!" he ripped a handful of Rubedo jewels from the gates and tried to run, but was promptly caught by the Orokin servants which dragged him to the town square. As punishment for theft, his left hand was cut off with a plasma dagger but while the gathered crowd cheered he managed to swallow one of the Rubedo gemstones.

With the Rubedo burning up inside him Parvos managed to crawl back to the farmstead, where his father and brother found him collapsed and near death. After coming back to his senses he threw up the molten Rubedo, a feat that Parvos affirms would have killed any man of lesser conviction, and that the single stone was worth more than ten generations' farm work.

The next day Parvos returned to the city, pawning the gem for a financial loan. His newfound wealth in hand he then loaned parts of it to other poor folk like him, who desired more of their life. With each new investment or associate, Parvos taught each one of them his philosophy of the evils of contentment and idleness as well the gift of Desire, while his partners themselves went on to further loan their money to others and spread his teachings, gathering more followers with each transaction.

In time his fortune had multiplied exponentially and he commissioned a golden prosthesis for his missing left hand.

One day during his journeys news reached him that his father had finally collapsed under the toiling farm work. Parvos rushed back to his home to find his father had already died.

Committed to ending the history of his family's brutal and extorted labor, he gave the order to flatten and demolish the farmstead and the surrounding fields, despite Cladius' protests. In their place, he erected a new city of the future called "Corposium", where even the smallest of men would be welcome to apply his wit and desire to make his own wealth.

Specter Particle Theory[edit | edit source]

Some doors ought to remain closed? That's not in my world view. Fire. Fusion. Void. Progress always comes entangled with risk, with violence. With the precious sample obtained, development is accelerating. The Entrati have kept their secrets long enough.

I am calling it the Specter Particle. As my Archimedian explains, mimicry is in its nature. An echo. Exposed to precept circuits, we are able to imprint behaviors! Like an infant mirroring her surrogate. Only this infant can set the world on fire.

The palace birds think they can control us. They hit our research site with a Warframe assault team. Of course they did. I baited them to do it. The whole site lite up. Eighty mega-therm bloom. The whole lab, vaporized, those Warframes with it. Fire. Fusion. Void.

—Parvos Granum

One of Parvos Granum's accomplishments was the creation of the Specter Particle Theory which would set the foundation for Specter technology that enables the imprinting of rudimentary behavior into bodies.

The Deadlock Protocol[edit | edit source]

Main article: The Deadlock Protocol

'My name'. Hmm... I have watched you. Monuments to narcissism. Demanding others sweat in your stead. Gorging upon that which you have not earned. Watched... as you claimed for yourself my teachings of self-reliance, perverting them into a flaccid philosophy of sloth. Of... Idleness. Is that you, my son?

—Parvos Granum's disapproval of Nef Anyo's actions in the Corpus.

As the Corpus Board of Directors continuously reach a voting impasse, Nef Anyo invokes The Deadlock Protocol, a contingency initiative to instate a successor to the Founder. Nef Anyo makes the claim that he himself is the genetic heir which, if true, would give him total control over the Board. He intends to prove this by searching for traces of Protea, using Solaris workers as a sacrifice for Void-temporal jumps to reach the Granum Void.

In an effort to thwart Nef Anyo's plans, the Tenno aids Solaris United and gets to the Granum Void before Nef Anyo's henchmen do. There, they discover that Parvos Granum had survived from Protea's sacrifice by trapping them in a temporal prison, at the cost of Protea becoming a Specter of herself. The Warframe Specter becomes hostile and sends its Errant Specters throughout Nef Anyo's fleet; Parvos Granum does not deny Nef Anyo being his son but is disgusted with his twisted and slothful methods within the Corpus, stating he simply used him to summon the Tenno to reignite Protea into action.

Angered by this deception and the threat of the Protea Specter, Nef Anyo calls truce with Solaris United and delivers the Tenno the blueprint to the Xoris, a glaive fashioned with Parvos Granum's Specter Particle Theory. Seeing Parvos Granum's high intelligence being a threat, Solaris United reluctantly accept the weapon. However, as the Errant Specters overrun Nef Anyo's fleet, he quickly breaks the truce and decides to self-destruct his ships. The Tenno jump into Granum Void once more and use the Xoris to save the trapped Solaris workers, and Parvos uses the chance to escape to realspace. He remarks dryly that the destruction of Anyo's fleet has left the Tenno trapped in the Void with the Protea Specter, but wishes them a polite goodbye during their final battle.

In the aftermath, Parvos Granum is unfazed by the defeat of the Protea Specter, sending the Tenno an inbox message stating he intends to restructure the Corpus to counter the impending threat from Tau. Otherwise, he will abandon his children to create a new doctrine, inviting the Tenno and Solaris United a seat next to him.

Trivia[edit | edit source]

Parvos Granum's name in Latin means "small grain". As mentioned in the codex fragment "Humble Beginnings", he and his family grew up collecting grain for the Orokin.
- The name can also mean "small seed", possibly alluding to his philosophy's role as the origin of the Corpus.

Gallery[edit | edit source]

A statue of Parvos Granum in the loading screen for the Deadlock Protocol update, standing behind Protea.