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“You're not supposed to be in here! You're going to ruin the surprise!”
The following article/section contains spoilers.
When the Zariman was found adrift, the Orokin did everything they could to erase their mistakes. Transit recordings, personnel logs... everything was wiped out. The only thing they kept was... you.
Lotus, to the Operator

The Zariman Ten Zero was an Orokin ship that disappeared into the Void when a Void-Jump Accident occurred. After the incident, its survivors received mysterious powers from the Void, and later became the Tenno that control the Warframes and fight for the Origin System.

Lore

General

In the Orokin's effort to expand their empire, they attempted an experiment Void-Jump with a military ship, the Zariman Ten Zero. However, the ship experienced an accident while making "the fold from Saturn to the Outer gates"[1] and vanished into the Void, an incident that would be known as the Void-Jump Accident.

As the ship traveled in the Void, the adults became mind-warped and went feral, although the children were spared from such a fate and instead received mysterious powers from the Void. The adults began to hunt the children on board, forcing them to retaliate and fend for themselves. One child that was cast out by his peers, Rell, realized that there was an unknown entity within the Void.

Years later, the lost ship reemerged from the Void and was recovered. The Orokin discovered that only the children had survived the voyage, and that the Void 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.

Ember PrimeIcon272 Ember Prime's Codex

Three figures waited behind a simple table. Their attention on a single chair, bathed in light. An old woman's voice from the shadow: 'Send her in'. Across the room a security officer, stern and plain, opened the door. The outline of a young woman appeared at the door. She hesitated, but only for an instant, then crossed the room and sat.

There was a gasp as the light hit her face. Her right eye was bright and blinking, but her left was a greasy slit. Her skin had been burned moon-white. Her mouth was a sagging gash without lips or expression. Her military beret was pulled snug over a scarred and hairless scalp.

The old voice: 'Your name is Kaleen.' Kaleen nodded. 'You were the principal investigator of the Zariman?' Kaleen's voice was a jagged whisper, a rigid face. 'Yes.'

Kaleen coughed, straightened: 'The Zariman was lost making the fold from Saturn to the Outer gates. Mechanical failure. I notified families and filled a report with the inspectors. Nothing ever returns from the fold, so I closed the case.'

'But you reopened the case, days later.'

'I didn't believe it myself until I stepped aboard the ship. It was completely intact, full environmental, as if it had never left.'

'And the crew was gone.'

'Not exactly.' Kaleen hesitated. 'We thought it was empty but we began to find...' Her face twitched at remembered pain, 'We began to find children hiding in the ship.'

'And that is when you violated procedure?'

Kaleen bowed her head, a tear welling in her sightless eye. 'They were children. They were afraid. They needed comfort.'

'So you broke quarantine and this happened to you.'

There was silence as Kaleen touched her face, 'So what have you done with them?'

The old woman gestured for the officer to take Kaleen away. The meeting was over. When Kaleen reached the door she twisted out of his grip and shot back, 'Why would you do that? Why did you put children on a military ship?'

'We didn't. That would violate procedure.'

Principal investigator Kaleen was assigned to inspect the disappearance of the Zariman. She initially concluded that its disappearance was due to mechanical failure and closed the case after notifying the families of the crew who had been aboard, but when the Zariman mysteriously returned days later she reopened it and began to inspect the ship.

During her personal inspections of the ship she found no trace of the original crew but came across children on board the ship, one of whom burned Kaleen, horribly disfiguring her face in the process, when she attempted to "violate procedure" to comfort the children. The burns left her skin moon white, her mouth a sagging gash without expression, her head scarred and hairless, and she lost her left eye. She was brought before a military tribunal where she explained the story before being escorted away.

Kaleen snapped at her officer, asking why they "put children on a military ship." They responded, "We didn't. That would violate procedure."

Rhino PrimeIcon272 Rhino Prime's Codex

Red lights flashing on stark, white walls. Davis is running ahead of me, dropping his notes. We're running for our lives. The fear gives me a strange perspective - I'm out of my body. I've forgotten how I got here. I don't recognize this place.

Davis and I slam pinned against a cell door and he shouts at me. I give him a dumb look. I can't hear him, the sirens, anything, only the muffled throb of terror in my head. I turn away from Davis down the hall and I see it. The hulking mass, flickering red, glinting like steel and fresh blood. Its skin changes, flowing like mercury when I'm blinded by the sudden muzzle-flashes. They do no good. The beast surges forward and the security men become crimson mist and gore.

I'm a statue, a cornered animal. A gate opens inside me and recognition floods in. I have seen this monster before. I have cut its shell and eviscerated its brothers. I have given it pain and measured its response. I have crafted then rejected countless like it. But I've never seen this beast so close, without the shield, without restraints. I have never seen it... free.

I know I will die so I just watch with curious acceptance. The beast squats down, shovelling a heap of gore into its mouth. It is watching me with vague eyes, a sense of recognition, ancestral memory. It knows who I am and what I've done. It rears up like a bear and roars, shattering the lights and casting us into darkness. I can hear it lumbering toward me, its metal fingers rending the walls, but I know I am dead. I close my eyes and stand ready to pay.

I feel the pull on my arm and realize Davis got the cell open. He tugs me into the cell beyond and I fall on my back. I see Davis standing at the open door, waiting, as the monster tears towards us.

Suddenly I could live through this I shout, "Davis, close the goddamn door!" - But he shakes his head eyes wide as moons. He shouts, "Watch!" over the roaring and rending of metal.

Then silence. Davis is panting, laughing? The beast fills the doorway, inches from him, dripping in blood, but still without violence. It stands there, looking at its hands. Davis whispers, "No one would have believed me."

I crawl up the wall to stand, opposite the door. I've never seen this cell, a cold place with an array of shelves. A morgue? "Where are we, Davis?"

"This is where they keep them. The ones from Zariman." I'm thrown, what was the Zariman? The ship that never returned? "Davis, what's going on?"

Davis turns to me, a smile forming - "What's going on is..." he turns back to the beast now silent and calm.

"...big, fat promotions."

Davis was a researcher working in a facility developing metallic creatures, presumably Warframes. At some point during his work, he developed a theory regarding the creatures he and others were working on and the victims of the Zariman. Believing that no one else would ever have believed him, he seemingly released the creature and allowed it to chase him and an unnamed colleague (who narrates the Codex entry) to a cell.

The creature mysteriously went calm after approaching the cell. His experiment seemingly successful, Davis tells his unnamed colleague that "This is where they keep them. The ones from the Zariman", and that because of this success both of them would receive "big, fat promotions."

Margulis

While most of the Orokin feared the survivors of the Zariman, the elite scholar Margulis did not, adopting them as if they were her own children. Initial experiments on how to harness the children's powers though led to several fatal accidents, including Margulis becoming blinded, which showed the danger their uncontrolled powers could wreak both on themselves and on others. However, Margulis continued to perservere for the children.

Ultimately, it was through her research that the children learned to control their powers through dreams. She developed Transference, a process that allows the children to transfer their consciousness and powers into the Warframes to act as a surrogate body. The children would be placed into a device known as the Somatic Link to project their Transference, which would be hidden in a facility called the Reservoir on Lua, to control their surrogate bodies in a secure location away from their enemies.

However, the Orokin did not take kindly to Margulis's defense of the children. Her lover Ballas tried to persuade her away, but she refused. Margulis would be executed and vaporized by the Jade Light, but her final thoughts were of her children.

While Ballas heavily resented the children for the death of his lover, he nonetheless continued Margulis's work on Transference and developed the Warframes.

Trivia

  • The term Tenno is loosely derived from its designation number Ten-Zero (10-0).
  • Based on the image of the ship in the Vitruvian, it heavily resembles a ship that makes an appearance in the original concept video (Original Dark Sector Concept ) for Digital Extremes's previous successful video game, Dark Sector.
  • During The Duviri Paradox trailer, the ship can be seen at the far distance on the vast alien landscape, presumably inside the Void.
    • However, as the ship was already returned to the material world, it is not possible to be found in the Void. This might be a basis for a 'paradox'.
    • In addition, the version seen in the trailer is colored quite differently from the version seen in the Chains of Harrow comic. In the trailer the ship uses a traditional Orokin ivory and gold color scheme, while in the comic it features a less ornamental, metallic scheme.

Gallery

References

  1. Ember Prime's Codex entry
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