The Tenno are Void-empowered warriors who served the Orokin. After defeating the Sentients during the Old War, the Tenno turned on the Orokin and destroyed their empire. Having slept dormant for presumably centuries, the Tenno have reawakened and now fight to protect the Origin System.
History[]
The Tenno originated from an Orokin colony ship known as the Zariman-Ten-Zero, from which they also got their name. When the ship was lost to the Void, the Orokin rediscovered it only days later. The crew and colonists were all dead, but the children survived. As the Orokin discovered, exposure to the Void imbued the children onboard the Zariman with unnatural powers but changed the adults onboard into feral, mindless savages, forcing the children to fight and kill their own parents and caretakers to survive. They were rescued from the derelict, but were almost universally hated and reviled by the Orokin, who saw them as impure demons of the Void. This stigma only deepened when several Orokin researchers were accidentally killed during experiments on these children, discovering the instability of their powers.
One Orokin, Margulis, took pity on the children and adopted all of them as her own, providing them shelter whilst researching a means of controlling their abilities. She discovered that when dormant and dreaming, the children were able to stabilise their powers, prompting her to create a stasis device known as the Reservoir, where the children could be preserved in a "second dream" and left alone in peace. When the Orokin sought to harness the children's powers for their own use, Margulis was executed for trying to defend them, leaving them in the care of her lover Ballas. Blaming the children for Margulis' death, Ballas intensely hated them and subjected them to the Orokin's experiments for weaponization. During the Old War, Ballas used a modified strain of the Infestation known as Helminth to turn Orokin citizens into biomechanical robots known as Warframes, only for them to cease functionality before long. Ballas found a solution in the development of the Somatic Link, which he had installed in the Reservoir. While the children remained in the Second Dream, their minds and powers were channelled into the Warframes, effectively making them into surrogate bodies. With almost indestructible new forms, as well as the means of focusing and controlling their powers, the newly dubbed Tenno were sent to war against the Orokin's enemies, from the Sentients to the Infestation.
During the Old War, Ballas betrayed his fellow Orokin and provided the Sentients with the secret of the Tenno's source of power and the location of the Reservoir. The Sentients dispatched one of their own, Natah, to infiltrate the Reservoir and destroy the Tenno within. However, Natah instead could not bring herself to do so and betrayed her kind to protect the Tenno. She assumed Margulis' form and transferred the Reservoir into the Void to ensure the Sentients could never reach it. The Old War ended with the Orokin's victory, followed by their subsequent collapse. The Tenno, resentful of being slaves to their foster-mother's killers, turned on the Orokin during the celebrations of the war's end. They assassinated the Orokin leadership and shattered their armies, collapsing the empire entirely. Once the Tenno were freed, the Warframes deactivated and they remained dormant in the Second Dream.
Generations later, Natah, now known as the Lotus, reawakened the Tenno to restore stability to the Origin System. amidst the ashes of the Orokin Empire, the Grineer, Corpus and Infestation fought each other for dominance over the System, with the innocent inhabitants caught in the middle and the Sentients plotting their return and retribution. At the Lotus' guidance, the Tenno now fight these factions to restore peace and balance to the System.
Technology[]
Due to the Sentients' ability to control other technologies, the Tenno made use of deliberately archaic weaponry to fight them and other foes. They travel through space with the use of the Orbiter spaceship, serving as a mobile base of operations, as well as the Railjack interceptor for ship-to-ship combat. With no permanent home to speak of, the Tenno have come to utilise space stations known as Dojos to train, recuperate and gather. The Tenno also utilise the jetpack-like Archwings for traversal through space. The most well-known technology the Tenno are known for is the Warframes. Initially presumed to be a suit of powered armour, Warframes are actually biomechanical machines into which the Tenno transfer their consciousnesses and powers into, each variant providing a different manner in which the Tenno operator can manifest their powers. Almost every Warframe also has a prime version of itself, a powerful upgrade but very difficult to acquire, complete with a more Orokin aesthetic to them.
Culture[]
The Tenno are often compared to Ninjas due to their extensive use of acrobatics in combat and their specialty in rapid strike missions. The Tenno often cite honour as a motivator in their actions, showing significant disdain for their enemies as violent savages (Grineer), disgusting monstrosities (Infestation) or selfish and greedy like the Orokin (Corpus). The Tenno are also known to sympathise with civilian groups and actively tries to support them with their own plights, such as protecting the Ostrons of Cetus from the Grineer. supporting the Solaris people in their liberation from Corpus tyranny. Most notably, the Human colonists of Mars often had their children taken by the Orokin as tribute, only to have them returned and protected by Inaros. To compliment different personalities and techniques, the Tenno follow five different schools of combat doctrine.
- Madurai: the fighters.
- Vazarin: the protectors.
- Naramon: the tacticians.
- Unairu: the indomitable.
- Zenurik: the arcane.
Warframes[]
