Swazdo-lah, Tenno! Today is the 1 year anniversary of Hail to the Jewels in the Lotus and we've got a new chapter to celebrate. There will be many more in the upcoming months, most of them linked in indirect (and not so indirect) ways. Without revealing too much, I can say that they'll shed light on Nezha's past – and include a return to Fortuna, where something hungers in the darkness of the vents. The events of Rising Tide and Empyrean will also feature prominently in several. In the meantime, enjoy our first visit to the Plains of Eidolon!

Batu left his village with the burgeoning dawn. Together with the sturdy woven basket on his back, he carried a small rockpick and a Sunpoint-class plasma drill, purchased second-hand from a smarmy Corpus trader who'd tried to boost the price well beyond what the tool had been worth. Batu considered it a worthwhile investment despite the aggravation. Sunpoint drills were far superior to the cheaper, less reliable Nosam cutters and had always helped him in locating some of the rarer things the Eidolon-Moh had to offer.

He reached Gara Toht within the hour, its eerie blue waters sparkling in the sunlight. The Sentient's fallen crown threw a long shadow onto the opposite bank and Batu tried to contemplate – not for the first time in his sixty-some years of life – how big the whole monster must have been. Like all who grew up in the shadow of the Unum, Batu had been raised on stories of the Glass Warrior who'd brought the flying mountain to its knees. And though Gara was gone, others of her kind had reawakened, cladeless remnants of a once-golden empire. The mightiest that had ever been. Batu repressed a little shiver. He'd never seen one in the flesh, but his late brother claimed he had. A Warrior-God in shimmering grey, painted in lines of blood.

The morning was already hot. Batu adjusted the brim of his hat and continued past the lake, moving deeper into the steppes. Condrocs circled lazily overhead, waiting for him to flush out a kuaka or two. The Plains had moved on from the rapid, unpredictable weather that defined the springtime months, but clouds gathered in the direction of the sea, heavy with the promise of a rain. Batu thought he would be glad of it come late afternoon.

Several hours later – he was walking slowly, with no desire to rush – the patchy grassland gave way to low hills, and Batu arrived at a vein of exposed minerals he'd discovered halfway up the slope. He removed the dead maprico branches he'd used to cover the site and got to work testing his new drill against a nearby boulder. It worked fantastically and the afternoon heat found him squatting on his haunches in the brittle grass, excising a ribbon of auron from the ground.

It was a rich vein, and his basket was soon half-full of nuggets. Batu was already counting the small fortune they would bring him. With every sophisticated piece of technology in the System containing at least a speck of auron, the Corpus industrial complex was always in need of more and had paid him fairly for it in the past. Nowadays it was said the Tenno were also on the lookout for great quantities of the mineral in order to create the rare, shimmering alloy that'd given the Golden Lords their name. Batu suspected that might be true, but he had no idea how to arrange such a contract, and no inclination to find out.

The Tenno were a secretive bunch. It was impossible not to hear tales of their exploits, but they themselves were rarely seen. Very few knew how to contact them directly; everyone else was funneled through their expansive network of operatives and intel brokers. As was to be expected, rumors thrived in the resulting absence of information. Most people agreed that the Tenno had set up aboard the ancient Orokin Relays – derelict since the Downfall – but the stories coming out of there were some of the wildest Batu had ever heard, fantastical tales of archives that preserved living things in lieu of books and crimson maple trees flourishing in fields of snow that didn't melt. Batu suspected most of it to be a shameless exaggeration.

He sat back and wiped the sweat from his brow. The sunlight that'd warmed him all morning had disappeared behind a rising wall of clouds and the air was growing thick with humidity. Distant thunder rumbled over the Plains. Sore from hours of crouching, Batu shifted himself onto a boulder and unpacked his lunch of boiled dumplings and cold chimmurr.

He was still sipping it when the Grineer arrived.

They'd come up a game trail that bent a little northwards around the slope of the hill, so that it was screened from Batu's sight as he toiled at his little quarry. That little quirk of geography, along with Batu's deteriorating sense of hearing, now proved disastrous. He stood up quickly. The Grineer were still a little ways off, but they'd spotted him and were coming in too fast for an older man to outrun on foot. Even a young man would have been hard pressed to avoid them on the barren grassland without taking a slug in the back.

"Gar elik'draedre kuhl, de'mon."

There were eight in total, a squad of Tusks out of the Seethe. One tipped his basket over and excitedly showed its contents to the others. His insides quaking, Batu slowly put a hand to the small bread knife tucked into his belt. His rockpick was too far away to grab, and he knew it wouldn't prove much use against armored soldiers, but it was infinitely better to die bravely, as Gara had done, than prostrate for mercy the enemy was unlikely to give. When the foremost Grineer got within arm's reach of him, Batu drew the knife and lunged.

He was immediately struck down with the butt of a rifle.

Blue light exploded behind Batu's eyes. Next thing he knew he was on all fours, jagged stones boring into his knees. A dusty boot struck him in the wrist and the knife he'd been gamely struggling to hold onto jolted from nerveless fingers. The Grineer hooted and laughed. Batu lurched backwards, thinking to try and crawl away down the slope, but the Lancer stooped and hauled him back by the arm. The air left Batu's lungs in a pained whoosh as he was shoved facedown in the prickling yellow grass. He lay there twitching while the other Grineer gathered up his heavy basket of auron, then began to debate who was going to carry it. Outraged, Batu tried to lift his head, only to have the side of his face slammed against the ground and held there, blood oozing from a stinging cut on his ear, while a heavy metal collar was clicked into place around his neck.

Batu went utterly still. Hands grabbed his arms and flipped him over, dragging his wrists together in front of his chest. In seconds, the Lancer had twisted a length of cord around his wrists and knotted it tight enough cut off the blood to his fingers. Batu stifled a cry, instinctively moving to grip the collar. The Lancer flashed him a crooked grin.

"It's wired with enough explosives to blow your melon clean off, Cetus skoom, so here's how you keep that from happening. You walk. You keep quiet. You make trouble-"

He held up a remote with a grimy yellow button.

"-and we use your head for a little game of kickball," he finished. "If there's anything left of it."

He lifted Batu by the back of his wrappings, but Batu slumped back down, overwhelmed by a surge of vertigo emanating from his throbbing skull. The Lancer irritably hauled him back up again.

"Try sandbagging it and see what happens," he added menacingly. "We've got other games that won't spoil your ability to talk."

Batu forced his feet under him and stood. Not well, but being upright seemed to be all the Grineer wanted from him. For now, at least. Batu shuddered to think of it, but he could guess what this "talk" was likely to entail. He knew the Grineer had been establishing excavation sites all over the Plains, looking for any salvageable bit of old technology, but Batu could only point their ugly drilling machines in the direction of his quarries. He mined for auron and gemstones, not Orokin relics! In over fifty years he'd laid claim to only a few, useless handfuls of their detritus – shattered copernics and ceramic bio-material, discovered mostly by accident as he traversed the rolling steppes of the Eidolon-Moh. He wondered how long the torture would last before the Grineer finally decided he really didn't know anything and put him out of his misery.

The thought was enough to make his gorge rise. Batu feebly twisted his wrists, but there wasn't an inch of slack for him to work with and he quickly stopped trying, tears of pain peeking at the corners of his eyes. A sour-faced Grineer picked up the basket of auron and hiked it onto his shoulders, but not before Batu noticed him furtively slip a nugget into his many pouches. A little something for the drinking and gambling back at camp. Batu couldn't help but feel a bitter surge of resentment. That auron was rightfully his. He'd walked the Plains for weeks in order to find the vein. He'd been the one bent over in the hot sun in order to extract it from the earth. He'd meant to use a portion of it to buy Koura – his brother's daughter and Batu's last remaining kin – a jug of temple kuva to celebrate the birth of her child, as was custom.

Now he'd never be able to see if the draught brought fortuitous visions of her daughter's future, as it was occasionally wont to do. Like many families who called the area home, his kin would likely never know what had happened to him, save that he'd left the village and never came back. There were countless ways to die on the Plains, and his was shaping up to be one more the Ostron people had learned to live with.

Someone prodded Batu in the ribs and he fell into formation as they moved down the slope. Thunder rumbled and Batu felt the first stray drops of rain fall from the overcast sky. As the afternoon waned, the drizzle became a steady downpour. Wind rose and lashed at the pines, whipping their scraggy branches into a frenzy. Soon it was too dark to see anything else. Without the Shards of Lua and the brilliance of the stars, Batu's only light came from the lamp-like optics of the Grineer themselves.

Once he caught the gleam of eyes watching them from the darkness, but the Grineer sent a few bullets after them and they scattered. Offworlders tended to equate being caught out after dark with a death sentence, but Plains' natives like Batu had learned clever ways to mitigate the added risk, and nocturnal excursions were rarely fatal despite the packs of vasca kavats and deadly, glittering Vomvalstys that prowled the night. Even the mighty Eidolon was only seen once or twice a month, and seldom near settlements – which were never built near large bodies of water. Batu had always found it amusing how Offworlders would scurry inside at the first sign of dusk, but as his torment slowly transitioned into a nightmare, he found himself hoping to run straight into whatever dread, homicidal phantasm they imagined lived out on the Plains.

The Grineer didn't march all that fast, but the terrain was folded and steep, and they kept a ruthless pace, their stench of sweat and festering skin stifling even in the rain. After going without rest for over an hour, Batu's legs had begun to shake. He tried to free his hands again, but the cord had swollen even tighter in the rain and his aching fingers felt thick and clumsy. One of the Grineer shoved him with his rifle. Batu stumbled forward to the sound of their jeers.

Another 200 paces saw them at the bottom of the hill and at the mouth of the coastal lowlands. Batu came to a halt, struggling to catch his breath. The Grineer pushed him again and this time he pitched headfirst onto the wet ground, the heavy bomb collar jolting painfully against his clavicle. His limbs felt like lead. A thin, oozing heat trickled from the gouge on his scalp. He didn't have the strength left to walk anymore, so unless the Grineer changed their minds and decided to drag him along like a sack, he'd reached the end of his rope.

One of his captors kicked him in the leg, but Batu didn't get up. He felt sick and lightheaded. After another bone-bruising kick, he heard the click of a safety catch being released. Batu hunched his back and waited to die, overcome with a grim sense of relief. Between his trembling arms, he watched his breath suddenly become a billowing white cloud. An unnatural cold rose on the squall and Batu felt the water on his skin freeze to a rime of ice. Patterns of hoarfrost traced themselves on the grass around him, a thing of slow motion sped up to mere seconds.

The Grineer fumbled with their weapons, shouting to one another in their own language as they turned and faced outwards into the night. Wind howled in the treetops, whipping streamers of ice along the ground and hurling the stinging pellets against Batu's face. The rain turned to sleet, turned to heavy flakes of snow. Something hurtled past in the darkness, a flash of movement too quick for Batu to follow. One of the Grineer was flung off his feet, completing one full revolution before he tumbled to the frost-bitten ground, blood spraying from his throat only to freeze near instantly.

His comrades immediately opened fire. The yellow glow of their eyes had turned bouncing and frantic, and threw wild shadows onto the nearby trees as the bullets chewed up the Plains. Squinting against the blizzard, it seemed to Batu that the world around him had narrowed to the shape of a globe, its edges visible only as an icy fog. Windblown drifts of snow heaped against the base of nearby trees and lay a thick, glittering carpet over the grass, radiating a faint luminescence that eclipsed what little light had been provided by the Grineer. Everything had gone bitterly cold. The wind gusted again, parting the veil of sideways drifting snow-

-and Batu saw the Warframe.

He guessed it to be taller than him by at least half a meter, its body thickset and powerfully compact, heavy lines undeniably masculine, so that the Batu's first impression was that of a man wearing an armored, insulated robe – but it was a hasty description that could not truly illustrate what emerged from the edge of the storm. It was holding a katana out to one side, turquoise light winking along the killing edge, but Batu's eyes cut to the empty fist the Warframe suddenly lifted over its head. Boulder-sized chunks of ice condensed out of thin air, held aloft with no visible means of support. The Warframe gave its hand a flick. The boulders hurtled towards the Grineer as though they'd been launched from a canon.

Several of the less situationally aware were hit in the back, the impact shattering both their armor and the callused bone beneath. Frost erupted where the hailstones struck and the luckier ones leapt aside to avoid the danger. With slow, deliberate purpose, the Warframe advanced into the chaos. The closest Lancer perished before he'd made it three steps, Tenno steel inscribing a thin, dazzling blue arc that that seemed to linger in the air long after the bloody, bifurcated pieces of the corpse had slid to the ground. The remaining Grineer scattered in a desperate bid to split the Warframe's attention.

Bullets chattered. The Warframe casually batted them aside with its katana, its other hand sweeping past its leg, fingers hooked into claws. Icicles erupted from the ground like spears, ripping up the soil as a wave of them surged towards the remaining Grineer. Hampered by the thick layer of ice that'd built up on their armor, most were handily enveloped by the glacial advance. When the bodies fell, frozen in the useless act of covering their face with their hands, they shattered like glass statues.

The last remaining Grineer stumbled out of the blast zone, one leg dragging from a broken hip. He went to all fours in the snow and scrambled for several meters, his breath pulling harshly in the bitter air. The Warframe tilted its head to regard him. There was no malice in the eerie movement, no joy, but it held the promise of death all the same – levied with all the impartial severity of winter. It made a flinging motion with its hand, and a needle of ice punched through the Grineer's back with enough force to stake the body to the ground.

Everything fell silent.

Something was beeping and flashing in the darkness, but its deadly significance was lost on Batu as he sat there shivering, unable to take his eyes off the frigid, regal thing towering above him in the gloom. Lifting the katana across its body, the Warframe silently wiped it across his opposite elbow, leaving a stark streak of blood across its gauntlet, and returned the blade to the sheath on its hip. Eye-level with the motion, some part of Batu registered that its guard had been fashioned in the shape of a flower – a lotus, perhaps – but his dazed inspection of weapon ended when the Warframe pivoted to look at him. It stood there for a moment, shadowed by the pale light of the snow, then lowered itself to one knee and extended its hand with the wrist facing up. A blade nearly as long as its forearm materialized in the cold light.

Batu stifled a sob. For all he knew, the Tenno didn't like trespassers any more than the Grineer, and this one intended to dispatch him with a clean slash to the throat. The beeping was growing louder and faster, throwing a flickering crimson light onto the Warframe's chest. With a horrible jolt of alarm, Batu realized it was coming from the collar around his neck. He grabbed at it with both hands and felt his skin stick to the frozen metal.

The knife moved closer to Batu's throat and the Ostron watched it segment down the middle, revealing a thin, writhing filament that seemed to move with a life of its own. It slithered over the bomb collar and wormed into the lock with an unpleasantly organic squelch. Batu got the horrified impression that it wasn't so much a probe as it was a part of the Warframe itself, some kind of living, organic extension. The beeping reached a crescendo. Batu squeezed his eyes shut.

With a weighty click, the collar broke apart and thudded to the ground. Emptying his lungs in a single, shaking gulp, Batu lifted his gaze to the Warframe's face – or rather, where its face might have been, had one actually been visible. All the colors of the aurora borealis danced beneath the glassy dome of its helmet, the same feathery embellishments that adorned the front reaching around the sides to form an intricate double halo that pulsed with the same shimmering, moonstone light. Winter itself seemed to emanate from the Warframe's presence; neither the crystalline needle of ice nor the chill grip of space, but something else entirely… almost indescribable… as if the frozen, fathomless dark between the stars could somehow burn.

The Warframe retracted its hand. The dagger closed like a flower bud, then slipped its winking, mono-filament edge between Batu's hands. In one clean motion, it sliced through the swollen leather cords and the Ostron's arms swung limply to his sides, his eyes watering from the sudden pain.

"Dah-dap," he whispered. "Dah-dap utz…"

Seemingly out of nowhere, the Warframe produced a small vial of orange liquid. Uncorking the stopper, it poured a small amount onto each of Batu's wrists. The unpleasant sensation that followed was comparable to hot wax being dripped into each of the various lacerations, but he endured the discomfort without complaint, and when he was offered the same liquid to drink, he did so without hesitation, fully trusting the Warframe's intentions. The pleasant smell of sunlit jade leaves rose on the cold air, completely at odds with the bitter, rotten taste that coated Batu's tongue. He gagged but managed to hold it down, mortified by the image of throwing up all over the Warframe's chest, as heat flushed into his limbs and the tips of his fingers.

Throughout it all, the Warframe didn't utter a word – and Batu had no idea what to say his own self. After a moment it rose to its feet and pointed in a seemingly random direction, holding Batu's gaze as it did so. The Ostron blinked, not comprehending the gesture, but the Warframe offered no further clarification. Putting a hand to its sword, it turned and walked away into the storm, icicles blooming from its footsteps. Batu continued to stare long after it had been swallowed by the squall.

The blizzard thinned, and something wet spattered against Batu's shaven scalp. Tilting his gaze skyward, he was astonished to feel drops of rain pepper his face, coming faster and faster as the world unfroze around him. Agitated tongues of lightning lashed the underside of the clouds, and Batu counted several seconds before the answering roll of thunder echoed across the Plains. The snowfield was already melting in the warm air, leaving a grey mire of corpses and churned, bloody earth.

Batu staggered to his feet, his wrappings dripping with mud and other, far less pleasant things. His body ached horribly, but the pain was somehow a distant thing, submerged under the haze of whatever he'd been given to drink. Nothing special was visible in the direction the Warframe had pointed – but Batu shambled towards it regardless. It would be the height of stupidity to remain here; the scent of blood was bound to attract the attention of the vasca, and Batu refused to squander the second chance he'd been given.

Drought-stunted maprico trees scratched at his shins, and loose stones threatened to turn his wobbling ankles, but he dug deep and tapped his last reserve of strength. It wasn't easy, but the rolling terrain was relatively gentle and no large obstacles lay in his path. How long he walked, Batu couldn't rightly say, but he guessed it to be a little over two kilometers before he saw the twinkling lights. Like most Ostron settlements, the main entrance was illuminated by strings of blue lanterns – a beacon to travelers and those late in returning home. Batu shaded his eyes against the drizzling rain, and almost wept when he recognized the lichen-covered piece of Orokin machinery that marked the approach to his home village. All this time, the Grineer had been retracing a different, but roughly parallel course to the one Batu had taken that morning.

Weak with relief, Batu staggered down the hill. At the bottom lay the modest Oro-kin-ka the villagers had set up at the base of the wreckage – an engine from some ancient, star-sailing vessel that'd fallen from the heavens during the Old War – and Batu sketched a rough obeisance as he passed, shaking with more than just exhaustion. He had no idea how late it was, but the streets were deserted as he made his way to his kinswoman's home at the end of the row. The door opened for him almost immediately, spilling a wedge of yellow light into the street. Someone had been waiting at the window for him to return. Batu inhaled the warmth of cinnamon and cardamom, of anise and steamed vobi milk. A baby's fussy cries drifted out to meet him. He wobbled on his feet and nearly fell as Koura's husband came out onto stoop.

"Batu?"

The man looked alarmed and relived all at once, pulling Batu inside just as Koura she came racing out to meet them. Her face was grey with worry. Batu tried to offer her some reassurance of his health, but the words wouldn't come, and as he reached for her with his bruised and swollen hands, Koura let out a little wail.

"Ai yo, your arms!" she cried. "Uncle, what has happened to you?!"

She led him to a seat and fetched clean wrappings from the laundry, then her husband helped Batu dress as though the elderly Ostron were his own father. Afterwards the couple conversed, debating briefly on the matter of sending for a healer, while Koura brought a cup of steaming hot harpu. Batu slurped at the greasy liquid, glad to find that his fingers still flexed, that no permanent damage seemed to have been done. He was still in a decent amount of pain, but he was alive and enormously grateful for it. The pungent slash of herbs filled the air as Koura uncorked a jar of salve and applied it to Batu's wrists, then to the multiple cuts on his scalp. She needn't have bothered; the Tenno medicine he'd received had already repaired the worst of the damage, but Batu thought the womanly gesture might bring her some peace of mind, and so he said nothing.

When he'd recovered his strength, he told them of the Warframe.

His kin listened in stunned silence as he related how the Grineer had come up him at his quarry, how they'd nearly marched him to his death and how he'd been saved. He tried desperately to describe the otherworldliness of the encounter, but it seemed to Batu that his explanations fell short of the actual truth, like trying to describe color to a blind man. When he reached the part about the snow, Koura shook her head, not to deny the strange event, but to try and make sense of it. She did not say the obvious, that it was the height of midsummer and they were many months from the chill that would lock nearby Er-Phryah's Vigil in a mosaic of glittering white. Batu looked past her shoulder, where heaps of fresh noodles, sugared mapricos and sticky crockery were piled in the couple's tiny kitchen, the groundwork for their daughter's Naming feast the next day.

Batu returned his gaze to Koura. "I know this may seem a strange request, and it's within your right to refuse a silly old man his whims… but may I choose a name for your daughter?"

"Tonight?"

Koura hesitated for only a moment before answering, possibly due to her relief at seeing her uncle alive and not wishing to refuse him anything, or possibly because a strange, shivering weight still lay over the house and they all felt that tradition could be bent a little.

"Of course," she said, nodding. "We would be honored."

On stiff knees, Batu rose from his seat. His great niece dozed in a wicker basket just off her mother's left, the interior padded with brightly colored silks. As Batu approached, she opened her eyes to look at him. Like many newborns, they were a stunning shade of pale blue, but Batu had a feeling that in her case, the color wouldn't darken to the more common black or brown. Patting her tiny stomach, he gathered the appropriate words.

"Look to this day, little one.

Yesterday is but a memory,

And tomorrow is only a vision,

But today well-lived

Makes every yesterday a moment of happiness

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look to this day, Hima.

The first of the rest of your life."

To his surprise the baby laughed at him and kicked her chubby legs, her face glowing with some secret delight. Batu read her approval as a favorable omen. When he looked back to Hima's parents, he saw tears in Koura's eyes and knew she understood the significance of the name – a token of protection against a harsh and difficult world.

"It is a beautiful choice, Uncle," she said quietly.

A sudden breeze gusted against the house, crisp with unseasonable, impossible cold. The windchimes danced, creating a soft jangle of music, and Batu thought he smelled dark branches edged in frost, frozen earth and cold roots, the raspberry char of deepest space. Not just winter on the Plains, but the glaciers of Europa and the polar caps of Mars, the artificial snows of the Orb Vallis and the cold at the end of all things, when the very universe had contracted and grown still.

Batu threw a soft look out the open window.

"Sho-lah, Tenno."

Notes:

-o- Hima is the Sanskrit word for snow. You can see it as the root of the word Himalayas, literally "abode of the snow". Hima (snow) + alaya (house/abode). "Snow" is the most common and recognizable definition of the word, but depending on context, it can also be taken to mean ice, frost, winter, the moon – and even a lotus.

-o- Auron is the Warframe equivalent to gold nuggets, being one letter removed from the actual Latin word for gold aurum. While this trash tier mineral has very little value in-game, if you consider the highly malleable, ductile and physio-electric properties which make actual gold invaluable to the manufacture of high technology, I've decided that despite the crafting requirements listed in the Foundry there's no way in hell that the magical Orokin Play-Doh known as "forma" isn't mostly comprised of auroxium alloy – which as you might recall is a mixture of:

Auron, i.e. gold
Oxium – "A rare, lighter than air alloy of Orokin origin."
Morphics – "An amorphous solid. Possibly Orokin technolgy."

I would even go so far as to say the golden architectural elements the Orokin slathered on with a paint roller are at least partially comprised of pure auron. Relatively speaking, they wouldn't even need all that much if you consider a single gold nugget measuring 0.5 centimeters can be hammered into a sheet of gold leaf/foil measuring 5.4 square feet!

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

-o- In others news, I am now the proud owner of this god-awful thing: Search for "Baro Keytar" on either Amazon or on For Fans By Fans

I don't know what diseased mind conceived of this travesty, but I applaud your twisted genius! Worst of all, I can't even say it violates the spirit of the character. It's that grin. That goddamn, shit-eating grin. LMAO! It wasn't offered as a poster, unfortunately, but I was not to be deterred. Printed it on some ledger-sized paper and hung it on the wall right next to my computer monitor. I get a sick LOL every time I see it.

-o- The prose at the end is a slight remix of an ancient Sanskrit poem called Look to the Day.

-o- "Gar elik'draedre kuhl, de'mon." – "You shouldn't be here, old man."