"Like all great empires throughout civilisation, the end of the Golden Reign came from several contributing factors on several fronts; culminating in a single cataclysmic struggle collectively known today as The Collapse.
Surviving texts formally documenting the final days of the war are seldom found, and often ravaged beyond recognition. The author has scoured every market available – antiquity fairs, flea markets, old journals, transcribed writings, both Tenno and Orokin; even the black market, where traditional methods failed and less than savoury credits prevailed.
What follows is but an attempt, however well researched, to chart the decline of the single greatest civilisation mankind has ever known, or indeed ever will know. It is not a perfect text. It contains conjecture, supposition, and gaps that can simply never be filled, lost forever to the sands of time.
Nevertheless, It is my greatest work.
We Corpus that survive today owe much to our predecessors: our infrastructure, our technology; indeed the very establishment of the Solar Rail that accommodates our trade fleets and permits the timely flow of Profit from one sector to the next. We chart our lineage from the Trade Guilds that arose from the ashes of the old empire; claiming our rightful place as the last true torchbearer of culture in a system ever-threatened by yawning darkness."
- A History of the Latter Orokin Empire, Collected Essays by E.M. Saronal
"You don't remember, do you?" Isolde asked. "The Old War. The endless fighting, the unfathomable destruction. The butchery. The Sentient: adaptive and relentless; eradicating all that stood before them. The Orokin: perfect and beautiful and cruel; descending into madness as their Empire crumbled into ash and fire, beset on all sides until that savage final stroke that ended them once and for all."
The boy for his part said nothing, only watching with that same lupine stare.
Isolde heaved a sigh.
"Not that it any of it matters any more. The Old War is over. The hated machines, the Golden Lords; gone, all but forgotten. All that remains are scavengers, picking over the ashes."
A communicator mounted on her belt buzzed softly. The girl reached down and silenced it. Then she shook her head.
"Enough pondering. Our paths lay in different directions. I expect they will want you to interface with your Warframe, when the time comes. A demonstration, of a sort."
She rose to her feet, shrouding her face beneath the hood once more.
"Remember who you are. What you are capable of."
With that she swept from the room, the door hissing shut behind her.
Left alone, the boy closed his eyes, searching within. Words she mentioned tumbled through his mind, sifting through the fog of who or what he once was; all too fleeting at first.
But the boy was disciplined. His brow knitted tightly. He focused on the terms, at first unfamiliar. The Orokin, the Sentient… Warframes.
Structures began to form; deeply embedded images began to coalesce and take shape within his mind.
Of a time before the smothering darkness; of blood and fire and endless war. When his skin was metal encasing muscled-rage; and his steel sharp and true.
Slowly, he began to remember.
Sara padded along the drain pipe; leaping from wall to wall with a speed and nimble deftness that beget her Warframe's size.
Her path carried her deeper into the bowels of the colony, far deeper than she had ever ventured on her previous scouting missions. She tracked the urchins as they slid down a series of handmade ropes; loot sacks jangling as they descended.
Nobody lived this deep; nobody but the absolutely destitute. The world became a tangled labyrinth of snaking pipework and hissing grates; unlit but for only the sorriest hovel erected beneath a skeletal joist or rusted gantry. The homeless that shivered here were clad in insectoid environment suits, desperately cobbled together from ramshackle materials discarded by the Low Tier above.
More than once, she encountered a mummified corpse, rendered small and tiny in the unforgiving dark. Each had been picked clean; ransacked by their fellow unfortunates out of abject necessity.
Still the urchins descended, eventually reaching a large support column stemming down into a wide lake of sifting coolant.
They huddled at one of the smaller clusters of pipes affixed to the edge of the column. Busying themselves with something. Sara peered closer.
A grate of some kind. Some kind of oven or furnace, to her untrained eye. They each collected a hidden stash of rebreathers and passing them out amongst themselves; wordless, tightly disciplined. They stashed the guns in the same grated hatch, before vanishing into the smoky darkness without a sound.
Sara watched from afar, swooping down to inspect the stash the moment she was sure the children had departed.
They had hidden the gear beneath an old sluice valve; one of the overrun pipes for when coolant levels spilled over. It was long since water sealed; the diversion lines welded shut or else diverted to adjoining systems piping down into Venus' blasted surface even further below. The weld work was discrete but noticeable on closer inspection.
The stash was choked with woven sacks. Sara took a moment to open one. Mercenary gear; battered and improvised, but functional. And not just Corpus-issue either. These were imports from off-world: Grineer slug throwers, even a Lato or two of Tenno design. Smuggled in, stored carefully in the bowels beneath the city; far from the prying eyes of the City Watch. Somebody had been assembling this collection over a long time.
Sara was still inspecting the stash when she heard a chattering series of clicks and whines behind her.
The Tenno chuckled, rising to her feet. Her hands drifted to the twin Furis by her hips.
"Takes a lot of skill to get the drop on me." Her voice rang out, reverberating against the dense forest of pipework overhead. "Gotta question your judgement though."
"We've no quarrel with you, Tenno." A gruff voice replied. "But the weapons stay where they are."
"I've no interest in spoiling your little revolution." Sara answered, turning to face her ambushers.
There were twelve of them; crouched on all sides; rifles trained squarely on her.
They were uniformly Corpus, that much she could tell. That was about the only uniform thing about them. Their cloaks were thick and heavily insulated; their rebreathers and environment helmets alternatingly boxy and bubble-like, from one shooter to the next. Boxy respirators mounted on their chests vented steam in wispy tufts that curled in the stale air.
Tactical assessment was second nature to a Tenno. Multiple rifles; ranging from harpoon guns to anti-material beam-emitters. Pre-sighted on her location.
Sara eyed each of them in turn; prompting them to bristle nervously.
"I still fancy my chances."
"That won't be necessary." An older voice cut through the fog. More figures swept into the clearing. An army of them now. They gathered around a tall yet perilously thin man.
His mask was transparent; revealing a gaunt face and wispy beard. There was a ghastly amount of worry in his face, yet a tremendous wisdom too.
With a wave of his hand, the snipers rose to their feet, at ease.
The old man stepped forward.
"My name is Vanger Hosk. And we are Solaris United."
"Who or what is Vanger Hosk, and how should I know him?" Captain Bravic growled, arms whirring as he crossed them.
They were assembled on the bridge of the Severance Package: Bravic, Vern and his team. Through the view port beyond, the Mid-Tier loomed up behind them. City Watch picket skiffs shadowed them, their weapon crews not taking their eye off the rangy scavenger barge for a second. The Severance Package was being led through a strict series of security checkpoints encircling the outer edge of the city.
A slow and laborious process, but a necessary one: The Upper Tier was exclusively Corpus controlled, and mired in bureaucracy. A shining series of corporate edifices that pierced the cloud bank high above.
The higher the ship rose, the more the scenery began to change. The air itself seemed cleaner; as ribbons clouds and floating glaciers drifted serenely by; glistening in the ever-sun. Trade galleons languished in the air above the Upper Tier; elongated boxy silhouettes that dwarfed even the Severance. Small shuttles darted from the colony to the ships like shoals of pilot ships.
Even Neera, shackled and with a Grineer bruiser towering over her, found herself fascinated by the vista. She had never seen the Upper Tier this close before.
"Local resistance leader." Vern was saying. "Thorn in the Corporation's side. Every major Mid-Tier bombing, armoury raid and executive shooting? Chances are Hosk had a hand in it."
"And this concerns me why?"
"Girl's his niece. His only family, far as the records show. Parents got caught in a sweep during the last uprising."
"I'm standing right here." Neera protested.
They ignored her.
Bravic studied Vern. As usual, the bounty hunter's impassive face may as well have been carved from stone.
"You think it's a credible threat?" The Captain asked. Vern's lip twitched.
"Solaris United primarily operate in the shadows. Strictly Low and Mid-Tier for the most part. A strike on us now, even under escort, would be unprecedented."
"But a possibility, nevertheless." Isolde added.
Bravic smirked at Isolde.
"You seem worried."
"I prefer prepared." Isolde replied evenly.
"Very well." Bravic turned and snapped his fingers at his com officer, Teico, "Who are the two closest crews operating in our sector."
"The Forward Transaction and Short Position." Teico confirmed, pulling them up on a display projector. Though not as bulky and menacing as the Severance, both were long distance Scav-barges; menacing and spiky in their own right.
"They'll do. Get word to Mehrino. Tell 'em we've three ships comin', not one."
Kahrl Bravic approached Neera. He towered over her; was so close that all she could smell was diesel and overpowering sweat. He addressed Vern as he leered at her.
"And get this terrorist off my ship. The Exchange will pay you handsomely, I expect."
"Hurry up!" Telin grunted.
"Almost there." Kelpo promised.
"Almost doesn't cut it. You're not as light as you think you are."
"Shut up and let me focus!"
The two scavengers were furiously attempting to saw through their bonds.
It was not an easy or graceful process. The edge in the wall plating they needed to reach was a good height off deck level. This meant taking turns. This meant Telin giving Kelpo Marr a boost. The two men swayed, an unlikely ladder. Both were already exhausted, battered and bruised. The Earth-vine was as strong and stubborn as the Ostron promised.
But it was not invincible.
Little by little, it began to fray.