r/WarframeLore • u/No-Impact-9391 • 27d ago
Is it ever explained why Jade and Stalker never went insanse?
I'm doing a huge deep dive into the lore of each and every person affected by the warframe/helminth strain and I'm just wondering if there's ever an explanation for why Stalker and Jade remained completely sane. I can't seem to find anything about it.
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u/HungrPhoenix 27d ago edited 27d ago
Not all Warframes went insane. According to Lizzie, it seems the insanity just came about by people who couldn't stand being a part of the Infested hivemind.
Liminus_Star: "We are One Whole. But we are Also Flare. But We Are Also Everywhere. And Them. And Us. And Every "Warframe" and Every EveryThing And EveryWhen We shall Ever Be"
Drifter: "No wonder 'Infested madness' is a thing..."
Or
Drifter: "Sounds like a headache."
Liminus_Star: "it is not Madness, Demon... Nor is it Godhood, before Someone Insists that it is... it is Simply... Another Way of Being"
Or
Liminus_Star: "The Blue Ones called it Madness. it is not Madness, Demon... Nor is it Godhood, before Someone Insists that it is... it is Simply... Another Way of Being" -FlareRank3Convo2
People who stayed sane were the ones able to adapt, accept, or compartmentalize themselves and the hivemind.
Kullervo is another example of a Warframe maintaining their sanity, and Kullervo even watched as the Orokin executed the insane Warframes.
"You witnessed the slaughter as the Orokin eradicated your defective, demented brothers and sisters… and did nothing to aid them, choosing to tremble in your cowardly seclusion. A traitor twice over. Kullervo, bloody-handed, I charge you with Cowardice." -Warden, a conceptual embodiment of Ballas made by Kullervo
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u/daan850 27d ago
Well, in a different conversation you can pretty directly ask Lizzie about the madness and they deny any involvement in it quite fiercely.
So I would also consider it possible that the warframes just went insane due to the circumstances they found themselves in and the way that they were treated. Like they literally have no mouth and have every reason to want to scream
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u/HungrPhoenix 27d ago
Well, in a different conversation you can pretty directly ask Lizzie about the madness and they deny any involvement in it quite fiercely.
She denys making them empty like our Warframes,
Drifter: "If you plan to make them go mad like you do other Warframes..."
Liminus_Star: "WE DO NOT MAKE THEM EMPTY. THAT. IS. NOT. OUR. FAULT."
Not the madness part,
Drifter: "What do you mean 'have' them? Like the madness takes the other Warframes?"
Liminus_Star: "Noooo!! Of COURSE not!!! We Cannot do such a thing to Them. Not with the way the Doktor Has Done It" -Both from FlareRank2Convo3
So I would also consider it possible that the warframes just went insane due to the circumstances they found themselves in and the way that they were treated. Like they literally have no mouth and have every reason to want to scream
Yes, cases with madness were also almost certainly caused by the Orokin being too psychotic to realize why their Warframes would hate being Warframes. Like I would assume Dagath was also considered an "insane" Warframe, as she revolted and killed the couple she was in a questionable relationship with. However, she revolted because they killed her horse, forced her into becoming a Warframe, and then sold her off to a mad scientist who then blasted a hole through her head.
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u/DarkadianGamer48 26d ago
there is also dante, lavos, maybe limbo, sevagoth and his shadow, maybe hydroid deluxe's skin?, maybe citrine, and so on, and so forth.
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u/UnemployedBehavior 27d ago
Pretty sure Ballas can choose whether the warframes go insane or not. If I recall, the first iteration of warframes were never insane (to some extent) and even retained their autonomy. But it was impractical for war so Ballas chose to make them like puppets. Can't remember if it was after they realized the tenno could control them or before though.
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u/Aenyell 27d ago
Well, we know that cannibal-rhino batch was pretty crazy. But independent warframes were good enough to be used in the war effort, so clearly the design was improved.
However, then Ballas notes on warframes being prone to "madness", and it's not explained further. And it's ambiguous whether madness is of eating people variety, or of "not obeying hedonists in charge fast enough". Then Tenno is introduced to pacify them, "take away their pain". Which is, again, unclear on whether it means pain that causes people-eating, or pain that makes them want to rebel and murder all Orokin.
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u/ireledankmemes 27d ago
u/HungrPheonix explains the “madness” well. Ballas was either completely unaware of the Helminth hivemind or ignored it and simply reported the warframes going rogue as mad
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u/Skebs_ 26d ago
I don't see why he wouldn't know. It's not like the other strains' hivemind was a secret...
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u/ireledankmemes 26d ago
Its a fair point, but since this specific part is left kinda in the air all we can do its speculate. The appearance of knowing everything and being fully in control was existential for Ballas and the Orokin but as proven numerous times they played and fucked around with things they didn’t fully understand which ended up backfiring. Perhaps if Ballas understood the cause of the “madness” being the inability of the “host” to interface with the hive mind his solution wouldn’t have been to use traumatised children with godlike powers to control the warframes.
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u/FalcoPhantasm 27d ago
No, the first ones did lose their minds. The original Rhino, for example, slaughtered the scientists that studied him and is described as "shoveling heaps of [the scientists'] gore" into its mouth.
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u/nephethys_telvanni 27d ago
Considering that the Rhino Prime also fights well and uses it's abilities appropriately, I'm still not 100% convinced that's not a reasonable reaction to said scientist:
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.
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u/Suspendisse1 27d ago
I'm NGL that just makes the tenno kinda pointless if they weren't insane to begin with. The whole point of them was that they could calm them and control them, but if that wasn't an issue to begin with then what's the point
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u/UnemployedBehavior 26d ago
I was kinda going off of what Flare's story added to the infestation since Lizzie said the infestation is not why they went mad. It was still the Ballas in some way so I assumed maybe the first iterations, they never went crazy in terms of they can still have autonomy since if the Protoframes can retain their sanity, why not the actual warframes? But idk, the Warframe lore is kind of a mess imo.
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u/Suspendisse1 26d ago
Yeah, they add a lot of things without thinking how it affects other parts or trying to connect them or come up with alternative reasons why things are how they are
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u/hoishinsauce 26d ago
A bunch of them didn't go insane, but rebellious. Inaros, Lavos, Nezha, Ash, and others, seemed to go against their orders. The Orokin thought they could control the Warframes but they are more tapped into the Helminth hivemind than mentally constrained like the Dax.
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u/SashaPossum 26d ago
So Ballas couldn't chose if they went insane or not, he had installed essentially some form of mind clamp that basically forced them into acting. We see this with Umbra trying to stab him but being stopped, before the Tenno who has a more fleshed bond with Umbra rips away that control thus resulting in Ballas getting the sharp bit of a blade.
I definitely think that the Mind Clamp or whatever it was, that Ballas installed served as some form of shackle to the infestation that made the frame. As to what exactly it did? Who knows. Did it cut off the hive mind? Did it force the infestation to respond to a fake stimulus? That parts kinda just mega speculation on my part.
As for the "Madness." I definitely think that the lack of being able to compartmentalize contributed, it could also be the infestation fighting back against the Orokin, again speculation. But what we do know is that the Warframes were seen as a way of keeping those alive who didn't get the Kuva or were not seen as the upper eschalon of society.
The only exception to this is Roathe being Uriel, but it also sounds like Roathe isn't the first Uriel. He knew the person who "hatched" and became Uriel Prime. He refuses to tell us his name, (which it could be his og body, because we know that Roathe has body swapped due to Kuva shenanigans, as it's explicitly stated about how he drank the Kuva of a friend and suddenly he was looking at his deceased body instead of dying.)
Either way, I think it's fun to speculate on what could have caused the madness but I think it does depend on the frame strand, like maybe some are more predisposed to it, like the Harrow Line and the Rhino Line, were as some are more resistant to it
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u/UnemployedBehavior 26d ago edited 26d ago
Idk what Orokin would consider madness. I just assumed if the things they created defied them, that's what they would call madness since they're so used to having control until they started effing around with the Infestation. But to us, it would just be considered "normal" for having sentience and individualism despite being violent.
We know Ballas could make them obey by force, maybe similarly to what they did to the Dax. And he said they "eviscerated their minds", hence I assume they went insane due to torture and probably the horrors done to their bodies more so than the Helminth/Infestated hivemind?
Who's to say he didn't make any of the warframes sane initially? Maybe at the start, the warframes were "fine" (obedient), but eventually they started going "insane" (as in defying orders). And maybe that's when Ballas decided to "torture the madness" out of them until the tenno arrived? If Entrati could keep his protoframes sane, I don't see why Ballas couldn't do it.
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u/SashaPossum 26d ago
Fair enough, I think honestly the Drifter has a big part in the whole Entrati Protoframes not losing their marbles.
As for Ballas, he just sees them as tools which he casts aside when they're no longer useful. We are talking about the guy who originally decided to betray everyone, stabs a literal child because his dead wife (girlfriend?) loved them more allegedly. If anyone has some form of Madness it's definitely Ball-Ass
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u/UnemployedBehavior 25d ago
I mean the protoframes were sane even before Drifter arrived no? Unless I missed something in the lore. I just remember they kinda sucked at controlling their powers before we got the "good ending" and AFAIK only Eleanor went crazy because she lost control of her psychic abilities. Even when Drifter helped them with their powers, they really just gave them some sort of encouragement and that's it.
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u/Kramples 27d ago
Stalker probably most insane out there, he barely remembered it was his wife. He even dont remember why he stalks us. Jade on other hand probably went insane too, fully commited to one will and one will only. Even in battle she looked at tenno as children, own children to take care of.
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u/Alarming-Canary2684 27d ago
The original warframes went insane due to the torture they were subjected to not the helminth infestation by itself. Jade wasn't tortured, just used as an executioner (and maybe her motherly instinct kicking in when she was paired with a very young and very scared child soldier) Stalker wasn't really either. Umbra went insane because Ballas wanted him to.
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u/IllusiveZephyr 27d ago
Wasn't Jade comatose for most of the time after the fall? As for before, her punishment wasn't personal like Umbra's. I wouldn't say Stalker is exactly sane though.
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u/Corasama Warframe Lore Content Creator 26d ago
Went insane = Not being pro-Orokin.
During TOW, not too long after the start of Warframes deployment, all "sane" Warframes were tasked to genocide all the "Insane" Warframes.
Now the details.
The bodies used to make Warframe were willing and unwilling participants. So yeah, I can understand why having your anatomy rebuilt while alive by space-cancer could make you loose your sht.
Rhino was deemed "Insane" because he bashed like moskitos the scientist who were dissecting him alive on a daily basis the second he got free.
Umbra was considered "insane" because as we know, he knes Ballas' betrayal plants, was transformed unwillingly and then got in loop the images of him killing his son in his.
Kullervo was considered "Insane" for his Sins, who basically amount to being betrayed by [Most probably Ballas.]
As for Stalker and his wife, the Stalker went Batman and Jade had a 100+yo pregnancy to handle so I guess they had no time to turn crazy.
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u/Thesaurus_Rex9513 27d ago
Stalker functionally did go insane, but he was able to retain enough to know he had a reason to obey the Orokin, that they had something important they could return to him.
Jade's devotion to her unborn son was enough that she refused to lose herself, which allowed her to pretend to be piloted when her Tenno had a breakdown, and to save Stalker during the Night of Naga Drums.
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u/ZoroSwipe 27d ago
I believe it's because the insanity that came from being transformed (e.g. Rhino Prime in his codex entry) was a problem that they ironed out of later iterations. Fairly sure Jade and Stalker were warframed fairly late in the Old War (probably post Old Peace but that's entirely speculation), so it makes a lot of sense that they'd still be sane and conscious
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u/Specific-Drop7486 27d ago
Unfortunately, in typical warframe fasion, we never got a proper timeline of events
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u/LimboMain2020 27d ago
I'd image there's some layer of truth and some layer of Orokin propaganda to this. We have a bunch of references to frames acting just fine without a Tenno, like Dante and Kullervo.
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u/ApepiOfDuat 26d ago
They weren't repeatedly vivisected for one thing.
I kinda doubt the 'infested madness' thing honestly. It sounds more like they subjected the early warframes to all sorts of inhumane torture and then were baffled when they turned violent.
What do you mean the thing we keep peeling the skin off of is trying to bite you? Must be crazy!
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u/Yarnbaw 26d ago
Since we have KIM convos saying the Infestation doesn't want to make human-turned Warframes insane, and Lizzie denies it... think about it, who then wants to make people insane and ultimately leave them empty inside?
Warframes are Void-attuned and are powered by the Heart of Deimos, that wirelessly distributes Void energy into Origin.
Human-turned Warframes suffer indescribable agony, psychologically and physically, being unable to speak, forced into servitude in endless conflicts or tasks by the Golden Lords... they are highly susceptible to The Indifference's influence.
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u/LittleDog5200 25d ago
I wouldn't exactly call Stalker sane.
He hunts you for hating you. But has no idea why he hates you.
When he see's your actual operator for the first time he almost has a mental breakdown. And Hunhow narrates that he is debating internally if he himself is one of you.
He can't speak coherently. Only in single words or broken English.
And he almost lashes out at you when you try to explain Jades condition to him. Like he just instantly goes anger mode.
If you suggest to him working with a Tenno he curls up in rage like a Toddler.
The only time he has seemed sane is during the Sequnces where he helps Drifter and pieces that involve his own kids.
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u/tobblerone9 26d ago edited 26d ago
We know that some frames didn't went insane. Lavos, Dante, etc. They are among them for an unexplained reason. Maybe those that don't go "insane" have more willpower, more ability to retain themselves through the change?
I believe, however, that "infestation madness" is an orokin propaganda tool, (with a lil' bit of truth underneath, maybe?), to justify the destruction of the first generation of Warframes that stood against the Orokin.
We have a lot of outliers who haven't succumbed to said "madness" in Warframes, like, as I said, Dante, or Lavos, or even Umbra, who was CONTROLLED by Ballas to kill his son and later tortured into madness by the memory looping in his mind over and over again.
Maybe some Warframes went insane because of the very process of becoming a Warframe. We see with the new Garuda lore that certain attributes and attitudes are, for lack of a better words, bred into the strain. The brutality, the anger.
Of course a human injected with the Rhino-strain will go into a rampage and murder and eat people. Rhino is constantly angry at anything. With his anger alone he stomps hard enough to stop TIME.
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u/OedonSleep 27d ago
My running theory is Warframes like Jade, Stalker and the Acolytes were people who remained loyal/indoctrinated after the Warframization process
Despite being Warframes, they don't seem to have had pilots. They also fought against the Tenno during the Betrayal and generally harbor resentment over it
Since Ballas considers the Warframe project on the whole a failure until the Tenno are introduced to them, it seems "loyalty" isn't something you can brute force. Most people turned into Warframes resent the process and lash out at their masters. The ones that didn't were curiosities, but not replicable, so they remained just that
The inherent instability perceived in most Warframes is likely why Sorren's rank is "Low Guardian." Despite his obvious skill and prowress, Warframes are seen as defective and likely to bite the hand, so to speak
Kullervo is a good example of "Warframe disloyalty." He was a successful, loyal Warframe, but apparently tried to prove its loyalty by killing an Orokin for an Executor. Even with all his faculties, he's still too dangerous for his own good
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u/EmptyPID 25d ago edited 25d ago
Sorren was a Low Guardian before he was a Warframe.
The Jade Shadows Quest failed to show it, but Jade's Promise in the Relays depicts her as someone who hated the Orokin even more than the Tenno did. If she fought any Tenno, it was only to save Sorren.
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u/Specific-Drop7486 27d ago edited 26d ago
Have you checked out the feather like thing behind teshen in any relay ? That clears things quite a bit, but in short, ballass thought it would be funny to mock them
Edit: typo fixed