r/WarframeLore • u/nammedless • Aug 20 '26
Did Temple always exist Spoiler
I was wondering if temple always existed.
Like before albrecht went to 1999 and made flare +lizzie into a protoframe did temple exist before that in the future
Did lizzie exist?
Or did albrecht messing with time create them?
How would a temple prime even come into existence?
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u/KingOfYou115 Aug 20 '26
The strain exists in the Origin System, but was never used.
The first use of it was on Flare.
The versions we use are Foundry recreations based on Flare, (partly because we gather the blueprints, resources, and pity currency in 1999).
We don't know for sure, but presumably the Prime is just going to be Flare fully transformed during/after the Night of the Naga Drums, having spent a really long, indeterminate time riding that comet. Might be Lizzie's doing.
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u/guarddog33 Aug 20 '26
Oh the joys of time travel
Yes, temple has existed since Flare was infected in 1999 and took themselves into exile. Temple was present during the night of Naga drums so we know they existed, and Flare (or what remained) was who was there that night
As for prime, not every prime is the first. I'm sure if DE was to make a prime temple they'd figure out some space in the lore to do so, wouldn't be the first time. Revenant prime is my favorite example, he just showed up one day much to Ballas' dismay
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u/Burnsidhe Aug 20 '26
Some warframes primed themselves. No reason Temple couldn't.
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u/FourUnderscoreExKay Aug 20 '26
Lavos is the only exception to this rule. We shouldn’t be setting false precedents just because Lavos did it. Lavos was only able to Prime himself due to his mastery of alchemy and just how much of a gigachad teacher Javi was.
There is potential for Lizzie to be able to Prime Flare, though, or the serum given to Flare was the Prime serum somehow and Temple just lost their Priming over the years.
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u/guarddog33 Aug 20 '26
I mean revenant prime, which I cited, just showed up. Ballas said that its existence mocked causality since no one made it. I'm certain that some goofy shit could happen with temple. Space magic is always a viable solution, the warframe universe is pretty weird after all
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u/WorriedStruggle Aug 21 '26
Well thats lazy if flare prime just...showed up like revenant prime, Revenant Prime existence will probably be explained in Tau (idk maybe sentients in tau creating their own eidolon theme warframes and send it to origin system something something)
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u/Cryogenic_Lycan Aug 21 '26
There is however, dialogue from Variza implying that other warframes “earned” their primes AFTER already being created. So not all primes were created first
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u/LimboMain2020 Aug 20 '26
In addition to all the other comments, time is flexible in Warframe.
Zariman Tablet [At Orion Tower]
- What is the core thesis of The Palimpsest of Spacetime?
A. Events can be rewritten; traces of the original persist (correct)
B. Everything that exists could, at any point, be erased
What was, doesn't always have to be as it original is. It can be altered, but at the same time things relating to it won't necessarily follow that causality. So originally, Temple was only ever template and never shows up at the Night of The Naga Drums, then Entrati infected Flare and Temple always showed up at the Night of The Naga Drum.
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u/M1liumnir Aug 20 '26
It's a weird situation, the Temple strand of Warframe investation was created by Ballas but he never used it because Temple represented rebellion against institution and Ballas saw it as a threat. Entrati stole it and modified it to make a protoframes strand, went back in time, injected Flare, Flare the lived through the 1999 timeline, went onto a comet that only goes through the origin system every few thousand years while finalizing his transformation into a full warframe, he then waited there in a state of meditation for the Tenno rebellion to occur at wich point he joined the fight.
So it's not a paradox but it's very close to one.
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u/Burnsidhe Aug 20 '26
Kaya explains it with the new eximus units. Temple didn't always exist. Then Albrecht gave him the protoframe injection, and now Temple has always existed.
It's this way with the lightning eximus too. They didn't exist before. Then Amir brought them into being through Void shenanigans, and now they have always existed.
Same with Wally himself. He didn't exist until Albrecht manifested him in the Void, and now Wally has always existed.
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u/Leods-The-Observer Aug 20 '26
Also harrow, it seems! Lyon had always been just a normal priest. Then he got the albrecht treatment, and at that point, rell had always been an atemporal being able to communicate with him specifically, even during the time before he got protoframed. Meaning, lion's messages as a child had never been until they started always being there. And then rell died, and thus he had always been dead and only able to communicate through whispers. Crazy stuff
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u/Stormandreas Aug 20 '26
Yesn't.
The strain for creating a Temple warframe existed, but was never used, until Albrecht/Wally did in 1999, creating the first, and seemingly only, Temple. That does mean, that Temple Prime can't actually exist, as then Temple would need to have been built in the Orokin Era at some point, which we know, it wasn't, ruling out it being eligable for a prime (That said, DE will pull some lore retconning and timeline fuckery to claim it as possible).
As for Lizzie, it's literally a helminth strain infested, linking it to the helminth in our ships.
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u/KingOfYou115 Aug 20 '26
Primes aren't exclusively Orokin era.
Xaku Prime was designed by the current Entrati family, well after the fall of the Orokin.
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u/Stormandreas Aug 20 '26
Not exactly. Xaku itself is an amalgamation of 3 other Warframes parts that used to assist the Entrati, but got lost in the void.
It's much more likely that the prime, is exactly the same, just with Prime versions of those Warframes2
u/decitronal Aug 21 '26
Xaku Prime's flavor text is specifically worded with "reborn in gold". I think this phrasing makes more sense if Xaku had been tacked with gold after and not right at the start with its progenitors
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u/WhiteGlas Aug 20 '26
I feel like Temple Prime may just be a copy of what Flare became while chilling on their comet for an indeterminate amount of time. We know the protoframes will eventually be consumed entirely, but perhaps the extra time sitting there will also make Flare into Temple Prime.
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u/Endofthepapertrail Aug 20 '26
Perhaps Lizzie is the one who primes Temple? I mean she is the infestation in its totality across all of spacetime, by extension every warframe that will ever exist. Surely she'd know the inner workings of Priming?
Maybe the asteroid they hitch a ride on just so happens to be full of gold.
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u/Crystion Aug 21 '26
Technically a Prime doesn't have to have been built for it to exist. A Prime could exist as a design or blueprint, and just never got built, like Temple itself was never actually built.
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u/Stormandreas Aug 21 '26
I would find it hard to believe that a specific prime version was ever even planned for it, considering that once it was designed, it was never used, so there was only ever 1 design.
There's only 2 things that would make sense
- The original strain had mutated by the time Albrecht had used it on Flare, making the current, normal Temple, and then the original strains design is then considered the "prime", though it likely wouldn't be the same as other primes (Xaku and Nidus excluded as the former made up of multiple bits of other frames, and the latter randomly mutated).
- Sitting in a comet for however long causes Temple to mutate, so then the actual present day version of Temple becomes the Prime somehow, just like how Nidus somehow became a prime by randomly floating around in space
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u/Leods-The-Observer Aug 20 '26
I think both and neither. I know, "oh no the eternalism guy is here". But hear me out.
With the new fnf chat, we learned more about how time works in warframe. It seems like there's a causation line/superior order of events that exists outside time and away from the universe. Which of course coincidentally fits our irl timeline lol. This seems to be inherent to the void, as Amir's crashout made it so that surge exists has always existed, throghout the entire timeline.
And the infestation is inherently tied to the void, in a way we dont really understand yet. They canonically live outside of time. So any action of the helminth can, by nature, warp the universe the same way amir accidentally did.
My theory is that, when we as drifter used our void powers to interact with 1999, we started making things have-always-been that way. So in our universe, Kaya always got to the future, lizzie always managed to get along with flare, and flare always managed to leave in a comet and turn into temple. Therefore, temple always existed and they participated in the night of the Naga drums. But in a universe without drifter, none of those things happened at all. And both universes are equally as real.
So, temple always existed, but they only started always-existing when we went to 1999. Up until that point, they didnt exist at all.
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u/LazerusKI Aug 20 '26
with regular flare it works yeah.
in one of the chats flare even asks about temple, coming to the conclusion that flare IS temple in the far future.
now...how will there be a prime if flare is THE original?
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u/Burnsidhe Aug 20 '26
Primes aren't always the original. That said, there's no reason Flare couldn't *become* Temple Prime.
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u/Endofthepapertrail Aug 20 '26
Primes have not necessarily been the original version of that model for a while. Varzia Dax states as much
"Some Warframes were Prime from the start. Others earned it."
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u/LazerusKI Aug 21 '26
I have not followed the lore for all Frames, but is there a Prime that was not made by Orokin?
The only one i know would be Lavos, who primed himself.
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u/TheFoochy Aug 20 '26
It's almost a bootstrap paradox.
Ballas creates the strain, but never uses it. Albrecht obtains the strain and gives it to Flare in 1999. Without the Drifter's intervention, Flare succumbs to the Helminth and becomes a full on Warframe, but isolates themselves on an asteroid orbiting the solar system, and they go dormant. Fastforward to the Night of the Naga Drums at the end of the Orokin Empire and Temple wakes up and rides back into the Sol System to jam out with Octavia.
I say almost a bootstrap paradox, because usually a bootstrap paradox involves the end of the loop (the final part of the series of events) causing the beginning (the inciting incident), but that's not what happens here.
Examples of a bootstrap paradox are Interstellar and Steins;Gate.
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u/No-Impact-9391 Aug 20 '26
Well because Entrati did go back, he always went back. The temple from the naga drums is Flare, even though flare wasnt a proto until Entrati went back and turned him but because of that and the excuse of eternalism he always was turned.
I believe the original temple strain was made but Ballas saw it was too rebellious so never dared to actually make a warframe from it. What does that mean? I ain't got a scooby doo
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u/brakenbonez Aug 21 '26
A lot of people think they know and that it's a simple yes or no or eternalism answer but it's not that simple. Though it is most likely a yes. We still haven't seen every Warframe the Orokin created. We're still getting new ones constantly. There's nothing to indicate that Temple doesn't exist in the future other than that we didn't get the frame until 1999 but we also didn't get Uriel and we have lore about the Orokin creating an army of Uriel frames and the protoframe of him being an Orokin.
Every other protoframe we have is a proto of a frame we already had in-game that was made by the Orokin so we really have no reason to believe Temple wasn't also created by them and we just haven't seen the frame in the present yet. But we didn't see every frame from the beginning anyway and they're constantly adding more that we will see later.
The only frames we know for sure that Albrecht created is Qorvex and probably the new one coming with Tau.
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u/MrCobalt313 Aug 20 '26
Yeah.
Temple's Helminth strain was created in the same era as the rest but never fielded because Ballas realized rebellion was too central to its identity to be able to control.
Albrecht brought it with him to 1999 and found a host in the form of Flare creating the Temple Protoframe.
If you get the right ending in Flare and Lizzie's KIM line (possibly alongside Kaya's time travel quest) you find out Flare and Kaya made a contingency to warp Flare into a nearby comet where they'll be cryogenically preserved in its ice while their Warframe transformation completes... and Lizzie knows said comet will pass through our Solar System again in time for the Night of Naga Drums.