The Tenno are the faction found in the Ziff'li Universe. Each Tenno has a suit of armor called a Warframe. The combat abilities provided by Warframes are vastly superior to both the Corpus' high technology and the Grineer's vast numbers; even the most inexperienced Tenno can fight their way through hordes of basic foot soldiers alone, and teams of experienced Tenno can best even the deadliest enemy threats. The Tennos joined the Alliance of Nations for introducing the Warframes in the Allied Arsenal and gain an advantage against the Grineer and the Corpus. Awakening from a deep slumber to a hostile world, the Tenno know little of themselves.
Each Tenno bears a primary weapon, a sidearm, and a melee weapon. Their arsenal includes rifles of various types, shotguns, pistols, swords, and exotic melee weapons such as staves, axes, and power gauntlets. Different Warframes offer their own unique powers, ranging from Volt's burst of superhuman agility to Frost's deadly avalanche. Also, Warframe armor's modular nature allows for major upgrades and wide customization options. Utilizing the arms, armor, and powers at their disposal, Tenno squads have adapted to wildly different situations using only a moment of downtime between missions.
After the liberation of their Homeworld after centuries of fighting, the Tenno soon became the Alliance and the Federation’s elite warriors who served the ranks the Peacekeepers and Federal Knights with their terrifying and superhuman abilities.
History[]
Origins[]
At the height of the Orokin Empire's reign, the Orokin became embroiled in a war with the artificial race, the Sentients: a creation of theirs sent to the Tau System long ago to prepare for colonization, their advanced technologies allowed them to quickly adapt to every attempt by the Orokin to defeat them. Each attempt by the Orokin to defeat the Sentients had failed andin desperation, they turned to the Tenno as their last hope to defeat the Sentients.
The Tenno were created in an incident long before the war had s occurred, during the so-called "Void Era", when a ship called the Zariman Ten Zero became involved in a void-jump accident that sent it lost in the chaotic sub-dimensional space known as the Void. The ship reemerged from the Void and was recovered only days later, completely intact, but the only survivors found were children, the Orokin discovered that the exposure to the Void's energies had twisted and changed them into something entirely unknown, giving them inexplicable powers and abilities. Feared and reviled, the survivors of the Zariman nonetheless were of great interest to the Orokin.
Experiments were conducted on how to harness the children’s new found powers, possibly even for themselves or to use as weapons which led to fatal accidents due to their uncontrolled powers. was the work of an Orokin researcher named Margulis that led to a breakthrough; through dreams, a child could focus and control their powers. However, this research would then be taken from her after she was executed by soldiers for trying to protect the children, and used to create a process known as Transference; the children's consciousnesses and powers could be remotely channeled through a surrogate body called a Warframe: specially-made techno-organic humanoid battle frame designed to enhance and focus the children's powers, using a device known as a Somatic Link. The survivors would be placed in Somatic Link pods in a facility known as the Reservoir located on the Moon, to control their surrogate bodies in a secure location away from their enemies.
Pilots who would operate this surrogate bodies would be the operators, newly christened as the "Tenno", were taught the ways of war. With the combination of advanced technologies and esoteric powers, the Tenno began to turn the tide against the Sentients, allowing them to vanquish the Orokin's enemies across many battles.
The end of the Sentient threat should have been the end of the Orokin's struggles, but it was not to be. The Tenno since the beginning had always held a grudge against the Orokin for executing Margulis, whom they had always considered as their foster mother. And as the Orokin were celebrating their victory by bestowing the Tenno with honors, the Warframes struck, assassinating the Orokin's leadership and throwing the empire into chaos, an event that would herald the end of the Orokin Empire.
With the downfall of the Orokin civilization, the machinations of the Sentients continued; a plan had long been hatched to infiltrate the Orokin and destroy the Tenno. The agent given the task, named Natah, grew close to the Tenno she was supposed to destroy. Betraying her own kind, Natah used her considerable powers to hide the Moon within the Void, keeping the Reservoir and the Tenno they hold hidden from the Sentients, and the Warframes scattered throughout the Origin System were made to sleep in cryostasis. Natah, taking on the mantle of the Tenno's caretaker and guide, remade herself as the Lotus, keeping watch over the sleeping Tenno until the time they would wake once again
The Sentient War[]
The First Multiverse War[]
The Tenno discovered dimensional rifts open up in their reality in the 15th Millenium (1619 NE) and learned from their spies of the Grineer and the Corpus establishing contact with an alien species who referred to as the Dominion who offered their enemies a place among their coalition in exchange for their technologies and resources for trade. The Tenno gathered intel to know more about this potential new foe and successfully infiltrated a base on the Jovian moon, Io where it was currently occupied by Grineer and the Jem'Hadar, The Tenno and the Lotus became concerned that this new foe has the ability to travel between dimensions and could attack their bases and allies anywhere, but soon discovered there were other factions and decided to establish contact with the faction known as the Alliance of Nations.