Newcommers and old questions
I've been stealing oxium from quite some time now. For some reason, those "oxium offspreys", in lack of a better term, are much more common around Venus than anywhere else I've ventured for them. There, very often, experienced Tenno such as myself come to the E-Gate. We simply force the Corpus to send more and more troops to defend their facilities, and thus send more oxium offspreys to join the fray. The Tenno operative searching the base is merely making is little extras, in case he -or she- stumbles accross a rare find.
E-Gate is a strange place. I don't know why, but I thought Venus was a high gravity cloudy hell bathed in acid rains. When we set foot on Venus' soil, though we are not crushed by the gravity. The snow covers the dark stones, and the sky is pure and clean above our heads. That's strange. I don't know why I thought Venus would be like this. Maybe is it an ancient memory from my forgotten life that tries to come back, or maybe is the rest of the planet like this, and the Corpus are maintaining an artificial breathable place clear of the toxic clouds with magnetic walls.
Anyway, we are very close from Mercury down there. Closer than I've ever been for a very long time. Newly awoken Tennos are coming from the Mercury gate. They just forced their way through captain Vor's blockade. Maybe one of them will kill him for good one day. They are just discovering the grim reality they are awakening to.
In all honesty, they cannot hope but to last more than ten minutes at one of E-Gate's bases. With us, they can go far beyond that limit. Some of them are wise enough to stick with us when the Corpus start sending engineers and fusion moas, and some are so confident with their strength that they don't see the limit of their power, nor do they see the virtues of teamwork; yet. They will learn. They have to, for the realms they have awoken to won't let loners get very far.
Even the Stalker is not working alone: he is definitely talking to someone when he leaves, regardless of raid's results. Even without mentioning such a versatile enemy, in our quest for gear, we stand better together. In the secret dojos of our scattered clans, we have build laboratories to retro engineer Grineer and Corpus weaponry. We even managed to develop a sentinel and weapons from Infested biosystems. With the oxium mass stealing we've been doing over the past week, Tennos do not have to rely on luck any more: the oxium the Corpus coated their offspreys with allowed us to set up new laboratories. In there can we craft schematics for the Banshee and the Volt, but also for a new warframe the Lotus briefly mentioned before this hole oxium operation.
His name is Zephyr, as he is one with the wind. The amounts of resources needed to develop its schematics were staggering, and so are the construction costs of its parts. I wonder why we needed oxium specifically, and, as with Oberon and Valkyr before him, his sudden appearance whispers the question of its origins. Was it that its schematics were lost and no awoken wore its form before falling into slumber, or was it made by Lotus agents or contacts after the Corpus released the oxium offspreys to fight with their regular troops?
It still puzzles me like all the loops and holes I see in the big picture of our solar system. When I sit in the Void, looking at the worlds in their slow dance around the sun, thoughts take shapes of unanswered questions. What are we? Where are we coming from?
Did we really use to be madmen and women returned from the Void to do Stalker knows what, coated with armour by desperate orokin to fight an impossible war? Did we come back victorious against all odds to slaughter the golden empire we just saved? How come we fell into slumber after that? Who put us in those coffins in hidden pockets of space, where we could sleep until the time was right? Was it the Lotus or its predecessors?
But Above all else, the Stalker's mind asks one very question that steps upon all the others we could have: why?