Warframe Fan Quest
An Orokin Tower has mysteriously crashed onto the surface of Earth, propelled from the void. It carries with it a mysterious and unmoving Warframe.
Fractured Dreams is a quest centered around the mysterious Warframe Tecassa and uncovering who she was before becoming the bone-wielding warrior she is now. The quest takes place after the events of The Hex and may include spoilers for Warframe.
If you would like to just read the cinematic screenplay for the three separate scenes you can view it here. I reccomend reading the Missions In Detail section however for important context. The cinematics appear in missions one, three, and five.
Table of Contents
Characters
In Fractured Dreams we interact with a few key characters, some are from the pre-existing Warframe universe:
- Tenno: The player character, capable of interfacing with Warframes, powerful battle frames.
- Lotus: The mother figure and handler of missions for the Tenno. She provides both tactical and personal advice to the player.
- Mitsuki: A blind woman who is a member of a mysterious group known as the Quills. She pushes the player to discover the true fate of the Tecassa Warframe.
- Executor Tuvul: A high ranking Orokin, a race of god-like creatures from the past. The player encounters him in flashbacks of Tecassa’s life.
Then we have the two I made for the quest:
- Archimedean Hypasa: The scientist who creates Tecassa, transforming her from a woman into a Warframe. Hypasa struggles with living up to expectations set for her by those above her, and passes those struggles onto Sesanna.
- Sesanna(Tecassa): The main character of the Quest. Sesanna is a struggling actress who’s looking for her breakthrough into fame. She is seemingly willing to go to any lengths to be someone.
The Story
Summary
Fractured Dreams is broken up into an intro, 5 distinct missions, and 3 memory cinematics. The quest is continuous and played in one sitting. At the start it gives an on-screen prompt, consistent with the other quests that lock the player in.
- Mission 1: The player discovers the mysterious Warframe Tecassa on Earth and begins to explore their past as Sesanna.
- Mission 2: The player learns about Archimedean Hypasa, the scientist in the first vision, and her relationship to Executor Tuvul. They also learn she was experimenting with the Infestation and Continuity.
- Mission 3: The player returns to Tecassa and has another vision. They see a glimpse into her relationship with Archimedean Hypasa.
- Mission 4: The player explores the ruins of Archimedean Hypasa‘s laboratory. They find signs of a fight and are urged to return to Tecassa as she is reacting.
- Mission 5: The player returns to the Tower and finds Tecassa awoken. A battle ensues and the player helps her resolve her internal nightmares.
Process
Inspiration
The idea first started when I saw the amazing fan concept art of a “Bone Warframe” by Mischka on Bluesky. The Warframe’s character felt super evocative and I couldn’t help but come up with lots of stories for it.
I began making the quest proper by analyzing my favorite quests and noting what made them great. My main sources of inspiration for Fractured Dreams were The Sacrifice, Chains of Harrow, and Jade Shadows. These quests are all cinematic, explore intense emotional situations, and push the envelope for what kind of game Warframe is.
My hope is that Fractured Dreams follows in their path.
My next step was to brainstorm and consider what stories had not yet been told in the game. This was something I struggled with a lot and often had to make sure I wasn’t making something too close to what came before. I explored multiple myths from all over the world, but ultimately ended up pursuing a story that was much closer to home.
During a therapy session my therapist offered up a quote that really resonated with me.
Nostalgia for the life of others. This is because, seen from the outside, another’s life forms a unit. Whereas ours, seen from the inside, seems broken up. We are still chasing after an illusion of unity. (p. 27, Albert Camus, Notebook IV 1942-1951)
This quote, of internal conflict, matched my own experiences in life and it reminded me of my friend’s experience as she transitioned from male to female. After deciding on this story, I had a wonderful chat with her about her experiences and learned a lot and empathized even more. It was clear that making a story about struggling with identity and cohesion excited me, felt novel, and would be a valuable story to make.
Production
For the entire process I utilized Twine for managing all of the different narrative beats, missions, and characters. It allowed for a clean space to organize my thoughts as well as an easy way to test ideas. Because of it I was able to share the story with friends and get feedback on the flow and pacing of the story easily.
This talk by Paweł Kroenke was invaluable as a jumping off point for me.
I knew that because of the cinematic nature of this quest it would benefit from proper cutscenes. This was exciting but also intimidating for me as I had never worked in screen-play format before. Creating these scripts was tiring and awkward in the beginning, but by the end of this quest I was itching for more and saw the format not as a hindrance but as a proper tool.
Tone Alignment
At Tennocon 2025 Digital Extremes hosted a Narrative of Warframe Panel where the narrative designers and writers gave fantastic insights into how they create the stories in the game. I loved this presentation so much and found it incredibly helpful for helping me make something that would fit into the world of Warframe.
Towards the end of the talk, they were asked what the core principles of writing on warframe were, and there were a couple answers I took to heart and tried to incorporate into this project:
- Weird first, cool second. My story is about an actress turning into a monster hoping it will grant her fame. In the end a stranger relating to their pain is all she needs to heal. It’s weird.
- Drive it like you stole it. In the beginning of making this quest I was concerned about perfectly matching the tone and staying inside a limited box, but these words gave me the freedom to have fun.
- Never lose the human connection or “When other games go big and bombastic, we go small and go human.” Despite it involving flashbacks and supernatural transformations, I started this quest with a human story, and ended it with it.
Retrospective
I’m incredibly proud of my work on Fractured Dreams. Working on this quest was some of the most fun I have had doing narrative and it was a great mix of research, brainstorming, trying ideas out, and iterating on feedback.
Pros/Stuff I liked
- First, I absolutely adore the Alignment mechanic. I think it’s a super powerful tool that encourages the player to interact with the story and ideas being explored in a story while being exceedingly cheap to implement. It requires very little effort to get working but immediately draws the player into the world by asking them a question.
- Second, I’m incredibly proud of the writing I’ve done in this project. My trans friend, who I in part made this story for, has told me that she already connects with Sesanna’s experience, and that’s all I ever wanted to do. Making a piece of content that trans folks can feel seen by feels wonderful.
Cons/Stuff I didn’t like
- First, the most glaring issue I have with it is it’s similarity to The Sacrifice. Both quests feature sentient Warframes with troubled pasts, whose story the player experiences through flashbacks/visions, and who are ultimately healed/redeemed through the Tenno’s capacity for love and empathy.
One tool I want to try using to alleviate this issue is shown in Pentiment. The game takes place in 16th-century Bavaria at an Abbey out of its time. However the game doesn’t shy away from pointing out the strange qualities of the abbey. This confrontation of the comparisons makes it feel more at home.
Likewise, I think pointing out the similarities between Tecassa and Umbra will actually help the overlap feel more natural. Second, I would really like to utilize Mitsuki more in the story. I really like her story in the comics and her own experience of being changed by the Orokin could be utilized to a much greater extent to empathize with Sesanna.
- Last, there are a few minor gripes or things I’d like to test out. For instance replacing the Lotus with Eudico on Mission 4, having a more cinematic start to hook the player, and changing the last interactable in mission 4 from a computer to something else, to distance it from the terminals in mission 2.
Missions In Detail
Quest Intro
The player begins the quest by selecting it from navigation on their ship. They are prompted by a short message:
CONTENT WARNING
This quest contains scenes of trauma related to body dysmorphia.
Fractured Dreams will typically take 30-40 minutes to complete. During that time you will not be able to participate in other Warframe content.
After the player accepts the quest, they are spoken to over the comms by Mitsuki, a member of the Quills, a faction the player has met before. She has a few things to say:
- She urges the Tenno to investigate an Orokin Tower that has crashed onto the surface of the earth.
- They have already detected enemy Grineer poking around the site.
- It is imperative that no Orokin tech gets into the hands of the Grineer. (This is a nice reference to her own experience in the Ghouls comic.)
Mission 1 – Earth Introduction
The player lands on Earth and arrives at the crashed Orokin structure. Its bright white walls and golden trim is in stark contrast to the lush green jungles.
As Mitsuki said, Grineer teams patrol the area and the player fights through them on their way. Once inside they encounter Corrupted Grineer that have lost their minds to the neural Orokin Sentry that protects the tower.
Eventually the player reaches a large open room filled with scientific equipment. Much of it is destroyed and bodies of Corrupted Grineer litter the room. There are large protrusions of bone that have come up out of the ground, many of which impale the dead Grineer.
At the center of the room stands a Warframe, Tecassa. She is completely motionless and turned inwards. She does not react at all as the player enters the room.
While the Lotus is impressed and enthusiastic that we have found an intact Warframe, Mitsuki is much more cautious, sharing that she detects life in the Warframe, when it should be still.
The Lotus directs the Tenno to go ahead anyway and attempt Transference to take control of it. After the player approaches and interacts with Tecassa, a short cinematic plays:
The player regains control after the cutscene ends and must escape the Orokin tower as bones from Tecassa erupt and chase them out. After they escape, Mitsuki tells the Tenno to leave for a time, and let her and the Quills calm the Warframe.
The Lotus and Tenno also speak about what we saw in the vision from Tecassa. The Tenno mentions that they saw Executor Tuvul, the Orokin who led the Zariman project. Lotus concludes that our best lead is to investigate Tuvul and any connection he might have with this Warframe. The player extracts and prepares to go to Lua.
Mission 2 – Lua Infiltration
The player arrives on Lua and is directed by Lotus to go toward three different consoles that hold recordings that Executor Tuvul made himself. They all provide more information into the story of Hypasa and lead to her involvement with Sesanna.
- The first console details his knowledge of Archimedean Hypasa’s past. She originally worked on a very secretive project for Executor Ballas, a major antagonist in the game. The project involved the Helminth strain of the Infestation. This strain was responsible for the creation of all Warframes.
Delivery Notes: He speaks with great disdain for both Hypasa and Ballas. Hypasa is beneath him and Ballas is a fool exploring worthless trivialities.
- The second console explains that despite Hypasa’s flaws, she was a gifted mind and could be of use to Tuvul. The opportunity to use her came when she lost funding for a project related to Continuity and was publicly disgraced, making it easy for Tuvul to scoop her up for his own ends.
Delivery Notes: Here Tuvul’s inner thoughts again drip with hatred for everyone else. He frames his poaching of Hypasa as a generous gift, and himself as her savior.
- The third and final console reveals that Tuvul has given her a research lab but that he now regrets it. He fears that despite his command to stop working on her past project (the work with the infestation) and to focus on his Zariman Ten Zero project she has continued in secret.
Delivery Notes: He laments having to check in on her frequently to keep her on track. He is exhausted with annoyance for her determination.This last dialogue helps tie the quest together by referencing what the player has already seen in the vision (Tuvul visiting Hypasa) and foreshadows the 4th mission (when the player will explore Hypasa’s laboratory).
After gathering all three recordings, the player extracts to their orbiter. There they are contacted by Mitsuki, who tells them that the Quills have calmed Tecassa, and urges us to hurry back to the tower as quickly as possible.
Mission 3 – Second Vision
The player returns to the Orokin Tower and sees it transformed from their last visit. Mitsuki and the Quills have set up candles, symbols, and other mystical icons to aid in establishing a connection with the spirit of the Warframe. None of the Quills are here, but Mitsuki guides the player over comms.
Mitsuki encourages the player to step forward and once again attempt Transference. Another short cinematic plays:
Upon returning from the vision, the Tenno is briefly questioned by Mitsuki and the Lotus about what they saw. When the Tenno mentions seeing the medical office again, the Lotus says that she has finished analyzing the data the player extracted on Lua and has found a potential match for the office.
Mitsuki is overjoyed and urges the Tenno to go there immediately and find out what happened. The Lotus is less convinced and thinks that they are chasing ghosts. However, she trusts Mitsuki, and directs the player to the Orokin Digsite in the Orb Vallis.
Mission 4 – Orb Vallis
The player arrives in the Orb Vallis and is guided by the Lotus to the Orokin Digsite. The digsite has been broken into by the Corpus and they have patrols inside. These ruins were once used as a residential and administrative area but now are falling apart as thermal sludge seeps in from above. As the player enters the digsite the Tenno remarks that it reminds them of the Zariman and their own past.
The main objective and mechanic of the mission is finding and interacting with 3 different objects, learning more about Tecassa’s life at each.
- The first object is the Statue we saw in the Second Vision in Mission 3. It has fallen over and lays broken in pieces in the center of a small courtyard.
On interaction the Tenno comments that the statue was a singer from the Orokin era. They mention how perfect the singer appeared to be when the tenno was a child, and how they never seemed to age. - The next object is a large bone spike found inside the office the player saw in both of the Visions. The player makes it to the office and it is completely destroyed. Tables are overturned, blood is splattered on the walls, and shards of bone litter the ground.
On interaction the Tenno comments that the bones match the ones found at the Orokin Tower on Earth. They wonder at what could have happened here. - The final object is a computer terminal the player can hack at the back of the office. Inside the terminal is a recording from Archimedean Hypasa, describing how they have sedated and moved Sesanna to a Tower in the void. She reveals that this project’s purpose is to further advance Continuity technology. If Hypassa could hand-craft Orokin’s ideal bodies into bio-steel flesh, she would be renowned throughout the Empire.
On interaction the Lotus remarks on how disgusting the act of Continuity is. She goes on to compare Sesanna’s experience to her own struggles with identity during the New War.
After interacting with the last object the Tenno feels a disturbance and hears echoes of the screams from the fight that happened here long ago. Immediately after Mitsuki comes in over the comms and tells the Tenno that the Warframe is reacting violently and again urges us to return to the tower. The player goes there immediately, not stopping at the Orbiter.
Mission 5 – Second Seance
The player returns to the Orokin Tower to meet with Tecassa once more. The Warframe is no longer standing but instead slumped on the floor, her body barely moving as she breathes. The Tenno steps forward and once again initiates Transference. Another cinematic plays:
As Sesanna commands the Tenno to leave, the player is ripped from the vision and returns to their body. Tecassa is now standing and moving. She attacks the Tenno and a boss battle ensues.
As the battle progresses, Tecassa gets more and more desperate and her bones she fights with begin to grow into and cover her, causing her pain.
After she is defeated, the Tenno activates Transference. The Lotus warns the player of trying Transference again, but Mitsuki tells her to trust them.
Instead of attempting to control Tecassa the player insteads opens up to her and shares their own vulnerabilities. A flash of our memories appears on screen. We see the Tenno as a child on the Zariman, on the mountain in the War Within, losing the Lotus during The Sacrifice, enduring in Duviri, and losing their friends in The Hex. All of this is to show that we too are a mess of trauma and pain.
After seeing into the Tenno, Tecassa takes a step back and relaxes. The player is then given an Alignment choice:
Sun: We are all broken.
Neutral: We must keep hope.
Moon: We can be made whole.
After the player selects an option, Tecassa and the Tenno embrace and the game fades to black and then shows the “Quest Complete” screen.
