The New War

As the system falls

When the Sentient fleet enters the Origin System, the Grineer soldier Kahl, the Corpus engineer Veso and Teshin resist on different fronts. Their heroism cannot stop the invasion. Teshin falls before Erra; the Operator reaches Lotus but is wounded with the Paracesis by Ballas and cast into the Void.

Ballas announces himself not as a prisoner but as the sovereign of a new order. Narmer alters human perception with its Veils, imposing a false peace and devotion to Ballas in place of pain.

The Drifter’s war

In the Operator’s absence an older Drifter appears, one who cannot yet use Void powers. With Ordis and a resistance network they tear off Veils and hunt Archons to heal Lotus’s shattered body. Even Hunhow becomes a temporary ally against Ballas’s order.

The meeting on the Zariman reveals that the Operator and the Drifter are two outcomes of the same beginning. The player chooses which of them returns to the war; each acknowledges the other’s existence.

Towards the Sun

Ballas turns Praghasa towards consuming the Sun. Erra finally understands he has been used and helps the Drifter. Lotus regains her power; Ballas presses his “love” for Margulis one last time as ownership. Lotus stops him.

In the finale the player chooses whether Lotus will carry the name Natah, Lotus or Margulis. That is not the erasure of her past but a decision about how she will present herself from now on.

NARRATIVE — The choice that ended the war was not only killing an enemy. It was choosing her own name from among the names other people had given her.

At the very moment of victory a vast wall-like being appears: The Man in the Wall. With Narmer left behind, the real cosmic threat no longer hides.

The fronts of Kahl, Veso and Teshin

Handing control to three different characters at the quest’s opening shows the scale of an invasion that is not centred on the Tenno. Facing overwhelming Sentient power, Kahl puts saving his brothers ahead of his orders. Veso, despite Alad V’s plan of surrender, uses Corpus systems to run the Jackal and the ship’s defences. Teshin crosses Orphix fields to reach the inside of a Murex.

These characters do not win the war on their own. On the contrary, the quest shows that heroism does not remove the possibility of defeat. Kahl is put under a Veil, Veso’s ship is destroyed, Teshin is gravely wounded by Erra. The disunited powers of the Origin System come apart before the assault Ballas has prepared.

Narmer’s false peace

Narmer is not merely a military occupation. Using its victim’s deepest longing, the Veil covers over pain and offers devotion to Ballas as a comforting reality. Because people do not see the chain as a chain, the order reproduces itself continually. Ballas’s aim is less to rule than to compel love.

The Drifter tearing off Veils with small communities is therefore a political act. Those freed do not instantly become flawless resistance fighters; the loss and the guilt that were suppressed come back. Kahl’s later Veilbreaker story shows that even after Narmer is defeated, the masks and the faithful remain in the system.

The choice between Operator and Drifter

The encounter at the table on the Zariman is the first open accommodation between the two roads. The Drifter does not have the Operator’s past; the Operator has not lived the years spent in Duviri. To be able to stand in for one another they accept not that they are the same person but that they come from the same root. The character the player picks for the finale changes the dramatic viewpoint, not the fundamental outcome of events.

As Lotus is repaired with Archon Shards, the Natah, Lotus and Margulis layers surface again. Ballas tries to reduce each of them to the shape he wants. The name given in the finale is not a claim on her but permission for her to choose. That The Man in the Wall appears immediately afterwards shows that the war of personal will has only begun the greater Void reckoning.

What did we learn in this chapter?

The New War ends Ballas’s domination in the guise of love, brings the Operator and the Drifter into one narrative, and gives Lotus the right to choose. The road of the Operator cast into the Void now takes us back to the Zariman.