Item C04-000-113-201 - Snipetron

It was a day underneath the sunless sky.

The ice, ever solid, hangs proudly over this place, as if waiting for someone to fall into. The wide holes that the Corpus dug to form such gleeful tunnels hold precious things, some of which hold no right to be priced. Many merchants come and go, in search of the next artifact to trade in, holding precious platinum on the left, and an extending hand on the right, and I thought digital trading was the hottest thing…

But no, the most luxurious item nowadays? Information. Here in whatever the name of this moon of a planet, I run some covert ops. A… black market, so they say. They come here, wait for another to extend their hand in trade, and, when given that sweet business, stay for a drink.

The Refracted Darklight welcomes people of many walks of life: from the poor Solaris to the meager Crewmen, to the Grineer defector and even some Tenno.

Yes… Tenno mercenaries, ever heard of them? They were the craziest bunch, always getting a deal, a mission, and some real treats. I recall a story from a long time ago…

This one, who they endearingly called Serendipity, was given a deal worth a magnitude of fortunes: destroy a prototype from a nearby weapons factory while using a test weapon they were desperate to calibrate with real-world data. The reward would be a copy of the unreleased schematics of their next weapon... The same weapon she was requested to use. The entire mission sounded like a dry-run that was not clearly a dry-run. Naturally, she nodded, ever so excited about a new weapon to master. Little did she knew the intricacies of this mission, which unraveled before her eyes.

Serendipity continued the mission. Ever powerful, she swept through the facility like a deadly plague, leaving behind an array of rotting flesh. Guns blazin`, as the kids would say. She’s near the weapons vault when… BOOM! A Raptor prototype sprung up. A battle ensued, with the Tenno becoming more and more wary of what her real mission was. She equipped the test weapon, a sniper rifle, and started pulling the trigger. Multiple bursts of gunfire were heard, a couple of explosions, and more crackling and fizzles. A few minutes later, the Raptor, with most of its armor pierced, punctured with holes, started to aggressively spit out more projectiles, but the warframe successfully evaded them. Serendipity let out a wheeze, and the area was covered with a green mist. The war-machine slowly corroded, and soon after, exploded into a million pieces…

I was told by an informant of those events, and soon after, the dashing Tenno returned, holding a data-mass. Some minutes later, a prim, well-dressed person, presumably Corpus, arrived at The Refracted Darklight. He’s wearing some off-white robe, and proudly displays his Northstar He directly went to where Serendipity was sitting.

"Glad to see who took up my mission. Very, very impressed that you also got something in here for me.", he said while looking at the datamass.

Serendipity did not make a sound. As with all warframes, not much audio output.

"Oh, I forgot, you Tenno have no mouths. Well anyway, I also have your reward here.", the man said, handing over a different datamass. The exchange was made, and the Northstar employee immediately left without another word. The warframe then gestures for me, and once I arrived at her seat, she gave me some platinum, alongside a rifle. The gun looks spartan, with clean lines, simple geometries, a nice scope, and very physical ammo. This is a good sniper rifle. It’s peculiar, though, as I thought Corpus usually wield weapons of light and circuits. This one uses metal and gunpowder...

One day, I saw over the headlines that Northstar has released a new weapon. A sniper rifle that… shoots lightning? It really looks similar to what Serendipity gave to me, the only difference is the ammunition used. I looked back to my copy of it, and there are so many corpus branding on it. What in the world is this one that I got? A rare relic of the past? A very early prototype that shows a very physical past? The model information even has a very basic name. Whoever thought of it was just… not too creative, I guess.

This weapon now sits amongst my treasured relics. Maybe someday, this kind of gun will come along to more people, other than me, a plain barkeep.

Yeah, a plain barkeep.