The New War starts off with a bang. With the mass sentient invasion already underway, the Origin System is thrown into a state of chaos and war. All across the solar system, we seem to be losing the war on every front. After this long sequence of chaos and fighting to get to the heart of the sentient mothership and confront ballas, we arrive just in time to see Teshin die. We also see finally reach Lotus after all this time. She's surrounded by Erra and Ballas, seemingly completely drained of life and visibly flaking away. With her entire essence being consumed to power the mothership, Ballas drains the last of her life force in front of us. A portal is swiftly opened and both the Lotus and the Tenno area sweeped up into it, seemingly dead. 

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We then log in again following a time skip as a new character. Though aided by Ordis and making a temporary hideout in the crashed Tenno ship, they are an unfamiliar character. Additionally, they seem to have found and recovered Lotus, barely alive, and are trying to empower her and resurrect her senses. The system is under complete control of Ballas. He's brainwashed and controlled almost everyone in the system using a device called the veil, and formed under the name of The Narmer. The new character we're playing as is named "the Drifter", and they seem to be fighting a losing war. Bullet by bullet, the Drifter fights against the Narmer control of the origin system. Despite their successes, they haven't made any progress in the face of Ballas' overwhelming influence. The Drifter decides to up the ante, and Ordis suggests to enlist the help of an old adversary.

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The Drifter reluctantly makes their way deep into the oceans of Uranus to attract the attention of Hunhow. Luckily, their attempts are successful, and Stalker kidnaps you and takes you to Hunhow. After heated negotiations involving more than a small degree of guilt tripping, the Drifter strikes a deal with Hunhow and obtains the Nataruk: an ancient sentient weapon capable of finally slaying Ballas' esteemed Archons. With this bow in hand, we strike down two of the three archons and bring their archon shards back to the husk of Lotus in attempt to bring her back. We feed her these shards and she recovers greatly; but in an unfortunate twist of fate, she attacks the Drifter. Not recognizing them and looking for the Tenno, she tries to kill the Drifter with her recovered strength. This duel continues for a while, and just as the Drifter is about to die, we swap perspectives to the Tenno. 

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This Tenno section is seemingly a recounting of what happened on the day the Zariman was pulled into the void. And by extension, this is also a retelling of the birth of the Tenno at large. This is a horrific scene, with some children terrified and others losing their minds as their parents try to kill them. In this chaos, it appears that your character, the Tenno, made a deal with some being that copied their appearance. It is completely unknown what type of deal was struck, but in this moment, the unknowable being smiles at you, and you flash to some metaphysical realm to handshake with the Drifter. 

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With this handshake, we snap back to reality and the Tenno seems to have swapped places with the Drifter. This immediately knocks some sense into the Lotus and she stops trying to kill whatever she sees. Instead, she takes off and flies away to presumably fight Ballas. However, in her weakened state, we know she will surely die. 

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Here comes the most unexplained part of this quest. Suddenly, our Tenno is teleported to an unknown reality where they sit down for lunch with the Drifter and try to wrap their heads around things. At this point in the game, this intentionally doesn't have a full explanation. However, from what you can gather in this scene, some void paradox has created two versions of you. One of you, the Drifter, was trapped on the Zariman forever and was never rescued to become a Tenno and control the warframes. The other, the Tenno, was rescued and time played out as you experienced it. It's at this point in the game when you get to choose who finishes the story of this quest: the Drifter, or the Tenno. 

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Either way, you advance on the ship, trying to stop Lotus from fighting by herself. In the process, you kill the last archon and obtain the final shard, finally having everything you need to restore Lotus to her full self. As you're fighting your way up to Ballas, you stumble into Erra, finally remorseful as he reveals Ballas' plan to consume the sun and return to the Tau system, leaving everything here to die. 

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We confront Ballas, and with the help of Lotus, manipulate Ballas into accidentally surrendering the final archon shard to the Lotus, restoring her to full strength and bringing her memory back. In the final twist of the quest, the sun-consuming void portal is opened and, with her restored strength, Lotus hurries to close it. In the few moments that the portal is open, a massive stone figure barrels through and materializes words in a completely unknowable language. Presumably the Man in the Wall fully materialized in our reality and unchained, this being manipulates reality by simply existing physically. Before his influence can spread any more, Lotus successfully closes the portal and banishes the being back to the void. 

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The New War has ended, and with it, the first major story arc of Warframe!