Clem

Submission 32,573

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About

Clem is a character from the multiplayer third-person shooter video game Warframe, who has his roots partly from memes within the Warframe community, before being made canon by Warframe's developers.

Origin

On September 13th, 2013, Warframe developers released Update 10.0,^[1] which, among other changes introduced, gave the Grineer (one of the enemy factions the player encounters) their own language, a change from the standard English they used prior to the update's launch. Among the new lines added was the word "klem", which is used by Grineer forces in various contexts, particularly the phrase "Get klem!"^[2] While most likely the phrase "Get them!" filtered through Grineer speech, the frequency of "Get klem" led to the Warframe community joking about a mysterious figure literally named "Klem", whom the Grineer would try to search for throughout missions.

Spread

On December 15, 2013, Warframe user and artist Datareaper posted "The Chronicles of Clem, [A] Grineer lancer who wanted to be a Tenno."^[3] to his Tumblr account, which depicted Clem as a Grineer defector and his attempts to become a Tenno. As of September 2018, the post has gathered 1,000 notes. Datareaper would later design the Kronen^[11] bladed tonfas for use in Warframe itself, which was one of three designs selected as part of a weapon design contest held in December 2013.^[4]

Datareaper's original set of comics. Note that some of the comics refer to mechanics that are no longer in the game as of this writing.

Datareaper would continue to make comics about Clem which would influence most depictions of Clem in the Warframe community, such as his choice of armor customizations, limited vocabulary (consisting mainly of "Clem" and "Grakata") and overall personality.

As time went on, Warframe's developers Digital Extremes became aware of Clem's existence and stated that a minor NPC players could encounter in any Relay^[12] was Clem himself, working for a group of Grineer defectors known as Steel Meridian.^[13] Clem would be formally introduced in the game on September 17th, 2015 with the release of Hotfix 17.4.3^[5] in the side quest A Man of Few Words.

In the quest, the players are contacted by Darvo,^[14] a black market merchant allied with the Tenno, to help rescue an undercover contractor captured by the Grineer. Said contractor turns out to be Clem himself,^[6] and after the players help get Clem his weapons back, Darvo sends both Clem and the Tenno to recover the artifact Clem was originally in charge of getting before his capture. Clem's depiction throughout the quest acknowledged Datareaper's depiction of Clem, albeit with slight adjustments. As another nod to the Warframe community, Darvo refers to the artifact as the "P-otent O-rokin T-echnical A-ugmentation and T-actical O-ffensive device" or "Potato" for short, "Potato" being a slang term for certain upgrades in the game that allow for further customization of player equipment.

Clem's popularity increased following the release of A Man of Few Words. On November 14th, 2017 Warframe was nominated for "Best Ongoing Game" at The Game Awards 2017,^[7] On December7, 2017, on the official Twitch stream of the ceremony the chatbox was flooded with spam of "Clem", must to the consternation of some users. This was documented by Reddit user Firinael and posted on the Official Warframe subreddit.^[8]

Two Grakata

One of the first comics drawn by Datareaper about Clem showed an Excalibur^[15] insisting that Clem use a Latron^[16] semi-automatic rifle (a Tenno weapon) instead of the Grakata^[17] submachine gun (the standard-issue weapon of Grineer Lancers like Clem), to which Clem responded by holding up a second Grakata and saying "Twooo Grakata!"

Both the comic and Clem's response quickly spread within the Warframe community, with many players demanding for a "Two Grakata" weapon to be added into the game. On July 31st, 2015 the Official Warframe YouTube channel uploaded a video titled "Warframe | Echoes of the Sentient Highlights" and briefly featured Two Grakatas being dual wielded, though not actually fired. The same day, Update 17.0 was released^[9] and added the "Twin Grakatas" secondary weapon,^[10] which Clem himself would wield when he was added to the game later.

Following the Twin Grakatas' release, many players jokingly started making hypothetical Grakata-themed weapons for other weapon categories, such as hammers, throwing discs^[18], and flak cannons.^[19]