For those familiar with the Harry Potter mythos, could the pup in Shelcoof be a kind of horcrux. In that story, Voldemort’s soul was split into seven pieces and stored in different items throughout the world called horcruxes. If one horcrux was destroyed, part of Voldemort’s soul would continue via the other horcruxes. We also know that Voldemort could store part of his soul in living creatures (humans).
Lundi claimed that Lagi’s body was stone cold but he knew Lagi was alive, but he also said that Lagi would return with a new rider (Edge). Could he have been referring to both dragons (the pup and Edge’s dragon) each containing part of Lagi and/or the Heresy Program - parts of the soul of the dragon? Perhaps the dragon stored parts of his soul in a number of bodies to ensure that he was more likely to survive until he returned to Sestren.
When the Shelcoof pup fused with Edge’s dragon, could this be pieces of horcrux-like soul joining together once again, ready to face Sestren? Similarly, did the dragon pup at the end of Panzer Dragoon Orta contain another piece of the dragon’s soul, ready to fight another day?
Interesting way to look at it, I don’t see a need for the dragon pups as such though. To condense and refine a part of the case I was making a couple years ago, if you accept the FMV cutscenes in Azel as congruent, and as the baseline for continuity: the Dragon even in the form of the Arm Wing reveals itself to possess the essences of the Lagi dragon pup, the Blue Dragon and the Light Wing. I am still more concerned with the mystery of the dragon crests, and my working theory is something like this…
If the uniformity of the crests is to be seen as having significance within the world, then the Blue Dragon can be seen as an archetype. I think they represent some sort of translation portal for the proto-dragon system, which the Heresy Dragon and Sestren are different manifestations of. In this model the appearances of both the Divine Visitor and the third Heresy Dragon in such close proximity to the D-Unit 1 and a Dragon Crest are no accident / coincidence at all. There are three known crests, the first one Edge sees would be the portal the “Edge’s dragon” uses to translate itself as a form compatible with the Light Wing essence, or perhaps as an incomplete version of the Light Wing.
The Shelcoof crest is presumably / obviously a portal the Lagi dragon used to both “seal the flying Tower’s functions” and translate its own profile into stasis.
The final crest, at the Red Ruins, could be both the portal the Armored Blue Dragon / Type 01 originally used to translate itself into an operational state - which is reasonably consistent with the direction of origin of the path taken by the Eins dragon and Keil - and therefore also a portal that combined with the Lagi crest and the completed Light Wing form can translate all three into a single form combining the strengths and abilities of each of the Heresy Dragon’s incarnations. The Solo Wing Dragon.
This is of course conjecture, but it is the one way I see to account for all three dragon crests as significant, at least in general terms. And the pup left by Orta’s dragon always seemed like an implicit Phoenix to me, a Dragon Phoenix as it were, which has a certain thematic precedence as well right?
Something like this seems likely. The crests appear to act as a utility (or portal, perhaps) to transform the dragon. It seems also that they are used for the dragon to reproduce (if the Shelcoof pup is indeed Lagi’s offspring/clone).
It is less clear if the crests are also used for hibernation. I had previously thought they might be a type of cocoon. The dragon’s fragile body creates the crest around himself to regrow his body in a new form, but to the outside observer it appears as an engraving (as Edge thought) of the form the dragon was in when he created the cocoon. Hmm.
It makes me wonder how the pup at the end of Orta came about. Is what happened off screen similar to the dragon’s previous transformations/resurrections and is there is some pattern to it?
Yeah, I was thinking of something along those lines. Having multiple copies of the program would allow the mission to continue through another dragon pup if Sestren defeated the dragon in combat. Think of how lucky it was that Lagi was outside of Elpis when Shelcoof destroyed the village. You don’t want to leave the fate of humanity to luck too often.
Yeah, that was the first time the Heresy Program transported itself into a living shell it could latter modify(updating the genetic make-up with wings/larger body/various forms).
That makes me wonder though: if it was in fact destroyed while still in the stables of Elpis, wouldn’t it just exist outside the dragon pup as energy again? The same way it entered it…And just find a new host body again.
I’ve wondered about something like that before, like maybe if Shelcoof had actually hit its mark then it could have been the end of Lagi, and if the Heresy entity had let’s say inhabited in that particular coolia body there’s also a chance it could be killed. Maybe Sestren couldn’t even know that for sure, but the force it unleashed on trying to snuff out a mutant coolia pup sure looked like a bit of overkill didn’t it?
My impression is that the Heresy spirit or whatever would still need a medium for its continued/coherent existence, the coolias apparently worked for some reason, but investing in Lagi could have been a gamble itself. And so maybe that’s the real reason Lagi was hunting Shelcoof from the start, those dragon crests are like nodes of power, so in a way it could be similar to the horcrux thing. Maybe it makes the most sense to guess the other crest at the Red Ruins is where the Eins dragon was last saved to as well, or something. It’s all speculation, but the most solid elements are the fact there are fixtures for two crests in the first place, and the fact the gate to that (sacred?) place could only be opened by the Light Wing or a dragon of equivalent “rank”. If you choose to read any of it as meaningful the clues are pretty intriguing I think.
