Well you got it right I think Lance except for the possibility of the Heresy Program reffering to the Ancients when it says it wants to return control to the people…
I don’t think that’s possible, I believe it meant the humans we know since in that recording in PDO it says “watch over our friends” to Lagi, it wouldn’t call them “friends” if it had actually done things against them by doing something good for the Ancients. And it was also intelligent enough to realise that it shouldn’t fullfill it’s objective just yet and just return in hybernation. It deffinitelly wanted to help humans. Perhaps it realised the regeneration would never be completed and sought to release the humans from an endless oppression by the monsters, perhaps there is another reason…
In a word, yes. He knows what he’s talking about, and I expect this thread would seem quite odd if you’ve been thinking otherwise up until now 
Yeah, I think I brought that theory up myself in an earlier thread… but Abadd did say above that the Heresy Program was directly related to the Towers’ purpose: I’m just trying to reconcile that to the known plot.
My own (earlier) theory was that the Heresy Program was a twin / related program to the Sestren AI, which re-evaluated its purpose (i.e. restoring the world) and decided that it’d be better for the planet if the Towers were switched off than if they were switched on. That wouldn’t be directly related to the Towers’ original purpose, though; that’d be directly against the Towers’ intended plan of action, which is why I was considering other theories for the time being.
Well it propably WAS related to that but as we know things went wrong with it and it OPPOSED the Ancients after that as Sestren says…
Maybe I’m right and it’s original purpose was to wipe out the Towers which in turn would wipe out the Monsters therefor when the Ancients returned the place would be safe without monsters that get enraged as soon as a human gets close (As is written they do) I’m saying that this action would wipe out the monsters from thinking that as the Drones had to return to URU once in a while to remain alive then the monsters (Since they are close “relatives”) would propably need to do something similar… Perhaps return to the Tower that created them. If the Tower was destroyed they would eventually die out as well…
Something that’s just struck me about what Abadd-the-character said:
Resuscitation program initiated…
Failure.
Resuscitation program initiated…
Failure.
It is too late for my ancient masters.
Resuscitation is 100% impossible.
My mission has failed…
I am alone…
Primary objective aborted.
I must fulfill my mission… I must find a way…
Now if Abadd’s new “way of fulfilling his mission” was to simultaneously wipe out humankind and allow the world to be controlled by the Ancient’s Drones, wouldn’t that mean that his original mission was to simultaneously wipe out humankind and allow the world to be controlled by the Ancients themselves?
What Abadd’s mission amounted to was retaking the world in the name of the Ancients. That would heavily imply that the Ancients really did want the world to themselves, and that all along they’d wanted to eliminate any other cultures and societies. Which would also back up the idea that they wiped out everyone else in the first place…
EDIT: Actually, “wipe out” might be too strong a term, but Abadd (and presumably his masters) wanted to become “lords over the world”. That’s pretty significant in the scheme of things, as it paints a much more aggressive picture of the Ancients than I’d previously imagined…
I agree that would make sense, but - from the way Abadd’s teasing us, at least - I get the impression that we’re meant to know what the Heresy Program’s purpose was. If it was literally ignoring its original purpose and going renegade completely, we’d have no clue as to what it was originally meant to be doing.
Now you could read it that the Heresy Program was fulfilling its duty to the letter (i.e. it tried to end the Towers’ reign) whilst ignoring the bigger picture (i.e. that the Towers hadn’t finished restoring the planet yet). That way it could both be “disobeying the Ancients” from Sestren’s perspective, whilst also fulfilling a role directly related to the Towers’ overall purpose.
BTW, I agree with your point that the Towers / monsters would have to be shut down in order for the world to become inhabitable again. That would make perfect sense.
As I’m running over my theory anyway I thought I may as well post this simplified / revised version:
-
In the Ancient Age the Towers were created, and one of their primary purposes was to rid the world of their creators’ enemies. (The Towers may have been responisble for the devastation of the planet itself, which may have been a means to this end.)
-
Whilst keeping the Ancients’ enemies in serious check, the Towers also set about the long process of repairing the ravaged world.
-
While all this was going on, the Towers’ creators had gone into hibernation to wait for the world to be repaired, when they planned to return and reclaim it entorely for themselves. They left Drones like Abadd behind to awaken them when the rejuvenation was complete.
-
Everything does not go as planned, and the Towers are unable to restore the world. (Quotes attribute this to either the Towers becoming worn down, or to the Towers being damaged by the Ancients’ enemies at the end of the Ancient Age.)
-
The Heresy Program is activated at its appointed time to deactivate the Tower network, in order to make the world inhabitable (and monster-free) again for the sleeping Ancients. Unfortunately for Sestren, the Towers have been unable to complete their task, but the Heresy Program goes ahead and forces the shutdown anyway.
-
Abadd is excavated. He tries to fulfill his mission (i.e. to resurrect the Towers’ creators so that they can retake the world) but he is unsuccessful. He tries to create a race of Drones to take over the world in their absence, but he fails at that too.
That theory incorporates another phase/function for the Towers anyway, and it also regards the Heresy Program as being directly related to the Towers’ overall purpose…
Thoughts, anyone? Or can anyone think of a better way that those notions might be incorporated?
When did Abadd express that he would wipe out mankind?(Sorry, I don’t have PDO, only played through the main game once)
And to your second post (the one in the middle of your last three posts), yes I agree, that’s what I was trying to say. I described a potential original purpose after all. And we all know it did that anyway, except at the wrong time…
And If I’m not mistaken by Orta’s time pure type monsters are already becoming rare-er? Isn’t that written somewhere? So perhaps I’m right that they would need “maintainance” from towers like drones needed “maintainance” from URU and the towers’ deactivation at the end of Saga is causing their numbers to slowly decrease?
Anyway even if that’s not the case the rest things I wrote should still apply…
Edit:
For your last post I find myself having a few different thoughts for (1), though yours could very well be true.
But for example it might have been so that the world was already getting destroyed in the same way Earth is being sucked up of it’s resources as we speak so The Ancients decided to do something about that, built the towers with that plan in mind and set out to terrafrom the planet all over again (and in the process wipe out the resources’ err suckers lol). The “enemies” and “rebels” actually appeared right then after finding out that plan cos they obviously didn’t want to get wiped out. Just an alternate thought.
I try to think of it like this cos I really find it hard to believe things like the towers were built during war time.
And again, I don’t agree with (5), I don’t think the Heresy program simply did it’s duty, if that was the case it wouldn’t have “friends” nor “another half” to bid farewell to (it’d just use Lagi and not care for him at all since it’s jus fulfilling it’s mission whatever way it can) And it definitelly was intelligent and aware of the surroundings enough to know the towers hand’t completed their task. There would also be NO reason to defeat Sestren and take it’s place and then deactivate itself…right? It could have just followed the original plan of taking out the Towers one by one (atleast I believe that was the original plan, else there would be NO need to make the Heresy program and they would just program Sestren to deactivate itself at the given time causing the Towers to shut down…right?)
On another note, are we certain that the Heresy program’s original purpose was the destruction of the Towers? I mean, if that was the case, why would it have to actually ATTACK them and destroy them and not just be allowed access to everything and just move in and shut them down? Kind of unnecessary battle isn’t it? Or perhaps the Towers only defended against it because they “knew” they hadn’t fulfilled their task… Or just cos Sestren commanded them d(most likely it’s the last one but…)
As I said, “wipe out” might be too strong a term, but lines like these seem to imply that Abadd wanted the Drones to control the world:
“We must take our places as lords over this world. There is no other way!”
“Do not resist… We Drones shall inherit this world!”
… and as that was Abadd’s “new way” to fulfill his original mission, it seems that his original mission was to resurrect his masters so that they could become “lords over” the world or so that they could “inherit” the world in this manner.
I get you now, yes it sounds like it. Re-read my post though, I added things about your last reply.
I agree: if those Ancients built the Towers so that they could gain dominance over the other inhabitants of the world, it’s likely that the Towers were the cause for any wars that may have taken place.
As far as I could tell, the Heresy Program’s “original plan” was to deactivate Sestren internally. When it tried to do this the primary Sestren AI noticed it, of course, and complicated matters by ejecting the Heresy Program out of the system. That’s when it started running about blowing Towers up manually, until it managed to actually re-enter the System and fulfill its original task of replacing the Sestren AI to power the Towers down entirely. (As far as I can tell.)
And as contradictory as it is, the Heresy Program did seem to literally state that its “duty” was to deactivate the Tower network (at the end of Saga):
“The duty that spanned thousands of years, is about to come to an end.”
… so I’m assuming that Sestren and the Heresy Program weren’t speaking in exactly the same terms when they were talking about “duties”.
About your other points, I’m not saying that the Heresy Program was “stupid” by the way, just that it might have been fulfilling its mission in the only way that it knew how. It was at least comparable to the Sestren AI, anyway, and that AI was completely preoccupied with fulfilling its own mission, even though it was doomed to failure. The Heresy Program seemed equally determined.
What I’m suggesting is that the Ancients never planned for there to be any problems with their overall scheme. They clearly never equipped the Sestren AI to deal with the problem of not being able to fulfill its duty via the Towers, anyway. In the same way, they might have never equipped the Heresy Program to deal with the fact that the Towers might not be finished by the time it went active. Maybe they just didn’t expect that these problems would arise when they constructed these AIs?
[quote=“Lance”]As I’m running over my theory anyway I thought I may as well post this simplified / revised version:
- In the Ancient Age the Towers were created, and one of their primary purposes was to rid the world of their creators’ enemies. (The Towers may have been responisble for the devastation of the planet itself, which may have been a means to this end.)[/quote]
It would make sense that the Towers completely destroyed the planet at the end of the Ancient Age. For example: if you want to reinstall everything on your PC, you’d start with a reformat too.
But was every human an enemy? The way certain people believed that the Gods would one day return seems to indicate that some people may have judged the Ancients’ actions as the right thing to do.
Azel and Abadd were never automatically awakened. One has to wonder if they were ever going to awaken. Perhaps they should have been activated a lot earlier to bring the Towers back to life and start with the full regeneration of the environment instead of just keeping it alive.
Now here’s the problem: The condition for the Heresy dragon to activate could not have been based on time, that would be a huge programming error. Instead it should have been something like “if (regeneration complete = true) then activate heresy program”. What made it awaken too early? If the Impurity was not the Heresy dragon, it may have been the Impurity that awakened it.
Slight tangent here, but I’ve just noticed something that I might have been completely overlooking. According to some quotes from Saga, the Towers’ original function may have been to keep the entire planet - sentient life included - in some kind of perverse “balance”, which would ensure that it could never come to self-destruction. So the Towers might not have been only trying to restore the environment, but actually trying to regulate everything.
It’s these kinds of quotes that I’m thinking of:
The rulers of ancient times
created an administrative system
throughout the world to control
the population of the humans
with large machines. These
machines are known as ‘Towers’.
This world has been molded into
its current shape by the powers
of a series of ruins we call
Towers. The Towers control the
environment, breed monsters,
and control human populations.
Even in the Ancient Age, there
were people against the presence
of the Towers.
Someone, or something,
must take control of everything.
Or we shall continue
to destroy ourselves
forever.
This world was constructed by
the ancient ones
as a delicate balance.
The Tower, the monsters,
everything is interwoven…
…and the fact that the Empire is convinced that the Towers are some kind of ultimate weapon makes me think that they were indeed something which allowed their creators to exercise control - possibly violent, threatening control - over the world, or that the Towers were used to devastate human populations in the first place:
… the ultimate weapon of the ancients, the ‘Towers’.
… one of the ancient ultimate weapons, a ‘Tower’.
… the final weapon, the ‘Tower’
… each Tower contains enough destructive force to destroy the entire world.
…The Tower… The legends say that it burned three continents in one night…
… thoughts?
As I mentioned above, the Towers’ purpose may have been to regulate everything; which would presumably include everyone on the planet other than their creators.
It’s unilkely that the Ancients knew that their Towers were going to become worn out though, and Drones might not have been able to help fix something as complex as a Tower anyway… who knows?
The whole time-frame idea is just the first thing that occured to me, seeing as the Heresy Program wasn’t apparently awakened by any specific events. I agree that the logic isn’t all the way there, though.
What we call the Heresy Program (that black dragon-symbol entity) is almost unquestionably what Sestren categorised as an “impurity”. When we see it in the memory orbs at the end of Saga, it spins onto the screen when Sestren says “impurity detected”, and it is very definitely the entity which enters into the physical dragon. When this entity is in the physical dragon, Sestren continues to refer to as the “impurity”. (It’s a pity that there’s no official name for the thing, because that would make theorising about it so much easier…)
Hmm…
Why create a dragon to destroy the Towers? Why not program Sestren to shut them all down from the moment you return? Who suggested that the Heresy dragon was a substitute AI for Sestren in case it malfunctioned? I like that idea.
The Heresy dragon was clearly acting of its own free will by destroying the Towers:
“I exist to lead the Divine Visitor, to break the spell of the Ancient Age, and to give humans control of their own destiny.”
The ancient ones/Abadd’s masters didn’t program the Heresy dragon to grant humanity its freedom – someone else did. In the very least someone tampered with the Heresy dragon’s mindset, perhaps unshackling it from the confines of the ancients’ twisted morality.
I believe no one but the ancients could build the Heresy dragon – if ancient rebels resorted to stealing drones, then they obviously couldn’t build them themselves, and even if they could, as Lance pointed out in an earlier discussion, such drones wouldn’t necessarily be compatible with the ancients’ technology like one of their own would be. The same holds true for the Heresy dragon.
What went wrong? I’d wager that the ancients lost control of their own dragons, which proceeded to “terminate all the active ruins and Towers”. Zadoc believed that the Towers lost their power over time, but Gash said they were “terminated”. What would best explain why the planet is still more or less a desolate wasteland?
That’s what Craymen and the Seekers believed and what Skiad Ops Endow knew thanks to the knowledge he received from his dragon via a vision of the Ancient Age (according to Abadd, the Panzer Dragoon Zwei endings were originally meant to reveal more of what really happened in the Ancient Age as Lundi witnessed it).
The Towers were only built by the ancient ones/the rulers of the ancient civilisation after centuries of fighting, which falls in line with the theory that they wanted to restore a world ravaged by war while removing anything (namely human beings) that stood in the way. Of course, they wanted to keep humanity alive, or stop the human race from becoming extinct by reducing its population to manageable numbers (numbers that wouldn’t threaten the survival of the human race or the environment).
I don’t mean to get technical here, but who do you mean? All the citizens of the Ancient Age, or Abadd’s masters/the gods?
Once I pressed that button at the end of Panzer Dragoon Saga was I shutting down all the Towers, or turning off the hibernation chambers in which the Abadd’s masters were resting? And if you say the Divine Visitor didn’t exist in the game world to press that button I will kill you.
I won’t say how much Lance has gotten correct, but his line of reasoning is quite astounding. Finally, someone who is reading between the lines. Your educational background is showing, Lance 
Carry on this line of thought, people. You actually getting somewhere this time.
edit: Just saw Geoffrey’s questions. My question was intentionally vague. Try to figure it out
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]Hmm…
Why create a dragon to destroy the Towers? Why not program Sestren to shut them all down from the moment you return?
[/quote]
That what I was wondering too… But as I said perhaps the dragon wasn’t meant to DESTROY them, just be their “deactivation switch” of sorts, but since the towers’ task wasn’t completed, both them and Sestren attacked the Heresy program cos they found it opposing the Ancients’ goals.
I do believe the program was acting on it’s own free will as well BUT it was deffinitelly DESIGNED to shut the towers down (as demonstrated at the end of PD1 if I’m not mistaken and with the sealing of the Shellcoof as well perhaps). So thats why I think it was originally a part of the Ancients’ plan that went wrong when (not sure how yet) the Heresy program decided to act different.
[quote=“Lance”]
As far as I could tell, the Heresy Program’s “original plan” was to deactivate Sestren internally. When it tried to do this the primary Sestren AI noticed it, of course, and complicated matters by ejecting the Heresy Program out of the system.[/quote]
Read Geoff’s and my last reply for that ^