I don’t have an answer for you. The Seekers only knew of the possible ways of entering Sestren, but exiting it is another story. Any entry point into Sestren would be well-guarded; I can’t think of a better guardian than a Tower itself.
By that definition the Episode 8 ruin would have to be an active Tower as well, though; it was linked to Sestren too. But as that ruin would seem to be a different kind of Ancient Age structure, doesn’t that show that Sestren is linked to more things than only active Towers?
EDIT: Sorry, I didn’t notice your last post. Still though, what suggests that entrances and exits to Sestren would be different things? You can definitely exit through what we know was an entrance (the data transformation gateway in the Tower of Uru). Why not the other way around? If Sestren is a data network as we’ve been told, it would stand to reason that things would be uploaded and downloaded with exactly the same apparatus.
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]Also:
"In order to control the Towers,
she was given superior intellect.
As a side effect,
she gained human emotions".
The Seekers were led to believe that Azel was designed to interface with any Tower. Of course, we have no way of confirming this, but in the absence of further proof, it’s possible.[/quote]
Azel herself said that she was designed to interface with the Tower though, and the Seekers say “the Tower” in reference to her much more often than they say “the Towers”. (To be honest it could just be a typo in this case; they are known to exist in PDS. Or a slip of the tongue for Zadoc, depending on how you want to look at it.) And of course if the Seekers really did think that she could interface with any Tower, why not just take her to a different one, one that was “on standby” like all the others we’re aware of? That would make much more sense, especially seeing as how the Seekers were pulling out of that region anyway.
We just don’t know if Azel could interface with more than one Tower or not, so the possibility remains open. Also, I think a Tower would need to be fully active before opening a gateway to Sestren was even possible.
As for the ruins in Episode 8, who knows what purpose they previously served? Like I said earlier, there could be more ways of exiting the Sestren system than entering it.
If some of the Towers weren’t destroyed, then why couldn’t the ruins in Episode 6 be a Tower? The structure bears some of the hallmarks of a Tower after all. We know Towers contain gateways to Sestren, but we don’t know what other type of ruins house them, as a rule.
I don’t know if this has been pointed out before, but as Orta was created in that Episode 6 ruin I’ve always thought the implication was that it was a genetics lab, like the complex at Uru or like the Cradle.
Now Towers are meant to contain automated monster factories, but it always looked as if genetic design work and prototype construction took place in different places entirely, as was the case at Uru. After all, you’d need extremely specialised equipment to design and create a completely new organism (a Drone no less), and as this would have no obvious relevance to a Tower’s function, why would a Tower contain such equipment? That’s where a lot of my doubt springs from…
On the other hand, we know that Sestren’s systems were at least linked to ruins other than Towers, we know that other ruins contained exits from Sestren and it’s possible that those data tranformation gateways went both ways. (And as the Seekers didn’t seem to think of Sestren as anything other than a Tower control network - despite it being linked to at least some other ruins, as we know - this could be the reason for any misconceptions regarding entrances to Sestren.)
It’d make some sense if the Episode 6 ruin was indeed a lab like Uru or the Cradle, anyway. Perhaps Abadd can enlighten us on this one, if there even is an official answer…
I think it would make more sense if the episode 6 ruin was a Tower. If it was the Tower that Abadd was guardian of, that would explain how he could open the gateway to Sestren inside it (assuming that drones can only interface with the Towers that they are guardian of) and where it’s Guardian Dragon is (Abadds Mare).
It could be possible that the Sestren has one-way exits all over the world, but only afew, very well guarded entrance inside the Towers. After all, it has to protect it’s entrances, but I don’t see why it would need to protect it’s exits. This would explain how Abadd had to lead Orta through the dangerous ruins to reach the entrance, but they could just travel straight to the cradle from inside the Sestren.
[quote=“Panzer Dragoon Orta”]However, at around the same time as
the Great Fall, most of the Towers,
as well as most of the ruins, became
inactive and are nothing but tombs. [/quote]
Speaking of unexpected information, has anyone else noticed that the PDO narration actually says the Empire used “Drones” to operate the Cradle, not “a Drone”?
Utilizing the power of artificially
engineered humanoids, called Drones,
created by the Ancients,
the Empire was able to resurrect
the primeval armament production
facility: the “Cradle”.
And the plural appears again in the Encyclopedia:
However, the activation of
the Bio-Reactor requires “drones” to
operate it.
Though it could simply be that these passages were just worded a bit unclearly, is it possible that Abadd was only one of several Drones needed to fully operate the Cradle? Perhaps a higher end Drone amongst less sophisticated Drones, or maybe the coordinator of a team?
Oh and Drenholm, apparently Abadd’s Mare was only created recently (it was one of the Empire’s Dragonmares which he stole and modified), so it doesn’t look like it could be a guardian dragon. It seems that Abadd sneaked into the Sestren network when the gateway opened for Lagi too, rather than opening it himself; it’s unclear whether he’d have been able to get in on his own or not.
Oh yeah, forgot about that 
I haven’t played Orta in ages, heh, Morrowind has consumed my life.
For the first narration, it could mean that the Empire used ‘the powers of the drone species’ or ‘the abilities of the drone species’. The second example you mentioned could mean that any drone could operate the Cradle, not just Abadd. It’s interesting that it has popped up twice it the dialogue though - I think it could mean either, depending on how you interpret the passages.
As for the original topic, it’s differcult to say - on one hand, it could be just another ruin, but then again, it has many of the characteristics of a Tower. I do think that it’s possible.