but the guardian dragon was able to be “taken to full power” on its own when it interacted with shelcoof. and we know it WAS shelcoof’s guardian. i don’t see why the dark dragon (if it was infact the tower’s guardian, as we are lead to believe) couldn’t do the same.
i do recall the “unit” referring to the dragon+rider entity, but in the opening dialogue it says something about unit 01 activating, and unit 02 activating. now we assume 02 was lagi, but is there actually any further evidence to back that up? perhaps 02 was the dark dragoon? i mean why would the tower mention the activation of something that had nothing to do with it? i’m sure there are plenty of little reasons that we could come up with, but it the line i quoted in my previous post would make perfect sense if unit 1 was the dark dragon and unit 2 was the rider.
It’s worth remembering that the English script for PD1 is a bit on the inaccurate side, so the whole strange Unit 01 / Unit 02 issue may just exist because of a vague translation. Assuming this bit of the script is OK though, I’m convinced that Unit 02 couldn’t be the Blue Dragon (for the reasons you pointed out; it wasn’t exactly “activated” at that point in time, and it certainly wasn’t activated by the Tower).
But I agree, Unit 01 being the Dark Dragon and Unit 02 being its rider would make sense if the Dark Dragon could interface with the Tower on its own. (The dragon would have to be on the smart side, as “Unit 01” also ordered the Tower to release the monsters on the Imperial capital, but it seems plausible.) The only other thing that’s occurred to me is that Unit 01 may have been the Dark Dragon and its rider, and Unit 02 may have been the Tower itself, confirming its own activation. (So the “rendezvous” it mentioned would be the meeting of the two Units.)
The problem is “Unit 01, activated. Unit 02, activated.” doesn’t necessarily mean that the Tower activated two units itself, but that two separate units were activated.
If the Heresy dragon was one of the ancients’ creations, then Sestren/the Tower would recognise it for what it is.
In any case, I’m sure it was the drone who activated the Tower outside the Imperial capital similar to how Azel activated the Tower of Uru. Even the Heresy dragon, a sentient dragon by all accounts, needed a drone to activate the Tower.
Also, we don’t know if a drone was involved in activating Shelcoof.
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]The problem is “Unit 01, activated. Unit 02, activated.” doesn’t necessarily mean that the Tower activated two units itself, but that two separate units were activated.
If the Heresy dragon was one of the ancients’ creations, then Sestren/the Tower would recognise it for what it is.[/quote]
That could be the case, but what makes me doubtful is Sestren’s memory orbs from the end of PDS: they imply that the Blue Dragon was around (and that Sestren detected its presence) before the Dark Dragon was activated. The PD1 script implies that Unit 01 and Unit 02 were activated at the same time, though.
True; given what we’ve been led to believe, it would make some sense if there was a Drone inside Shelcoof, doing whatever needed to be done. On the other hand, perhaps some Towers were just more automated than others; Shelcoof and its guardian dragon may just have been built so that they didn’t need a Drone, for whatever reason.
I was thinking that the Heresy dragon could’ve gone off Sestren’s radar somehow for a while. Sestren may have only detected the Heresy dragon’s presence again when Lagi came out of hibernation…
We may never know. I do wonder if Shelcoof was an exception to the piece-of-ancient-technology-that-requires-a-drone-to-be-activated rule though.
I agree there, but I was really thinking of this quote:
Impurity reacquired… Eliminate it once more… …Activation of D Type 01… confirmed…
That seemed to imply that the Blue Dragon (carrying the “impurity”) had emerged before the Dark Dragon / D Type 01 was activated by Sestren - assuming that Sestren lost track of the “impurity” while it was in its dormant state, which does seem to be the case.
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]In any case, I’m sure it was the drone who activated the Tower outside the Imperial capital similar to how Azel activated the Tower of Uru. Even the Heresy dragon, a sentient dragon by all accounts, needed a drone to activate the Tower.
Also, we don’t know if a drone was involved in activating Shelcoof.[/quote]
i don’t see why you are so convicted about the drone activating the tower. and i don’t see why you are so convinced that the dragons are dumb.
lagi couldn’t activate the tower of uru because he wasn’t its guardian. if the dark dragon was the tower’s guardian, i don’t see why it couldn’t interact with its own tower.
we never saw any hint of there being a drone at work in zwei so i am more inclined to believe that the guardian dragon took itself to full power. i also have a suspicion that shelcoof is a special tower, beyond being a mobile one.
also, i’m not implying that azel (or atolm) was the guardian of uru, i think azel was a skeleton key of sorts for the ancient technologies.
I’m unsure about that; I get the impression that Azel really was designed to interface with the Tower of Uru itself. The script is a bit vague on whether or not she could interface with any or all Towers, but it does imply that she was built to interface with that specific Tower.
Some plot issues might crop up if Azel really could interact with other Towers, too. For instance, if she could interface with the systems of any Tower, why did she and Edge have to go through the deadly and active Tower of Uru to reach Sestren, instead of reaching it through one of the world’s many inactive Towers instead? That alternative would make much more sense than putting their lives at risk, but they didn’t take it.
[quote=“Lance Way”]I’m unsure about that; I get the impression that Azel really was designed to interface with the Tower of Uru itself. The script is a bit vague on whether or not she could interface with any or all Towers, but it does imply that she was built to interface with that specific Tower.
Some plot issues might crop up if Azel really could interact with other Towers, too. For instance, if she could interface with the systems of any Tower, why did she and Edge have to go through the deadly and active Tower of Uru to reach Sestren, instead of reaching it through one of the world’s many inactive Towers instead? That alternative would make much more sense than putting their lives at risk, but they didn’t take it.[/quote]
i didn’t mean to say that without explaining it
it was part of a theory i had about the mystery surrounding the tower of uru’s purpose, azel’s purpose, and her kidnapping/possible reprogramming. the basic idea was that she COULD interface with any piece of ancient technology (including the towers) however, sestren exis, could prevent her from doing anything that it controlled directly. consider this: she was a heresy drone- she was working to bring down the will of the ancients; i’m sure that if sestren could cut off her ability to interact with anything, it would.
i hadn’t really worked it all out and it was premature of me to bring it up, so disregard it for now
now back to the issue at hand, why does geoffrey think guardians are too dumb to interact with their own tower and why are drones so important!
[quote=“Megatherium”]i don’t see why you are so convicted about the drone activating the tower. and i don’t see why you are so convinced that the dragons are dumb.
lagi couldn’t activate the tower of uru because he wasn’t its guardian. if the dark dragon was the tower’s guardian, i don’t see why it couldn’t interact with its own tower.
we never saw any hint of there being a drone at work in zwei so i am more inclined to believe that the guardian dragon took itself to full power. i also have a suspicion that shelcoof is a special tower, beyond being a mobile one.[/quote]
I’m certain the Sestren AI was controlling Shelcoof, even if we have no idea who or what activated the ship itself, or if a drone was involved in its activation at all.
Who’s to say that it wasn’t Sestren who ordered Shelcoof to enhance the Guardian dragon? For all we know Sestren itself may have been controlling both the ship and the dragon at the same time. I’m not saying that a sentient dragon couldn’t activate a Tower, but everything we know points to a drone’s involvement. Drones being required to operate ancient machinery is established canon – a rule with few or no exceptions.
The Tower of Uru was active at the time, so there was a pressing need to deactivate it as soon as possible. Also, I thought Sestren could only be reached through an active Tower. Even if the Seekers were wrong, Zadoc did more or less say that Azel was designed to control any number of Towers with a measure of certainty. Many of the other Towers could’ve been shut down completely or concealed (though I’m certain some were fully active or most of them were at least partially active).
Hmm… but all of the Towers would have been shut down when the Sestren AI was destroyed, regardless of which Tower Edge and Azel entered the network through. Or did you just mean that it was the nearest, and therefore they could get to it more quickly?
True, but assuming that Azel could interface with any Tower, she could presumably bring a different Tower up to its full operation level first, as she did with the Tower of Uru. She would be destroying the Tower shortly afterwards, of course.
He certainly did, so I’m probably just being picky. It just strikes me as being a bit odd, given the other things we’ve been told or can deduce about all this.
My thoughts are similar; I know this has mostly come up before, but I’d find it hard to believe that the Seekers didn’t know the locations of any functional Towers other than the Tower of Uru. They were a massive organisation that had know about the Towers (and even Sestren) for two centuries, and some of their reports / dialogue seemed to imply that they had come into contact with other Towers.
we don’t really know enough about the nature of sestren exis to say that do we? we don’t know if sestren exis actually controls anything beyond coordinating the forces still loyal to the ancient masters and on the flipside it’s possible that sestren is like a hive-mind, controlling EVERYTHING still loyal to the ancient masters. though i’m inclined to believe the first option.
my point is that the dark dragon was the tower’s guardian the way the guardian dragon was shelcoof’s guardian. i think that guardians are allowed access to at least the one function that will enhance their ability to guard the tower. we saw no evidence of there being a drone at work in shelcoof or on the guardian dragon, and the script to PD1 (however much value you place in it) supports that idea as well.
i’m not saying the guardians have access (or the mental facility) to control the more complicated functions of the towers (such as controlling the environment or the weaponry built into the tower) but i think the evidence against your idea is enough that we can’t really be certain, wouldn’t you say?
It did seem to be the closest. Also, Edge and Azel could shut it down without even going to Sestren, so they could still save the lives of the surrounding inhabitants in the event of failing to kill Sestren.
Even when the Towers were shut down, some of them still remained active for some reason - they just didn’t have Sestren to guide them. I wonder how that happened.
Unit 01 was a designation for both the Dark Dragon and its rider acting as a unit. Who’s to say the drone didn’t activate the Tower outside the Imperial capital when we all know that operating complex machinery is in a drone’s job description? While it’s possible, I just don’t believe the Dark Dragon activated the Tower it was ordered to protect. The blame for that lies with its drone rider.
Shelcoof was already active by the time it decimated Elpis, so we don’t know if a drone was involved in its activation. That doesn’t mean we can automatically assume a drone wasn’t involved.
that’s what i’ve been hearing, but is there any evidence in the game to support that? and if there is, i’m still inclined to believe lances idea that unit 02 is the tower itself
i’m not saying the drone didn’t, i’m just pointing out that there is evidence that the dark dragon activated its own metamorphosis.
i’m not automatically assuming anything, a drone very well may have been involved in the activation, but that’s not what i was talking about. i was talking about the guardian dragon activating its own metamorphosis. we can agree that it had no rider? yet it flew into shelcoof at the very start of episode 6 and began growing. then in the final episode (after shelcoof was practically destroyed) it really came alive.
you are proposing that there was a drone somewhere- not riding the guardian dragon- that allowed it to be taken to full power though we’ve seen absolutely no hint of that at all. and you must be proposing that because if the guardian dragon was in control of its own metamorphosis, then why couldn’t the dark dragon govern it’s own abilities?
The difference between Shelcoof and the Tower outside the capital is, the Tower wasn’t active until the Dark Dragon arrived. Only when the Tower was active did the Tower take the Dark Dragon to full strength. It was the voice of the Tower or Sestren ordering the dragon’s enhancement. The way I see it, the drone activated the Tower, then the Tower brought the dragon up to full strength.
Shelcoof was already active. Sestren was controlling the ship and possibly its guardian dragon (somehow without a drone). Sestren would want to exert some kind of control over its minions (a drone in the case of the Dark Dragon), so it’s impossible to say if the guardian dragon of Shelcoof functioned with any degree of autonomy (it may have been just another soulless minion, with the exception of being larger, that followed Sestren’s orders to the letter).
i think too much of this is based on intangible extrapolations. i think you may very well be correct, but saying “there is no question” and “i am certain” is a bit premature at this time.
with that, i think it is still reasonable to entertain the idea of the sky rider and dark dragoon as being some of the low-end drones.
both of our views here are based off of intangible interpretations. i see sestren as a commander of all those loyal to the will of the ancients. you see it as controlling some things itself. and in truth i do not think there would be much og a difference in the behaviors. lets say sestren ordered the dark dragon to fly to the tower and go to full power; now sestren knows exactly how the dark dragon is going to behave and it knows that since it is still loyal, it is going to do everything within its power to carry out those orders. and i think the same things would happen if sestren somehow had the ability to take control of the dark dragon.
but again, i don’t think there is tangible evidence to really show wether or not sestren actually puts a hand into the events of the real world. i can understand why it wouldn’t be able to take control of lagi (already being controlled by heresy) but why couldn’t it take control of azel or atolm, which it must have known were working against twota?
If they could both synchonize with dragons, then how could they possibly be lower end drones? If the drone riding the Dark Dragon was a lower end drone, then how could he possibly awaken the Tower outside of the Imperial capital?
I’m sure the ancients would spawn sentient dragons if they were loyal to them, but from what we know, the Dark Dragon was controlled by its drone rider (who was probably sentient). Nowhere does it say that dragons can activate Towers, so whether the Dark Dragon was sentient or not (which I think it was) it would have still required the aid of a drone. As for the guardian dragon of Shelcoof, who knows if it was sentient or not. The Empire has theorized that dragon riders act as safeguards who serve to keep their dragons under control if something should go terribly wrong. In the absence of a rider, the guardian dragon appears to be a unique case. Either it was sentient or Shelcoof was guiding it somehow like all of its other minions (in which case it wasn’t sentient).
who knows what lower end drones can and cannot do? lower end drones may still be superior to humans in all aspects. it could be that lower end drones are just ones without the facility for emotions, or perhaps lower end drones are just made for battle, we just don’t know anything about them. and you’re still basing your argument off the unproven fact that the drone had anything to do with the tower.
HOW do we know that? the dark dragoon may have just been along for the ride, an extra gun, or other form of upgrade (it says that the minds of the rider and dragon link to give better awareness and such).
i’m not talking about activating the tower. i’m talking about the dark dragon having one function under its control. a single function. not control over the tower in any other way. just the ability to activate it’s own metamorphosis as guardian of the tower.
“Unit 01… Confirmed. After rendezvous, take Unit to full strength”.
The [voice of the] Tower took the Dark Dragon to full strength. I’d love to believe that the Dark Dragon could activate the Tower, but there’s no proof supporting the idea. On the other hand, drones have been proven to be the keys to unlocking the power of any given Tower.
Regarding Azel:
“In order to control the Towers, she was given superior intellect. As a side effect, she gained human emotions”.
Vast intelligence is required for a drone’s mind to become one with a Tower. The only way you could prove that the drone riding the Dark Dragon wasn’t a higher end drone is to prove that he didn’t activate the Tower outside the Imperial capital. From everything we know, the presence of a drone is required to operate certain pieces of advanced technology such as a Tower.
Regarding drones:
“Creations of the Ancient Age appeared in the form of humans. They had the power to synchronize and control other creatures”.
**"Researchers have also discovered that not all drones were created equal.
The drones were created in separate classes, depending on their abilities.
The higher-end drones were thought to have been created to interface with biological weapons, or various technologies of the Ancient Age. It is known that Azel, who was “kidnapped” from an Imperial excavation site by the traitor Craymen during the Great Fall, was of this type of drone".**
According to the information we have before us, Abadd was also a higher end drone merely because he could operate the Cradle. The drone riding the Dark Dragon was also one such drone simply by virtue of his ability to synchonize with a dragon.
