why do you think i’m talking about the activation of the tower?
the partial autonomy that the towers have exhibited could explain some things. we’ve been looking at the tower as the servant (arguing over who the master was), but it realisitically could have been the tower that ordered the dark dragon to return and so that it could be taken to full power. then it would be the tower that ordered the pure-types to appear and secure the area as the dark dragon neared.
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.
well that does solve the initial issue- that the dark drone and sky rider were definitely high end drones, but i don’t think that effects the issue of just how much power is gifted to guardians of towers. i mean, the idea of the dragon rider “unit” means just that, dragon+rider- not rider controlling dragon or dragon controlling rider. so back to my original argument, i don’t think we know enough at this time to say for certain wether it was the dragon, the tower, sestren, OR the drone that instigated the final events of PD1.
If the Towers were indeed autonomous (as in they could order bend pure type monsters to their will) it would defeat the purpose of having the Sestren AI to control them.
I do believe the Dark Dragon was sentient, but it still required the aid of a drone to activate the Tower outside the Imperial capital nonetheless.
do we know enough about the nature of the sestren to say that? from what we’ve seen of it’s actions, i think it coordinates and organizes the forces loyal to the ancients rather than control anything. but that’s just my interpretation.
i think my entire interpretation of the ancients is different from yours though. i think all ancient creations that are still loyal are doing everything within their ability to carry out twota without needing to be ordered to do so in each circumstance that it encounters. i think sestren, for the most part, only keeps this army linked and informed.
for instance, i don’t think it took control of shelcoof to destroy elpis when it detected the “impurity”. i think it just informed shelcoof of the impurity’s presence and shelcoof went to work by itself. perhaps it was shelcoof’s duty to hunt down the impurity from the start, perhaps shelcoof was the only force of sufficient power in the area to destroy elpis. in any case, my interpretation of it is that sestren doesn’t actually do anything itself (in the real world at least).
The Seekers described Sestren as a place that controlled all the Towers. Although the information contained in Panzer Dragoon Orta suggests that most of the Towers were destroyed during the Great Fall, perhaps the Heresy dragon disconnected Sestren’s link to most of them in order to precipitate that destruction. The fact of the matter is the Towers couldn’t operate without Sestren, so I assume the Sestren AI had a vital part to play in maintaining them.
There doesn’t seem to be much evidence telling us about Sestren’s interface with the ancient technologies, but I at least got the impression that it was more of an overseer and an administrator than anything else. Its main concern was controlling the Towers, but it’s hard to say how automated the Towers’ systems really were; perhaps Sestren had to give them detailed instructions on how to act, what to do with the environment and when to generate more bio-monsters, or maybe it only had to flick virtual switches to turn the Towers on or off when necessary. Sestren was definitely an integral part of the Tower network (to the point where the Towers couldn’t function without it), but I expect we’ll never know just how involved it really was…
I think the Sestren AI was the pinnacle of the ancients’ creations. Personally, I wonder just how sentient it was, and why it chose to remain loyal to the ancients if it had a choice at all.
Perhaps because of the same reason that Abadd remained loyal to his masters, even after he found out that it was impossible to bring them back. Without the Ancients, Sestren - like a drone - would have felt that it didn’t have a purpose. Lost and alone in a world no longer ruled by the Ancients, a drone would be difficulty deciding what to do besides carrying out what the Ancients would have wanted, or what it thought the Ancients would have wanted.
It’s also possible that the Ancients were ‘still alive’ at the time of Sestren’s reign.
i wonder who exactly abadd meant when he said “ancient masters”
did that mean a small group of ancients that he specifically served? all the ancients? the ancient rebels?
we just have to keep in mind that it was his duty (or at least he thought so) to revive them, which would make the idea of him governing the revival of all ancients quite unlikely.
it also seemed weird to me that a drone was put in charge of that. couldn’t an automated system do it?
I get the impression that his masters were the Ancients who built the Tower network, the group who thought they knew what was best for the world and the human race. We can’t be 100% sure, but it’d seem to fit the facts a little better than the alternatives; just how many of these Ancients there were is anyone’s guess, though.
By the Ancients’ standards of technology though, a Drone arguably was an automated system. Abadd may have been sentient, but that did seem to be more of an advantage than a drawback: he would have been able to adapt and defend himself (and his mission), and he never did stop being loyal to his ancient masters, even when he found out that they were gone.