If you haven’t done so yet, please read the news post here:
http://www.thewilloftheancients.com/news/panzer-dragoon-saga-guide-translations
These translations contain answers to questions which we may never have gotten the answer to had these not been translated. I’m sure people here will agree that it was worth getting these translated 
. Feel free to discuss these translations in this topic. I’ll post my own thoughts on the new information the translations revealed later on.
Great to see these live on the site, Draikin.
I really like the story about the mediators. Its a good explanation as to why the dragon riders were all so young, and why the dragon chose seemingly random human riders each time. A much more preferable explanation to the Divine Visitor guiding/controlling Lundi and Kyle as well as Edge.
Also, even though Orta wasn’t a mediator to the dragon program, I have a theory that the dragon program influenced the physical dragon’s actions, and that was part of the reason why he chose her. Of course being Edge’s daughter was a greatly influential factor, but Orta also chose “the path mankind will follow”. She was arguably more human than drone (in terms of “free will”), a suitable candidate for choosing whether to stop the New Empire, the dragonmares, and Abadd from taking humans in a direction that paralleled the Preservation Faction in obvious ways.
The 146 -147 text also acts as evidence that the Sky Rider, the 2nd mediator, was actually human. The text says “there must be a human to make the decision put forth in the original goal of the program.” The strongly implies that it was a requirement for the Sky Rider to be human in order for the dragon to choose him.
Of course he could also have been an exception to the rule - perhaps the Sky Rider was the dragon’s original drone rider, created by the Destruction Faction? The Seekers (assuming they were the authors of the text) may not have been aware of this exception. However, if the Sky Rider was a drone, this does seem to go against the Destruction Faction’s philosophy - that “one ought not to interfere with the laws of nature, but rather leave things to progress as they would”. If the Sky Rider was a drone, I imagine he would have been created with human like emotions, much more human than those found in Azel. Alternatively, he could have been a descendant of the Ancients (as rumored in Panzer Dragoon Orta), perhaps a human rider from the Destruction Faction who hibernated until the world was healed enough for the Towers to be destroyed, and was awakened by the dragon after the events of Panzer Dragoon Zwei (when he had no time to find his original rider instead of Lundi).
Maybe the drone rider shared their philosophy.
If the Sky Rider was indeed human, we will have a hard time explaining what the green lifeforce was that escaped from his body when he died. Maybe the dragon was trying to heal him, but I see it as something analogous to a soul.
We can explain his armour easily enough, but not the lifeforce.
Nothing completely rules him out being a drone still.
Even if it’s just a “what if?” scenario, it would have been fitting if the Sky Rider had been Lundi because it would have tied up a loose end and created a sense of continuity, but that’s just my opinion.
Of course, there’s always the possibility that we cannot trust the information we’ve been given. >:)
If the information was written by the Seekers - and the author’s knowledge of Edge going to fight Sestren strongly suggests that it was - then they would know what happened to Lundi. And the text says that Lundi never reunited with the dragon. Now there’s always room for error, but I think the chance of error is slim here. Don’t let me spoil the dream, of course. >:)
You’re right that it doesn’t rule him out being a drone. But it makes the issue more controversial. The evidence has tipped his identity in the human direction some more.
I like the idea that he was drone who shared the Destructive Faction’s philosophy.
The green lifeforce could be explained if he was an Ancient and the Ancients were human but not entirely human.
I like the idea of him being a living breathing Ancient. It is possible.
I bet if he had lived he would have had quite a story to tell.
FAAAAANtastic!
Arrggh, too much at once. But just a couple things for now:
It does seem quite apparent from the perspective, that this is more-or-less intended as a Seeker account. And a lot of it’s in line with the ‘from what we know / can ascertain’ styling of much of the Orta Encyclopedia material, as well as some of the Azel ingame texts. As always, they leave us a lot of wiggle (and writhe) room. 
And something already on my mind in the last few days, which is perhaps even more pertinent now: the quote from Yukio Futatsugi about 30% of the information in the games being lies…
OK, strictly speaking this info isn’t in the games. And Futatsugi-san, as an admitted liar, may have just been lying to us anyway? lol
I loved that statement immediately, because I felt I’ve always intuitively understood it. But attendant to that understanding, was also a conviction that the games exhibit a strict integrity in their obfuscations. And so we may expect a kind of fair-play, those lies are not delivered to us indiscriminately or arbitrarily. We’re always given a fighting chance to deduce what could be a lie, what can’t be a lie, and how likely it is a given literal source would lie to us.
And I think and hope that fully clarifies the attitude I was attempting to explain before Solo. I realize I’m probably the #1 troublemaker around, when it comes to these debates. But consider it like this: if 30% of our information is in fact false, then in forcing everything to fit together perfectly, we might presumably become about 30% in error?
So I feel the need to absorb this all for a bit, as it rattles a thousand little cages…
It makes me wish they’d make a new PD RPG. When I look at business ethics these days, I am surprised that PD Saga was even made.
But there’s a lot of symbolism in PD like the Light Wing becoming the Solo Wing.
The creators were very talented to say the least.
Yeah, I think that the game world being is full of lies, or at least mistakes made by the characters, is one of the draws into that world.
Some of the lies/mistakes are quite clearly pointed out. The Seventh Emperor didn’t sacrifice himself because we were shown what happened. The Divine Visitor wasn’t the dragon because we interacted with the game world. Other lies aren’t so clear, such as how much truth was contained in the books of Zoah, but we can deduce that at least some of it was made up or distorted. I think much of this covers the 30%, but any records present events that are shown off screen could potentially be erroneous too.
I think it would be less than 30% (given that some of the mistakes are very clear), but it’s going to be more than 1% error.
Also, it is probably worth me pointing out the ontological/epistemological distinction here. What exists (in the Panzer world) is distinct from the knowledge we have about what exists. So, for example, in the real world it is either true or false as to whether there is another planet with life on it. We don’t know the answer, and even if we did discover an answer, we could make a mistake. But even though we don’t know the answer (at all or for certain), there is still a truth of the matter. The same reasoning can be applied when seeking “truths” about the Panzer world, it just requires a suspension of disbelief. Otherwise we’d have to say that the characters cease to exist in the story when they walk off screen. 
?
Nevermind me. Forget I said anything! 
Very cool. Thanks Draikin and GlitterBerri!
I don’t know why you guys are doubting the text when it says the Sky Rider was a drone.
“The dragon, sensing the activation of the Tower, appeared once more to search out a mediator.”
“Having obtained one, the dragon was activated with the goal of stopping the Tower”
“As an addendum, the mediator chosen for this conflict was Kyle Fluge.”
It still didn’t have a mediator, but it might have had a rider.
The Sky Rider’s purpose might have been to serve as a messenger.
The sequence of events appears to be:
Of course Zwei and Saga both portray visions shared directly by the dragon with its riders. So if there is any canonical sense to the Sky Rider…that alone probably couldn’t be it.
But seeing as in Zwei the Heresy program first appears in a village, and in Saga right next to a mediator to begin with…there might have been no need for an temporary rider to begin with.
Or maybe PD1’s story was merely envisioned before anything started to make any sense 
This is amazing props to Draikin for this much needed translation.
Now, that part in Panzer Dragoon Saga when Azel runs off to Uru and you read those data recorders about her capture and creation make more sense.
[quote=“Ehndow”]Very cool. Thanks Draikin and GlitterBerri!
I don’t know why you guys are doubting the text when it says the Sky Rider was a drone.
“The dragon, sensing the activation of the Tower, appeared once more to search out a mediator.”
“Having obtained one, the dragon was activated with the goal of stopping the Tower”
“As an addendum, the mediator chosen for this conflict was Kyle Fluge.”
It still didn’t have a mediator, but it might have had a rider.
The Sky Rider’s purpose might have been to serve as a messenger.[/quote]
The text clearly says the Sky Rider was a mediator though.
This is all but confirmation that the Sky Rider had to be a human.
Something we didn’t know yet is that the Empire did in fact activate the Tower in Panzer Dragoon, which in turn led to the activation of the Heresy Dragon and then the Prototype dragon. One has to wonder how they managed to do that. Perhaps it wasn’t a complete activation, seeing how that only seems to happen when the Protoype dragon neared the Tower.
Awesome job on the translation. Really wish we could have seen a PDS 2.
[quote=“Draikin”]
[quote=“Ehndow”]Very cool. Thanks Draikin and GlitterBerri!
I don’t know why you guys are doubting the text when it says the Sky Rider was a drone.
“The dragon, sensing the activation of the Tower, appeared once more to search out a mediator.”
“Having obtained one, the dragon was activated with the goal of stopping the Tower”
“As an addendum, the mediator chosen for this conflict was Kyle Fluge.”
It still didn’t have a mediator, but it might have had a rider.
The Sky Rider’s purpose might have been to serve as a messenger.[/quote]
The text clearly says the Sky Rider was a mediator though.
This is all but confirmation that the Sky Rider had to be a human.
Something we didn’t know yet is that the Empire did in fact activate the Tower in Panzer Dragoon, which in turn led to the activation of the Heresy Dragon and then the Prototype dragon. One has to wonder how they managed to do that. Perhaps it wasn’t a complete activation, seeing how that only seems to happen when the Protoype dragon neared the Tower.[/quote]
Oops somehow missed those lines 
But the same text does say he was a drone. That last paragraph does also imply the dragon was after a mediator and Kyle was the one…not Sky Rider…
The section on the Prototype Dragon says that the Dark Dragon’s rider was a drone. The Sky Rider’s identity is not explicitly mentioned.
Yep, Kyle was the third mediator. The Sky Rider is referred to as the second mediator (it says that second mediator was killed by the Prototype Dragon).
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]I like the idea of him being a living breathing Ancient. It is possible.
[/quote]
Me too . Tbh I’m not sure even the Team really knows his true identity and was just put in the intro with not much thought given to it .
[quote=“Solo Wing”]
The section on the Prototype Dragon says that the Dark Dragon’s rider was a drone. The Sky Rider’s identity is not explicitly mentioned.
Yep, Kyle was the third mediator. The Sky Rider is referred to as the second mediator (it says that second mediator was killed by the Prototype Dragon).[/quote]
:anjou_embarassed:
For some reaosn I was reading this part - “Sestren charged the Prototype Dragon with the task of protecting the Tower and eradicating the dragon. Its rider…” - as saying “Its rider i.e. the dragon’s rider” and not the “Prototype Dragon’s rider”.
Me too . Tbh I’m not sure even the Team really knows his true identity and was just put in the intro with not much thought given to it .[/quote]
It does kind of make sense if he were an actual Ancient too. I like that idea more than him being human because it shows that people from the old world had come back to set old wrongs right. The fact that we never know forces us to wonder.
[quote=“Ehndow”]
:anjou_embarassed:
For some reaosn I was reading this part - “Sestren charged the Prototype Dragon with the task of protecting the Tower and eradicating the dragon. Its rider…” - as saying “Its rider i.e. the dragon’s rider” and not the “Prototype Dragon’s rider”.[/quote]
I thought the same thing at first too, but since the paragraph is about the Prototype dragon specifically, it seems to be referring to the Dark Dragon’s rider.
[quote=“Ehndow”]For some reaosn I was reading this part - “Sestren charged the Prototype Dragon with the task of protecting the Tower and eradicating the dragon. Its rider…” - as saying “Its rider i.e. the dragon’s rider” and not the “Prototype Dragon’s rider”.
[/quote]
I had figured that’s what you were going by Ehndow, it is ambiguous in the reading, but as such not actually unclear. I even had a post asking about it, along with an hour or so worth of other material about five words from completion last night when this silly PC crashed on me. Just one point from it for now:
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I think this actually becomes the first explicit suggestion that the Dark Dragon’s rider really is a drone? For me that virtually cancels out the other reinforcements that the Sky Rider is human since, other than the small coloring / shading differences both those riders appear identical.
I’ve picked up on a ton of small contradictions in this document, and of course I don’t take anything as gospel. But I’ll elaborate in a bit.