Random point about Lagi's body

Panzer Dragoon
1

There were some people who said that the crest in shellcoof wasn’t Lagi’s body.I was taking a look at some of PDS’s text :

From Dragon Book

“In the center of the airship,
Lagi laid still, his power
completely exhausted. Lagi’s body
was stone cold, but I knew he was
still alive. At least, deep
inside of me, I believed so”

From SK-Endow’s diary

“By destroying the Tower of the
Sky, Shelcoof, our journey came to
an end. Exhausting all his power,
he discarded his body, and entered
a deep sleep. I assume he has now
reemerged with a new body, and
chosen you as his rider.”

Aren’t these contradictating each other?

2

Those passages are certainly a little vague, but I wouldn’t say they really contradict one another. My understanding is that when Lundi says “Lagi’s body was stone cold, but I knew he was still alive”, he means that Lagi’s spirit or consciousness was still alive, even though his body had to be abandoned. The two passages seem to correspond with one another when looked at that way.

As for the dragon crests, I’m pretty convinced that they’re only meant to be carvings. On the one hand, if they really were meant to be bodies, it might help to explain why the dragon crest at the end of PDZ was different depending on Lagi’s physical form. Taking all the other evidence into account though, I do get the impression that they’re supposed to be ancient carved artefacts.

3

You said it yourself.The morphings are proof enough in my eyes.

What does discarding his body and entering a deep sleep mean?

You need a body to rest.That’s why I think they are a bit contradictating…

4

It’s possible that Lagi’s body was left behind in Shelcoof while his consciousness entered the crest. Lundi could have found Lagi’s body first before he discovered the dragon crest. The crest could be what made him believe Lagi was still alive.

5

My personal explanation is that Lagi’s spirit or consciousness (or whatever it could be called) left his exausted body and entered into the dragon crest, where it “rested” in a dormant state for some time. EDIT: As D-Unit said. :slight_smile:

Hmm… well there does seem to be quite a bit of evidence against that explanation, at least to my reasoning:

  1. In PDS, the different dragon crests all have the image of the dragon in exactly the same position. If they were really the bodies of dragons, could they realistically have all died with their bodies in that same pose?

http://www.panzerdragoon.net/theories/images/different_dragons_theory_1_21.jpg http://www.panzerdragoon.net/theories/images/different_dragons_theory_2_10.jpg

  1. In that passage above, Lundi says that Lagi’s body was cold, which seems to imply that he touched it. However, the dragon crest in Shelcoof was very high up on the wall in that enormous chamber, so it was presumably out of Lundi’s reach; that seems to imply that the crest and Lagi’s body were two different things.

  2. The text says that Lagi had abandoned his body, yet “Lagi” (or whatever remained of him) apparently lived on inside that dragon crest. Again, the implication seems to be that the crest and Lagi’s body were not one and the same.

  3. In PDS, the only descriptions of the crests we’re given are “A finely crafted engraving of a dragon” and “Crest in which an image of a dragon is engraved”. On the other hand, no text suggests that the dragon crest is a body.

  4. Also in PDS, Edge took the crest from Shelcoof to the Red Ruins in the Forest of Zoah, and when he placed it there it still had the image of the dragon on it. Lagi had definitely left the crest by that time though, so if it literally was meant to be Lagi’s body on the crest, it presumably wouldn’t be there any more.

  5. In my honest opinion, the crests really do look like carvings. Can it really be doubted that this is meant to be a carved image?

http://www.panzerdragoon.net/mysteries/images/the_mystery_of_dragon_crests_01.jpg

(Larger version)

… the dragon on the crest merges into the surface around it, and its legs are only a stylised zigzag shape, rather than anything realistic. The dragon doesn’t really have a tail either, only something that breaks apart into flowing abstract lines. Also, some of the alternative crests look far too flat to be bodies, not to mention the fact that they’re coloured in greys and whites (like the ancient machinery around them), rather than in their real colours:

The other thing that really convinces me is this question: why would Lagi’s body be embedded in the geometric centre of an ancient crest halfway up a wall, in a sideways-on position of flight? In my mind that just feels too bizarre and random to be the intended explanation, which leaves me with the alternative conclusion…

6

[quote=“GehnTheBerserker”]There were some people who said that the crest in shellcoof wasn’t Lagi’s body.I was taking a look at some of PDS’s text :

From Dragon Book

“In the center of the airship,
Lagi laid still, his power
completely exhausted. Lagi’s body
was stone cold, but I knew he was
still alive. At least, deep
inside of me, I believed so”

From SK-Endow’s diary

“By destroying the Tower of the
Sky, Shelcoof, our journey came to
an end. Exhausting all his power,
he discarded his body, and entered
a deep sleep. I assume he has now
reemerged with a new body, and
chosen you as his rider.”

Aren’t these contradictating each other?[/quote]

To be honest, I don’t think that the translations of those books are 100% accurate. If they were it would make sense that what Lundi is telling is would be much more specific. Both books seem to apply that Lagi went into some sort of sleep or hibernation, but they do appear to contradict one another (when taking them completely literally, at least).

In the Zwei endings, Lundi looks up at the crest and says “Lagi”. This can’t be a translation error since he speaks it with his mouth (as opposed to text on the screen so it could mean one of two things:

  1. Lundi thought the glowing light was Lagi, even though it was just the baby dragon or Lagi’s spirit left behind in the crest.

  2. It was actually Lagi in hibernation, before he left (to join up with the Sky Rider) leaving the baby dragon behind in the crest so that he could merge with it at a later date (119 AF)

I’m inclined to go with the second theory. There definitely was something in the crest that Lagi looked at (the baby dragon), and because he said “Lagi” that suggests that the developers wanted us to think that Lagi was in there too. However, as Lance pointed out, most of the descriptions the dragon crest describe it as just a craving or “engraving”.

Perhaps the crest was shaped when the dragon flew into it? Maybe Lagi created the crest around himself, and that shaped the actual crest. I agree that the crests seen in Epilogues A, B, C, and E simply look like cravings, but the crests seen below do look like there could be (or once was) a dragon inside of them.

http://www.panzerdragoon.net/theories/images/different_dragons_theory_2_10.jpg
http://www.panzerdragoon.net/theories/images/different_dragons_theory_1_21.jpg

7

“3) The text says that Lagi had abandoned his body, yet “Lagi” (or whatever remained of him) apparently lived on inside that dragon crest. Again, the implication seems to be that the crest and Lagi’s body were not one and the same.”

That’s just it.One of the texts implies that Lagi abandoned his body but the other doesn’t.

Oh and stone cold is just an expression;even if it isn’t Lundi saw the crest/body;doesn’t mean he had to touch it…

I honestly think that the crest in Shellcoof is both Lagi’s body and spirit altho that doens’t mean the body is funtional.

I see it like ciment really.Once it’s “stone cold” it can no longer me modelled(in this case used;it can no longer be a capable d-unit)

But the fact is Endow said Lagi discarded is body;that seems to imply they parted ways in someway.

But I would like to see Lance’s opnion (and everybody else’s really) about the crest in Ruins near the excavation camp 4.

I think the answer to all the Solowing crests could be the Heresy Program.It created them and scattered them across the world (are there more?maybe so…or maybe not) so that it could have numerous options when it came to be present in the world of men.

“The voyage that began,
when I tried to return the world
into the hands of the people…
The duty that spanned
thousands of years”

The destruction of Sestren Exsis was suposed to take place earlier I think.It could have been in the Zwei timeline.But the Heresy needed to conjugate each one of its’ “weapons” at the same time.Azel,the DV (inside someone) and a dragon vessel .

8

Hmm… the passage from Dragon Book 3 is definitely much more vague, but in light of what’s written in the Old Diary, I’d say it can be taken to mean the same thing. What strikes me is that if you break each passage down, they appear to make very similar statements:

Old Diary

  1. Lagi’s “spirit” left his exhausted body.
    “Exhausting all his power, he discarded his body”.

  2. Lagi’s “spirit” entered into a dormant state.
    "… and entered a deep sleep".

Dragon Book 3

  1. Lagi’s body was exhausted.
    “Lagi laid still, his power completely exhausted. Lagi’s body was stone cold”.

  2. Lagi lived on in some way.
    “I knew he was still alive”.

… so if Lagi was “still alive” even though his body was “exhausted”, that’d seem to link up OK with what the Old Diary says about his spirit living on separate from his exhausted body, even though Dragon Book 3 isn’t so specific. As Solo said, we know that the PDS translation is pretty loose; I expect these two diaries are meant to state things in a similar way, and that Dragon Book 3’s meaning just became vague in translation.

Although it’s a pretty normal expression, I wouldn’t say it’s usually used in a loose way; at least, it’d strike me as strange if someone said that something was “stone cold” if they didn’t know that it was literally completely cold. Lundi would only really know this if he’d come into contact with Lagi’s body, which makes me think that it was discarded elsewhere in Shelcoof, rather than embedded in the crest - and that Lundi had approached the body, looking for signs of life, but that he’d found none. Again though, this could just be another oddity arising from translation, so I might be taking it too seriously.

If you’ve got the time to read it, the new version of my “different dragons” article actually covers my thoughts on the dragon crests, too (in a lot more detail than I could cover here). In brief though, my explanation was that the dragon crests act as genetic incubators, so if a dragon’s spirit / consciousness enters into a crest, the crest will slowly generate a new body for it.

That’d seem to explain the crest at the end of PDZ, which Lagi’s spirit apparently entered into when his previous body was exhausted, and it could also explain the crest at the beginning of PDS. For a few reasons, I get the impression that the dragon from PD1 (or rather its spirit) is meant to have entered the crest at Excavation Site #4 after the events of that game, and that it emerged from that crest with a new body shortly before PDS took place. As I say, I’ve written up the reasoning behind all this in the article.

9

Yes we are pretty much agreed when it comes to those crests.

The only odd thing about exacavation camp 4’s is that the dragon first appears in a much higher point.

But that could mean that the dragon had been “born” into a ne wbody for sometime now…

10

I personally think that Lagi transmuted into pure energy, like the divine visitor. And since he was a part of Sestren, he could conjure up a virtual ‘shell’ which he could inhabit. This would explain how he basically had immortality up the the point where the Heresy program liberated the Sestren network.