Sestren is said to be the network that connects the ancient ruins to each other. Together with the Towers, it allowed the Ancients to monitor and control the world. The various Data Transformation Gateways allowed the Ancients to enter the network and be transported to any of the ruins throughout the world.
Now what if the Ancients got more and more accustomed to living inside the network as beings of data, free from the physical limitations of the “surface world”? That might explain why the Ancients created the drones, because then they could spend more time inside the data network, their alternative world. After all, the real world was a wasteland so there was nothing worth of interest there.
In the end, Sestren was also the perfect place to hibernate during the restoration of the world’s ecosystem, since their bodies could not degenerate there. It was then simply a matter of waiting until the Towers had restored the world. This is all just theory, but it might explain why the Ancients are sometimes considered to be gods instead of humans. They could have been human and “inhuman” at the same time. Thoughts?
The ancients would still need to return to their bodies eventually if they hoped to enjoy the fruits of their labour (i.e. a restored world).
If they had in fact uploaded their minds to Sestren I can imagine someone or something erasing their collective consciousness from the system, or destroying the host bodies they stored in hibernation on the planet’s surface. In any case, the will of the ancients was immortalized in the form of their Towers until their reign was brought to an abrupt end.
Abadd tried and failed to ressurect his ancient masters… indicating that it was a possibility… or was it? Who knows.
Who is to say that there aren’t more Ancients in hibernation elsewhere? Remember, there is proof of TWO factions of Ancients, and Abadd was only trying to resuscitate his ‘masters’…not the entire Ancient population.
In any case, I’m pretty sure we’ll see a walking, talking, living Ancient in a future Panzer Dragoon game. Some fans think a living Ancient would dispell some of the mystery and greatness of the story of the PD universe…but I think it would make it even greater, if such a thing is possible.
If what we’ve seen from the Sestren network in PD Orta is correct, the system is perfectly capable of transforming physical bodies into data. The Ancients would have no need of keeping their bodies in hibernation somewhere else, since the Sestren network could also store them. The Data Transformation Gateways could simply rebuild the Ancients after they had been awakened in Sestren.