The Imperial Academy - we get some information about it as the Empires center of knowledge and the place were the leaders of tomorrow are educated.
But is it more? I always thought of it as some kind of “secret society”, some kind of council that is guiding the Emperor and having its share of power.
I only see it as a research isntitute actually.Although there is no doubt it heavily affects the course of Imperial history…
Wasn’t Craymen part of the Imperial Academy? I seem to remember reading that somewhere, but I don’t remember where (it might have been someones assumption). At any rate, he must have had access to some of the knowledge the Academy has acquired or else he wouldn’t have known about Azel.
I think that the Academy was like an evolved version of Seekers’ compilers. Since the Empire originally started off as a tribe of Seekers, their researchers would have grown into an organised institute. They must have discovered a lot of information about the Ancient Age (The Tower and Azel for starters) so I do think that it is possible that the Academy did have some sort of influence over the Emperor. However it’s difficult to do more than make guesses when it comes to figuring out the Academy’s true motives.
I always thought that the Imperial Academy was an institution of learning located in the Imperial capital. The information contained in Panzer Dragoon Orta regarding the Academy states that it survived the destruction brought to bear against the Empire during the Great Fall “intact”. However:
http://www.panzerdragoon.net/factions/images/the_old_empire_07.jpg
How the hell did the Academy survive the explosion that burnt the Imperial capital to the ground in mere moments? Does anyone have an explanation?
a) It’s an underground facility? 
b) It’s an ancient ruin restored so it basically withstands pretty much anything?
c)It’s not in the Capital (where exactly are we told it is?)
d)It’s an organization that spreads thoughout the Empire, having numerous facilities.The main one would make sense to be in the Capital tho or maybe even near the Imperial Palace (Grig Orig in Saga).
These paragraphes from the Imperial Tower report suggest that the Academy is located somewhere in the Imperial capital:
**"Due to the battle between the
dragons, attacks from the sea
monsters, and the destruction of
the Tower, most of the Imperial
Capital was destroyed. The loss
of life will mark this as one of
the darkest days in our history.
Fortunately, the Palace and
Academy suffered only minimal
damage, but these events led to a
reexamination of our defense plan.
And, as a result, we have begun
building a large scale flagship,
‘Grig Orig’."**
I suppose the Academy must’ve been underground or located within a sturdy ruin when the Imperial capital was engulfed by an explosion in Panzer Dragoon Saga.
There ya go.A flaw right there.
How the event described in that text be the same if the Grig Orig wasn’t even built at that point?
Yep, Craymen was definitely an Academy officer:
Moreover, due to the fact that Craymen
was a member of the Imperial Academy
at the time of his rebellion,
the Academy regards this fact with great
shame, and has abolished the position of
"Examiner," which was the rank that
Craymen held, as well as the act of
appointing Academy officers from among
commoners.
They pretty much prove that the Academy was located in the capital at the time of PD1, but the Empire may simply have been smart enough to relocate it after the capital’s near-annihilation: as they did with the Emperor himself, securing him away in Grig Orig.
Maybe. But if the Academy only suffered minimal damage when the nearby Tower’s monsters invaded the capital, then it could’ve remained there. There’s no information stating explicitly that it moved. Also, wouldn’t the Imperial capital be the safest place for the Academy?
The capital is supposed to be situated on a network of ruins too…
Evidently not, with people like Craymen running around. But yeah, if the Academy was largely situated underground or if it had archives of its knowledge (and even other branches of researchers) in other Imperial cities it’d likely still be able to survive; there seem to be any number of possible explanations…
The capital from the time of PDO was meant to be built upon a ruin complex (i.e. the city in and above the Episode 8 ruins), but the old capital seemed like a different city entirely, and there was no real suggestion that it was built upon an ancient site as well (that I can remember, at least). I got the impression that by PDO’s time another city had simply become the capital, seeing as how Craymen eradicated the previous one at the time of PDS; looking at that explosion, I wouldn’t expect there’d be much point in trying to rebuild it…
The timeline states that the Imperial tribe carved out its initial territory by purging local ruins of monsters and claiming the technology within. The 7th Emperor’s advisor also says something interesting:
“In a blinding flash, our Capital was reduced to dust. The Academy reported that the underground ruins were created with technologies beyond our understanding”.
I wonder if the old capital was built on the same ruins as the new one. I also wonder when the Academy filed that report: before or after the capital’s destruction?
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]The timeline states that the Imperial tribe carved out its initial territory by purging local ruins of monsters and claiming the technology within. The 7th Emperor’s advisor also says something interesting:
“In a blinding flash, our Capital was reduced to dust. The Academy reported that the underground ruins were created with technologies beyond our understanding”.[/quote]
I suspect that part of the timeline was only referring to Imperial excavations in general; after all, they were the true source of the Empire’s power. The oddly-translated timeline also has this to say about the destruction of the capital:
Special No. 0 Bullet-Emitter experiment fails catastrophically. The Imperial City disappears.
… but as Craymen was the real cause for the explosion, it sounds as if he may have arranged for the Empire’s latest experiment with ancient technologies to go hideously wrong. That might explain the advisor’s words to some extent, and I’ve always thought he was tentatively telling the Emperor that “The Ancients’ immense powers have always been beyond our understanding, which is why this blinding flash occurred.” (As in, the Empire knew that their own experiment had brought on this event, and they attrtibuted the explosion to their inherant lack of knowledge regarding the ancient technologies).
EDIT: Actually most of that entry in the timeline seems to be mistranslated in the version we have - it doesn’t look like it’s meant to be talking about the destruction of the Capital at all, just some random experiment that failed nine years earlier - so ignore all that. (Oops.)
If the old capital was built upon a ruin complex - which does seems possible, even if it’s not literally suggested - I get the impression that the new one was built in a different place. The Encyclopedia entry seems to imply that it’s a fresh site, as far as I can tell:
Once the western coast was once again
under the imperial rule, a new Imperial
Capital was built atop a huge site of
ruins from the Ancient Age,
and the mass influx of the chosen people
began.
Helped in part by the large amounts of
Ancient Age resources found in the ruins
that supported the new capital,
the new Empire soon grew to rival its
once-lost glory.
Another theory is that the Grig Orig or another ship could have become home for the Academy. While it’s hard to image the Grig Orig housing the whole Academy, maybe it was spread across several ships?
I think the idea of it being located underground it more likely, however.
Maybe it also uses some massive ancient underground complex to store all this information? I can’t believe that they write everything down in tomes and store it in some fortress.
They just have to use more advanced means to do their work or I’m pretty disappointed. 