Thanks, Abadd. I don’t have PDO myself so it’s been a while since I read the encyclopedia stuff there. I find it interesting though that the entry mentions “old texts” about riders (presumably humans since the average drone probably wouldn’t feel fear or compassion, let alone note that it could no longer feel them after coming in contact with the dragon). I had figured Lagi picking up various humans had been an aberration. Perhaps not as much as I’d thought.
I thought shellcoof didn’t have a drone either and was controlled by Sestren or just AI as an “alive” ship of sorts… 
Well, it was just a theory I heard. A possible to explanation for the guardian dragon’s ‘exception to the rule’. I don’t remember the games ever explaning how the Shelcoof was controlled, but it’s likely that Sestren was controlling it directly, yeah.
The games never explained why the Tower of Uru or the PD1 Tower were controlled either did they?
I safly assume that they are controlled all by the same force.
[quote=“GehnTheBerserker”]The games never explained why the Tower of Uru or the PD1 Tower were controlled either did they?
I safly assume that they are controlled all by the same force.[/quote]
Well, ultimately they were all controlled by Sestren. Zadoc states that “Sestren controls all of the Towers”. What I was suggesting was that maybe the Shelcoof was “driven” by a drone who would otherwise be riding the Guardian Dragon.
Yes I know.But I don’t agree with your theory
I can’t possibly think of a reason why that should be true.
That’s kind of like a few of your theories Gehn. There were no facts to support them and no facts to discount them for sure either so you went along believing you are right, I don’t see why you react that way when other ppl do the same…
Anyway, that IS a possibility solo but I think that we’d have been shown that drone if that was the case
Besides if that drone was required to man the Shellcoof why would Sestren bother repairing it since the potential drone was likely dead for good. Unless other drones had that ability as well but with the kind of specialisation we see in other drones I don’t think that would be the case again. And if someone was to take out the drone he’d have to take out Shellcoof first so there wasn’t really a chance of the shellcoof surviving but the drone dieing… So, yeah no reason to repair it unless Sestren by itself can control it or if it’s an “alive” ship, not exactly a monster but more like something the twin guardians which were clearly more machine than animal as well but still had their own AI…
Again though, it IS a possibility even with the things I said
React?What exactly did I do?I was just pointing out that I don’t agree with him that’s all.
touch?! I wish I weren’t so slow off the mark on these ones, but I’ll try to offer some reasonable (if not already aired) input.
I would have to assume that the Rider is indeed a safeguard to prevent misuse.
However, I got to thinking: from what we’ve seen, its the dragon (lagi) choosing the rider, so misuse wouldn’t really be an issue. It is almost entirely at the sole discretion of Lagi to choose who his rider is, which means that the safeguard theory might not be entirely fool-proof.
And there’s some evidence to suggest that Lagi’s choices have been based on something more than random encounters.
But to discredit myself (yet again) there’s no way of knowing if Lagi’s discretion extends to the other dragons in the ancient age.
Maybe the question my musings offer is: Do the Dragons of the past and present (Lagi) have some kind of criteria when choosing riders?
Well we know at least two cases in which the Dragons were made for the rider : Abadd and his mare;Azel and Atolm…
Now that you mention it, why didn’t Abadd had a real ancient-age dragon? You’d expect that his mission would be important enough to have a dragon prepared for him in the Ancient Age, but instead he had to make an enhanced dragonmare by himself.
Maybe a dragon wasn’t needed? Maybe the empire didn’t find it? Maybe it was dead like Abadd’s masters?
He was awakened prematurely…
I don’t know if we can base that anywhere or if we can judge anything as “premature” now since all the ancients plans have gone wrong but even so the same thing could happen to his dragon…
A dragon was clearly needed, how else would he be able to get to the ruins? Even if the Empire didn’t find it, Abadd should have known its location, and I also doubt the dragon would be dead, since dragons don’t seem to die that easily.
That shouldn’t have kept him from activating his dragon though.
When he says that in PDO he means awaken from his “charging” state while inside the Cradle.
Maybe his dragon had awakened prematurely in PDZ and was called Guardian Dragon 
No, that’s not what he meant.
“I have awakened prematurely… and have found nothing but filth and destruction”
I think he meant he should have been awakened after the Towers had completed their regeneration process, in a new and peaceful world. Things didn’t go as planned though. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t have a dragon, because there weren’t supposed to be any bio-engineered monsters left when he was supposed to be awakened?
That’s what you think.Not everything in PD has a deeper meaning you know?
Sure, Gehn, but lines like that are often written with certain meanings in mind.