Contents

• Introduction
• The Origin of the Dragon
• Why Did This Dragon Betray the Ancients?
• Why Did the Ancients Create This Dragon?
• How Did a Coolia Become a Dragon?
• Conclusion

Introduction

At the heart of every Panzer Dragoon game lies the dragon, the iconic creature that the gameplay and storyline of the series both revolve around. In each game this mysterious beast emerges from the shadows of the past to take a human rider upon its back, carrying them across the desolate world on a mission that even they can barely comprehend. Even after the revelations of Panzer Dragoon Saga though, the dragon may still seem like a great enigma. Several questions regarding it are left without a straightforward answer, leaving the player to once again make their own deductions.

The aim of this article is to delve into the truth of the dragon, to explore the questions that are not obviously resolved in the games themselves. Why was the dragon brought into existence? Why did it do what it did? And how does the dragon tie in with the Ancients, and the background story that cast such a long shadow over the Panzer Dragoon world?

The Origin of the Dragon

By the end of Panzer Dragoon Saga, much of the series’ background story had been laid out for the player. It had been revealed that the Ancients - the dead civilisation whose ruins littered the world - were far from benign, and that their greatest legacy, the enormous structures called Towers, existed to oppress and control the human race.

The events leading up to the end of Panzer Dragoon Saga saw Edge and the dragon setting out to destroy the Towers once and for all. The Towers were linked together by an ancient data network known as Sestren, and an AI within this network controlled the Towers themselves. Edge journeyed to the heart of the Tower of Uru and uploaded himself and the dragon into this network, so that they could destroy the Sestren AI and end the Towers’ reign.

If we have not literally been told why the dragon came into the world, Panzer Dragoon Saga at least outlined its origin. Just before the final battle with the Sestren AI, the player was treated to five “flashback” full motion video sequences - presented as records stored in the virtual network - which briefly ran through the events of the dragon’s life. It turned out that the dragon was not a straightforward creature at all.

Back before the events of the games took place, a program emerged within the Sestren network that rebelled against the Sestren AI. It was a sentient program that evidently opposed the Towers and their continued operation, and although it unfortunately has no official name, this entity is often referred to by fans as the “Heresy Program”. It appeared as a black dragon-like shape within the virtual reality of the network, as pictured here.

The Sestren AI was quick to eject the Heresy Program out of the network, but surprisingly it managed to live on in the outside world. Existing only as spiralling, luminous energy, the Heresy Program travelled in search of a physical host, which it ultimately found. The domestic riding animals known as coolias were one of the most common creatures in the Panzer Dragoon world, and the Heresy Program entered into the body of a young coolia called Lagi.

Of course, this is where the story of Panzer Dragoon Zwei begins. Lagi did not grow up to be a normal coolia, as the Heresy Program radically changed his physical form, presumably by manipulating his genetics. Lagi ultimately evolved into a “dragon”, the most powerful kind of bio-engineered creature designed by the Ancients - a living weapon with outstanding combat capabilities. When the time was right, Lagi took his owner Lundi upon his back, and set out on the mission that the Heresy Program had given him: he pursued and destroyed Shelcoof, the deadly Tower of the Sky.

In the following chapters of the storyline, Panzer Dragoon and Panzer Dragoon Saga, the dragon(s) guided by the Heresy Program continued this mission, always striving to end the influence that the Ancient Age still had on the present world.

Although these revelations shed much light on the nature of the dragon, they also raise countless questions. What was the Heresy Program, and why did it exist in the first place? Why was the Heresy Program able to survive outside of Sestren, and why was it able to enter into a symbiotic relationship with Lagi? The most approachable question is one of the most pressing, though: why did the Heresy Program do what it did?

Why Did This Dragon Betray the Ancients?

When Edge and his dragon face off against the Sestren AI at the end of Panzer Dragoon Saga, the AI shares a few words with the dragon (or rather, the Heresy Program dwelling within it). The Sestren AI’s dialogue confirms something important about the nature of the Heresy Program:

I see you have returned… With a human… Our purpose is to fulfill the will of the ancients. But… You have chosen a different path… You ignore your duty… You disobey the ancient ones…

It seems that the Heresy Program not only originated within the Sestren network, but it was an intended part of that network, something created by the Ancients themselves. Like the Sestren AI, the Heresy Program existed to carry out the will of its Ancient masters; by attempting to destroy the Tower network it was clearly betraying them, though. So why would the Heresy Program even consider going against the wishes of its creators?

Of course, there are numerous possible explanations. One of the most popular theories is that the Heresy Program was reprogrammed by the rebels who existed in the Ancient Age, which is quite an appealing explanation. Unfortunately though, there is not really any evidence in the games that suggests or supports this theory, leaving it in the realm of pure speculation.

The games themselves may hint at another reason for the Heresy Program’s betrayal, though. Among the Ancients’ other creations were the humanoid bio-engineered creatures called drones, and like the Heresy Program, they did not always serve their masters forever.

In Panzer Dragoon Saga we witnessed Azel, an advanced drone, struggle with her own thoughts and emotions until she gave up trying to serve others and finally asserted her own free will. The Ancients may have created Azel as a servant, but by the end of the game she had disregarded this purpose in order to follow her own wishes. Importantly, Azel was able to do this because of the advanced intellect that she had been gifted with.

The Ancients created drones like Azel to operate their advanced technologies; the interface was apparently psychological, with the drone’s mind connecting directly to the technology in question. For a drone to be capable of interfacing with something as complex as a Tower then, they needed highly advanced intelligence, and this is where problems arose for the ancient scientists. The advanced intellect of drones such as Azel caused them to develop emotions and ultimately to start thinking for themselves. The Seekers recognised Azel’s emotional nature in Panzer Dragoon Saga:

In order to control the Towers, she was given superior intellect. As a side effect, she gained human emotions.

The Drone Record from Panzer Dragoon Saga also confirms that advanced intelligence was the source of a drone’s free will:

To synchronize with complex structures, a higher thought level is needed. But a unit at this level may create its own identity.

By ignoring her servile role and seeking out her own path in life, Azel had succumb to these unavoidable “flaws” in the Ancients’ design. The Drone Record does not indicate that this would have been an issue in the Ancient Age though, as the drones’ creators would have been there to solve such problems:

Correcting these difficulties is extremely dangerous, and in most cases, the drones must be terminated.

By the time Panzer Dragoon Saga took place though, the Ancients were long gone from the world, and no one existed to keep Azel’s behaviour in check. Her own free will led her to help Edge and his dragon in their mission to destroy Sestren; because the Ancients created Azel to interface with the Tower of Uru, she was able to transport Edge and his dragon into the Sestren network. Her abilities even allowed her to destroy the Tower itself.

Knowing that Azel was capable of asserting her own free will in this way - and that she actively destroyed the legacy of her creators in doing so - it should perhaps not come as a surprise that the Heresy Program could do the same thing.

Like Azel, the Heresy Program was a sentient being created by the Ancients; Panzer Dragoon Orta even confirms that Sestren’s program-entities were organic and literally alive, however odd that may seem. Also, when the Heresy Program spoke to Edge at the end of Panzer Dragoon Saga, it certainly seemed intelligent; and as intelligence could ultimately give rise to free will in the Ancients’ creations, the Heresy Program would presumably be no exception.

When Orta journeys through the still-active Sestren network in Panzer Dragoon Orta, she can witness a recording of the final conversation between the physical dragon and the Heresy Program, a scene that was stored in one of Sestren’s memory cells. During this exchange, the Heresy Program reveals a surprising amount of emotion: it shows a concern for the wellbeing of the physical dragon, and also their “friends”.

This empathy appears to be the final key to the Heresy Program’s motivation. It seems very probable that the Heresy Program’s intellect had caused it to develop feelings and thoughts of its own, just as Azel had. With that in mind, it does not seem so strange that the Heresy Program “ignored its duty” and “disobeyed the ancient ones”, when its “duty” was to be a part of the Sestren network and to keep humankind oppressed.

If the Heresy Program had begun to think for itself at last, it may simply have decided that the world would be better off without the Ancients’ legacy, just as Azel did. As the Sestren network was monitoring the known world, the Heresy Program would have plenty of information from which to arrive at its own conclusions. Of course, when the Heresy Program eventually tried to act against the will of the Ancients, Sestren simply tried to terminate it - just as the ancient scientists would have terminated their problematic drones all those millennia ago.

Why Did the Ancients Create This Dragon?

Although we can see how the Heresy Program could have turned against its creators, an important question remains: just what did the Ancients create it for in the first place? What was its purpose, and why was it able to bond with a physical creature - Lagi the coolia - and guide that creature’s thoughts?

Needless to say, this seems like an incredibly specialised ability, and it would be very odd if the Ancients did not give the Heresy Program that power on purpose. Also, not only did this program-entity transform Lagi into a dragon, it was even shaped like an abstract dragon-symbol itself: this is presumably no coincidence.

To understand what the mysterious Heresy Program really was though, we need to look at another example of its kind, and indeed the games have shown us one. As well as the black Heresy Program, a golden dragon-program also appeared in the “flashback” full motion videos at the end of Panzer Dragoon Saga.

This entity appears in the first of these full motion video sequences, the one that reveals how the Heresy Program was ejected from the Sestren network; in fact, it is the golden dragon-program itself that chases the black Heresy Program out. The full motion video shows them moving swiftly through a Sestren data stream, before the golden dragon-program uses some kind of energy attack on the Heresy Program, causing it to spiral into darkness.

While it has been suggested that the golden dragon-program may have been the Sestren AI itself, this does not seem the most likely explanation. When Edge battles the Sestren AI at the end of Panzer Dragoon Saga, it of course has an entirely different physical form. Also, in the full motion video where the golden dragon-program appears, the Sestren AI’s booming voice-over seems to indicate that they are indeed separate entities:

Impurity detected… Pursue at once…

It sounds as if the Sestren AI ordered the golden dragon-program to pursue the “impure” Heresy Program, which would apparently make sense. We know from Panzer Dragoon Orta that the Sestren network was filled with different program-entities, all of which presumably served the main Sestren AI. The question is still unanswered, though; even if the Heresy Program and the golden dragon-program were equivalents, what actually were they?

It seems that there is another piece to this puzzle though, as the golden dragon-program makes one other appearance in these full motion video sequences. It can also be glimpsed in the fifth and final “flashback” full motion video, the one that sheds light on the events of the original Panzer Dragoon game. This is where the Sestren AI activates the Dark Dragon (the “D Type 01”), in the hopes of destroying the Blue Dragon, which of course contains the Heresy Program:

Impurity reacquired… Eliminate it once more… …Activation of D Type 01… confirmed…

Vitally important is what appears on-screen as this announcement is being made. The view switches quickly to the golden dragon-program in the Sestren network, zooms towards it, whites out, and then pans out again to reveal the Dark Dragon (as it appeared at the beginning of Panzer Dragoon).

Team Andromeda presumably constructed the sequence in this way for a reason, and by associating the golden dragon-program with the activation of the Dark Dragon, this full motion video could be making an important implication. It seems likely that the golden dragon-program entered into, empowered and guided the Dark Dragon from Panzer Dragoon, just as the Heresy Program guided the Blue Dragon during that game.

If this deduction is accurate, it would seem that the Heresy Program and its golden twin were indeed the same kind of entity. Both of them were programs that dwelt within the Sestren network, both of them were shaped like an abstract image of a dragon, and both of them could exit Sestren so as to enter into the body of a dragon in the real world.

If this is indeed the true nature of the dragon-programs, it is not so difficult to see why the Ancients would have created them all those centuries ago. A being that could act as a true emissary between Sestren and the real world - which could exist as a program but also “download” itself into the body of a bio-engineered creature - would indeed be a powerful tool and a flexible servant.

How Did a Coolia Become a Dragon?

There is one complication to all of this, however. When the Heresy Program was ejected from the Sestren network, it did not enter into an actual Ancient Age dragon (as the golden dragon-program presumably did). The Heresy Program entered into Lagi, a simple beast of burden, and transformed his humble body into that of an Ancient Age dragon. If the dragon-programs were created to guide the dragons of the Ancients, why would the Heresy Program be able to do this?

It might be important to consider what dragons and coolias represent in the Panzer Dragoon universe. Dragons were the most powerful bio-engineered creatures developed by the Ancients, but ultimately this is all they were: a living weapon like the other pure-type monsters left behind from Ancient times. On the other hand, coolias are a strain of mutated monster living in the present world. As with all mutated types, coolias are the descendents of bio-engineered creatures that adapted and crossbred over the centuries; coolias and dragons both stem from the same ancient origin.

This could explain how the Heresy Program was able to enter into the body and mind of such a creature, as a few millennia of natural selection may not have caused the coolia to become an unsuitable host. Still, if the Ancients intended their dragon-programs to enter into combat-ready bio-engineered creatures, why did the Heresy Program have the power to evolve Lagi’s body so that he became such a creature?

This ability displayed by the Heresy Program may not be as strange as it first seems. The body of an Ancient Age dragon was allegedly able to metamorphose and evolve when necessary, and Lagi’s dragon body also achieved this; he evolved through many different physical forms during the course of Panzer Dragoon Zwei. But what is it that allows a dragon to metamorphose in this way? In Lagi’s case, it is heavily implied that any evolution was the work of the Heresy Program that dwelled within him - after all, without the Heresy Program Lagi would never have evolved beyond his coolia origins.

If the Heresy Program inside Lagi caused his various metamorphoses and step-by-step evolution, it would stand to reason that Ancient Age dragons achieved their evolution in the same way. In all likelihood, their genetics were also manipulated by the dragon-program they carried.

This appears to be the final piece of the puzzle. It seems likely that the dragon-programs were designed not only to enter into the body of a living creature, but also to tamper with that creature’s genetics as and when necessary. Apparently this is just what the Heresy Program did in Lagi’s case: it transformed his body into the much more powerful dragon-forms that it was presumably familiar with. Just as Azel turned her powers against her creators when she destroyed the Tower of Uru, so it seems the Heresy Program used its abilities in a way that its Ancient masters would never have intended.

Conclusion

Once again, Team Andromeda and Smilebit have managed to weave an intriguing mystery through the heart of their games. This is another topic where the players are invited to do their own thinking, to put the fragments together themselves and come to their own conclusions. Can the explanations of this article really be considered the “truth” about the dragon? They certainly seem to fit the facts, but as is often the case in the Panzer Dragoon world, the facts are relatively few. Only time and future games can shed more light on these things, and confirm or deny any deductions of what our dragon truly is.