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Chapter 3: Panzer Dragoon Saga
Written by Lance Way
Author's note: A few passages in this synopsis have been borrowed from the character summaries that I have written for The Will of the Ancients.
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Game Information:
Year: 1998
System: Sega Saturn
Genre: Role Playing Game
Creator: Team Andromeda
Japanese title:
Azel - Panzer Dragoon RPG
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Plot Synopsis:
After the events of Panzer Dragoon drew to a close, roughly thirty years passed before the next chapter of the story, Panzer Dragoon Saga, took place...
Opening Sequence
Edge was a young mercenary, part of a team that had been hired to guard an Imperial excavation site out in the Frontier. They had been stationed there for many months already, without their services really being called into action; very little had ever happened at the site. During one bleak day in Imperial Year 119 though, the workers finally disturbed a hostile monster within the ruins; Edge and his fellows were immediately called down into the excavation to deal with the beast.
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| At the same time, floating through thick clouds, the battleships of the Black Fleet made their way to the same excavation site; the Black Fleet was an elite unit of the Empire's military forces, commanded by a man named K. F. Craymen. Craymen had recently gone renegade however, and he had taken the Black Fleet under his own personal control, in order to further his own goals.
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| At the excavation site, things were not going well for Edge and his team. The creature had turned out to be a powerful pure-type monster rather than a weaker mutated one, and it was all but immune to their weapons. Running for a more powerful gun that had been dropped on the ground, Edge tried to take the creature on alone.
During the battle, Edge inadvertently found what the Empire was in the middle of excavating from the dormant ruins. It appeared to be a girl, but her white skin and white and black armour made her look more like an Ancient Age relic or monster rather than a human being. She seemed to be sleeping - or rather, she seemed to be in suspended animation - in a cavity in the wall.
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| Staring at this mysterious girl, Edge was distracted almost long enough for the monster to overcome him; coming to his senses though, the young mercenary was able to take out the platform that the beast had lumbered onto, plunging it into the darkness below. Edge, his friend Rhua, and their Captain had barely survived the conflict, and they hobbled out of the ruins.
When they reached the surface, the mercenaries found themselves confronted by Craymen and his loyal henchmen; believing them to be allies, Edge and his companions went to them for help. To Edge's horror, one of Craymen's men - a laughing maniac known as Zastava - raised his gun and shot both Rhua and Edge's Captain at almost point-blank range. He was going to take Edge out as well, but Craymen's orders stayed his hand; the Black Fleet had no such time to waste. When Edge revealed that he had seen the girl within the ruins though, he was knocked unconscious with the butt of a gun and left on the cold rocky ground.
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| When Edge finally awakened, the ships of the Black Fleet were moving steadily away, carrying the mysterious girl - still encased and sleeping - with them. Edge futilely went to pursue the departing ships, but he was instantly confronted by Zastava on a thin platform over a yawning chasm. This time there was no one to hold Zastava back, and he shot Edge square in the chest; the boy's limp body tumbled backwards and down, falling into the depths of the excavation.
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| To divert the Empire while he went about his search, Craymen had arranged for an immensely powerful detonation to take place in the Imperial Capital; the explosion occurred soon after they departed from the excavation site, levelling the entire city. The Emperor knew that Craymen must be the man responsible however, and the deaths of all those people were as unimportant to him as they were to the Black Fleet. Travelling in his massive flagship, Grig Orig, with much of the Imperial Fleet in tow, the Emperor set off in pursuit of Craymen.
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The Ruins
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| Edge's body had plunged into a deep pool of water on the very bottom floor of the ruins, where it continued to float, completely still. After some time, a mysterious ball of white, glowing light descended from above, and it entered into him. Gasping for breath, Edge awakened; he struggled out of the water, confused.
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| In the room beyond the pool, Edge searched for a way to begin his ascent towards the far-off surface. He discovered an Ancient Age gun in a storage capsule, which he took with him, and he couldn't help but notice an enormous carving of a dragon mounted high up on one wall. It was an ancient dragon crest, an artefact like the one Lagi's spirit had entered into at the end of Panzer Dragoon Zwei, but of course its significance eluded Edge: he was more concerned with activating an elevator that he had found nearby.
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| Edge soon succeeded in unlocking the elevator, but it took him up to a high platform where he was confronted by a legion of pure-type monsters. Edge drew his newly-acquired weapon, but when he tried to fire the gun he found that it was malfunctioning, as only clicking noises emerged from its ancient casing. The beasts lumbered ever closer, emerging out of the darkness all around him. To Edge's surprise though, it seemed that his life was destined not to be ended by those monsters' claws; massive shafts of energy shot down from above without warning, and the approaching horde was annihilated.
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| Edge found that his life had been saved by a dragon, which landed on the platform to greet him. Although Edge of course knew nothing of these things, this dragon was guided by the Heresy Program, the renegade entity that had been ejected from the Ancient Age data network long ago.
Looking into his mind, the dragon communicated with him, causing strange visions to float through his consciousness: visions of the future, as Lundi had seen all those decades ago. Vaguely understanding the dragon's wish to reach some kind of towering structure on a far-off island, Edge climbed up onto the creature's back; together, they ascended out of the darkness.
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| Edge made his way back to the place where his companions had been attacked by Craymen's men, and there he found his Captain; the man was still alive, if barely so. It was him that told Edge of Craymen's identity before he finally passed away; angered and horrified by the murder of his friends, Edge vowed to hunt Craymen down to find vengeance for their deaths.
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The Valley
Returning to the dragon, Edge flew out through the Imperial excavation site and entered the gloom of the valleys beyond. After some time he chanced across a lone man riding a Coolia, who was being pursued by an Arachnoth, an enormous and deadly mutated monster; taking advantage of the power of his dragon, Edge saved this defenceless man from the beast. Grateful for being rescued, the man revealed that his name was Gash, and also that he was a Seeker.
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| Due to the Imperial propaganda that Edge had been subjected to for some time, he was under the impression that the Seekers were no more than a group of troublesome outlaws, dangerous thieves who plundered the ruins of the Ancient Age. The mysterious Gash almost took offence at this assertion, as in reality the Seekers' actions were simply no worse than those of the Empire; the Seekers did not use the technologies they excavated to conquer and dominate their fellow humans as the Empire did, either.
Gash's Coolia had unfortunately been lost during the battle with the Arachnoth, so rather than leave him stranded out there in the wilderness Edge agreed to give the Seeker a lift. According to Gash, there was a village known as Cainus not too far away.
The Village of Cainus
When the pair arrived at the village, Gash was disturbed to find that the place was lifeless; its buildings were toppled and reduced to heaps of rubble. Darkness was closing in by then, so Edge and Gash resolved to camp out there for the night.
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| Seated around a blazing fire that they had made in the ruins, the pair talked long into the night. Edge recounted how he had come to meet the dragon, but Gash was a little more secretive about what he was doing out there: he mentioned that he was in search of an individual referred to as the "Divine Visitor", but he would say little more on the subject.
Gash informed Edge that Craymen had caused the Seekers various problems too, and that the Black Fleet had killed many of his fellows. Eventually Gash chanced across a message that had been left in the ruins, which bore disturbing news: apparently Edge was well on the trail of Craymen already, as the Black Fleet had been responsible for the destruction of Cainus itself.
The Garil Desert
The following day Edge agreed to give Gash a further lift, this time across the sprawling wastes of the Garil Desert, which evidently stood between him and wherever Craymen had gone. The desert was made up of vast rocky basins, and the arid land was populated by a colourful ecosystem of mutated monsters.
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| Whenever possible Edge flew underground, travelling through yawning tunnels that had been dug out by the enormous sandworms that inhabited the region. In the end, on Gash's apparently sound advice, Edge took what appeared to be a good shortcut through some abandoned Ancient Age ruins.
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| The ruins lead down into the massive subterranean caverns that stretched beneath the desert. Although they were pleasantly surprised at the lack of hostile monsters, it was not long before Edge and Gash were confronted by an enormous flying beast known as a Gigra. This creature was incredibly resilient to damage, and their conflict with it was inevitably a long one.
To Edge's astonishment, his dragon underwent a physical metamorphosis towards the end of the battle, its body changing and subtly evolving. In its new, more powerful form, the dragon was finally able to overcome the Gigra.
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When Edge and Gash at last reached the other side of the desert, the Seeker bid his friend farewell. He was extremely grateful for all of the help that Edge had given him, and he promised that if he could ever give the dragon rider any aid in the future, he would gladly do so.
Before he departed, Gash gave Edge a pendant that would identify him as one of the Seeker's trusted friends. He also directed Edge to a travelling caravan that he knew was passing through the region, where Edge might be able to pick up more information regarding Craymen's whereabouts.
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The Caravan
The caravan was home to a clan of hunters, nomads who depended on the mutated monsters of the world for their survival. Their leader was a grave and serious man named An'jou, and he revealed to Edge that their caravan had recently been attacked by Craymen's Black Fleet. It seemed that Craymen and his men had headed away to the north, their destination an area of sea that the hunters referred to as the "Forbidden Zone".
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The Forbidden Zone
When Edge arrived at the Forbidden Zone, he found that it was a waterscape littered with ruins and relics from the Ancient Age. Upon entering the area, Edge inadvertently triggered an ancient security system, and unfortunately the largest relic - which the ruins' automated voice identified as a "Sky Transporter" - became deactivated and locked.
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| By reassembling the pieces of the Sky Transporter's seal, Edge was able to reactivate the relic and use it to be transported far above the clouds; it was there that he finally caught up with Craymen's flagship and its escorts. The Black Fleet ships were no match for the dragon, and with the escorts destroyed and the flagship disabled, Edge boarded the craft.
On the silent bridge of the ship Edge found Craymen's second-in-command, a man named Arwen, whom he recognised from the excavation site. Arwen was sitting wounded in the commander's chair, and he revealed that Craymen was long gone; apparently he would have already reached his destination, and arrived at the ancient Tower that he sought.
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| To Edge's surprise, the disabled ship was hit by a huge explosion, and when the smoke and light cleared an enormous black dragon swooped into view beyond the shattered windows. The rider of this beast was none other than the mysterious girl that Edge had seen in the ruins beneath the excavation site. She had evidently been awakened, and she seemed to be fiercely loyal to Craymen. Edge rushed back to his own dragon, diving out into the open sky; the girl and her dragon, the monstrous Atolm, followed and continued to attack him.
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| Atolm was an immensely powerful living weapon from the Ancient Age, but he was evidently weak after the millennia of slumber that he had endured. Edge's dragon proved to be more powerful in battle - for the moment, at least - and the girl wisely chose to escape to safety, riding away on the black dragon and disappearing into the clouds. Edge was left alone, mystified as to what her role in all this truly was.
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