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Characters > Keil
Written by Geoffrey Duke, June 2003
Thanks to the bleak nature of our beloved Panzer Dragoon setting, we never learn what happens to Kyle, the hunter who became a dragon rider, who then saved the world from a menacing black Tower. He's named Keil Fluge by our Japanese cousins and Kyle is the closest English pronunciation. Kyle is essentially the hero of the first Panzer Dragoon game to appear on the Saturn but his status as a hero is often overlooked simply because his character was never explored to any satisfactory degree. At least when it comes to his in-game role, which other than the intro, saw no cut scenes that might develop his personality further. His courage is never in short supply, however, so we can assume it's woven into the fabric of his identity.
Panzer Dragoon lacks a compelling story of its own but is meant to be a mere chapter in a story larger than itself. Feast your eyes on one of the most memorable FMV sequences ever developed first, lest you discount the game's part to play in what is an unfolding epic...
 
Kyle and his two hunting companions are exploring a sun-burnt canyon on their coolias when a Battlecruiser flies overhead, casting an unmissable shadow over them. Bewildered, they cannot help being distracted by the marvel which captures their collective gaze.
 
A moment's pause blinds them to something moving under the ground behind them, and in that moment, a burrower shoots up from the earth, knocking one of the trio off of his domesticated coolia (burrowers are scorpion-like creatures that dig just beneath the ground whilst leaving a trail of broken earth in their wake). Kyle succumbs to his hunter's instinct, kicks his mount into gear, and chases after the burrowing beast with the sole intent of exacting his own brand of hostility. Guided by his hunter's instincts, Kyle refuses to allow the killer monster to escape. He aims and fires his auto-reloading crossbow several times only for the creature to narrowly dodge the bolts by shifting side-to-side.
 
Another burrower springs up from the earth alongside him as if to mock his intent, but in an excellent demonstration of swift hand-eye coordination, Kyle fires a crossbow bolt into the wannabe killer just as it lunges itself at him in the time it takes to blink an eye. Its screeching war cry becomes a shriek of pain when it's introduced to the penetrating sharp tip.
 
Kyle continues chasing his prey until he reaches the entrance to an ancient, unexplored ruin buried into the side of a canyon. Perhaps Kyle and his friends planned a trip to the place all along. Kyle chases a burrower into an ancient warehouse with what seems to be dormant pure type creatures literally hanging from the ceiling. The silence permeating this graveyard of monsters belies the terrors that await Kyle within. Still, the huge warehouse full of curious ancient weaponry beckons Kyle further inside. The question is: who filled it with such weapons?
 
Before Kyle realises it, his coolia walks onto a huge elevator, which rises at a close distance alongside the inhuman creations. The silent creatures could be inactive or incomplete mechanical gaurdians, but Kyle soon confirms the presence of pure type guardians when he reaches the upper level of the ruin. When the elevator stops, something shrieks and falls on the ground in front of him. Kyle looks down to see the viscious burrower all but torn to bloody pieces and shaking in agony. Before he can react, three orange laser beams coming from above rain down around Kyle, closely missing him, and the pure type creature responsible soon jumps down on his coolia where he happens to be mounted, and thus flattens the hapless steed under its clawed feet and body weight. That could've been Kyle's fate if he hadn't flung himself off the mount with all his hunter's dexterity. Kyle faces his worst nightmare in the form of an ancient, clawed monster that seems completely encased in shell-like armour-plating. He runs from the creature only to be reminded that it's not far behind by the sound of its metallic feet clattering against the ruinous ground as it chases him. Kyle reaches a dead end in both a literal and metaphorical sense. The monster roars as if it is enraged by the human interloper's presence. Cornered and left with no alternatives, Kyle unloads all the bolts of his auto-reloading crossbow into the creature. But the bolts ricochet. The towering creature corners Kyle and it soon seems as if Kyle's life is about to come to an end. The ultimate irony for a hunter is to become the hunted and this seemed to be Kyle's fate until a huge rock fell from above, teaching the creature a first hand lesson in how to crush something.
 
Kyle looks up to see where the huge rock had fallen from when a blue dragon swoops down through a hole in rocky ceiling above and soars past him into the distance. Soon after another, larger black dragon enters the ruin in close pursuit. Once these two mythical creatures greets his eyes, Kyle almost cannot believe what he is seeing. He's so awed by these two dragons that he drops his crossbow in shame: he has no right to call himself a hunter. Kyle sees fire in the distance and a rapidly approching tide of flames illuminates the area in front of him. The blue dragon is riding the tide, staying just ahead of the expanding fireball, which obliterates everything around him. Kyle is swept up in the exlosion and falls into unconsciousness. After waking up, Kyle wonders how he can still be alive. Barely surviving the perils within the ruin, he eventually stumbles on the two dragons fighting one another in the background -- a huge black dragon is locked into a head-to-tail chase with a smaller blue dragon coated in bony plating, and shows no signs of relenting.
 
The blue dragon swerves away from a fireball and is pushed high into the air above by the resulting spherical explosion. The rider of the blue dragon looks down to see what he had just narrowly avoided, just to look up to see his mistake swooping down on him. The rider is shot through the chest by what seems to be a lightening fast laser beam emanating from the black dragon and thereby mortally wounded. I guess the underlying theme is that distractions can be detrimental to your health.
 
Kyle watches helplessly on his knees at a distance. The blue dragon glides down towards Kyle who scrambles away a few inches at first, not sure what to think. The armoured rider stretches out a trembling arm as a desperate gesture for help. Kyle doesn't see how he can refuse to honour the dying man's last wish and so touches his beckoning hand with his own.
 
Just as their arms connect Kyle's vision races through a long tunnel of neon colours where suddenly, much to his dismay, he realises he's floating in mid air before a huge black towering structure in a place so real he can barely distinguish it from reality. Both the clouds overhead and the sea underneath flow and wave at furious speeds. A storm is brewing. He sees the Dark Dragon entering the monolith while a voice struggles to speak: "Don't... let him go back to the Tower... my dragon... knows the way". Kyle is pulled back through the tunnel in time to hear the Sky Rider utter one last word full of desperation: "Please". The rider's wound glows bright green and releases a stream of green particles before his body hits the ground dead. Kyle fails to grasp the meaning of such green particles, so stares in awe as they trail off. The dragon looks to the sky and sets free a heart stopping roar to mourn his fallen comrade. It looks at Kyle and in the form of a gentle cry asks for an answer.
 
Kyle decides not to let the Sky Rider die for nothing and therefore continues the mission he undertook: to stop the Dark Dragon from reaching the Tower at all costs. I can see two ideas behind the mysterious rider's death:
1. He was a good drone who defied enslavement to the ancients but wasn't quite as adept at killing and shooting things, as a human would be. This would explain why Kyle replaced him as a protagonist. We gamers can of course relate to a human more than we could a drone, if the Sky Rider was one.
2. He was the dragon's very first rider whose death showed us the steps he was willing to take to save the world, or he was someone who knew the importance of the mission to the point where he was willing to sacrifice his own life.
Either way, with heroes like Kyle in the world there's a glimmer of hope for humanity yet. Kyle picks up the huge gun that once belonged to the Sky Rider and mounts the armoured blue dragon we would come to know as Lagi to rid existence of an unparalleled evil. The hunter lets his hunter's instincts take control of him once again. The Sky Rider's gun is clearly designed for human hands, which alone suggests that the ancients were human or that there were humans in the Ancient Age who wielded advanced technology. The ancient energy weapon fires white energy pulses of incredible destructive power that the Empire would surely be eager to harness. As we know, the Empire excavates countless ruins across its territory, but still deems weapons of its kind as rare artifacts; it is no wonder they are so highly coveted.
 
Kyle helped destroy a Tower, not to mention an army of bio-monsters it was built to mass produce, and thus saved the world. Few can boast such an accomplishment. Kyle succeeded where the Sky Rider -- who seemed quite experienced -- failed. His expert aiming skills certainly came in handy; being used to riding a coolia no doubt contributed as well. The Dark Dragon reached the fabled Tower in spite of Kyle's and his dragon's efforts to stop it after all. The Tower went active the moment the Dark Dragon was within communication range, so there was an urgent need to deactivate it as soon as possible to save the lives of the people in the surrounding area. Of course, Kyle and Lagi welcomed the challenge, and nothing that stood (or flew rather) before them survived. Lagi and Kyle killed the Tower's guardian, the Dark Dragon, and even the Empire was powerless to stop them. Before catching up with the Dark Dragon, the Empire threw everything it had at its dragon nemesis to stop it from reaching the capital but armoured warships weren't adequate for the task (the Empire was actually trying to ward off both dragons... to no avail).
  At the end of Panzer Dragoon Lagi obliterates the black Tower outside the Imperial capital, but not before surrounding Kyle with a protective orb of surging electric energy and floating him away. He wakes up afterwards on a sandy shore to find footprints in the sand around him in an all too familiar pattern. Then Kyle looks up to the sky to see light beams piercing through the clouds. This is where things become a little obscure; we never find out what happens from that point onwards. History seems to have relegated Kyle and the role he played to the annals of oblivion.
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Related Articles:
Dialogue > Panzer Dragoon Script
Characters > Kyle (a shorter Kyle summary)
Theories > Panzer Dragoon Ending Theory
World > Blue Dragon
Back to the Characters Section
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