Drones

Drones and Clones, instead of being naturally-evolved races like the rest of the members of the Concord, were actually created to do manual labour. They have, however, played a significant role in the Concord's history; being responsible for the Obsolescance Wars. Drones, at least, are signing members of the Concord, though, as, after being 'banished' from the Concord at the end of the Obsolescance Wars, finally rejoined years later as the Affiliated Habitats.

The Clones are the original template, having been created years earlier than the Drones. They had a unique body shape that was specially designed to be cheap, efficient and capable of performing a variety of tasks. About 2 metres tall, they have a central body, with two long, stocky, limbs sticking out of the bottom used for mobility and a manipulative limb sticking out of each side of the top of the body. An interesting feature of the design is a round sensory body part that is attatched to the top of the body, which also contains the Clone's neural network; Clones are given a wide range of sensory abilities, able to see, hear, smell, taste and feel. However, the Clones were also designed to be more like simple, organic, robots than sentient individuals and as such could only perform simple manual tasks.

The Clones had a number of advantages over robots, such as the fact that they could repair themselves, did not require electricity to run, lasted for many decades before breaking down could be built from common organic elements and could be grown cheaply instead of being built on a production line. Most people do not know what Clones look like in any detail as they are usually dressed in full-body environmental suits (which are usually hazard yellow) so they can survive in different environments, but also to make then look less 'alive,' saving more sensitive individuals distress.

Drones are like a 'next generation' version of Clones. Unlike Clones, they are self-aware but highly devoted to their work; as such they are not dressed like Clones and usually wear no clothes at all. Drones were designed to lead 'teams' of Clones to more efficiently complete tasks; they have the 'arms, legs, head' design of their fellow Clones with a few alterations. Drones have a long snout with sharp teeth (being designed to eat more nutritious meat) and have longer arms and fingers with pointed claws on the end (for handling small components), they have elongated feet and can walk flat on their feet or on tip-toes; similarly, they are equally comfortable walking with their legs bent or upright. Because of this, Drones can stand between just over 1 metre and almost 3 metres tall at a stretch (but tend to stand low, out of humility). Drones have powerful senses, able to see in complete darkness (their irises are in fact slightly bioluminescant) and find flaws in a structure by simply placing an ear (which look like bats' ears) to a wall; they are also very hardy, able to survive in space, or deep under water, for over an hour without harm (though this is not recommended). They have toughened cartilage instead of actual bone and, being very lanky with small muscles (but a high muscle density), can dislocate parts of their body to fit into pipes down to as small as 20 centimetres in diameter. The Drones originally had pasty white skin, but a random genetic mutation that spread through their population in a few decades seemed to quickly cause most Drones to develop leathery, dark red, rusty coloured skin.

Drones are very intelligent and have a strange, logical mindset that could be considered autistic. They don't operate well in social situations but are great in purely administrative or engineering positions. A neat party trick is to throw a big tangle of pieces of string or wire into a box and ask a Drone to find the other end of a certain piece of string; they get the right answer almost immediately.

It is a common misconception that the Drones and the Clones started the Obsolescance Wars; in fact, they never did anything wrong; it was the impact on employment and economics of their presence that started the Obsolescance Wars. The Drones just left voluntarily to bring the chaos to a close (it is rumored that the Zambarau prefer the Drones to any other race in the Concord, and that they had a significant influence in their design).