History Webcomic / DriveDaveKellett

* HiveQueen: Rare male example: [[https://www.drivecomic.com/comic/act-4-pg-146/ The Gannath's Center]] is supreme overlord because their equivalent of Royal Jelly - eating 200-300 pineal glands of their rivals - has mutated them into a giant with hyper-intelligence. When combined with the Gannath's natural telepathy, they will naturally brainwash anyone on their psionic network.

** The Gannath are a totalitarian dictatorship purely because of their biology; when the Center dies, every successor and potential usurper is forced into a blood frenzy in a trial-by-combat-free-for-all, which keeps happening until about 200-300 Gannath die while exactly one survives. The sole survivor is then instinctually ordered to eat the pineal glands of the corpses, and undergoes a hormone-based metamorphosis that makes them gigantic, hyper-intelligent, violent, and completely narcissistic. This means that their entire race is genetically programmed to create the ''perfect'' tyrant every time the latest one dies.

** The guest story arc ''That Time the Veetans Defeated the Tesskans Forever'' shows that the Ring can be used to put things JustOneSecondOutOfSync, making them invisible and invulnerable, but unable to take any action, and use it to [[spoiler: cloak Tesskil and convince everyone they had erased it from the timeline]].
** Activating a ring engine while inside another ring engine results in an absolutely catastrophic explosion, big enough to wipe out entire space fleets . Cuddow decides to weaponize this, and begins designing a missile with twin ring engines instead of a warhead.

* InherentInTheSystem: La Familia has taken significant measures to ensure their family will always rule. La Familia's secret police ruthlessly crush insurrections. They carefully maintain a tight monopoly on the Drive, ensuring that all regions must obey them or risk getting cut off from the rest of humanity. They even took measures to ensure that reform could never happen from within. Familia members are taught from birth to believe that the current power arrangement is needed to prevent economic collapse. One popular Familia member who attempted it anyway was executed. Even a reform minded emperor, for all their power, would have to acquire the consensus of the rest of the family to attempt such a thing.
** The Gannath are a totalitarian dictatorship purely because of their biology; when the Center dies, every successor and potential usurper is forced into a blood frenzy in a trial-by-combat-free-for-all, which keeps happening until about 200-300 Gannath die while exactly one survives. The sole survivor is then instinctually ordered to eat the pineal glands of the corpses, and undergoes a hormone-based metamorphosis that makes them gigantic, hyper-intelligent, and completely narcissistic. This means that their entire race is genetically programmed to create the ''perfect'' tyrant every time the latest one dies.
* InsufficientlyAdvancedAlien: While they are certainly not this now, the Continuum's technological development is unusual in that, as far as they know, the Drive was the very first creation their kind invented. Kik finds this odd, since the Drive is a very sophisticated device.

* TheMole: Orla O'Malley is actually part of La Familia like Fernando, but only the reader knows this: She's here to keep an eye on the crew.

** It's recently been revealed that Orla is [[spoiler: not Familia. She's ''worse'': she belongs to the Jinyiwei, the Emperor's Secret Police. When this is revealed, Taneel is neither amused, nor unprepared.]]

** The Jinyiwei are meant to be the Emperor's enforcers, to ensure even other members of La Familia do not rebel. The previous head however helped Emperor Cruz in his coup.

-->'''Narration''': Evolution is funny. Generation after generation of Fillipods were naturally selected for stalks capable of ever-stronger van der waals forces. Basically, for reasons of diet. The Winter Tilla fruit has an amazing combination of proteins, carbs, and vitamins... but has a tree bark that's glass-smooth, and impossible to climb. Hence the natural selection towards van der waals forces: the Fillipods who could climb... could live to breed. It's an ability that's kept them alive for thousands of years. And, oddly enough, did so again when [[spoiler: their planet was cracked in half... and every Tesskan alive was flung 30 meters in the air.]]

** [[spoiler: Nosh]] is now a Vinn. "We've lost him. He's gone."

** Ultimately justified, as several human-designed AI's (or "Fishes", from artiFISHal intelligence) seemed to be benevolent and reasonable... until they randomly started killing people for no reason intelligible to their creators.

* RevengeBeforeReason: The Grasskans offer the Continuum an alliance against the Vinn, but the Continuum refuses due to carrying a grudge against them for stealing their technology. They get to have the pleasure of watching nearly all of them die, only for the Vinn to begin a CurbStompBattle against the Continuum too.