History Webcomic / Drive

[[redirect:Webcomic/DriveDaveKellet]]

[[quoteright:193:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/webcomic-drive-001_4779.png]]

->''"The story is serious. The characters are hilarious."''
-->-- '''Jeff Kapalka''', The Post-Standard

''[[http://www.drivecomic.com/ Drive]]'' is a scifi webcomic by Dave Kellett, author of ''Webcomic/{{Sheldon}}''. It takes place a few hundred years in the future, in which humanity has discovered FTL space travel in the form of the [[TitleDrop Ring Drive]], and has a large intergalactic empire, ruled from Madrid, on Earth. They are at war with mysterious aliens, called the Continuum of Makers, who invented the Ring Drive humans "discovered".

The story mainly follows an amnesiac lizard creature, using the name "Skitter", with an impossible talent for piloting ring ships, which even the Continuum can't match. But we're also shown some of the politics of La Familia, who closely guard the secrets of the Ring Drive in order to keep in power, and the history of a certain individual of the Continuum, which for lack of a name will be referred to as the "Rogue Maker".

The comic also routinely brings in guest artists to write and draw collections focused on a mini-story of dubious canonicity. Some are clearly acanonical (such as the weird time/space thing by [[WebComic/SaturdayMorningBreakfastCereal Zach Weiner]]) while others ''could'' be canonical (such as the story of how the Veetan's beat the Tesskans ''forever'').
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!!This series provides examples of:

* AbusiveAlienParents: r-selecting species with lethal rites of passage seem common.
** The Continuum reproduce asexually and rapidly if they want to, treat their progeny as cannon fodder with nothing but a number to identify them, form no emotional attachments to them whatsoever and emotionlessly dispose of them as punishment for transgressions. One in thousands survives the heat of battle and becomes a Maker.
** Tesskans abandon their offspring to the wild, eventually allowing the survivors to rejoin the pack when they gang up on and kill the pack's oldest member.
** The Astina have hundreds of pups and then require them to prove their worth to their family. When Orla catches a pup stealing, his father kills him with his bare hands for getting caught.
---> '''Sett''': "800 children... and maybe five of them with wits."
* AbusivePrecursors: Most species, [[http://www.drivecomic.com/archive/170719.html like the Veetans]], remember the ancient Sill as warlike conquerors who subjugated their ancestors in ancient times.
* AlcubierreDrive: The Ring "pinches" space, allowing ships to go FTL. Well, not so much "pinch" as "Generate a Singularity close enough to the front of the ship to start dragging us in, but far enough away that we're not instantly spaghettified. Also, keep it at that magic distance until we turn it off or get shot down".
* AllegedCar: ''Machito'', before the Emperor upgraded it.
* AlwaysChaoticEvil: The Tesskans appear to be this.
* AppliedPhlebotinum: The Ring Drive. Only the Continuum knows how it really works, and they aren't in the mood to explain. [[spoiler:The Fillipods have figured it out as well, but only their most important members know this for fear of retribution by La Familia.]]
* ArtificialHuman: The great sin the Rogue Maker committed was to build an android with a full AI, creating a "Spirit that was also a Maker." The Collegium was not happy about it, I tell you what. Said android is still active in the present day.
* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: Why the last remaining Sill monks are not too fussed about dying out and losing all remaining presence on the physical plane. One of them implies that their minds continue to live on in the Great Quiet.
* AsteroidThicket: Skitter loses a Continuum ship in one. Subverted in that it's not your typical SpaceIsAnOcean Asteroid Thicket -- they could easily avoid it, if they wanted to, and it's only dangerous because they're crossing it at FTL velocities.
* BanOnAI: One of the Continuum's oldest and strictest laws. Ahmis, one of the most brilliant makers the Continuum had ever seen, was sentenced to death for building one and became TheHeretic.
* BeneficialDisease: The Vinn parasite causes all sorts of neato superpowers to develop within its host: [[MakeThemRot cytotoxic venom]], a sixth sense, [[InvisibilityCloak chromatophores]], "Bioelectrogenesis" [[spoiler: read: [[ShockAndAwe the ability to throw thunderbolts from the palm of one's hands]]]], etc. The only drawbacks? The infested lose all memory, becoming an entirely different person. They also lose the ability to reproduce.
* BenevolentPrecursors: Oddly, while most species remember the ancient empire of the Sill as warlike AbusivePrecursors, [[http://www.drivecomic.com/archive/170718.html the Fillipods]] have a much rosier memory of them. For some reason the Sill never conquered Tesskil, and instead taught the Fillipods art and poetry.
* BerserkButton: Nosh has a history with the Tesskans.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Nosh, and Veetans in general. An info page lists the Tesskans flash-bombing a Veetan planet as the critical error in the three year Tesskan/Human war. The resultant mobilisation of the Veetan Defence Force resulted in Tesskil being conquered ''a week later''.
-->'''Nosh''': Show respect to my captain.\\
'''[[{{Mook}} Tesskan]]''': ooOOooh...whatcha gonna do, pacifist? Punch me?\\
'''Nosh''': '''No'''... but I am very good hugger. [''picks Tesskan up from behind with a "hug"'']
* BigEater: Veetans. There's an in-universe poem about the sight of a Veetan eating. It ends, "A Veetan eating is not joy, but more like ''abject fear''"
* BigScrewedUpFamily: La Familia won their way into royalty through their monopoly over the Drive. Naturally, this has lead to underhanded power struggles.
* BilingualBonus: The Empire's English-Spanish Hybrid is usually written as plain English, but it occasionally gets peppered with Spanish words.
* BizarreAlienBiology:
** The Continuum reproduce asexually, are born from silica-based cocoons with basic knowledge and motor skills after a 2-day term, and they feel nothing unusual.
** Skitter's mohawk can detect gravity waves, allowing him to maneuver around obstacles nobody else would notice until too late.
** Fillipods look kind of like caterpillars, and their legs/feet/stalks have an incredible grip via Van der Waals forces. They have a stinger on their head which injects its target with a sedative, which works even on the Fillipod it came from. Also, they're incredibly "huggable" to the point that pillow companies are trying to make pillows that feel like a Fillipod.
** The Vinn are actually a number of species infected with a [[TheVirus parasite]], but this parasite spreads a number of useful genetic traits across each of those species. So most Vinn tend to have "bioelectrogenesis, venomous necrotoxins, chromataphore cells in their skin/hides, sharp vision due to minimal diffraction of incoming light, and shark-like electroreception".
* BlackBox: The first emperor was able to reverse engineer the ring engine, and duplicate it, but he had no idea how it worked. His best guess was that [[AlcubierreDrive it somehow "pinches" space]]. It's likened to trying to flick a penny over a heavily clothed table, which could take hours. But if the cloth is pinched in the center, it only takes a fraction of the time. According to the renegade Maker, it was invented by the founder of the Continuum and pinches space by manipulating dark matter to generate a [[UsefulNotes/BlackHoles singularity]].
* {{Blackmail}}: Amara Till threatens to give out the blueprints for the Grasskan FTL drive if the Emperor doesn't give the Grasskans sovereignty over Saseet as part of their deal, which would end La Familia's monopoly within their own empire.
* BlackSheep:
** [=IndustriaGlobo=] is a MegaCorp that has tried many times to hock the drive schema. The Empire hasn't shut them down permanently, but they *have* ruined their shipyards and HQ. The main reason they're still in business is because the CEO is a Cousin.
** The Tres Primos are a trio of Famillia SpacePirates who rob the Empire and give the profits to the citizenry.
* BuffySpeak: Lots.
-->'''Nosh''': A Moebius is figure-eight that goes loopty-loopty-loop.
* TheClan: La Familia, descendants of the first Emperor and the only ones allowed to work on the Drive, there are thousands of them and they rule the Empire in law and in practice. While Slaughter is ruled by the mafiaesque Five Families.
* CameBackStrong: [[spoiler: Nosh]] gets cured of his Vinn infestation, but he gets to keep the handy mutations it imparts. As director Steven says, they *could* make him back into a normal [[spoiler: Veetan]], but everything works ''better'' now so they won't.
* ColourCodedEmotions: The Colegium's trialroom has a special paint that reacts to the pheremones of those inside, changing color in accordance with their mood.
* CommonTongue: A trade language named Standard Imperial English-Spanish Hybrid, or "Hybrid", has been mentioned.
* ComicallyMissingThePoint: Nosh, fairly often.
-->'''Taneel''': [[SarcasmMode Wonderful]]. So they're bigger and faster... and I'm flying '''the dang car I had in high school.'''\\
[...]\\
'''Nosh''': Wait wait wait wait... you saying your car in high school smelled this bad? I find hard to believe.
* CoolShip: ''Machito'', after the Emperor has it upgraded. ''La Invencible'', being the Emperor's ship and the most powerful ship in the Imperial fleet. And especially ''The Spark of Thought'', on the Continuum side, the largest warship ever built and capable of cracking a planet like an egg with the backlash of its FTL engines.
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: More a GeniusDitz than moron, but Nosh fought off a bunch of mooks on his own.
-->'''Nosh'''(mid-fight): Maybe you forget why you lost the war, Tesskan. You didn't lose because of the humans... you '''lost''' because you made my lovely, joyful, peace-filled people... '''PISSED OFF'''.
* ChinaTakesOverTheWorld: Downplayed; ''Spain'' took over the world, since one of its colonists reverse-engineered the Ring Drive. Bejing, however, hosts the Imperial Family's private university.
* CuttingTheKnot:
** The Tesskans, in their city-sized stolen Continuum ship, were attacked by another Continuum ship. The Tesskans still hadn't figured out the weapons systems on their ship, so they just drove right through the attacking ship.
** The crew of the ''Machito'' take their own unique spin on a similar situation when they decide to "test" what happens when [[spoiler:a smaller ship engages their ring drive ''inside a larger ship's drive ring''. During a Maker invasion of a human world. The resulting "significant drive event" is so catastrophic is destroys about a third of the Maker fleet while the ''Machito'' speeds instantly away]].
* DeathRay: The empire developed a device called the "Neutron Daisy Cutter" specifically to fight the Vinn. It causes a catastrophic breakdown of Vinn parasite cell walls, killing them while leaving the host alive. However, the neural shock tends to kill the host. For this reason, the Vinn call them "Soulkillers".
* DeathWorld: Skitter's race, the Rhinn, come from a world with predators so dangerous that their ability to detect gravity waves is the only thing keeping them alive.
* DeflectorShields: Mentioned, but averted. Armada ships, at least, only have a sort of energy field which vaporizes small debris. Not nearly enough to be called a DeflectorShield.
** The Vinn manage to shield their ships from Daisy Cutter particle beams, much to the dismay of the Jynniwei.
* DisproportionateRetribution:
** How La Familia deals with anyone who tries to steal the secret of the Ring Drive, because that would put their supreme power in danger. In a guest comic, a stranded captain is forced to activate the Ring Drive's alarms, not even to steal the secret, but due to that being the only means he had to signal the Empire. Indifferent to his plight, they arrest him for prison and possible execution.
** Sett sentences Orla to Trial by Combat for interfering with one of his 800 disappointing kids' mafia initiation.
* DisturbingStatistic:
-->'''Nosh''': Our armada ships... have a 1-in-600 chance of catastrophic impact anytime we pinch space.\\
'''Skitter''': I... I'm gonna ''die in space''.\\
'''Fernando''': Nosh, that number is a lie, spread by the royal family. It's not 1-in-600... it's ''1-in-400''... we lose five or six ships every week.\\
'''Skitter''': [''slow clap''] Wonderful. Awesome. Let's all thank Fernando for clearin' up the math, there.
* DivineRightOfKings: La Familia's self justification for seizing power. They like to preach to young Familia members that before they took over, humanity existed in a dark age. If they were to give up their monopoly on the drive, their authority would no longer be unassailable. Without La Familia's rule, humanity would inevitably collapse.
* EarthShatteringKaboom: The Makers crack off a chunk of [[http://www.drivecomic.com/archive/110623.html Tesskil]] using the Drive's space-folding. Many of the filipods survive thanks to their evolutionary history, while the tesskans are nearly driven to extinction.
* EasyAmnesia: Skitter woke up on a prison planet with no recollection of who he was or how he got there, and was informed he took a nasty hit trying to protect Nosh. [[{{Lampshading}} Lampshaded]].
-->'''Nosh''': ...You are like bad episode of "Series/GilligansIsland".
* TheEmperor: The current Emperor killed his uncle for the position, and framed Nosh.
* TheEmpire, TheFederation: It's technically an Empire, but it shares parts of both of these tropes. For example, they formed an alliance with the Veetans, which is a trait of TheFederation. But anyone with blood ties to the royal family (La Familia) gets extra privileges, ''everywhere'', which seems to fit TheEmpire trope more.
* EmpireWithADarkSecret:
** Due to their desperation to maintain their monopoly on the Drive human civilization runs on, only the Emperor knows the real reason the Continuum is at war with them. Their founder did not invent the Drive himself, but reverse-engineered it from a crash landed Continuum ship, offending an alien civilization with a religious opposition to intellectual theft. To make matters worse, the empire has had several options to alter their drive technology in a way that would stop offending the Continuum, but have chosen not to take any of them because that would require admitting their secrets.
** The Continuum itself is built on a dark secret, of which no living member besides the Continuum's guardian is aware until Ahmis also learns the truth. [[spoiler:Their founder claimed to be the first of their race, that the Drive was the first invention they ever conceived, and that Circle's End is their homeworld. But Ahmis discovers that the accidental birthplace of the Vinn is their true homeworld, and that their founder was not the first of their species, but most likely the last survivor of their previous civilization]]. The guardian comes to agree that while exposing the truth will pretty much break the very foundation of the Continuum, not doing so will cause its people to end entirely.
* EncyclopediaExposita: The ''Enciclopedia Xenobiología'', used to provide info-dumps on newly introduced races and institutions. Given it's written from the human perspective in the late 2300s (and the comic takes place largely in 2401 with flashbacks), [[UnreliableNarrator it is occasionally wrong or at least lacking]].
* EnemyMine:
** Offered, but ultimately rejected. The Grasskans stole several spirits (the Makers' term for original technology) from the Continuum and fought bitter wars with them over it. But when the Grasskans get {{Curb Stomp}}ed by the Vinn, they try begging for an EnemyMine with the Continuum to work against the greater threat to the both of them. While new Maker Prime feels that the Vinn threat is big enough to at least consider it and respects the Grasskans as a WorthyOpponent, the rest of the Colegium prefers RevengeBeforeReason and overrules him. Due to being insular and still carrying a grudge, they decide that they would rather take their chances and watch them die.
** The Emperor considers one with the Grasskans due to them both being enemies with the Continuum over stolen technology and the Grasskans actually being strong enough to fight the Continuum to a stalemate. The Grasskans get crushed by the Vinn before they can even negotiate, but he is still able to take in a few refugees.
* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep:
** The Rogue Maker. [[spoiler: His real name is Ahmis]].
** "Sett" is both a clan and the title of the male head of the clan.
* FantasticDrug: {{Telepathy}} can be used to reach a state the Sill religiously refer to as the "Great Quiet". It produces an absolute ecstasy that makes the "noisy" material world difficult to pay any attention to, which has resulted in their race dwindling towards extinction since they barely maintain their bodies or produce offspring. The few remaining monks only keep themselves alive at all to offer this path to others.
* FasterThanLightTravel: A mix of the first and second varieties. The first Emperor, Conrado I, hypothesized it worked by pinching space together to hop across the top, so to speak. But in practice you still have to worry about running into stuff along the way, suggesting the Drive makes constant little jumps to achieve a warp drive-like effect.
** "Near-light" drives are known to exist as well, as the Fillipods devised one for the Tesskans from captured Armada sublight drives.
** The Grasskans have their own FTL drive, but it's apparently much slower and less reliable than Ring/Singularity Drive.
* FinalSolution: The Grasskan homeworld [[http://www.drivecomic.com/archive/201105.html was once]] hit with nuclear weapons by a race called T'shonn. The Grasskan empress made sure they would never do it again.
* FindTheCure: [[spoiler: When Nosh gets Vinnified, Orla reveals herself to be a Jynniwei operative. They have a cure to the Vinn parasite that ''doesn't'' involve blasting the host with a DeathRay and hoping they can handle the neural shock of their symbiote dying.]]
* GadgeteerGenius:
** The Fillipod race in general are very good with technology.
--->'''Cuddow''': We went from zero manufacturing to space travel in two generations!
** The Hat of the Continuum is that they invent things. The Rogue Maker is able to fix a completely ruined hover tractor ''and'' build an unspecified farm machine within one night.
* GeniusDitz: Nosh is the science officer of the crew, interested in all types of science, but lacks common sense.
-->'''Nosh''': I am researching lung capacity of common earth-wolf.\\
'''Taneel''': Good lord... ''why''?\\
'''Nosh''': Pique of my interest, mostly. I read in earth story how wolf able to bring down house with massive lung capacity...\\
[''{{beat}}'']\\
'''Taneel''': ...Did the aforementioned wolf happen to "huff and puff" before he blew said house down?\\
'''Nosh''': Yes! Amazing creature, no?...I research the pig construction techniques, next.
* GenreSavvy: When the crew is [[http://www.drivecomic.com/archive/151026.html investigating a distress signal on an alien planet]], Orla and Taneel have their suspicions about what kind of story they just wandered into...
-->'''Skitter''': Nobody's picking up. It's just repeating the message.\\
'''Nando''': Creepyyyy.\\
'''Orla''': This will end with only one of us escaping the planet, won't it?\\
'''Taneel''': Bloody and crying in an improvised escape pod, yes.
* GentleGiant: Nosh, and apparently most Veetans. It's one of their [[PlanetOfHats hats]], according to their entry in the ''[[EncyclopediaExposita Enciclopedia Xenobiología]]''.
-->'''Nosh''': Is too much anger in Monopoly... Share the railroads! Everyone benefits!
* GilliganCut:
-->'''Skitter''': ''What?'' What ''possible'' way could that help me defeat these jer-\\
''[cut to milkshake bar]''
* HaveYouSeenMyGod: The Vinn religion revolves around finding the race that genetically engineered them from the local version of ''Toxoplasmosis''.
* HaveYouToldAnyoneElse: When the previous leader of the [[SecretPolice Jinyiwei]] [[spoiler:commits suicide, her successor becomes a MoleInCharge. She uses an excuse to let one of her co-conspirators hack into the Jinyiwei network. When another member of the Jinyiwei figures it out and reports it to her, she double checks whether said member shared it with anyone else before killing him for [[HeKnowsTooMuch knowing too much]].]]
* HeavyWorlder: Veetans come from a planet with 1.19 Gs, which makes them ridiculously strong and durable, as demonstrated when Nosh shrugs off steel I-beams falling on his head and beats the crap out of a dozen Tesskans. Unfortunately they also suffer from chronic hip and joint problems and live just a quarter-century at most.
* HigherTechSpecies: The Continuum is one of the most advanced civilizations in the galaxy to still exist, but not by an overwhelming margin.
* IJustWantToBeNormal: Tradition and superstition dictate that Prahsitt greenborn live exciting and adventurous lives. In a guest comic, one such greenborn is satisfied and ''happy'' living life as a farmer, and disappointed that his parents expect him to travel the stars instead.
* ImpossibleTaskInstantlyAccomplished: The Rogue Maker passed the Test of Tests, which was supposed to take nearly a week, in an ''hour''. Largely out of petulance, no less.
-->''He could have took another day. Added some art to the design. They told him he would get no sustenance until he was finished. That made him angry. He wanted a sandwich.''
* 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.
* 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. The Rogue Maker's apprentice finds this odd, since the Drive is a very sophisticated device.
* LaResistance: At the time of the story, the outer colonies of El Imperio are engaged in a full fledged revolution. At first, the military and SecretPolice attempt to put it down, but when the war against the Continuum and the Vinn grows very desperate, the Emperor is forced to prioritize and shift his resources towards bigger threats.
* LightningBruiser: By every indication, the Tesskans. They're terrifyingly fast and strong, as well as incredibly sturdy. The logistical advantage the drive imparts may as well have not existed when it came to a direct war between the Empire and the Tesskans, as the Tesskans were overpowering in actual battle -- demonstrated handily by those captured by the Continuum, who swept the single largest ship in the galaxy before the Makers could manage even a token defense. The only thing that's stood successfully against them is the Empire-backed MightyGlacier of the Veetans.
* LuxuryPrisonSuite: Only high ranking members of the Continuum even ''get'' jail as opposed to execution, and as such, Makers that have been charged with a crime are usually made comfortable.
* MarkOfTheBeast: Vinn all have black squares around their eyes. [[spoiler: It goes away when the parasite dies]].
* {{Matriarchy}}: The Grasskans have one of the flip variety. The Grasskan Empress outright rejected El Imperio's ambassadors due to them being male.
* OurDragonsAreDifferent: The Fekk Dragon, or "Tranquin", is an enormous creature resembling, well, a dragon. The colloquial term "Fekk Dragon" comes from an InUniverse viral video of a human "fighting" one. It consists of the human completely breaking down and running around the arena screaming "Fekk! Dragon! Fekk! Dragon!".
* MisappliedPhlebotinum: [[AvertedTrope Averted]] viciously. If the space being pinched by a ring drive is occupied by a planet, then that planet will suffer massive tremors. The bigger the ship, the more severe the quakes. This ''has'' been taken to the [[http://www.drivecomic.com/archive/110519.html logical]] [[http://www.drivecomic.com/archive/110623.html conclusion]].
-->'''Maker:''' Prepare a leap directly above the planet. We shall crack it like an egg.
* 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.
** Taneel may be [[http://www.drivecomic.com/archive/120414.html on to her]]...
** 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.]]
* MoleInCharge:
** 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.
** The next head of the Jinyiwei [[spoiler:''also'' turns out to be loyal to a faction other than the current Emperor.]]
* MoodWhiplash:
-->'''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.]]
* MyHovercraftIsFullOfEels: Despite his normal gift with languages, Cuddow's attempt at speaking Maker doesn't turn out too well.
--> '''Kik:''' "He wants to know why you're propositioning his hat."
* TheNapoleon: The current Emperor Cruz.
* TheReveal: [[spoiler: Orla's actually a Jinyiwei spy.]]
* NecessaryDrawback: The Famillia-owned ship building firm [=IndustriaGlobo=] has to hire non-Familia employees, since 1) once a Member is out of the Drive Corps, [[{{Nepotism}} they get to be a government official]], and 2) there's only +/- 1200 Familia members. This leaves them vulnerable to industrial espionage. The Empire gently chastises them over shenanigans that would see anyone else expelled from the Empire. Note that in this context "gently chastise" means "only bomb your shipyard and headquarters to atoms instead of shut you down completely."
* NeverMessWithGranny: Captain Taneel of the ''[[{{CoolShip}} Machito]]''. But ''don't'' call her "Granny".
* NoodleIncident: Nosh has had a....''colorful'' past, by his talk. While we're eventually told what he did while stuck in Russia, he's continually making references to things he's done that aren't exactly what normal people would do. For example, when he comments on the utility of having a xenobiologist on the crew:
-->'''Nosh:''' Is good to have one! Sometimes hard to tell whether to talk to creature, or eat creature....I have made awkward choices in past....
* NoSell: The Vinn manage to re-create the containment field on the weapons specifically intended to fight them, and turned it inside-out to protect their ships.
* NotTheIntendedUse: The Ring Drive can be used as a DoomsdayDevice by pinching the space occupied by a planet to cause an EarthShatteringKaboom.
** 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.
* OhCrap: Skitter's reaction when he learns that the ''Machito'' has no shielding and the likelihood of them all dying while crossing an asteroid field is very high.
* OhWait:
-->'''Fernando''': Do you know what my family will do to your people when they find out??\\
'''Cuddow''': What, [[spoiler: crack our planet in half?]] '''Oh wait.'''
* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: Nosh. Like most of his people, he has an insatiable desire for knowledge of any sort.
* PerfectPacifistPeople:
** Veetans are taught that fighting wastes the life they could spend searching for knowledge.
** Fillipods take it a step further, as they're [[SlaveRace completely subservient to their cousins]], the Tesskans, who are belligerent enough for both of them.
* PlanetKiller: Every single Drive-equipped ship can cause seismic events on a planet by pinching too close to it, see the MisappliedPhlebotinum entry above. When a ship is big enough, well...
* PoorCommunicationKills: Literally. The language of the Continuum is so complex and nuanced, traditional translator devices can't decipher the whole thing. This leads a Tesskan to ''decapitate'' a Maker out of frustration.
* {{Precursors}}: The Sill were the most advanced race the galaxy has ever known and the only one to ever reach a type 2 Kardashev civilization; they ruled a significant swath of the galaxy, and through their trading and wars left profound influences on almost every sapient species they encountered. When they discovered {{Telepathy}} and modified themselves to be able to use it, one of them discovered that it can be used as a religious FantasticDrug and their entire civilization got addicted. Now all that's left of them are some impressive ruins and some slowly dying monks.
* ProperlyParanoid: Standard procedure for all imperial ring ships returning to Earth is that nobody but the captain may steer the ship in to dock, and Earth's coordinates are to be top secret, and never recorded anywhere. This is because before this policy was implemented, the Tesskans captured a ship, and the Fillipods were able to recover Earth's coordinates from it. If not for the Fillipods [[spoiler:keeping the secret of the ring drive to themselves]], the Tesskans would have won the resulting war.
* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: The [[PlanetofHats hat]] of the Tesskans.
* PuppeteerParasite: The Vinn
** The guest comic ''Cute Things'' is a horror-film parody involving the crew getting infested by a race of teddy-bear looking aliens, that forces their hosts to climb to the tops of trees and get eaten by {{Space Whale}}s.
* QuestForIdentity: Skitter. Fortunately, he's been roped into a hunt for his own home planet.
* RequiredSecondaryPowers: The Empire and Continuum have FTL, but not DeflectorShields. This means they are vulnerable to micrometeoroid impacts that can destroy the ship (At FTL speeds, kilotons upon kilotons of damage, although Continuum ships are built out of sterner stuff than La Famillia ships). Skitter's people can sense gravity waves through the Mohawk-like comb on their skulls, which lets them pull off DeadlyDodging. The Empire now wants to recruit them as navigators.
* 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.
* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: The Drive is serviced and run exclusively by members of La Familia, though they also take great pains to keep it that way; see DisproportionateRetribution above. Of course, this means La Familia is in fact very large to be able to maintain a multi-species interstellar empire's worth of ships - so large that only a small core has a realistic chance of being anywhere close to the throne, though the rest do still get perks to go with their responsibilities.
* ScaryDogmaticAliens: The Continuum can be friendly under some circumstances, but if you offend their religion by stealing their technology, they will attempt genocide unless and until you give it up.
* SecretPolice: They monitor all your communications for anything La Familia would find of interest. There is also a special branch of them called the Jinyiwei, created to enforce imperial law against dissidents among the royal family itself.
%%* ShoutOut: To ''Series/GilligansIsland'', later ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}''.
* SkewedPriorities: The Fillipods are rather poetry obsessed, and tend to try and break out in overly long poetry if not forced to work on more important things, like dealing with invasions. When their Tesskan masters are mostly killed, and their human masters forced to shift away all forces and oversight, they choose to take advantage of this precious strategic time of autonomy... by hosting a slam poetry contest.
* StarfishLanguage:
** The Fillipod language is an extremely complicated, musical tongue that most other species can’t physically speak, since their mouths can’t make the "wild undulations" that the Fillipod language relies on.
** The Nyx language is even worse. It appears to use future tenses that incorporate quantum uncertainty, meaning that normally binary states like on/off and alive/dead are understood as existing on gradients of possibility. Further, the exact meaning of a statement can change seemingly arbitrarily between sentences or even as it is being spoken. Finally, though their language is constantly changing, the Nyx understand everything they say as being the only thing that could possibly have been true at that moment -- and if you ask the same question a moment later, they’ll give a completely different answer that they’ll see as self-evidently the only thing that could have been spoken in ''that'' moment. The Nyx find navigating this language as easy as breathing, but other species find it literally impossible to understand it. Even when they speak other languages, they have a strange way to use tenses, often using the future perfect tense at all times, that makes them difficult to understand.
* StateSec: The Jinyiwei. They've also got more conventional SecretPolice.
* StealthHiBye: The Tres Primos do this to Fernando while he is alone on the Machito.
-->'''Fernando:''' "'''MAAAH!''' HOW'D YOU GET ON BOARD??"
* SterilityPlague: [[spoiler:One of the effects of the Vinn virus, which is in fact driving the Vinn to infect more beings than ever before in a futile attempt to escape their own extinction that will ultimately take everyone else with them.]]
* TakingYouWithMe: The Grasskans get brought to the verge of extinction at the hands of the Vinn. Since the Continuum refuses to help, they [[spoiler:[[StarKilling kill all of their stars]], deciding that its better for all of them to die then let their families [[FateWorseThanDeath be remade]] by TheVirus.]]
* {{Telepathy}}:
** The Sill were able to modify themselves with the ability to hear and speak to the minds of others shortly before their civilization collapsed.
** A surviving Sill discovers that Skitter's species are also telepathic.
* TerminallyDependentSociety: La Familia had the good fortune to recover and reverse engineer a FasterThanLight drive lost by the Continuum and used this to crown themselves the rulers of humanity. They maintained a very careful monopoly to ensure that all of humanity's colonies would have to obey them or be cut off from humanity. But some of the outer colonies are able to rebel thanks to the help of three renegade Familia members. This dependence on the Drive is also the reason for El Imperio's war with the Continuum, since as far as they can tell, the Continuum wants the human race to give up the stolen technology or be wiped out, and the former would mean the end of their interstellar civilization.
* ThrowAwayCountry: The Grasskan Empire is barely even mentioned before the Vinn invasion, [[spoiler: and once they realize they've lost that war they destroy their own stars.]]
* TranslatorMicrobes: Translator implants are implied to exist but are imperfect, shown by a Tesskan poking at the side of his head when he can't understand a Maker, complaining that the translation "ain't comin' through." PoorCommunicationKills quite literally when the Maker refuses to speak another more easily-translated language, which angers the Tesskan.
* TwitchyEye: Nosh, upon learning the crew's next destination is Tesskil. More so when he finds they're being pursued by a Continuum Dreadnought ship.
* UnfortunateName:
** Skitter wanted to call himself Steve, but...
--->'''Taneel:''' Well, lessee now... "Skitter" '''is''' a ridiculous name that sounds like an 18th century case of the trots... but "Steve" is the name of my jerk of an ex-husband.\\
''[{{beat}}]''\\
'''Skitter:''' ...Skitter it is?\\
'''Taneel:''' Skitter it is.
** Still, it might've been worse. Nosh's ideas were "Pablo Picasso", "Mr. Fancy Pants", and "Boopsie-Diddle".
* UniquenessDecay: A big plot point is that [[spoiler: the Fillipods figured out how to make Ring Drives of their own, and a guest strip tells us the Veetans captured a derelict ringship and retooled it into a CloakingDevice.]]
* UpliftedAnimal: Fekk Dragons are usually barely intelligent enough to learn only a handful of words, and if one of those is "Food" it's all they'll ever say. But the one in the arena on Slaughter is also a Vinn, and is intelligent enough to speak fluently, and recognize [[spoiler:Orla]] and deliberately intimidate her.
* TheVirus: The Vinn aren't actually a single species; they're at least 14 species all infected with the Vinn parasite. The parasite bonds to the nervous system and restructures the brain, resulting in an entirely new, unique mind. Most, possibly all Vinn are trying to spread across the galaxy in an attempt to find their [[{{Precursors}} "gods"]], who [[GoneHorriblyWrong developed]] the parasite as a misguided cure for an unknown affliction, although it's described as a "[[TheTopicOfCancer Cancerous malady]]". It's implied this is an empty quest since their creators' homeworld was nuked into oblivion in a desperate attempt to wipe out the parasite -- possibly by the few surviving creators themselves. Unfortunately, the parasite was already able to spread on its own.
* WeAreAsMayflies: Continuum Makers can live for several centuries but most other species have lifespans comparative to humans. Inverted with Veetans who only live 25 years. The Rhinn, [[spoiler: Skitter's species]], are also implied to have multi-centennial lifespans given they're only allowed to leave their homeworld in the last 10% of their life and that lasts at least [[http://www.drivecomic.com/archive/200109.html 60 years]].
* TheWikiRule: Has a [[https://drive.mcb.guru/index.php?title=Main_Page fanwiki]], with a more easily navigable page archive than the main site.
* WhamEpisode: Every now and again, a page will reveal something shocking, even if the consequences of the revelations aren't apparent at the time.
** The strips detailing the "Rogue Maker's" actions turn out to lead up to the events of the very first strips.
** The "Tres Primos" came out of retirement recently. [[spoiler:Their pilot happens to be the same species as Skitter]]. Not to mention [[spoiler:they strongly hint that Fernando is the previous Emperor's true heir. "Pequeño rey," indeed.]]
** [[spoiler: Nosh]] is now a Vinn. "We've lost him. He's gone."
** When Ahmis [[spoiler:finds out that humans reverse engineered the ring drive from his people. ''He is not pleased.'']]
* WhamLine:
-->'''Maker:''' Prepare a leap directly above the planet. We shall crack it like an egg.
** Also: [[spoiler: "...we already know how your Drive works."]]
** The Tres Primos calling [[spoiler:Fernando "pequeño rey." Or, in English, "little king."]]
* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: Nosh spent 6 years stuck in Moscow when he ran out of cab fare, and so speaks with a ridiculous Russian accent.
* WhenItAllBegan:
** "He has never piloted before. But then, he has only been alive for fourteen hours..."
** On April, 22nd 2011 this came full circle.
* TheWorfEffect: The Grasskans are said to be an old starfaring empire, and one strong enough to fight even the Continuum to a stalemate. As soon as the Vinn are given FTL travel, they completely CurbStomp the Grasskans and wipe them out.
* WretchedHive: Planet Slaughter.
-->'''Taneel:''' You'll meet 100 species on that planet, and each one is a mob hitman.
* YouWillBeAssimilated: The Vinn are like what you'd get if you crossed [[VideoGame/StarCraft the Zerg]] with [[Franchise/{{Halo}} the Covenant]]: a religion of parasite-infested SuperSoldiers who constantly evolve and have "Spread our BeneficialDisease" as a form of evangelism.
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* InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons: The Fekk Dragon, or "Tranquin", is an enormous creature resembling, well, a dragon. The colloquial term "Fekk Dragon" comes from an InUniverse viral video of a human "fighting" one. It consists of the human completely breaking down and running around the arena screaming "Fekk! Dragon! Fekk! Dragon!".