Drell
Two centuries ago, the hanar helped 375,000 members of the drell race migrate to the hanar homeworld, Kahje, to escape the environmental extermination that had claimed the remaining 11 billion drell.
Nearly all drell demonstrate tremendous loyalty to their famously reclusive saviors. The intimacy of their relationship, expressed in a formal sociopolitical alliance called the Compact, also results in extremely close personal relations in which some drell actually learn hanar Soul names. While most drell reside on Kahje, some assist hanar off-world as envoys, researchers, co-investors, wayfarers, assassins or otherwise, eager to help their saviors. For a century, galactic wisdom has held that behind any high-ranking hanar hides a resourceful and fanatically devoted drell.
The omnivorous, reptilian drell possess an average life span of 85 galactic standard years. Having evolved on an arid planet, drell face serious illness on the hanar homeworld, especially Kepral's Syndrome, a fatal bacterial lung disease.
Biology
Drell are omnivorous reptile-like humanoids with an average life span of 85 galactic standard years. They give live birth to their young, who are capable of eating solid food from the moment they are born. Drell appearance is very similar to asari and humans, but their muscle tissue is slightly denser than that of humans, giving them a wiry strength. Many of their more reptilian features are concealed, like a three-chambered heart with a muscular ridge that is capable of shunting oxygenated or deoxygenated blood as needed.
One unique characteristic, however, is the hyoid bone in their throats, which allows them to inflate their throats and produce vocal sounds outside of the human range. Would-be assassins have noted that these two features make drell extremely hard to strangle or suffocate.
Because the drell ancestors emerged from arid, rocky deserts, the humid, ocean-covered hanar homeworld of Kahje proved tolerable only when the drell stayed inside a climate-controlled dome city. Due to this huge disparity in the two species' homeworld environments, the leading cause of death among drells on Kahje is a bacterial lung disease called Kepral's Syndrome.
Within a generation of the drell's arrival on the planet, the disease had become resistant to hanar antibiotics and other advanced treatments. Once an infection settles in, death is slow but imminent. Transplants may buy time, but as the infection spreads to other major organs there comes a point of diminishing returns and eventual system failure.
Culture
Eight centuries ago, the already-arid drell homeworld, Rakhana, began its swift descent into lifelessness due to disastrous industrial expansion. Because their population was bursting at 11 billion and they did not possess interstellar flight capacity, the drell would have been doomed without the intervention of the hanar.
Following first contact, the hanar spent ten years transporting 375,000 willing drell to their own homeworld, Kahje. The remaining billions perished in the dying world, warring against each other for diminishing sources of water and food. Today, only a few thousand survive on Rakhana in clusters never exceeding a few hundred. Now a cemetery world, Rakhana’s population can double during pilgrimage season.
Drell have been part of the galactic community for almost two centuries. Most reside on Kahje, content to coexist with the hanar. Those who leave Kahje tend to be adventurers. Gifted by the hanar with acute perception of interspecies body language, solitary drell travelers often seek out new species elsewhere, adopting that species’ culture and rarely returning to Kahje. Such drell number in the thousands and are scattered across the galaxy, tending towards quiet integrated lives.
On Kahje, the hanar afforded the drell every opportunity to thrive. While outsiders and even some hanar regard the drell as junior partners, if not actual servants, drell have integrated themselves into every level of hanar society as respected productive citizens.