The Dreen help defend the Castle Wulfenbach
Lurking in St. Szpac
The Dreen are a type of Wulfenbach forces about whom very little is currently known. They may be constructs. They may be clanks. Klaus has at some point told Gil they exist "tangential" to time as humans experience it; they are also strong, powerful and/or fast enough for the elder Wulfenbach to consider ✣ them good guards for Adam and Lilith. Before we were properly "introduced" to them, Word of God told us that the shrouded, conical-hatted things in the background of this page ✣ are them.
They are of about average human height or a little taller and seem to be built on the upright tetrapodal human body plan, though their obscuring clothing makes this very uncertain. Over their bodies is worn a golden or brass-colored conical hat, from which descends a translucent veil, about half the length of the robes. Only their arms are exposed outside of the black drapery, and whether that's black-and-green-striped skin terminating in cyan hands or suit sleeves with gloves, they still have unnaturally long, spidery, claw-like fingers (arachnodactyls) which seem sharp and strong enough to easily penetrate a slaver warrior's carapace.
In the book Agatha H and the Airship City, they are described as 'killing with a touch' and as being the only thing that the slaver wasps seem to honestly fear: "Deep within the midst of the enemies moved the Dreen, two unearthly terrifying creatures garbed in dark wide brimmed conical hats and long, obscuring veils. They killed with a touch, and they alone seemed to scare the Slaver Wasps. Everywhere they drifted a circle of emptiness opened around them as wasps desperately tried to escape."
The Dreen take part ✣ in Wulfenbach's attack on Mechanicsburg, where their reputation is so fearsome that even the normally stalwart Jagermonsters opt to flee from them ✣ . This attitude is promptly shown to be well-founded when Knight of Jove pilot Martellus von Blitzengaard attempts to squash one of them; the targeted Dreen shrugs off the attack and obliterates the Knight with an energy blast, with Tweedle just barely leaping to safety.
Two and a half years later, a lone Dreen appears ✣ in the bowels of the Corbettite Depot Fortress following the Beast's escape-rampage through the fortress's treasure-vaults. Agatha's Wasp eater seems to notice and react adversely to the Dreen which, as seen in the picture above, lurks in some shadows as Agatha and Co. go running past. It is unknown at the current time if this is a legitimate triggering of the Wasp-eater's intended function (i.e., identifying wasp-infected Revenants), or if a Dreen is just that scary. (The whole "tangential to normal time" thing would seem to suggest the latter.) Either way, the Dreen is then shown either watching, trailing or pursuing Agatha's group, but Agatha and friends eventually defeat the Beast, finish construction on the Corbettites' new Sparky super-train, deal with the arrival of Gil and his forces, and depart the fortress for Paris, all without further interaction with the Dreen.
It is Gil himself and Bangladesh DuPree who are finally confronted ✣ by the creature, which is identified as not being one of the ones working for the Wulfenbach empire, and which enigmatically announces Agatha's intended destination to Gil, adding that Gil will be journeying there himself. This prompts Gil to recall Castle Heterodyne's rather sketchy description ✣ of the previous type of Hideous Extradimensional Being to appear in Mechanicsburg following an experiment with time, specifically that these entities "had hats."
Possibly relevant outside information
From a discussion archived on NNTPnews.net:
- The Dreen are the bad guys in a series of novels by John Ringo and Travis S. Taylor.
- Also, another race called the Dreen feature in Star Rider by Doris Piserchia.
- And a race by that name appears in "Man of Two Worlds" by Frank Herbert and Brian Herbert.
- Dreen is also a dialect variant of the word drain.