A Warscaper Drone (Kor’vesa in the T'au Lexicon) is a type of T'au Drone (small, sleek, disc-shaped, semi-sentient machines) sometimes employed alongside T'au Farsight Enclave forces in major engagements. As rare drones of Commander Farsight’s own invention, Warscaper Drones were developed to aid Commander Farsight once he mastered the art of turning a planet’s environment against his foes on the oxide planet of Arkunahsa. Never passing up an opportunity to use a world’s topography and climate against the enemy, a Warscaper Drone's role is to augment its owner's own Battlesuit systems with detailed scans of the local environment, allowing him to easily draw the enemy into dangerous locations without putting himself in harm’s way. The exhaustive cartographic information that it provides can also be used by the Drone's owner to allow him and his squad to more effectively navigate through the same dangerous terrain without coming to harm, as well as easily outflank enemy forces through hidden routes and paths.
Warscaper Drones consist of an advanced processor unit, which individually has only a basic intelligence (approximately equal to that of a small animal such as a pterasquirrel), and moves about by way of a small anti-gravitic generator and a smaller and much modified version of a T'au Jetpack. This allows the Warscaper Drone to hover over the ground and skim over most obstacles. As they hover over landscapes, rotating back and forth, their sensor vane constantly transmits vital information about their surroundings.
So deeply do the T'au believe in the Greater Good, that even their Drones are programmed with self-preservation protocols. In the face of what the the Drone's artificial intelligence deems to be hopeless odds, a Drone will attempt to escape rather than stand and fight. While in certain extreme circumstances Drones might be deployed on high-risk missions likely to lead to their destruction or purposefully moved to block enemy advances on units of Fire Warriors, the T'au do not consider Drones to be disposable units and the Drone artificial intelligence will analyse every possibility in order to ensure its own survival.
Ordo Xenos Departmento Analyticus Technical Specifications
The technical specifications for this T'au unit have not been obtained or released by the Ordo Xenos.
Sources
- Codex: Tau Empire (4th Edition), pp. 25, 31, 35
- Codex: Tau Empire (6th Edition), pp. 32-33, 55
- Imperial Armour Volume Three - The Taros Campaign, pg. 282
- Deathwatch: Mark of the Xenos (RPG), pp. 12
- Farsight Enclaves, A Codex: Tau Empire Supplement (Digital Edition), pp. 74, 305-306