Life on Druto progressed steadily for the next few centuries, and the Drutans were apparently successful in constructing a functioning hi-tech society, despite the bankruptcy of their driving philosophy. Druto was a founding member of the Union and resisted several attempts at corporate take-over. Following the outbreak of the Orbital Wars, Druto was the only member of the Union Council to vote against the construction and use of Crackers. It did however support more conventional forms of warfare during the first phase of the wars and Drutan volunteers were well-represented in the Light Brigade. During the second and third phases of the Wars, the Drutans firmly believed that they were working to keep the Union together. However, their proposals of negotiation and restraint were actually key in undermining the Union, and the Drutans must surely take the lion’s share of the blame for its eventual break-up.
After other members of the Union began to turn on each other, and on Earth, Druto resigned and concentrated purely on defending itself. Witnessing the destruction of Earth and fearing similar attack, the Collective was desperate to develop some form of protection. Fortunately for the Drutans their lax immigration laws saw an influx of refugees, amongst them three geniuses worked together to develop Gaurron. Gaurron was first implemented in the form of a planetary shield that saved Druto when one of its many enemies eventually attacked. The subsequent spread of Gaurron technology showed Druto's supposed neutrality and high-mindedness was worthless, as it was willing to support any regime regardless of its supposed philosophies and its own strategic interests (though Druto responded to such accusations with claims that Gaurron technology had been stolen by unidentified agents).
The Drutans took no further part in the Orbital Wars, which they simultaneously prolonged by providing a refuge where many of the best scientific and tactical minds could sit-out the conflict, leading to the entrenchment and stagnation of battle during the War's later phases. As Druto's population grew beyond a sustainable level, the Drutans decided to occupy habitable worlds in several nearby systems, worlds of the Lesser Central Hub Consortium. This brought its sphere into contact with other powers, and it eventually seized the inhabited world of the Lesser Central Hub, as well as the established planet Rutland?, rapidly securing these worlds and holding them against a massive counter-strike by the [New Unified Terrans]?. Reports of the suppression of indigenous population, reluctantly published by the authorities of the New Union, show the brutality and depredation of what the Drutans called "liberation".
In the wake of the Orbital Wars, Druto refused all attempts at rapprochement from the New Union, and remained in isolation, though it continues to accept immigrants. A few people have escaped Druto's iron grip, returning to member-worlds of the New Union with stories of a utopian paradise. Such people are treated with an appropriate degree of suspicion. Those that do not show signs of delusion or mind-control are often tortured prior to execution, in the vain hope of eliciting an honest picture of life within the Drutan Collective. That the only people to come out of the Collective are propagandists and agents of provocation is a clear indication of the despotic regime that must now operate on Druto and the worlds it occupies.