Arcosian

The Arcosians are small, green-skinned aliens who dress in white cloaks and wear apparatus resembling gas masks. They have sizable, sharp fingernails and a generally unassuming physical presence, standing shorter than the average Saiyan. Their homeworld, Arcose, was described bluntly by King Kai as "a dump," which goes a long way toward explaining why the Arcosians became technology brokers rather than conquerors. Lacking the physical power to claim new worlds themselves, they turned their engineering capabilities into a bargaining chip, forming one of the most consequential business relationships in Universe 7's history.

According to the Funimation dub of Dragon Ball Z, the Arcosians were the ones who provided the Saiyans with battle armor, scouters, and space-faring technology. In exchange, the Saiyans conquered planets on the Arcosians' behalf. This arrangement transformed the Saiyans from a powerful but isolated warrior race into an interstellar military force. The battle armor itself became the standard uniform of the Frieza Force, worn by soldiers of every species across the empire. Whether the Arcosians continued this relationship after Frieza subjugated the Saiyans, or whether Frieza simply absorbed their technology along with everything else, is never explicitly addressed.

The Arcosians appear only briefly in a flashback during the Saiyan Saga, when King Kai explains the history of the Saiyan race to Goku. In this scene, cloaked Arcosians are shown meeting with Saiyans, establishing the trade partnership that would eventually draw the Saiyans into Frieza's orbit. It is a small moment, but it fills in a critical piece of the backstory: the Saiyans did not develop their iconic armor on their own, and without the Arcosians, the empire's expansion might have taken a very different shape.

The Arcosians are named exclusively in the Funimation dub, making their designation somewhat unofficial in the broader Dragon Ball canon. Despite this, they fill an important narrative gap. Every Frieza Force soldier wears the same style of battle armor, and the Arcosians are the original source of that technology. Their planet, their continued existence after the Frieza Force absorbed their contributions, and their culture remain entirely unexplored. They are, in a sense, the ghost behind every piece of Frieza Force equipment: the unnamed designers whose work outlasted any role they played in the empire's story.