Skrulls

The Skrulls are an extraterrestrial humanoid race who have created a vast interstellar empire, the oldest known empire still in existence, within the Andromeda Galaxy. The Skrull-race began on the planet Skrullos in the Drox System hundreds of millions of years ago. While the Skrulls were still in their early stages of evolutionary development, the Celestials, a star-spanning race of genetic engineers, landed on Skrullos and selected a number of natives upon whom to experiment. With one sample group, they affected a series of genes related to longevity, and created Skrullian Eternals. With another, they tested for genetic stability and diversity, and created Skrullian Deviants. In a third group, they implanted a gene series which would enable rapid benevolent mutation under the right conditions when the species matured. This group, its genetic modifications latent, remained the Skrullian “Normals”. After performing their genetic diversification, the Celestials left. The Deviant branch of the race, developing powers of mimicry, began to dominate the planet and eventually eradicated both the Eternal and Normal branches of the species (this is in marked contrast with the human race, another subject of Celestial experimentation, where the Normal branch continued to dominate the species).


Since the Eternal and Normal strains have long since been eliminated from the gene pool, all Skrulls alive today possesses the Deviant gene series which endows them with ability to alter their size, shape, and color through mental concentration (some of Earth’s Deviants, like Kro, have the same ability, but to a far more limited extent due to differences in the basic genetic material between two races). A Skrull can mentally cause the unstable molecules that comprise his or her body to become pliant, enabling him or her to assume other forms through muscular expansion and contraction. Once a new shape has been assumed, it takes a conscious act of will to assume another form or revert to natural. Hence, Skrulls do not spontaneously lose their assumed form when asleep or unconscious. Skrulls in altered form will, however, revert to their original forms at the moment of death. Skrulls only take on the appearance of an object or person and none of that object or person’s characteristics. There is a limit to the size of the object or person a Skrull can imitate. The average Skrull cannot distend his or her mass any more than 1.5 times as large a volume as his or her original volume, nor can he or she contract his or her mass any more than 0.75 a volume as his or her original.


Despite these limitations, the power of mimicry has enabled the Skrull Deviants to master their own world by infiltrating and sabotaging their rival sister races. After discovering space travel, this ability also proved a valuable tool for the conquest of other worlds. Assuming the forms of a world’s natives fostered a seeming common bond between the Skrulls and the natives. Upon attaining interstellar travel, Skrulls began to build an empire. Although imperialistic, the Skrulls were not a particularly militaristic race, and set up their early empire based on free trade.


Approximately 10 million years ago, the Skrulls first ventured outside their native galaxy into the nearby Greater Magellanic Cloud and Milky Way Galaxy. In the former region, the Skrulls encountered the Kree, a humanoid race still in its rudimentary stages of civilization. The Skrulls sent emissaries to the Kree homeworld Hala to offer a gift of advanced technology so that the Kree might one day be brought into the Skrull Empire. The Skrulls discovered, however, that Hala boasted two equally intelligent races, the Kree and the sentient plants called Cotati. Arranging a test for the two cultures to determine worthiness, the Skrulls ultimately judged in favor of Cotati. Enraged, the Kree slew both Cotati and Skrull ambassadors, and confiscated the Skrull’s technology. Due to the immense distances involved, no word of this atrocity reached the Skrulls until the Kree had sufficient time to master the fundamentals of stolen technology. Decades later, the Kree ventured into the Andromeda Galaxy and began attacking Skrull outposts and finally Skrullos itself. The Skrulls, forced to become more militaristic, retaliated. Thus began the Kree-Skrull conflict which still is waged between the two empires millions of years later.


The seat of the Skrull Empire was moved about 100,000 years ago to Tarnax IV, a planet more centrally located in the empire, renamed Throneworld. The Skrull Empire is governed by a totalitarian monarchy. There is one supreme emperor or empress, and a governor for each of the 978 member-worlds in the empire. In recent years, the Skrulls emperor has been Dorrek, who was assassinated and succeeded by his ambitious wife R'klll. Empress R'klll, her daughter Anelie, and millions of other Skrulls were recently killed when the world-eater Galactus destroyed Throneworld to consume its energy. The leadership of the Skrull Empire at this point uncertain.