History
The products of a botched attempt by UrSkeks to purify their souls by using trapped sunlight from the Crystal of Truth, the Skeksis entered the world of Thra hating their UrRu counterparts and each other. Not long after the division, a fight broke out among the Skeksis, resulting in a shard of the crystal being chipped loose from the main rock and being lost. The UrRu then left the castle to the Skeksis, who began to modify the UrSkek architecture with their own grotesque designs. The Skeksis apparently considered the division a great triumph, and attempted to create a crystal of their own. The blackened rocks they created though proved ineffectual, and were reused as targets for the Haakskeekah ritual, translated as "Trial by Stone", in which the loser is stripped of his position.
According to The World of The Dark Crystal, the Skeksis were originally a vibrant and jovial race that possessed the wisdom and knowledge of the UrSkeks, yet lacking any form of restraint or contemplation. They ruled Thra for over a thousand years and apparently had good relations with the Gelfling people, inviting them to their castle and reveling with them in festivity and song. As time passed and the Skeksis morality decayed along with their bodies, they began to keep Gelflings as slaves. Desperate, the Gelflings sought counsel in prophecy, which revealed that a Gelfling would end the rule of the Skeksis by healing the Dark Crystal with the shard it once lost. When the Skeksis learned of this, their first reaction was to create multiple crystal shards in order to confuse the Gelfling's search. Later, they had the Garthim carry out the genocide of the entire Gelfling race.
By the start of the movie, only ten Skeksis survived, with skekSo's death leading to skekUng succeeding him. However, skekUng's reign was short lived as Jen and Kira survived the massacre of their people, eventually finding each other and fulfilling the prophecy that destroyed the Skeksis and reintegrated them into the urRu to recreate the urSkeks.
Read more about this topic: Skeksis
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