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| Real Name: Knull |
| Also Known As: God of the Symbiotes, King in Black, God of the Abyss |
| Place Of Birth: The Primordial Void |
| First Appearance: Venom Vol.4 #4 (2018) Modern Age Villain |
| Known Associates: Grendel, The Void Knight, Knull's Sentries, Dark Carnage, Tyrannosaurus, Exolon, Big Mother, Symbiote Dragons |
| Group Affiliation: Symbiote Hive |
| Base Of Operations: Mobile |
| Grudges: Venom, Spider-Man, Silver Surfer, The Sentry, Fantastic Four, Avengers, Thor and the X-Men |
| Creators: Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman |
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| Despite not possessing any formal training, Knull is a vicious warrior with billions of years' worth of combat experience, capable of slaughtering entire armies of gods augmented by the Uni-Power single handedly. |
| Enhanced Abilities: Knull has vast godlike superhuman strength, endurance and durability. |
| Divine Physiology: As a primordial god of darkness, Knull possesses superhuman attributes and powers which far exceed those of humans and even most other deities. As the creator of All-Black the Necrosword, he appears to possess the same powers it bestows upon its hosts but to a greater extent. Much of Knull's power and apparent invincibility comes from his metaphysical link to the undead corpse of the Celestial he used to refine All-Black, which feeds him power through the Necrosword and in exchange assimilates the souls of those he kills; serving as a grotesque afterlife. |
| Living Abyss Manipulation: Knull possesses the ability to create, control, and manipulate a fount of eldritch darkness, a manifestation of the primordial void that existed before the universe itself, that he calls the "living abyss". Knull has spent billions of years experimenting with and honing his powers to create not only the parasitic symbiotes, but similar entities such as Mister E and the Exolon. His greatest creations have been All-Black, the Void Knight, a powerful proto-symbiote created to enslave the Silver Surfer, and the symbiote dragons. |
| Symbiote Creation: Knull first discovered his ability to create life from darkness itself when he manifested All-Black from his shadow in order to kill a Celestial. Experimenting with and honing this aspect of his powers over the eons, he formed a suit of symbiote-armor, constructed an artificial planet, and amassed a horde of wyvern-like monsters from the living abyss. While he initially only infected gods and other cosmic beings with the living abyss; when stranded on a desolate world he discovered he could also infect mortal creatures with the living abyss, creating an army of parasites to conquer the universe by corrupting life instead of simply exterminating it. Knull's early experiments to hone this aspect of his powers resulted in what became known as the Exolon, imperfect symbiotes he discarded as failures. He was also capable of creating symbiotes using his blood, though the only known symbiote created in this manner is Big Mother. |
| Symbiote Domination: As the divine progenitor of the symbiotes and the nexus of their hive-mind, Knull is able to mentally influence and dominate symbiotes even while sealed away; driving them insane with bloodlust and hunger. He is also capable of remote-piloting them, enabling him to see through their eyes and directly control them; and can manipulate their biomasses even when not in direct contact with them, as demonstrated when he used an ancient dragon-like symbiote to attack Earth and manifest an avatar of his true form. symbiotes infected by Knull's will usually have red spirals in place of their eyespots, and are more powerful than symbiotes disconnected from his dark hive-mind; sometimes even gaining new powers and abilities as a result of the connection. Knull is also capable of forcibly removing symbiotes from their hosts either by psychically blasting them off or by ripping them off with his bare hands. Being one of the primevals of darkness, he is also capable of dominating other dark entities, such as the Void. |
| Symbiote Armour: After forging All-Black, Knull created a suit of symbiote-armour from the Living Abyss. The armour was originally solid black, but after he founded the Symbiote Imperium he emblazoned its chest and back with a red dragon emblem It is unknown exactly what abilities the armour possesses and confers upon Knull, though it is capable of shape shifting to manifest a cape, waistcloth, wing-like fins, and draconic helmet. Given that its constituent matter was used to create the lesser symbiotes, it can be presumed to possess similar abilities; and despite presumably being vulnerable to intense heat and sonics it was capable of withstanding a plunge through the atmosphere of a planet and being immersed in stellar plasma without sustaining significant damage. |
| Dark Energy Manipulation: Knull is capable of conjuring fiery purple energy; wreathing himself and All-Black in an aura of it, firing it from his hands in a beam powerful enough to incapacitate the Silver Surfer, or firing it as flak and homing projectiles from artillery constructs manifested from the Symbiote Throneworld. |
| Necrosword: In order to slay a Celestial, Knull manifested a black-and-red sword from his shadow; later refining it using the dead Celestial's cosmic power. |
| Amortality: Knull is purportedly unable to be truly killed and has existed for over 13.7 billion years, having come into existence prior to the beginning of the seventh iteration of the universe. However, he can be injured to the point of incapacitation: after being impaled through the head and falling from space to the surface of a planet, he required centuries to fully heal from his injuries. |
| Self-Sustenance: Knull is capable of surviving in the vacuum of space unaided, and does not appear to need food, water, or sleep to survive. |
| Regenerative Healing Factor: Despite his immense durability, Knull is capable of being injured to the point of incapacitation. However, he is able to not only survive injuries that would kill other gods but eventually recover from them. |
| Flight: Knull can manifest a pair of large dragon-like wings that allow him to fly. |
| Temporal Manipulation: Knull was able to reach backwards through the time-stream to resurrect Mister E and create a barrier of living abyss around the sun. |
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| Knull existed in the darkness when that was all that existed. When light poured into his blackness, he tumbled through existence for eons. During that time, the Celestials found the darkness wanting and began building space with light. After regaining himself, Knull plunged a hand into one of the giant gods and pulled out the proto symbiote which he turned into a sword and used to slay a Celestial. As punishment, the space gods sent Knull back into the void of the murder victim. |
| Inside, Knull made a home for himself in the head of the Celestial he killed. There, he created the first sword-shaped symbiotes from his own form and developed into the god of the forge. Those earliest symbiotes were far from perfect in those early days and still retain a fear of fire from their violent creation. |
| With All-Black the Necrosword, Knull set out to kill all beings in the light. In doing so, he crashed on a planet where Gorr, the future God Butcher, made off with his weapon. While stuck on this unnamed planet, the Lord of the Abyss realized that he could create a symbiotic relationship with creatures or hosts. He could not only learn from their knowledge, but also pilot them remotely. On that desolate planet, he realized his true power and began building a hive mind of symbiote agents. |
| The true extent of Knull's powers remains something of a mystery. He claims to be the god of the abyss, the world of darkness that existed before light entered the cosmos. When the Celestials first made their presence felt, he realized he could make a blade that was able to kill one of the gods. He began forging a new weapon from his own form that he eventually called All-Black, the Necrosword. He used the weapon to fight back agents of light. |
| During one such battle, he lost All-Black and became marooned on a backwater planet. There he learned that he could bestow an aspect of his essence onto another creature. He could control the resulting symbiotes even across great distances. Altogether, they also formed a hive mind that allowed Knull to become an inter-galactic despot. |
