Viltrum Empire's Expansion

The Viltrum Empire's Expansion is the vast military crusade through which the Viltrumites revived their colonial ambitions, aiming to swallow first their own galaxy and eventually the whole of the universe. It defines the Thragg Era, the empire's great age of conquest. The push began after the bloody civil war of the Great Purge, once a newly installed Grand Regent, Thragg, drove his people back into aggressive expansion. World after world fell, among them the Unopans of Unopa, and their reach stretched across galaxy after galaxy. In answer, the Viltrumite defector Thaedus, who had slain the first emperor Argall, founded the Coalition of Planets to stand against them.

The empire's approach was blunt when it could be. Resisting worlds faced leveled cities, wholesale slaughter, or outright planetary destruction, while those who submitted were promised advanced medicine, an end to war, disease, and famine, a healed climate, and protection from every outside threat. That direct method faltered after the Scourge Virus gutted the Viltrumite ranks, forcing a shift toward subtler tactics. Trusted agents were seeded onto target worlds to hollow them out from within ahead of a clean takeover. Earth drew special interest because its humans were genetically close enough to serve as breeding stock for a shattered race, which made the planet the campaign's single most vital prize. Every attempt to claim it, however, ran aground against Invincible, the first Viltrumite-human hybrid, and his allies among the Guardians of the Globe, the Global Defense Agency, and humanity at large.

The long campaign feeds directly into the open Viltrumite War, the reckoning between the empire and the Coalition. Its shadow also stretches across the multiverse, where the outcome frequently ran the other way. In most alternate timelines the empire triumphed, usually because Invincible was turned to its side early, before Allen or the Coalition could reach Earth to expose Viltrumite weaknesses. Angstrom Levy found dimension after dimension in which Omni-Man had won his son over and seized the planet. In one such reality the pair crushed Earth's rebellion together, wiping out heroes like Robot, Rex Splode, and the Immortal, though Mark's love for Atom Eve led him to spare her even in ruin. In countless others, Debbie Grayson herself sided with the empire, and Mark went so far as to don its uniform and bear its markings as a servant of the Viltrumite cause.