Grue (Freedom City)

"For other meanings of the word, see Grue."

The "Grue" are a fictional race of extraterrestrials from the Freedom City campaign setting of the role-playing game, "Mutants and Masterminds". The Grue are an expansive alien empire intended to serve as antagonists in the game. Like most aspects of Freedom City, they are largely derived from comic book characters; in this case, the shapeshifting Grue loosely resemble the Skrulls from Marvel Comics, though with aspects of other fictional aliens as well; their collective hive-mind nature is similar to the Star Trek villains the Borg and the Changelings, while their leader the "Meta-Mind" invokes images of the Supreme Intelligence of Marvel's Kree race. The Grue come from the planet of Gruen-Prime, or Gruen-World, a reference to comics writer and editior Mark Gruenwald.

The Grue are mostly organized into an insect-like caste system. The Grue drones are limited in intelligence and shapeshifting ability, and have almost no individual initiative. The Meta-Mind controls them telepathically and uses them as footsoldiers.

The Metamorphs are both the officers and the spies of the Grue. Capable of detailed imitation of an alien lifeform, and telepathic draining of the subjects knowledge, enabling a near-perfect mimicry of any being. The process of duplicating a non-Grue is risky, however, and on rare occasions a Metamorph will come to absorb too much from its victim and go rogue, developing an individual personality. One such rogue Grue is Pseudo of the Freedom League, who now helps defend Earth against his own kind, and another is the Meta-Grue.

The leader and brain of the Grue Unity is the Meta-Mind, a collection of thousands of Grue brain-clusters. More than a king, it "is" the Grue Unity; the other Grue are essentially extensions of its body.

In at least one alternate reality, the Grue are a peaceful people who prize individual growth and development. One such Grue, Changeling, is a current student at Claremont Academy