In the beginning, the Celestials captured some ancient apes, transforming one hundred of them into Deviants and another hundred into Eternals. Then they set the programs in their genes and had the two races slaughter each other in Earth's laboratory.
The Eternals were stronger individually. Their physical abilities, intelligence, superpower strength, affinity with Cosmic Energy, and so on all far surpassed those of the Deviants.
But the Deviants had their own advantage: reproduction. Their unusual genetic structure allowed them to breed with nearly any living creature on Earth.
The most orthodox Deviants had not originally looked like this. The first hundred Deviants had merely been "humanoid" with different skin colors. They looked more like Thanos, with monkey-like faces, pointed teeth, and sharp ears.
Yet over the long years that followed, they had needed to expand their population in order to survive, so they interbred with all sorts of creatures. That was how tens of thousands of underground species such as Minotaurs, Dog-Headed Humanoids, Pig-Headed Humanoids, and Pukwudgies had emerged.
His sister-in-law Shakara had many Deviants under her command. She lived in Monster Metropolis beneath New York and even called herself The Queen.
But even Su Ming did not know how much Deviant blood she had. On the contrary, she seemed more like a demon, so perhaps she was a hybrid of a Deviant and a demon?
In any case, the Deviants were doing fairly well now. They had long grown accustomed to being hunted by the Eternals, and their numbers were sufficient to ensure that their race would not go extinct.
The Eternals, however, were quite few in number. Especially when the Titans had split off and departed back then, taking most of the elites among the survivors with them. Su Ming estimated that there were probably around five hundred