the vell-os were originally part of the colonial council (which preceded the federation) but seceded when they protested the colonial fleet trying to invade the polaris. following a devastating war with the colonial council, they were enslaved by the colonial council and proceeded to raze every inhabited vell-os world via intense orbital bombardment, leaving dead planets with dangerously high radiation that will endure for millennia. the leaders of the vell-os ruling council, the krypt-tokh, escaped enslavement by fusing their bodies with their nanite-producing organs, becoming immense, immortal, telepathic space-roaming beings which ply the ruins of vell-os space. the krypt await the liberation of the vell-os race as foretold in the so-called "korell prophecy."