The Brood Empress

The Brood first appeared while chasing Corsair to Earth. At the time they were in league with Deathbird, who was trying to wrest control of the Shi'ar Imperium from her sister Lilandra. The Brood were defeated by the X-Men, but returned to take the mutants hostage and implant each of them with an embryo. Wolverine's healing factor dealt with his embryo, but Storm began to change into a Brood. Before the change completed, she was swept out of an airlock, but saved by a young member of the space-whales called the Acanti, many of whom had been enslaved by the Brood to become living starships. The X-Men vowed to free the Acanti by recovering their leader's "soul," which was still held on "Sleazeworld," one of the Brood homeworlds, before they changed. After a pitched battle, the X-Men found the Prophetsinger's soul, and it healed them as it destroyed the Brood queen and returned to its people. The Brood planet then destabilized and exploded.

Brood "Firstborn" Assassin

Upon returning to Earth, the X-men found that their troubles weren't over. Professor Xavier had been implanted with a queen egg, whose psychic feedback had caused him to go into a coma even before the X-Men had been captured. He had woken up, and under the queen's control had collected mutant children into the team called the New Mutants. The queen Brood finally hatched, destroying Xavier's body, but the X-Men and NM fought long enough for Xavier's mind to reassert control. Rather than kill him, the X-Men took his Brood body to the Starjammer, which was still in orbit. The ship's doctor, Sikorsky, was able to clone Xavier a new body and transfer his mind into it.

Colossus vs. Brickbat

Years later, a Brood sharkship crashed in the Midwest, and its occupants slaughtered a bunch of hapless campers. Only paramedic Harry Palmer survived, but he had been implanted with a queen's embryo. Over the course of the next few months, Palmer and his partner Josey Thomas implanted Brood eggs into people they had treated, specifically those that they detected had latent or active mutant powers. The idea was to create a force of Brood with mutant powers that could rival the X-Men. The X-Men came to Denver on the trail of the Brood and were ambushed by Palmer's Broodlings. The X-Men fought against:

Blindside	Brickbat	Dive-Bomber	Lockup
Spitball	Temptress	Tension	Whiphand

The X-Men next came into contact with the Brood when Belladonna brought Gambit and the X-Men to New Orleans, where the Brood had captured the children of the Assassins' Guild and were going to use them as hosts. The mutants teamed up with Ghost Rider, which proved a little tricky when he was implanted with an egg. Luckily, his supernatural nature burned the embryo out before he could do too much damage. The X-Men saved the children, but Belladonna was gravely injured.

Hannah Connover and her Brood

Unbeknownst to the X-Men, Harry Palmer's partner Josey Thomas was Brood as well, and had implanted a quuen's egg inside Hannah Conover, when she was "treating" her arthritis. The egg "cured" the affliction, and people came from all over to receive Hannah's healing touch, which was actually her implanting of an egg, building her own force of loyal Brood. However, as Hannah's embryo started to grow, her humanity asserted itself and refused the telepathic orders coming from the Brood. The Brood Empress sent a squad of her "first-born" assassins to kill Conover and her Brood, but the X-Men, tracking a Brood signal, got there first. After a long and arduous battle in which most of Hannah's Brood were killed, Reverend Conover was captured by the Brood, forcing Hannah to convert to her Brood form in order to defend him. Her mind remained human, though, and she was able to return to human form when the X-Men had beaten back the first-born. Seeing no other solution than death, the Conovers agreed to allow Iceman to freeze Hannah until a cure could be found. The first-born, sensing that the rogue queen was no longer mentalz active, destroyed themselves, their corpses turning to dust. Bishop said that in his era in the future, there was a group of peaceful Brood, and it is possible that Hannah Conover was the start of that line.

Recently, the Brood interecepted NASA's Mars Lander, and invaded the Space Station Simulacra when the Lander returned to Earth orbit. The X-Men and Fantastic Four received a vague distress call, and quickly went to aid any survivors. There they discovered the Brood, and managed to kill all except the infected crew members, whom they had to leave on board to try and avoid an imminent cosmic storm (said storm in fact transformed four X-Men into ersatz versions of the FF, but their X-Factor prevented the mutation from becoming permanent and Reed Richards was able to reverse the transformation). However, the infected crew survived and tried to crash the space shuttle docked at the station into New York, and were only narrowly stopped by Invisible Woman, Storm and the Human Torch. While the Brood crew waited inside the shuttle, a Brood invasion fleet of Acanti ships appeared over the skies, disgorging too many winged Brood warriors for the heroes to handle. The Brood were defeated with scare tactics: Reed had Emma Frost use Cerebra to project an image of the Phoenix Force and Galactus ready to fight each other into their simple minds, and the illusion frightened the Brood into calling a retreat.

Brood Technology

Ships: The Brood use a variety of ships, some technological and others a mix of organic and technological components. Their largest ships are made from the bodies of the Acanti space-whales, and are so huge that they are able to implant domed towers and groups of structures on their backs, making them floating cities. Other semi-organic ships include a giant flying "shark," one of which was the crashed ship that infected Harry Palmer.