Skeksis The Skeksis are the villainous race in " The Dark Crystal " , one of two species to emerge when the Crystal cracked and divided the urSkeks . The creatures are described in detail in the book " The Making of the Dark Crystal " : " For every Mystic there was a corresponding Skeksis . . . The Skeksis had control of the castle where the Crystal was kept ; in its chamber they practiced their evil arts , hating each other as much as they hated the rest of the world . " Possessing all of the negative attributes of society , and none of the positive ones , the Skeksis live out a superficial existence of intrigue and plots against each other while struggling to retain their grip on Thra . They keep essence - drained Podlings as slaves , have their own personal army in the Garthim , and absolutely despise Gelflings , a race they think they have completely exterminated . There were originally eighteen Skeksis , but by the time of the Great Conjunction when they rejoined the Mystics , only eight remained . Skeksis is both singular and plural , but the plural form is pronounced ' Skek - " sees " ' . They say " Hmm " when they are thinking , when they are confused , and when they are fascinated ( for example , when SkekSo dies ) . Skeksis . As mentioned above , eighteen Skeksis existed to begin with ; being formed from the evil sides of the Urskeks . Eight had died by the events of The Dark Crystal , with another two perishing during the events of the film . The following ten Skeksis were alive during the events of the film : The prequel series " Legends of the Dark Crystal " introduced four more Skekis : This leaves four Skeksis whose names and titles remain unknown . Creating the Skeksis . In " The World of the Dark Crystal " , Jim Henson commented that the Skeksis were based on the Seven Deadly Sins , but that since there were ten Skeksis in the movie and only seven deadly sins , they used some sins twice or simply made some sins up . Originally the Skeksis spoke an alien language based on ancient Greek and Egyptian , specially created for them by linguist Alan Garner . Jim Henson stated , " My whole approach to this film is visual . I wanted as little dialogue as possible because I believe the story is stronger that way . Dialogue becomes a crutch . If you have all these alien - looking creatures , why should they be talking in English ? An early concept was to have the Skeksis just making noises , but in a way you knew what they were saying . " Gary Kurtz responded to the non - English version stating , " The audience thought that they were missing something . Actually , they didn ' t need to understand the Skeksis ' dialogue at those points . The translation of what was being said is really quite banal . The strength of those scenes was instinctively knowing what ' s going on . . . But the Skeksis scenes were quite long . You had to concentrate . The audience wasn ' t prepared to do that . " The response of the test audiences led to the replacement of the Skeksis language with English dialogue . The Skeksis were full body puppets , operated in a very similar way to Big Bird : the puppeteer ' s secondary arm was in the arm of the skeksis , and the puppeteer ' s primary arm was held up over the puppeteer ' s head and the hand operates the jaw . A monitor inside the suit allowed the puppeteer to see what he or she was doing .