Morrigan

Morrigan is a female leopard-theme felinoid featured in the Empires science-fiction story created by Chris F. Grant in the pages of Yarf! fanzine from 1990-1996. Racially, she is what is known as an an-feliscii in the Empires universe, meaning that she has digitigrade legs and a tail rather than the "superior" plantigrade legs and no tail. Morrigan is a foul-tempered person that has had to endure not only war but racism and sexism from her peers. Her full name is Lefeyette Morrigan.

While Morrigan was a "bad guy" she quickly became a fan favorite for being simultaneously brutal and driven while also guided by an odd sense of justice. She was given the duty of occupying a town of mostly veliscii seperatists that were sympathetic to the enemy's cause. Morrigan was assigned the task with expectations of failure; being given insufficient resources and authority, as well as responsibilities for tracking down and destroying Central Army units that had escaped destruction and were running unfettered behind Imperial lines. She surprised everyone by using non-standard methods of accomplishing her goals with minimal effort and masterful command of troops and materiel. Her role in the story was called "Morrigan's War".

Her turning point as a character in the story came when she had to discipline four soldiers under her command for brutalizing prisoners under their care, including two soldiers who raped a female prisoner. The most junior soldier was given a reprimand and extra duty for shooting a male prisoner who tried to stop the rape; the two rapists were executed; and the sergeant in charge of them all was demoted to private and sent to the front lines where vicious fighting was taking place.

She is an extreme "type A" personality and her final act of wartime savagery was to release nerve gas on a civilian town of 4,400 people simply to make life difficult for the Central Alliance liberating forces. She escaped to areas unknown and it is presumed she still serves the Irrykanoi Imperial Army with distinction.

She was a favorite focus of satirical comedy at the hands of Jim Groat and others in the pages of Yarf!, 1989-1996.

Social Tensions in Empires
In the Empires universe, the society of the Irrykanoi Empire was for centuries a male-dominated society; simultaneously there was a great deal of scorn for Morrigan's race of an-feliscii. There are three races of cat-based humanoids in the Empires universe: the veliscii, fully humanoid with no tails and plantigrade legs, which are considered the superior race; the an-veliscii, which have plantigrade legs and tails, considered to be more "animal" and less "evolved"; and finally the eti-veliscii, a mix of the two in which one characteristic or another-- either a tail or digitgrade legs-- is present.

Morrigan, being an an-veliscii and a female to boot, was treated with disrespect by her peers and superiors and sometimes undisguised contempt by her juniors. Because of this, she developed a very gruff, martinet command style and tended towards heavy-handed discipline.