[ Animal Lords ] of the [ Land | Past | Skies | Tundra | Waters ]
[ Ape | Bear | Boar | Cat | Chameleon | Dinosaur | Dog | Elephant | Fox | Lizard | Mouse | Sheep | Wolf | Zebra ]
Cat Lord
Felis Seyhrain. Planar animal lord [she/her] N
Realm: Beastlands / Brux / The Cat Lord’s Prowl
The Cat Lord maintains her realm in an area between the borders of Krigala and Brux known as the Cat Lord’s Prowl to outsiders—which includes just about everyone who’s not a feline, berk. She’s probably the most prominent Animal Lord of the Beastlands, probably because of her current rivalry with Bast, the power of cats from Ysgard. It’s not that her pride of cats are more powerful than other animal species on the Beastlands; it’s just that she’s one of the more noticeable Animal Lords on the Beastlands. Most other Animal Lords prefer to keep to their own layers and realms, while the Cat Lord is actively working to increase the standing of cats throughout the multiverse. The other Animal Lords quietly disapprove of her actions, believing her ambitions to have betrayed the plane’s nature of keeping to their own.
The Cat Lord is the patron of all felines throughout the multiverse, be they panther, lion, lynx, puma, lycanthrope (such as were-tigers or were-lions), and even tabaxi. She watches over these creatures that love to lurk in the shadows, stalking their prey with glowing eyes. All sorts of animals can be found within the Cat Lord’s care—all except for the domestic cat anyway, who Cat sees as a perversion of the true nature of felines. Any domestic cats that become petitioners in the Prowl are transformed into their more wild counterparts, such as lynx or a panther.
Among all of the realms of the Animal Lords, the Cat Lord’s Prowl is the one that’s the most talked about outside the Beastlands, possibly because of the Cat Lord’s rivalry with Bast. This rivalry is an odd one, since it involves the Cat Lord’ and her’s beliefs that she should control the portfolio of the power. Bast herself seems rather amused by the Cat Lord’s stance, but the Cat Lord has retaliated by kidnapping feline worshippers of Bast and bringing them to the Beastlands to become her own followers. It seems Cat has a scheme to usurp Bast’s portfolio, which will end one of two ways—either it’ll work and Bast will lost her own status, or Bast will tire of the games and strike back at Cat in whatever way she desires. Right now, Bast’s options seem rather limited, for the mere presence of the Cat Lord herself causes Bast’s worshippers to forget any devotion that they once had to the Egyptian power. These worshippers do not follow Cat’s orders by magical coercion; rather, they merely forget their loyalty to Bast and begin to focus on themselves and their position within nature rather than worry about powers. The Athar find this whole turn of events amusing of course, but the human followers of Bast are beginning to get edgy: who knows when they’ll be next?
On the Beastlands, the Animal Lords mostly stand by in quiet disapproval of the Cat Lord’s actions. However, the Dog Lord and his servants are beginning to get more hostile than usual when dealing with the felines of the Beastlands. The Dog Lord’s annoyed that the Cat thinks herself so much of a power that she can actually cross paws with an actual deity, and Dog isn’t afraid to let the Cat hear about his disapproval. If it wasn’t for the Dog Lord’s own hatred of Bast, the Egyptian power would most likely have tried to recruited the Dog Lord to her side long ago. However, recently, the worshippers of Bast have been making more of an effort to speak to Dog and persuade him to step up his harassment of Cat further. Whether or not this will actually benefit Bast is unclear, but it does risk causing a war to break out across the Beastlands: the last thing that the Dog Lord wants. The rest of the Animal Lords seem to prefer to leave alone to the whole situation; they may disapprove of what Cat is doing, but they do not wish to turn the Beastlands into a place of violence and war just because of one Cat’s arrogance.
Adding to the tensions throughout the Beastlands is the fact that the position of the Cat Lord was recently replaced after the former Lord mysteriously vanished, at about the time that the Vile Hunt showed up on the Beastlands. While Cagers may not see this as a critical matter, on the Beastlands is a big deal. The death and replacement of an Animal Lord is an event that doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it usually proceeds smoothly. However, the mysterious disappearance of the former Cat Lord, the rise of the new Cat, and now her conflict with Bast all seem to be part of some own master design. The new Cat Lord’s actual innocence doesn’t vindicate her much, for she cares little as to what anyone else thinks of her—only that she is respected as the Queen of All Cats in the Multiverse.
The Cat Lord represents all forms of feline throughout the multiverse, including lions, tigers, cheetahs, jaguars, panthers, tabaxi, weretigers, lynxes, and leopards. All of these may be found in the Cat Lord’s Prowl, hiding in the shadows, waiting for their prey to make the wrong step. And when they do—because prey always do—they’ll be meat.
The Cat Lord also has an ongoing rivalry with the Swan Lord, although this is not a personal matter. Rather, it’s rooted in the basic struggle of Ground against Air, which was begun centuries ago when the first Wolf Lord was born.
Canonical Sources: Manual of the Planes [5e] p214; Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix 1 [2e] p12-13; On Hallowed Ground [2e] p50,87; Planes of Chaos [2e] Book of Chaos p107,118; Planes of Conflict [2e] Liber Benevolentiae p24; Player’s Guide p10; Something Wild [2e] p5,9,14,43-44,46,52,54,60,63. AD&D 2e stats for the cat lord can be found here.
Source: Dave King aka Heregul, Jon Winter-Holt. Canonwatch: The Cat Lord is one of the four animal lords detailed in Planescape MC1.