River City History: Rise of the Monsters

As summer brought a heatwave to 1954 River City, the gangs under the Red Hawk were still at war. A traveling carnival mystic named Madame Lizette saw a place to make her move. Lizette (no full name nor birth records exist for her) appeared to possess actual magical powers.

Her machinations were slow and deliberate until the arrival of a pair of criminals: Bonita “Nita” Dell and Brett Hannigan. The criminals tried to rob the carnival box office, only to be cornered by the police. They hid in two hollow animal totems owned by Lizette, totems that were destroyed when the police located the pair of would-be thieves and opened fire.

Dell and Hannigan both survived, but Lizette burned with anger at the loss of powerful sources of magic. She used the remains of the totems to cast one last piece of magic on Dell and Hannigan. Inside the prison hospital, the criminals were transformers. Hannigan became a werewolf while Nita kept her human features but gained the fur and tail—as well as the strength and power—of a tiger.

The two monsters go on a rampage that destroys much of city hall, but Lizette’s own greed gets the better of her when she learns of a large reward for the pair: $25,000. When she tries to trap them, she used her dark arts to turn them on one another. When Dell and Hannigan apparently kill each other, the police target Lizette. She runs into her own burning pyre than be killed by the police.

Dell and Hannigan’s bodies were taken into police custody, apparently human again.

Nita Dell and Brett Hannigan were not dead however, nor were they fully human. The pair escaped from the city morgue after they realized they could now transform from human to animal forms at will. Nita seemed to find some kind of enlightenment in her near death experience. She realized that with their powers, they could rise to take the Red Hawk’s place. The pair set out to secure the criminal trade of the city, using their powers to strongarm the gangs of River City.

With a shortage of metahumans in the city, legends of the Werewolf and the Tigerwoman struck fear into the citizenry and the criminals of the city. While the two figures consolidated power through several compatriots, they secured their hold over the city using their animal forms.

Even as they strengthened their hold in the underworld, each use of their powers deepened their transformations. While once Tigerwoman only had a few superficial cat-like features, her body grew more hair with each turn and her claws and legs lengthened and hardened. Within months, Hannigan started to sprout a longer wolf-like nose and sharper, deadly teeth. But with their powers necessary for them to secure their powers, the two figures continued to use them as they continued to bring the individual cartels and mobs under their purview.