Slobbery Mangy Stupid Poachers

some 'yeens!

I'm doing some fiddling with Virgil's design and character. Been thinking of "upgrading" him to a cave hyena (Ice Age spotted hyena), an animal that's long extinct in our world. Which is just as well, because fossil evidence shows it definitely fed on early humans. And lions. And bears. Oh my!

Virgil's subspecies is much bigger and stronger than his modern day counterparts, we can see how fucknormous he really is paired against the decently-sized spotted hyena matriarch to his left. (These two hyena ladies are just random nobodies, but I call the lil one Pam and the big one Bev.)

We've gone over the social distinction between wildtype carnivores vs domestics.  Virgil Kruger is definitely a wildtype carnivore, yet he is also unfortunate enough to receive an additional social designation, he is a primal. Primals are animal species that are very, verrry ancient. As previously discussed, animals that are extinct in our world are not necessarily extinct in Fuzzbutts, as no humans exist in FB to impact animal populations. Thus you have Jude the dire wolf, Dom the sabertooth tiger, and Virgil the cave hyena. 

Primals are very rare, and keep to themselves in quiet, insular communities. This....isn't great for staving off negative social perception. Some primal species are fortunate enough to be largely regarded as cute (dodo birds, great auks), awe-inspiring (woolly mammoths, smilodons), or just plain cool (thylacines).....but many are dismissed as strange and primitive, even stupid. Primal carnivores are typically perceived as witless savages. Hyenas are already unfairly stereotyped as filthy disease-carrying scavengers, so a giant primal hyena is simply not gonna have a fun time in modern society. Virgil is no less evolved than the average person (he's even learned to eat his cheetos with chopsticks! No more dusty paws!), yet has to deal with basically everyone assuming that he is 1.) a lumbering neanderthal, or 2.) a violent bloodthirsty slave to primal instinct. Virgil is neither of these things (he is ruthlessly cunning, yet also lazy and largely disinterested in devouring anybody), in fact he might just be willing to help these lovely ladies reach the tortilla chips on the tall shelf at the grocery store, if they ask nicely~

Virgil has never met another of his kind, though not from lack of looking. He knows that logically his father must also be a primal hyena (his mother, Sheena, is a run-of-the-mill spotted 'yeen), but Virg figures that mystery is better left unsolved. 

random notes

-Virgil has a more humanoid body plan than the average Fuzzbutt denizen, with broader shoulders and large dexterous hands. The overall effect is he looks more like a cryptid than an animal, and other critters do find this unsettling. Except Sunny, I guess. Sunny saw tall dark and gruesome there and thought yep, boyfriend material

-Like most hyenas, Virgil "laughs" (a peculiar cackling/whooping sound) when agitated, usually involuntarily. It happens most commonly when he's nervous, angry, frustrated, excited, or sometimes when he's looking at something he really wants to eat (eg. a pricey lab-grown rack of ribs). As you can imagine, it spooks the hell out of prey animals. They don't know that creepy cackle is coming from a hyena frustratedly trying to wrangle a stuck snack from the vending machine. They think it's the grim reaper, come to devour them alive and screaming. :D Virgil also has a loud cackling regular laugh, as does his foster sister Savannah. It can sometimes be heard when the pair use their lunch break to people-watch together (really just make fun of everyone like catty teenagers)