Myrrah

Myrrah is the Queen of the Locust Horde and the primary antagonist of the Gears of War franchise. Throughout the franchise, she leads the Locust in a campaign of extermination against the Humans of Sera, both out of a sense of compassion for the Locust and resentment towards the inherently violent, destructive nature of Humanity. The irony, of course, is that Myrrah herself is Human, though she has severed all ties to her race and considers herself Locust.

Early History
During the early Pendulum Wars, almost a century before the Lambent Pandemic, the COG established the New Hope Research Facility to study the possible toxicity of Imulsion. Because of the discoveries made there, the facility was shut down and the scientists as well as a large number of test subjects were forced to relocate to Mount Kadar. Myrrah is a descendant of these scientists and, unlike the New Hope subjects, is completely human.

Myrrah's title of Queen is self-given and does not have power related to royalty or genealogy. Nonetheless, the Locust Horde is ardently devoted to their Queen. Myrrah resents humanity for forcing the Locust underground after New Hope was shut down. Where the COG saw mutated, poisoned humans Myrrah saw an evolved, stronger race. Through both fear and respect she pushes her Locust to take their rightful place as the dominant species on Sera.

Locust Civil War
Almost a decade before Emergence Day, the Locust Horde became engaged in a bitter civil war. Many Locust had begun mutating after entering more advanced stages of Lambency and as the mutations increased their numbers expanded. At first, Myrrah regarded the Lambent as a mere nuisance, but it soon became clear that these violent, self-destructive abominations posed a serious threat to the Locust's survival. If her people were to survive the Lambent infection, they would need to relocate to the surface and then bury the Lambent within the Hollow before they spread any further. The problem was that Sera's surface was already densely populated by Humans, so it became apparent that the Locust would have to take the surface world by force. Lacking any sympathy for Humanity and concerned solely for the survival of the Locust, Myrrah made plans for the Horde to invade and conquer the surface.

Roughly five years before E-Day, Myrrah made contact with COG scientist Adam Fenix who was investigating reports of undiscovered life-forms supposedly dwelling within the Outer Hollows. When Fenix and Myrrah met, they discussed the threat of the Lambent and the possibility of destroying the infection. As the foremost scientific mind in the Coalition of Ordered Governments, Adam was the most likely to devise a solution to the Lambent problem and so Myrrah gave him whatever scraps of Lambent tissue could be recovered for analysis.

Professor Fenix was pressed for time. While the Locust were struggling to hold back the spread of the Lambent, the Pendulum Wars were still raging on the surface of Sera, leaving Adam torn between his duties to the COG as its chief weapons developer and finding a solution to the Lambent situation. Myrrah warned Fenix that the Locust were preparing to invade the surface and that he had to develop a cure for Lambency or have to carry the weight of his species' extinction on his shoulders.

Locust-Human War
Merely six weeks after the Pendulum Wars drew to a close, the Locust began their invasion of Sera's surface. They emerged within every major city on the planet and began systematically slaughtering every man, woman and child, wiping out almost half the Human population of Sera on the first day. Myrrah, having long since cast off any sympathy for Humanity, held no regret or remorse as her Horde exterminated her race of origin. As far as she was concerned, they had brought this war upon themselves, and her disdain for them was only justified when the COG resorted to deploying the Hammer of Dawn orbital defense network to burn most of the surface world just to deny the Locust control.

For over fifteen years, Myrrah's armies clashed with the remaining forces of the COG for control of what was left of Sera, and all the while Adam Fenix was hidden away at the secret COG research facility on the island of Azura, continuing his research on developing a cure for Lambency. Neither the Locust nor most of the COG knew that Fenix was still alive and equally as few knew that he had been in contact with the Locust before E-Day.

Hollow Storm
Throughout most of the Locust War, Humanity was unaware of the structure of Locust leadership. That would change when the COG launched a massive counter-offensive against Locust forces in the Hollow in response to several cities being sunk by the colossal Riftworm. Marcus Fenix, son of Adam Fenix and leader of the Delta-One Gears squad, led his team into the bowels of the Hollow where they discovered the Locust capital of Nexus, and after infiltrating the palace within the centre of the citadel, they encountered Myrrah herself.

Myrrah revealed that she knew Marcus' father, though she remained ambiguous as to the exact nature of their relationship. She soon tired of the Human presence within her sanctum and summoned her high priest Skorge to kill Delta Squad while she made her escape. She would not ever return to Nexus as soon after she left, the COG initiated a last-ditch plan to sink their own city of Jacinto in order to flood the Hollow, wiping out a large amount of the Locust population.

Lambent Pandemic
In the two years following the sinking of Jacinto, Myrrah and the surviving Locust had gone into hiding in order to regroup. Many Locust became displaced during this exodus, resulting in the formation of a number of small tribes of Savage Locust. Meanwhile, the COG had relocated to the island of Vectes where the Locust could not reach them. However, there was something that could: the Lambent.

The flooding of the Hollow had caused Imulsion levels to rise rapidly until it reached the soil and oceans, infecting numerous life-forms and accelerating the spread of Lambency across the planet. Lambent life-forms began to appear all over Sera and relentlessly attacked any and all other life-forms, killing or infecting them. As the Lambent spread, the remaining COG forces abandoned Vectes and attempted to survive out at sea, but the menace could even reach them out there.

Former COG Chairman Richard Prescott was forced to reveal to his former charges the truth behind the disappearance of the COG's scientific elite prior to E-Day and how he was made aware of the Lambent threat early on by Adam Fenix. After hearing that his father was still alive, Marcus Fenix and Delta Squad organized an excursion to Azura to find him, hoping that he had discovered a solution to the Lambent Pandemic. Queen Myrrah was also made aware of Adam's status and had her force carry out a siege of Azura, bypassing the Maelstrom barrier that hid and protected the island and capturing anyone who may have been of use.

By the time the Locust and COG had made it to Azura, Professor Fenix had finally managed to devise a solution to the Lambent. What he had created, however, wasn't so much a cure as it was a weapon; the vaccine could be installed within Azura's Maelstrom device and distributed into Sera's atmosphere, but it would not only wipe out the Lambent but also the Locust. Adam hoped that he could find a way to save both Locust and Humans, but as always time was against him.

Final Battle
As Humans, Locust and Lambent converged on Azura, a ferocious battle raged for control of the Maelstrom. Marcus Fenix fought to protect the Maelstrom while his father prepared the vaccine for global distribution while Myrrah personally led the Locust charge on the facility from atop her personal war-mount, the Tempest. She attacked the weapon itself, demanding that Adam stand down and remarking about the similarities between humanity and the Locust: both were genocidal, hateful races that considered each other monsters.

After the Tempest and Myrrah were brought down by multiple blasts from the Hammer of Dawn, Adam managed to activate his anti-Lambent weapon, resulting in the annihilation of the Lambent and the Locust. Myrrah somehow survived the Hammer barrage on her Tempest, extracting herself from its carcass and gloating about Adam's own death, stating how everything he had created was used only for destruction. An enraged Marcus then took a commando knife and stabbed Myrrah in the heart, letting her die in a pool of her own blood.

Personality
Myrrah holds cynical and xenophobic views, which drive her ruthless war tactics. She sees the human race as savages that only destroy, and that no matter how hard they may try, they will always be destined to destroy. Believing that, she ordered the genocidal assault on the surface of Sera beginning on Emergence Day after the Lambent threat arose in the Hollow, rather than seeking diplomacy, and saw the human's penchant for destruction fulfilled when the humans countered the Locust's near victory with the Hammer of Dawn counterattack. During Operation: Hollow Storm, she was willing to sacrifice the Hollows so her race could colonize the surface. Much can be learned of her nature during her exchange with Marcus Fenix during the Second Battle of Azura. Here, she repeatedly lambasts the human race for seeing the Locust as beneath them, despite the fact she views humanity in exactly the same way.

Queen Myrrah's view on the Lambent is that of an infection. Her hatred for the Lambent is described as an "infection" that afflicts the Locust Horde. On a propaganda broadcast to her troops, she explains, "We cannot allow the Lambent to pollute the surface. We must bury their infection here."

She refuses to surrender either to the humans or the Lambent and wishes for the Locust Horde to reign not only supreme over the others, but to exterminate all other threats to the Horde as well.

Abilities
Myrrah does not possess the same level of fighting fitness as her Locust Drones, but in Gears of War 3 she demonstrates that she is able and willing to fight alongside her warriors for the survival of their race. The only inhuman ability she has demonstrated throughout the games is an apparent telepathic link to her forces, as seen in the RAAM's Shadow DLC when she mentally communicates with General RAAM during the Locust invasion of Ephyra.