Snow Leopards

The Snow Leopards are the great pale hunting-cats of the northern mountains, ghost-furred predators that Kislevite trackers capture as cubs and raise to hunt alongside the armies of the Tzar. Broad-pawed and silent, superbly suited to the snows in which they were born, they pad unseen across drifts that would swallow a man to the waist, then fall upon their prey in a sudden explosion of fang and claw. Loosed ahead of the host, the leopards range the flanks and forests, running down scouts, savaging skirmishers, and flushing hidden foes from cover before the main battle is joined. They answer to their handlers with the wary tolerance of half-wild things, obedient only so long as the hunt runs in their favour. To the superstitious folk of the oblast the white leopards are creatures half of this world and half of winter itself, and to hear their coughing snarl in the snow-mist is a chilling omen indeed.