Fern-Hollow Cat

A wet-wood ambush predator that hunts the fern hollows of the Greatwood — grey-furred, long-bodied, silent until it moves, and nearly invisible in the green shadow.

The Fern-Hollow Cat is tier-2 in the right conditions and tier-3 when it chooses the ground: it waits in fern cover, watches for heartbeat-vibrations through its paws, and closes the gap in one long low rush that a traveller usually hears as a rustle too close to be wind. The Cullers track them for their pelts and because a corrupted cat runs wrong in a way even a veteran mistakes for shadow—faster, wrongly angled, too-keen to its prey. Its drops are pelt and claws; the Greenwake consider killing one wasteful unless it's gone grey.