Background
...A magnificent beast, the smoke jaguar. It is ferocity unbound, tenacity without limit. Once it locks its powerful jaws around the throat of its prey, it never lets go. The greatest of warriors might be shamed by comparing himself to such fierce courage...
My Clans might learn much from this beast. Like us, it came from Nature, but has been improved by human hands. And now the great cat born on Terra thrives on a world so many light-years away from the planet of its birth that the human mind shudders to contemplate it...as we must. As we will...
The smoke jaguar fights like a true warrior. No deceit, no subterfuge - a single, brutal assault, both open and deadly. A powerful spring from above, a slash of its huge claws across its victim's throat, and its prey lies dead before it. So should all of us fight our enemies - openly, but with overwhelming force. Thus we may win true glory by defeating the foe in honorable combat. Truly, this great cat is a finer warrior than any human being I have ever seen on the field of battle...!
- -- From Birth of a New Society: The Collected Writings of Nicholas Kerensky, Strana Mechty Press, 3025
Like many of the Clan warriors it represents, the predator for whom Clan Smoke Jaguar is named owes its existence to science tampering with nature. Its genes are those of the Terran jaguar, altered in the laboratory to enable it to survive in a harsher environment. Imported by Aleksandr Kerensky's followers to the world of Strana Mechty, the smoke jaguar thrived in the fertile jungles that teemed with suitable prey.
Members of Clan Smoke Jaguar take fierce pride in their namesake, which the Clans' revered founder, Nicholas Kerensky, chose for them. They believe that Nicholas modeled all of Clan society on the smoke jaguar, and point proudly to the above entry from one of his many journals in which he extols the beast's virtues. Modern-day Smoke Jaguars often quote from this journal entry, which they revere above all literature save for the Clans' epic poem, The Remembrance.
