Raised in the deepest jungle, Nidalee is a master tracker who can shapeshift into a ferocious cougar at will. Neither wholly woman nor beast, she viciously defends her territory from any and all trespassers, with carefully placed traps and deft spear throws. She cripples her quarry before pouncing on them in feline form—the lucky few who survive to tell tales of a wild woman with razor-sharp instincts, and even sharper claws…

Far, far from the harsh deserts of the Great Sai, over savanna plains and mountain steppes, lie the great eastern jungles of Shurima. Swathed in mystery, they are home to wild, fantastical beasts, and dense forests blooming with life. But while there is overwhelming beauty to be found there, danger and death lurk nearby in equal measure.

No one knows how Nidalee came to be alone in the heart of the jungle. Dressed in little more than rags, the infant child sat alone on the leafy soil, her cries echoing between the trees.

Undoubtedly, that was what brought the cougars.

A mother, roaming with her cubs, approached the abandoned girl, perhaps catching the scent of something familiar… or at least something worth saving. She accepted Nidalee without hesitation, half leading, half dragging her back to their den.

The girl lived in the company of beasts, scrapping and playing alongside her new siblings, with no connection to her own kind, or mortal society at large. The cougars raised Nidalee as a creature of the forest, and as the years passed she grew into a capable huntress—but where her guardians favored tooth and claw, Nidalee learned to take advantage of her surroundings. She worked up healing salves from honey fruit, sought out curiously glowing flowers to illuminate the night, and even used explosive seeds to send territorial murk wolves flying.

“They will fear the wild.”