Wood Elves

The wood elves are the elves of the forests. They shape their homes by growing untouched trees in the right way through their magical songs.¹

Ways of the forest

Wood elf tribes, like nomadic cultures, often perform one version or another of the Call of the Ancestors, a ritual that invites the spirits of one's forebears into the mortal world to seek their insight and protection. The spirits it summons are not always benevolent.²

The language of the badgerfolk takes its grammatical structure from Elvish, specifically from the wood elf dialect.³

Neighbours

Badgerfolk share much of the forest with the wood elves. Despite their different ways of life, their common respect for the forest and the benefits each can offer the other often lead to alliances. Because the badgerfolk understand trade better than the elves, they handle the trade in wood elf goods in many places: elven products find their way into the human world through badgerfolk hands, and many human materials reach the elves by the same route.³

Drooms typically live among wood elf communities or in badgerfolk towns within the forest.⁴

Orc tribes come into conflict with the wood elves, as they do with the northerners, the Empire, the badgerfolk, the capra hordes and one another.⁵

Against the Empire

Conflicts between The Empire and the wood elves who broke away from the Da'fat Federation have gone on for ages. The rule of the Red Eagle covers every road and city of the Empire, but claiming dominance in the ancient forests is hard even for the mightiest man alive.⁶

The K're

Where the efforts of a single clan are not enough, wood elves form war clans made up entirely of fighters, called K're. Elves who join a K're give up their old surnames and devote their lives to protecting the borders of the ancient forests from the Empire. To the Empire these clans are no different from terrorists, and bounties are often placed on the heads of their members.⁶

K're war parties are usually divided into two sects: those who oppose the Da'fat coalition and those who support it. The renegades who follow the anti-Da'fat factions are said to bear an innate hatred of the Empire for corrupting and butchering the forests of the world. They are rigorously trained in guerrilla warfare and expert at fighting in the forest; they hunt and fight like wolf packs and prefer hit-and-run tactics.⁷

What the K're share with the k'reani, the defenders of the ancient forests, is a single concern: their homes. When it comes to protecting their homes and their way of life, the creatures of the forest unite much as nations do.⁸

In the Bluelands, where forestry dominates, conflicts with various wood elf k're communities break out from time to time.⁹

The Whistle

The most valued warriors of the war clans are the barbarians who can use the Whistle, a sacred battle trance developed by the wood elves. Whistle warriors usually cause great damage in small groups and are respected among their own people; the special weapons given to them are treated as heirlooms and guarded from outsiders.⁶¹⁰

The path of the Whistle belongs to the wood elves: anyone else who follows it must somehow have learned it from them. This happens very rarely, when an outsider has somehow won the trust of a K're.⁶

In the Western Provinces

Several mercenaries of the Western Provinces have ties to the wood elves and their struggle:

• Dhori Whitefang comes from an anti-Da'fat K're of the Western Provinces and practises the Whistle.¹⁰
• Alveir Greenblade left his K're for a life of adventure, came to the Westreach on learning that a wood elf resistance fighter was in the city, and fights in the traditional wood elf style, with longsword at close quarters and longbow at range.¹¹
• Vaness Von’frevein went to live among the wood elves of the Western Provinces after being cast out of her position, and became a skilled swordswoman under their training.¹²
• The Oakenheart Conclave has close ties with the wood elf rebels.¹³

On the other side, Aetheus Boldragon once fought alongside the legions against rebel wood elf forces as a member of The Scarlet Spears, and Xaman left that guild when it raided a wood elf K're, unwilling to kill elves. A band of wood elf freedom fighters once attacked a lumber mill and their leader was beheaded by Batlamius Guilla, and Perildien Elderwood recently learned from a treant of the part Avalon played in the massacre of a wood elf k're.¹⁴