Wargrove of Woe

“The Children of Isha will fail us!” The Treeman Ancients were the first magical beings encountered by the Elves of Ulthuan at the very beginning of their history, powerful spirits whose essences had long ago merged with living trees in bonds that only death can sever. The Wood Elves tell that there were once hundreds of such beings, but the collapse of the great polar gates and the coming of Chaos saw many perish in the fight against the Daemonic hosts, before the conjuring of the Great Vortex led to the withering of Daemonkind. Though many Treemen endured the bitter struggle against the Dark Gods, the vast majority of survivors were younger striplings, and only three of the eldest Ancients survived – Adanhu, Durthu, and Coeddil. They are known as the Elders, Treemen whose age is beyond mortal reckoning. For long centuries before the coming of the Elves to Athel Loren, the Elder known as Coeddil was responsible for the many manifestations of the forest’s wrath against its despoilers. When a pact was made by Durthu that would ensure the forest’s symbiotic relationship with the Wood Elves, the distrustful Coeddil was consumed with bitter fury and demanded the interlopers instead be slain. Overruled by his fellow Elders, Coeddil’s resentment for the Wood Elves’ presence eventually drove him to a great betrayal, when centuries later he strode into their glade with his wargrove of Dryad handmaidens to slaughter all he could find. It was an act met with all the rage and awesome power of the Elven Mage Queen Ariel, against which Coeddil and his followers could not withstand. Unable to slay him due to her soul’s binding to Athel Loren’s spirits, Ariel imprisoned the wrathful Elder in the Wildwood, a dark corner of the forest where no Elves dwell. Encircling it with Waystones, Coeddil was abandoned amongst the shadow-glades to brood upon his betrayal. Though Coeddil remains trapped in the Wildwood’s depths, his malevolent will still manifests itself through the actions of his herald, the most spiteful of all Dryads – Drycha, the Briarmaven of Woe. Here are two embittered spirits of common cause, for like the great Elder himself, Drycha remembers well the days before the coming of the Elves and has ever rued the folly that shackled the forest to mortal whim and fate. In the early years of the alliance, she was ever in evidence about the glades and groves, watching the Elves and examining their every action for any sign of betrayal. Though she has been seen little in more recent times, strange tales have emerged around Athel Loren – worrying tales of Drycha’s activities. Amongst the men of the Empire and Bretonnia, rumours abound of trees that come alive, unprovoked yet hungry for blood, leaving settlements ruined and their inhabitants as no more than scraps of tattered flesh. These may seem like senseless events, but there must surely be a greater goal behind Drycha’s activities than mere slaughter, though what that goal might be remains to be seen.