Athel Loren

Athel Loren is a living, self aware forest where the badarse Hippies live. It is best known for simply killing anything that dares to enter it unless they are a tree or a Wood Elf. The forest has existed since before the time of the Elves or Dwarfs and was the last place to be destroyed in the End Times.

Before the Elves

Yeah well... the forest was basically not important before this point, no one came near it because it is full of creepy strange magic that makes time go weird. If you were stupid enough to walk in you could be there for twelve years only to leave and find that a second has passed since you entered in the rest of the world, or maybe you go in for a second and find a century passed in the world you left. Time doesn't matter in the forest, no one could keep track of it even if it did, the forest is weird.

When the Elves arrived

Things matter now, the Dwarf and the High Elf kingdoms had a big war the Elves called the War of the Beard and Dwarfs call the War of Vengeance, which fucked over the Elf colonists who were still on the continent. The rest of the elves of Ulthuan abandoned them to go save themselves from a bunch of backstabbing cunts so the disgruntled Elves decided to go find a new home. The spirits of the forest, particularly the giant treeman named Durthu, had been calling the colonial Elves in a way that affected their most primitive instincts, drawing them into its depths as allies tied to the forest.

Dwarf culture heavily involves Grudgekeeping, or recording EVERY sleight and paying it back. Although the victory of the Dwarfs saw them strike out the Grudge that began the war, many Grudges remained from actions during the war. Being a bunch of racists, the Dwarfs saw the remaining Elves as the targets for revenge and pursued them into the wilds. The ruling Spirits of Athel Loren, a rather moody Fey butterfly queen named Ariel (actually the mother and main goddess of all Elves, Isha) and an outright hostile Satyr king named Orion (father of all Elves and a god of the hunt Kurnous), decided not to instantly kill all the Elves and instead lead them to the Oak of Ages, the heart of the forest. When they got there the Forest talked to them, told them about how it wants them to stay and protect it during the winter. The treemen however regretted the invitation as Dwarfs massacred them, and came to resent all fauna as a result.

Winter is Coming

The forest of Athel Loren is sentient, it skullfucks anything that messes with it and is very much alive. Most trees (you know.. not evergreen ones) they wilt in winter, Athel Loren is no different and during the winter months will go into a long sleep only to wake again in spring. During winter the entire forest is basically just another forest, with weird time warping, during the rest of the year the forest is fully capable of protecting itself.

Things that live there

Athel Loren is full of some of the most kickarse old world creatures in the entire game. Starting off do you like tree people? Well they are there and they are awesome. Every treeman has a serious beef with anything living and not a resident of the forest, like, thorns tentacle raping you angry.

Then there are the eagles and hawks. The eagles are really cool, like their LOTR counterparts they are extremely badarse and fully capable of taking on all kinds of things from worms to giants. The hawks are smaller but there are more of them, the Wood Elves like to bird-nap them and raise them as life long companions to become a murder-death combo known as the Hawk Rider. Fucking innovative name there.

There are also Stags and Unicorns, you might think a stag is unremarkable but it isn't they're super magical and super important, even more important than a unicorn. The unicorns are still very magical though, they tend to get drawn to the Spellsingers like magnets.

After that you got the Wood Elves... yeah ok go find the actual page for them, in short they're badarse tree huggers.

THEN THERE ARE FOREST DRAGONS! What?! Right.. yeah, they're some of the only dragons left alive in the world of Warhammer Fantasy. Bretonnia is full of douchebags that keep trying to kill dragons for their quests and the rest of the dragons are hiding in mountains so the Forest Dragons are descendant of dragons who took refuge in Athel Loren to escape being hunted down and killed. They are super smart and super strong but most of the time they are asleep except for when Athel Loren tells them to wake up and skullfuck some Dawi or Orcs. Sometimes the Elves wake them up and say, hey, can our lord ride you? They're super cool about that though and totally onboard with it, often they make friends with the Elf they work with. They love the news though, if you can tell them about what's been going on in the rest of the world since they slept with sufficient clarity you won't become a roast.