The Wood Elves

The Wood Elves emerged from the forests of the Cobra Domain. The trees had first been awakened by the Wardens and could, at first, commune only with them. The Elves' Warden ancestry allowed them to learn to, with time, as well. Generation after generation, the Elves and the trees grew together. They learned one another's rhythms, shared the same forests, weathered the same seasons, and slowly developed a bond unlike any other. As the Elves adapted to the forest, so too did the forest to them. In time, the ability to commune with the trees belonged to the Wardens and the Wood Elves alone. Other elves, despite sharing the same Warden heritage, found themselves unable to bridge the necessary centuries old bond that had grown between the trees and the wood elves.

The Wardens valued the trees chiefly as living fortresses guarding the frontier against Imperial expansion, but the Wood Elves came to see them as family. Living beneath their immense canopies gradually changed them. Their skin retained the warmest, most vibrant hues of any Elven people, as though the forests had rekindled the humanity still within them. They saw the lofty ambitions of the First Elves and the relentless striving of the Dark Elves as futile and distasteful, embracing instead the patient pace of the woodland. Though increasingly isolated from other Elven societies, they remained devoted to the Naja, believing the ancient forests deserved protection from the Empire's endless hunger for timber and conquest. They became the quiet guardians of the wild, serving not as rulers of the forest, but as its lifelong companions.