Athel Loren is the great enchanted forest on the south-eastern marches of Bretonnia, and it is less a forest than a vast, slow intelligence that happens to be made of trees. Magic has soaked its roots since the world was young. Within its eaves the seasons hold court like rival monarchs, time flows at the forest's own discretion, and paths lead where the wood wishes rather than where they led yesterday.
It is home to the Wood Elves, who ward the forest and are warded by it in an ancient compact, fighting alongside its stranger children: dryads, branchwraiths, and ancient treemen, eldest and angriest among them the scarred giant Durthu. Over them all preside Ariel, the Mage Queen, living vessel of the goddess Isha, and Orion, the King in the Woods, who dies with every winter and is reborn with every spring to lead the Wild Hunt across the treetops.
Outsiders fare poorly here. Bretonnian peasants leave offerings at the forest's edge and teach their children that those who wander beneath the canopy come back years later, aged strangely, or not at all — and for once the peasants are entirely right. Orc waaaghs, dwarf expeditions, and errant knights alike have marched into Athel Loren and simply never marched out.