The longbow of Athel Loren is not a weapon the asrai take up so much as a language they are raised in. A Glade Guard learns wind, range, and the gaps between leaves the way other races learn their letters, and by the time the forest first calls them to war they can put an arrow through a visor at distances other archers call impossible. They fight as the forest fights: unseen, patient, and all at once — volleys falling from the canopy in whispering sheets, each shaft loosed down a shooting lane only the wood itself could have opened.
They are not soldiers, for Athel Loren keeps no standing armies. They are the forest's common kindreds — hunters, wardens, keepers of the glades — who set aside their crafts when the horns sound and take down the war-bow that hangs beside every hall's door. Glade Guard do not hold ground; the forest holds it, and they merely punish whatever stands upon it. Along the Bretonnian marches it is said that no one has ever seen a wood elf and lived. The truth is colder: every trespasser is seen, from their first step beneath the eaves to their last. It is only the archer who goes unwitnessed.
Order of battle
