The Dryads are the fierce spirits of the trees of Athel Loren, elemental beings of living wood who take the shape of tall, unearthly women wrought of bark and briar. Beautiful at a distance and horrifying up close, they are the forest's swift and pitiless response to any who trespass beneath its eaves, boiling out of trunk and shadow to fall upon intruders with slashing, claw-like talons of hardened wood. Fast, agile, and far stronger than their lithe forms suggest, they rend armour and flesh with contemptuous ease, and they feel neither fear nor mercy toward the warm-blooded things they regard as vermin. Dryads are creatures of raw instinct and old malice, bound to the will of the forest and its elven lords but never truly tamed, and even their allies among the Wood Elves treat them with wary respect. Where the trees themselves seem to move and the shadows come alive with grasping limbs, the Dryads are abroad — and the forest is defending itself with a fury as old as the world.
Order of battle
