Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back
to Fantasy Fireside. It's been a little while.
I think the last episode we talked about Grand
Cafe, but we've got something a bit different
now. Due to popular demand in the comments, we've
had some people suggesting various factions.
But Colin, I believe this is possibly the single
most requested one. What are we talking about
today? We are talking about the Wood Elves, and
you better believe I was surprised that... elves
were the most requested thing. That doesn't normally
happen. We love elves. Good on you, elves. They
definitely seem to have a contrasting perception
compared to 40k. 40k people are like, and the
fancy is like, oh, elves, I love Iden F. Deepkin
and the other ones. There's elves in the sea,
there's elves in the cities, and today we're
talking about the living trees. Amazing. It's
crazy. When the writers don't treat you with
contempt, the audience is more receptive. Who
would have guessed? Nice. Well, I must admit,
wood elves are quite a regular thing in fantasy
settings. You've got them in things like Dragon
Age. You've got them in, obviously, Lord of the
Rings and stuff like that. There's the ones that
live in the woods rather than the cities. So
is there like a specific thing that defines them
differently in Warhammer Fantasy, or are they
just kind of following the tried and true, like,
oh, it's a wood elf, isn't it? They have bows
and arrows. They like squirrels, I guess. It
does, in a lot of ways, follow the tried and
true method of, you know, this is a wood elf.
That being said, they encroach a little bit into
both Elder Scrolls territory, because they'll
happily eat you. We know your opinion on myrrh
in the Elder Scrolls. It's okay. These aren't
myrrh. These are different. It's fine. Okay.
And a little bit of eldritch horror stuff because
the forest they live in is, you know, it's not
the warp, but it is terrifying and warps reality
around it. So, you know, it's not. Wood elves,
if they were completely insane and lived in a
very green hell, is not the worst way to look
at them. Okay. Not quite malevolent. It's basically
just like mini Katachan. Everything will kill
you if you go in apart from the elves. They're
fine because they've got an understanding of
nature. It's like... What is it? Lustria is like
Catacan, kind of, because I think Lustria is
close, because, you know, Lustria is just like
a jungle, too. The wood elves kind of live, it's
kind of like Catacan, too, but if, like, Catacan
was intersecting with the warp, there are better
places to live. There are also much worse places
to live, because if the forest likes you, it's
not too bad. But, you know, it probably doesn't
like you. Yeah. OK, well, I'm intrigued to learn
more. So where are we taking things to start
with today? Well, we we're going to start with
a little bit of prehistory again. So old ones
come to the planet. I think we've we've discussed
this a bit before. They start mucking about with
it. All the Lizardmen. Hey, there's a lot of
never before seen fantasy races on it. If you
could handle that. And they did. And it's never
quite confirmed, but they might have also popped
down a very big acorn for a tree called the Oak
of Ages that would turn the surrounding forest
into a really, at the time, much nicer magical
forest than it would become. At this point in
time, and it's a forest, so it takes plenty of
time to grow, but it's much closer to the forest
from Lord of the Rings, where they all live in.
It's a wonderful, magical forest. There's no
Galadriel there yet, but there's very kind trees.
Treebeard is here, and he's still very nice.
I like the forest. It's full of trees. Oh, I'm
the same voice actor as Gimli. Hello. Said Treebeard.
Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. It's good
fun. Oh, that's cool. But yeah, the last March
of the Ents has not occurred yet, so they're
still very happy, kind tree folk. No gunpowder
is getting involved yet. No, not yet. And this
great tree that would grow, called the Oak of
Ages, its roots were... Called the World Roots
because they're pretty much across the entire
planet. They went to Ulthuan, which is them reaching
up through the ocean because Ulthuan doesn't
connect to the ground. They were across pretty
much everywhere on the planet. They weren't the
entire planet, but if you wandered around every
continent, every future country a bit, you'd
find some bits of it. One of those, that world
that led to Ulthuan, is in the place called Averlorn.
which is where the Everqueen of the Elves lives,
who is part the goddess Isha. And the tree spirits
would travel there every now and again. The elves
were, you know, this is again, this is the prehistory,
the setting. They're very innocent. They don't
know. We live in a Warhammer world yet, to put
it that way. So they saw Treebeard come walking
through, and they're like, I love Treebeard.
He's my friendly oak grandpa. Hmm. He's like
the Deku tree from Zelda. Like, oh, Link, I'm
just a big tree. Oh, couldn't hurt anything.
Yeah, they're just kind fellas. All the other
spirits were still, you know, nice and kind and
cheerful and playful. One of them in particular
named Dirthu, who has a different moniker in
Total War, which we'll get to later. He was really
fond of the High Elves and the Ever Queen in
particular. Him and his tree brothers and sisters
taught him how to shape the wood without cutting
it down, all that classical wood elf forest hippie
stuff. Still not wood elves. This was more just
a cultural exchange, right? Because they weren't
allowed to go back to the main forest. But the
tree spirits... They didn't really need to go
to the forest. The elves were perfectly happy
where they were. They were happy to make their
homeland that much more beautiful and vibrant.
The tree spirits, it's mentioned, they wanted
those trees to wake up too because they woke
up and now they could walk around and they want
the other trees too as well. We were old friends.
Exactly. They want to spread the gift with the
world. And then demons happened. Oh, as, uh,
as tends to happen in Warhammer. Hmm. So those
two great polar gates, the old ones used exploded,
uh, chaos swept across the world and it was awful
for everyone. Um, you know, the TLDR for, again,
the elves, the Lizardmen were busy fighting the
war in the web way, basically. Okay. Uh, Except
they didn't have guns or anything. They just
had obsidian clubs. It's, you know, I'll give
the Saurus credit. Some of them are basically
lizard custodians, but that war was too much
for the custodians and it was too much for them
too. So it's going rough. The elves are even
worse off because, you know, they have armies,
but it's an army that was never used. It was
just a thing to do, because why would you? They
lived in the Garden of Eden. What do you need
an army for? It turns out when four different
Satans invade, it's good to have that army, but
it wasn't much. Their experience before then
was doing the towel flick in the gym, like, oh,
stop it, stop it. And then it's like, Satan,
oh, no. We actually have to use these swords
that we have. Oh, how do you stab them? Which
edge bit do you use? I think the pointy bit.
Yeah, the greatest High Elf commanders are the
ones who do the bottle -flipping trick where
it lands on the bottom three times in a row.
You do that, you can lead. You are now in charge
of the artillery. Brilliant! Yes! Clearly he's
got the credentials. Yeah, so eventually the
tide turns. That Anarion fella, the greatest
High Elf, pulls the sword of Cain, goes to town,
starts fighting everything off. lord croak kills
like half of all demons ever on his own uh wow
i there's no specific numbers given i just know
that time stopped not because he stopped time
but because reality had the youtube buffering
symbol on it he was casting so much magic time
literally just as bystander watching guys check
this out I'm just going to slow it down because
it's that cool. And I'm just an effervescent
idea. Wow. Even time was impressed. I love my
elves. This is an elf episode, but I got to be
fair to Lord Croak. He's a real one. The elves
fought one infinite demon army. That's pretty
impressive. The lizardmen fought infinite demon
armies. They definitely had the brunt of the
work. But, you know, the elves have an area now.
He's chopping demons left, right, center, wherever
he goes. And this province of Averlorn, where
the tree forest likes to go, they had largely
been untouched. Interestingly, in part, because
the demons sensed the forest spirits were not
all that dissimilar from themselves. And they
didn't want to muscle in on their territory when
there was easier options available. That is a
worrying statement. And should be a worrying
statement. But if they're tree demons, they're
still nicer than the corn demons or the slanesh
demons. At least they're not on fire or doing
unseemly things to each other's orifices. Pick
evil tree any day. They're quite opposed to fire,
I would say. Yeah. Seems like a hazard. But they...
They're demons of chaos. They're not going to
hold back forever. And one day, while Anarion's
all army was way away from Averlorn, because
he's got to defend the whole continent, the largest
demonic host yet seen on Ulthuan descended upon
the place of Averlorn, and they just started
going to town. Durthu and the rest of the tree
spirits, they helped fight alongside their allies.
They had their home, but they didn't want to
just leave their friends out to dry. Still a
losing battle. They're demons, they're technically
infinite, and even if not functionally a lot
of the time, they're still a lot. So they just
kept pushing further and further into the heartlands
until the last day of Averlorn being a thing
for the time being before they could rebuild
it. where the Everqueen of the Elves, named Asterial,
who, as an off -mention, is Anarion's wife, but
that's not too relevant to the story at hand,
came to Durthu with a request, and this was a
sad one, because her request was just that her
two children be taken with him back to the Great
Forest and the Oak of Ages, so they don't die.
He thought about it, because... Like, sapient
things have never been in the forest before.
Like, you know, there's all the forest. There's
plenty of deer. There's some squirrels and critters
like not. No people. And he didn't feel his other
tree friends would be too happy with him bringing
them back. But, again, the trees are still tree
beard. They're still nice and they don't want
to leave their friends out to dry. And, more
importantly, he kind of... I don't know if he
outright looked into the future, but he thought
long and hard for as much time as he had. He
saw how, you know, when the elves and the trees
were fighting together, they were a lot more
effective than there would be alone. So he foresaw
a time where that might help save his forest.
So he agreed. He said, there's going to be a
price to pay because if I do this, I'm going
to take some elves of my own. Not kill. You know,
he didn't mean kill, but it's like, hey. these
are the forest guardians. Now you can't have
them back on your Island. Hmm. Uh, the ever queen,
you know, she was thinking this over too, especially
cause there's this tone. What he had that tone
of, you know, it's Christopher Lee's given you
a prophecy. It's like when, uh, what is it? Episode
two, when he's telling Obi -Wan, uh, the Sith
control everything. And Obi -Wan just doesn't
believe him. He's got that tone in his mouth.
So the ever queen's a little bit more receptive
than Ewan McGregor. Uh, but whether or not she
would have said no, uh, she never, she didn't
have much time to think on it and make her own
choice because just about that moment, uh, Nakari
burst through, uh, you know, the, the keeper
of secrets. Oh, uh, killed the rest of her bodyguard
at once. And then she basically said, okay, that's
fine. do it just let my kids live so she gave
dearth through her two kids and went to go fight
nikari with a little magic she had spoiler alert
she did not make it oh her two kids did though
uh but unfortunately for an arian he didn't know
that and uh by the time his two kids returned
One to become the Everqueen and one to become
her bodyguard. Aenarion had gone long insane,
grabbed Cain's sword, started killing demons,
disappeared, all that fun stuff. But for the
time being, you know, we got to jump ahead a
little bit because that's a high elves thing.
We're not quite there yet. And to be fair to
Aenarion, what's more likely? Ah, my wife died
and the kids died too, or big tree took my children.
Yeah, it's... I can't blame the guy for not expecting
Treebeard to come rescue his children. You know,
that's more than fair to make some assumptions
about that. But, you know, back at Athel Loren,
there was some fighting over, you know, do we
allow them? I'm not a fan of this. I don't necessarily
want to kill them, but I kind of want them just
thrown out. One of the tree lords wanted them
killed. His name's Coadil, and he is not a very
nice tree man. But... I had the tree. Yeah, but
it was eventually Durth who convinced all the
other big trees and that, look, let's just magically
keep them asleep. They won't see anything. You
know, and then we'll send them back home, which
they did. In the meantime, the Great Forest was
not doing much better than Ulthuan was or anywhere
else in the world was doing. Demons everywhere,
remember? But by the time Durthu got back home,
he noticed that the trees had changed a bit.
All the different treebeards are still around.
All the little dryad forest spirits are all around.
They're a lot angrier than they were before,
though. You know, before again, you know, it's
an ant, right? Like, you know, Lord of the Rings.
The ants aren't angry. They're not warlike, but
it's a moving tree. It's going to punt you into
the stratosphere if it so feels. They're not
ants anymore. Now they are quite upset at the
outside world for the demon invasion they've
been suffering for all this time. They were happy
and peaceful. And all of a sudden the deep, and
that's not our fault because we didn't do anything.
And now we've lost a bunch of allotments and
flowers. You are all enemies of the state, the
tree state. Yeah. So they had, they'd started
regaining a bit of ground, lost to the demons.
And again, the price of their kind, wondrous,
happy nature had been replaced with, I sure want
to be watered with the blood of the living. My
word. So, a little rough. But, the demons were
eventually put back. Anarion and Kalidor set
up the Vortex. The Lizardmen finally got to sleep
after fighting ten to the power of infinity demons
for the last couple thousands of years. The trees
can rest too, and hopefully could become a little
bit less psychopathic. For the time being, the
wood elves and the trees wouldn't really speak
to each other again for a bit. They didn't visit
their home of Ulthuan anymore because they had
their own force to rebuild. All the old contact
and secrets the trees taught the elves kind of
lost to time. Shame, but it is what it is. So
again, it was another good while before they
ever interacted again. The high elves for their
part. colonized a lot of the old world, the lands
that would become Bretonnia, the Empire. Malekith
and his mom did the funny thing and tried to
take control of Ulthuan before they got told
to piss off. And friendships were made with the
dwarfs. Things were good for a while. Then things
weren't good. The dwarfs and high elves go to
war because Malekith is awful. And those colon...
slightly jumping ahead. No one won the war. No
one really won that war. The dwarves like to
say they won, and to be fair, they did kill the
king. Who lost more? Not me. You lost more than
I lost. They did kill the king, and the high
elves had to retreat back home. At a certain
point, it just doesn't matter. When you lose
10 million dwarves, It's kind of doesn't really
matter. You won. Would you like your consolation
prize? It's your home covered in orcs and goblins
now. Not great. But with this, Malekith once
again invaded Ulthuan. He does that every five
minutes. And all those elven colonists were recalled
home back to Ulthuan. The high elves were just
like, now they are the high elves. Dark elves
and high elves are separated. They were like,
we're done. Clearly, we have our hands full just
with our own home continent. We don't need to
be reaching out for more. The dwarfs now hate
us. To the east is dwarfs. To the west is dark
elves. Let's just all go home because this planet
sucks. Some of them, you know, some of the colonists
went home. A lot of them told them to piss off.
And during this time, some of them had been not
going into the Great Forest because... When they
did, they saw strange lights, heard singing,
the path would shape around them, and then anyone
who made it far enough just wouldn't come back
out. But they were, for some reason, something
in their blood was just saying, that's going
to be important one day. Something about that
forest. I want to know what's going on there.
And they named it Athel Loren, which translates
to Wood of the Dawning of the World, which is
a lot of word to come out of two words. But I'm
never going to call it that again. They settled
on the outskirts, and when the dwarfs, you know,
the war happened, the colonists were called home,
a lot of them just kind of hung around here.
Eventually, the dwarfs kind of... had to work
out their hurt feelings in that war and they
decided to work it out on those remaining high
elven colonists as you do i was going i don't
know how to process my emotions where's my axe
yeah sounds like a like a dwarf thing to do yeah
they looked was like you you are an elf we were
just on fighting elves come here knife here and
yeah yeah they they started swinging there's
there's no two ways about it But for once, now
the forest opened up for the high elves. And
let them in. Why? Who knows? We've had some experiences
with the elves, but those short fellas, I don't
like the look of those fellas coming over here,
killing these elves. Oh, they didn't do anything.
And we didn't do anything when we were attacked.
So maybe they were like, oh. Not helping is that
winter was also coming by this point. And, you
know, the trees, they're trees. They get a little
bit more lethargic in winter. You know, all the
leaves fall off. It's like that for the tree
spirits, too. You know, they're slower. They're
more sluggish. Trees need firewood in the winter,
don't they? So the trees weren't much a fan of
that. Trees were also going after the elves.
So the force was like, they hate both of us.
Come on in. Come on in. So at this point, the
dwarves have been, oh, we need to build stuff.
Let's cut down some trees for the industrial
war machine. Let's slowly chip away at them.
Yeah, cut down some trees, make some impromptu
buildings, and then cut down some elves too.
Hmm. Why not? Yeah. So with this, eventually
the elves and the tree spirits started working
together a little bit. They started, you know,
as they once did against demons, so too do they
did against dwarfs. The forest would open up.
Some elves would rush out, shoot the dwarfs with
their bows, rush, bash it back in. When the dwarves
tried to give chase, the trees would come to
life and cut them into pieces. It was some pretty
good teamwork. Also, some of that mystical Eldritch
Forest thing came into play here. Because suddenly,
the elves would walk out. They'd walk back into
the trees. And five minutes later, they're ten
miles away. So, something's going on there. sometimes
the forest would just kind of close you know
the branches just kind of and to be fair i'm
assuming that the height advantage of like have
you ever seen a dwarf climb a tree doubt it like
there must have been like a lot of arches on
the top branches and the dwarves are going where's
that coming from like craning their necks trying
to see where they're being shot from bad times
i would assume I imagine it's like a dog trying
to look straight up. It's not going to work very
well, man. Getting stuck in mud and maybe some
swamp lands or something. With these heavily
armored fellows just marching in, you've got
these very light -footed elves running along
the tree ranches. It's kind of a... Again, that
scene in Lord of the Rings where it's Gimli walking
through and it's like, the dwarf made so much
noise we could have shot him in the dark. Elves
do well in trees. Dwarves, not so much. Yeah.
So all through this time, eventually, the dwarves
are driven back, and the forest seemed to let
the elves stay this time. They could even go
in a little bit deeper than before, which the
elves, they didn't know why. Off to the sidelines,
Durthu and his two main tree buddies, that coital
guy and one named... Where did I put his name
down? Shit, give me a minute. Adonhu. There we
go. He's not too important. He kind of comes
up every now and again now, but not for long.
Adonhu. More like Adonhu. But they were arguing
over the fate of the elves. Adonhu, he was like,
well, hey, they helped us out. They seem pretty
good at keeping the forest safe. Why don't we
keep them around? And that Coedil fella was arguing
for the elf death way of things. Durthy, for
his part, just wasn't saying anything. He didn't
trust his judgment anymore. Treebeard. Treebeard
was also gravely wounded by dwarf axes. So he
got a little bit more violent too, and he didn't
quite trust his own judgment anymore. Which props
for him for recognizing he might be a bit compromised
emotionally. He was getting a bit sappy. Get
the pun. I do. But eventually, the forest opened
up most of its secrets to it. Not totally yet.
The dryads and the tree men and the bigger tree
men. Still not revealing themselves to the elves
yet. They've kind of been helping off to the
sidelines for now. But, you know, the elves,
they're allowed to hang around their house, even
if they never quite see the owner. Hmm. Fair
enough. They treat the forest very well. They
speak with the actual forest. When they got to
the center of it, saw the giant Oak of Ages,
which by this point, breaching the clouds. Their
mages started speaking with the will of the forest
in unison, which is at least a little bit terrifying.
And their head mage, Ariel, who's very important,
taught them how to tree sing, do that thing where
they shape items out of trees and cut off branches
and grow new wood without breaking it. The wood
elf hippie stuff. A bit like bone singing, but...
More natural, I suppose. I wonder where they
got that from. Who did it first? 40k or Warhammer
with singing things into weapons and stuff. I
wonder. One of them did it, surely. They did
take good care of the forest. They wouldn't take
from it without giving back equally, either through
some kind of sacrifice, which doesn't necessarily
need to be murder sacrifice. It could be just
a... I mean, hunting maybe, but, you know, they
give in return or it's at the very least service.
It's like, all right, I needed to make my house
out of this wood. So now I'm going to, you know,
spend a couple shifts at night making sure that
no beavers or nothing try and cut down this tree.
It's free labor, said the Ents. Amazing. Pretty
much. You know, they would only take in the winter,
you know, fallen branches. They'd heal any trees
that were hurting. They were doing good. Waste
not, want not. Every bit of the animal goes towards
making something. They're good little tree guardians.
Once again, the dwarfs march upon the forest
later on. And then the dwarves went, I hate trees!
And started, like, book of grudges. Chapter 15.
Hate trees. Trees bad. Trees hurt me. Hate trees.
There are absolutely several dozen entries in
the book after the last time. So at this point,
and now they're especially prepared. They know
this forest is alive, so the torches are bright
and the axes are sharp. Hmm. So... The elves,
you know, the four spirits speak on what to do.
What is it? The elves are figuring out how do
we defend, consult the gods, do the future, do
everything we can, do all the magical stuff.
How do we handle this? Two of them, Ariel, the
one we just briefly mentioned, and one guy named
Lord Orion. quietly off to the side, were deep
in conversation, and they just kind of quietly
slipped away. For the rest of the wood elves,
they're like half wood elves now, they were not
pleased with what they were coming together with.
They felt that not only could they not defeat
the dwarfs, But their seers had determined that
the dwarfs are not even the greatest threat because
there's a whole lot of orcs behind them that
they don't know about. Oh, no. Wave upon wave
of people who hate nature. Assuming there must
be a point where the dwarfs get pintered between
the two, that would be bad. You don't want the
orcs following you. That sounds like a bad plan.
It's not great, but they didn't seem to quite
be aware. It was more so behind because there's
so many orcs that they just kind of stretched
out a little bit to intersect with the dwarfs'
invasion path. Just like the equivalent of a
raiding party of orcs. 1 % of this gigantic mass
that's terrorizing somewhere else on the planet.
It's orcs. They're everywhere in Warhammer. Some
orcs raiding your army is, I assume that's just
kind of expected. Like, that's just an assumption
you make when you're out in campaign. Yeah. In
this, as this is happening, the tree spirits
finally reveal themselves to the elves. They
say that Adatenhu, he comes back out and he says,
we will fight alongside you as long as the battle's
before winter. We're not very active in winter.
We biologically can't be. We've got to huddle
up and hibernate. I've seen all the bears, just
like, no, I can't, mate. Oh, I'm so tired. Sorry,
I can't fight anymore, said the bear. I said
the bears and the trees and everything. Makes
sense, though. Yeah. So with this, Orion and
Ariel aren't quite back yet, but the trees and
the elves are now working together. And the dwarfs,
they're pretty handily defeated. It's not a bloodless
victory. Elves and trees alike are scarred. But
both elf and dwarf had some payback to get. So
they took to this fight with gusto. Unfortunately,
winter seemed to have come early this year. In
an almost prophetic sense. Last dwarf goes down.
The icy winds start blowing through. And the
trees. Said. They gotta go to bed. Nap time.
Said the trees. So. With that. The trees have
to go hibernate. And now the orcs are here. And.
Orcs still get cold. They're certainly more resistant.
than most people, but orcs still get cold. They're
surrounded by a whole lot of forests that they
just start cutting down and lighting on fire.
Sometimes, have you ever played Don't Starve?
You know that game? I know it, but I've not played
it, but I remember when it was really popular
and I used to see lots of gameplay of it. Well,
I'm assuming they did what you can do in that
game and they go to light one tree to keep it
warm and then a forest fire starts. Except in
that game, it can be a little bit accidental.
It's like, I didn't mean to do that. I'm sure
the orcs were perfectly happy with it. Yeah,
happy accident. They're like, oh, well, to be
honest, I don't care. It's not like they had
any reason not to make more fire, because more
fire mean more warm. That sounds like a good
idea. Exactly. More fire mean more warm. The
elves prepare to fight and die in front of the
Oak of Ages, because... This was going on slowly
but surely over the winter. They're fighting
a losing battle. And then at dawn one day, the
forest transforms en masse. It seems like just
as quick as it came, winter's over. And they
hear the horn of their god of the hunt echoing
throughout the woods. The animals are all rised
from hibernation at once. Yeah, their god, Kurnos,
is suddenly on the field. No tricks. It's just
their god. Oh, gods turn up. Don't worry. Happens
occasionally. With his hunting hounds at his
heels. And, you know, that renews the elves,
because if there's anything that's going to give
you a second wind, it would probably be god showing
up to fight alongside you. I imagine that would
bolster spirits. He blew his horn a second time,
and he and the hounds crash into the... Into
the orc lines. And. The elves join in the fray.
The tree spirits. They finally start waking up
again. And they're all too happy. To take revenge
for all their. Brothers and sister trees. That
were burned by the orcs. And. Yeah. They had
been. They're back. And by the time the sun sets.
There's no more orcs. They're gone. is it fair
to say that they're at their strongest during
spring because that's like seasonally that's
like oh and everything blooms again and then
yeah like you've gone from worst possible to
best possible character stats yes spring comes
and yeah they're at their strongest you know
they're still doing plenty strong in summer fall
comes around everyone knows nap time's coming
winter is nap time yeah also i came up with a
brilliant pun during the winter bit you could
call it Now is the winter of our discontent.
It's a pun episode. Little did anyone know, including
me. Neither did I. They're just happening in
my brain. Yeah. But yeah, Orion and Ariel had
left to become avatars of the god Kernos and
the goddess Isha. Yeah. So now the, uh, the wood
elves are, you know, they're around now. Uh,
it's like they're, they're properly the wood
elves now. Like, uh, the tree spirits have formed,
you know, friendships with them, you know, everything
else is, uh, you know, it's, it's, they're good
buddies now. Uh, they're, they're hanging out
now. Not, not every tree is the biggest fan of
them. I will admit. Uh, would still quite like
to see. a lot of dead elves to the point that
at one point he went a little bit insane, started
killing elves, and they had to lock him away
in a part of the forest that might be slightly
chaos corrupted. Oh. I'm sure that won't be a
problem. It's good. Got this bit of chaos in
the middle of the... Just ignore it. It won't
grow. It's good for keeping him out of the picture.
It's definitely not great for his long -term
health. Or sanity. There's a couple big threats
that the wood elves would eventually have to
deal with. For one, a small one. Mankind is a
thing now. The empires of Elfen Dwarf kind of
fallen away. There's people kind of encroaching
on Athel Loren, which the empire doesn't really
do it too much. There's a mountain range in between
the forest and them. So the empire, you know,
they're cutting down trees, but not, you know,
the sacred magical trees, right? yeah they're
not they're not as bad as orcs and dwarves who
are like the the most industrious faction ever
who likes to create stuff all the time and need
a lot of firewood or the ones who cut down trees
and burn them because more warm more good or
just for fun so that someone will come and attack
them so they can have a fight like that's the
competition not great yeah it's it's not ideal
but there are worse alternatives uh for the most
part uh but the the ones who didn't really ignore
uh the forest too well the ones who were living
on the side of the mountains with the forest
were those good old bretonians i was wondering
when they were going to get into the pictures
like where are the french they've got to be around
here somewhere according to the wood elves as
they saw it and i have to say i don't i don't
i don't disagree with this view uh they were
superstitious stupid ignorant barbarians who
did largely avoid these places because, as far
as they were concerned, that forest is haunted.
And the wood elves mostly just kind of watched
this happen. There were still orcs and goblins
all over the place. So every now and then, green
-skinned man would fight and the wood elves would
just kind of stare at it like, eh, that's funny.
Just get their telescopes out and just look at
that stupid peasant. Oh, he's fighting an orc.
Look at this, Kevin. Get some ethically made
popcorn, watch the fighting. Whenever the fighting
got a little bit too close, they would just kind
of sweep in and slaughter both sides. Not helping
mankind's view that that place is super haunted.
Yeah. This incidentally started a tradition known
as the Wild Hunt, which we'll get to later. Oh,
Witcher 3, the Wild Hunt. Great game. Awesome.
It's about as peaceful as that one is. And usually
has a similar body count. Oh. And humanities
in the end, it's not even an easy piece. It's
like a stay off my lawn or I'm murdering you.
Okay. Yeah, they're kind of assholes. Across
this line, we will kill you. This line will kill
you. The Wild Hunt basically is that Orion guy,
the avatar of the god Kurnos. His wife, Ariel
slash Isha, she's around all year. In the winter,
she kind of chills out a bit, but she's around
all year. There's still life in the winter, right?
Orion, come winter, he just steps in the tree
and dies. He's gone. Oh. He goes into the Oak
of Ages and he's out. Wow. Every summer, a wood
elf, you know, an important wood elf, is elected
to be a sacrifice slash host for Orion's spirit
and, you know, the spirit of Kurnos. And he comes
forth. He enters the Oak of Ages. And when he
comes out, Orion is back. And then the wild hunt
begins, which... ostensibly, is to clear out
any nearby threats to Athel Loren. Perhaps more
honestly, they just like rampaging across the
land. It's just a bit of fun. It's like, I've
just woken up. I want to kill something. Like,
all right, mate. Mr. I get reborn for the sacrifice
of someone important just because I'm a big deal.
Like, okay, mate, calm down. It's... Again, they
are technically protecting them from outsiders,
because the outsiders can't invade you if there
are no outsiders left to invade you. Yeah, the
best deterrent is kill everyone. Then they can't
make any decisions that can hurt us. Brilliant.
Yeah. The biggest problem they have is a beastman
named Morger, who usually, the beastman 95 %
of the time, exists to be murdered. so that Chaos
can take some early losses in a story without
actually losing anything. The red shirts of Warhammer.
Yeah, it is. I mean, you know me, Andy. I'm an
Eldar fan. I wake up every day and think, God,
I'm not a Beastman fan. There's being ignored
by Games Workshop, and then there's held in active
contempt. Yeah, I was going to say, the contemptuous.
GW, anytime they see a Beastman, it's like, don't
remind us we made these. Like, oh, come on, guys.
They're kind of cool. No. No Beastman. They like
to not think about them if they can help it.
And when they do, it's usually with hate. But
yeah, there was this Beastman named Morgur. He'd
probably be best saved for a Beastman -dedicated
episode. But Morgur, or even his own thing, because
he's... utterly horrifying and made it to age
of sigmar had his own plot line going before
they were then taken out of age of sigmar the
entire beast infection so who knows where that's
going nowadays probably nowhere could you imagine
being a beastman fan it's like yeah we're so
back we're so back and then instantly everything's
taken away from you like what you have to rebase
your entire army again fuck you wow uh but yeah
this This beastman, his name is Morgur, Master
of Skulls. The wood elves just call him the Corruptor.
I'm trying to think of the best way to put him.
He's like a walking warp rift. Oh, okay. Bad
things happen in his wake and it's not even his
fault. It's just me. Chaos just seeps out of
him and all around him. Everything, including
the ground, just corrupts. It's like fleshy and
nasty and evil and gross. He's a bad egg. Is
there an equivalent in Warhammer 40k that I can
think of? Other than like obviously evil characters
like the Death Guard who just like plagues follow
them. But I can't think of anyone who just like
chaos just seeps out of them because they were
born bad and they are bad because of that. I
assume he didn't choose to be bad. He just is.
He just is. Like he's barely sapient. if he even
is he's just like a primordial like force of
chaos oh and to be fair i bet his mom was well
proud he's like what's your baby called he's
called the master of skulls oh well that's lovely
uh i gotta be honest i don't think his mom made
it through childbirth oh no in fact i think if
i'm remembering correctly i'd have to double
check later i think he was born to human parents
they did not make it very long oh no Warhammer,
everyone. You can always find something terrible,
even in the most innocuous of environments. Oh,
lovely baby. Susan? Susan, wake up. Oh no, he's
warps spilling out of his paws. Yeah, so it's
bad. Wherever he goes, no one who's seen him
has lived to report it. He just gives off that
many bad vibes. He's just like a horseman of
the apocalypse. He just is. Yeah. Like everyone
who sees him goes insane. Again, like I said,
the land around him gets corrupted. It took everyone
a while to even figure out what the hell this
thing is. Ariel eventually figured it out. And
she went to go deal with him. No mortal could
deal with her. So she's like, all right. My husband's...
Either taking a nap or rampaging through Bretonnia.
He's busy. I'll do it myself. He's either killing
the French or having a nap. Either way, he's
not here. I'll figure it out myself. Yeah. She
goes to deal with him. And when she finds him,
admittedly, it isn't really much of a fight.
Because as much as he's horrid, he's passively
horrid. And especially at this point, he's kind
of just this lumpen, misshapen, thing like barely
even a proper beastman so she she just kind of
obliterates him uh he's dead like he's gone uh
like she she was expecting like some powerful
mage or something you know demon or something
something truly horrible and she finds like a
blob she finds a blob so you know she she brings
down the cleansing flame and Kills it and all
of the beastmen that were following him around.
So she just goes home. She's like, well, problem
solved. Little did she know. Problem not solved.
Morgur can't really die. Not for long, anyways.
So he started healing. He's completely insane,
so he didn't quite understand what he was looking
at. But he did understand powerful goddess thing.
I would quite like to eat that. Yummy, he said.
Yeah. So it got to about two centuries down the
line. Oh, okay. There's still beastmen. There
have always been some amount of beastmen in Athel
Loren. There's even theories that because Athel
Loren warps time, it might be the same herd of
beastmen. perpetually trapped in a stage of being
hunted by the wood elves, just at different points
of existence. So the presence of these things,
it's not, it's not that big of a worry. It's,
it's, it's really, it's really not. And when
their numbers start increasing at first, it's
like, it's barely even noticeable. Like one day
you kill 10 beastmen. The next day you kill 11.
That's not that much of an increase. That's not
too worrying. Maybe one day there's a big herd.
It would have been like 100. Next day it's 105.
Again, acceptable variance, right? Like this
is acceptable numbers for the people who traverse
the magical forest. They can handle that. Then
11 becomes 12. 105 becomes 110. Still not quite
taking note of it. uh slowly though there's more
and more beastmen every time and now morger is
here and that that's a lot of thousands and thousands
of beastmen he brought with him so they they
didn't understand the beastman's true strength
compound interest yeah they just over time the
longer you leave them the more they propagate
Amazing. Yeah, they were suddenly dealing with
a lot more, and again, Morgur is back. And his
passive Ickfield is still in full swing, because
every now and again, they almost get him. They
keep almost killing him. And then everyone about
to strike the finishing blow on him and his army
goes completely insane. And just starts swinging
at everything around him. For once in Warhammer.
It's not always permanent. Like sometimes if
you can hold them down long enough. They might
snap back to their senses. Okay. But it means
that Morgur keeps getting away. He heals up.
Because he heals alarmingly quickly. And he's
off. They get in. Eventually they get into one
final battle. Coedil. He hasn't quite been imprisoned
yet. He hasn't gone insane yet. He just gives
up. He's done trying to kill him. He's just like,
come here. Come here, you. He just grabs him
and full nelsons him. You're not getting away.
You're not getting away. I don't care. I do not
care. Ariel, she readies her Dragon Ball Z attack,
charging it up. She brings forth not only her
own power, but that of the forest. And not even
Morgur can make it. And he dies here. uh, once
again, uh, you know, his, his form shattered,
his spirits dealt away with. And, uh, it's, it's
still not great though. Uh, cause wherever Morger
walked through doesn't, doesn't quite heal. Hmm.
It doesn't quite get as good as it used to be.
And the place where he died is known as the glade
of woe. Uh, everyone stays away from it because
the forest spirits around there, There might
be a little bit of chaos, corruption that you
just can't get away. It's ick. It's bad. You
can't do anything about it. That's a good name
for an area. Sometimes Warhammer names just go
pretty hard. That's pretty good. Glade of Woe
is pretty great. They nailed it with that one.
Yeah, so rough time. After that, I didn't mention
it earlier, Coedil does his funny treachery thing.
He struck at the time least expected because
him and his allies, his tree spirit and sane
allies, just didn't go to sleep for the winter.
Ariel did, and she doesn't die. She doesn't have
to be reincarnated, but she does still take a
nap. And with that, Coedil and his allies just
kind of started cutting down all the wood elves
they could find. Oh. While she's sleeping, she's
like, help me! Snap. Like twigs. Ironically.
I just like the idea that the wood elves are
like, wait, they're awake during the winter.
They're just going, they can do that? Oh god!
Sounds OP to me. Oh no! My limbs! Yeah, so they
killed a whole lot of elves before Ariel woke
up halfway through her nap and was like, you...
You are not going to get away with this. So she
dealt with all of them. She really wanted to
kill them, but she couldn't, both out of respect
for the not totally insane trees and more so
because Coedil is part of the forest. Ariel is
part of the forest. She kills part of the forest.
She kills part of herself. So she just banishes
them to the Glade of Woe. It's like, you know
what? You can go sit there. Fine. You're in timeout,
she said. Yeah. In the ickiest part of the forest,
other than that chaos patch, which is also bad.
Actually, it's a similar... Their specific part
is called the Wildwood. It's another place the
elves just don't go. They locked it. They built
a bunch of magical waystones. Like, you stay.
So, yeah. Cobadil hasn't done anything ever since
then, but any elves who go in get slain by his
dryad handmaidens, so the elves tend to not go
there. Yeah. They're trees, right? It would kind
of go on from there to be much like trees. They'd
have seasons of rebirth, seasons of kind of bad
times, like spring goes to winter and all that
stuff. things are good. They eventually get a
semi -unspoken alliance with Bretonnia. It's
a lot more manipulative on the part of the wood
elves, but every now and then some wood elves
and maybe even a forest spirit will, within the
years of the king, guide them on policies and
whatnot. Orion, for his part, sometimes tries
to limit the damage of the wild hunt against
Bretonnia. Sometimes. When he feels like it.
You were saying, well, they just watch them go
through all this trouble. And I like the idea
that after a while, they just felt bad. They're
like, oh, these peasants. They keep dying in
the most stupid way. Can we give them, like,
can we help them out a little? It's sad. They're
so stupid. Okay, we'll help them a bit. They're
backward and they're superstitious. Oh, they
keep eating poisonous mushrooms. Idiot. Okay,
fine. We'll help them a bit because I feel bad.
Poor Bretonians. Yeah. Once again, Morgur comes
back. Again? It is a nonstop thing they have
to deal with him. And at one point, Ariel just
really tries to kill him permanently. Doesn't
go well. She kind of gets corrupted with dark
magic. Not helping this is that part of the way
she learned a way to properly deal with him is
that long ago, Ariel had a sister. That sister
was Malekith's wife. Oh. So she eventually learned
about all that. So his her aerial sister, who's
named Alessara, was was allowed to was allowed
to go be with her husband again. You know, she
she felt bad, you know, because her sister was,
you know, she was in the foot with the wood elves.
But she was like, well, maybe if I was around,
maybe she could have fixed him. I can fix him,
she said. Yeah. And. Fair enough. She might have
been able to. Especially early on. Malekith was
sometimes... He had a lot of depressive episodes
where he'd think about how far he'd fallen and
he'd just lock himself in his tower. He's not
coming out. Marathi, however, does not want her
son to go back to the light side. Does not want
Darth Vader... Dark Elf Darth Vader to become
Dark Elf Anakin once again. And so on her way
to kind of be remarried or renew their vows,
however you want to put it, she had a good escort,
good army. That army was a disgraced elven lord.
It was not like a disgrace. He was kind of like,
you know, he was socially disgraced, but he wasn't
kicked out of Ulthuan. What she did do to him,
however, was charm him and make him think that
her wedding escort was an army of Naggaroth Corsairs.
Okay. So he got an army and attacked Alessara's
wedding party. The Red Wedding before it was
in Game of Thrones. Amazing. Alessara, she's
still the Wood Elf Mage, so she's like... I know
he's not thinking straight. I can sense the enchantment.
I want to free him. It didn't quite work. So
he stabs her through the heart. Then does the
counter spell go in? And he realized what he
did. Threw himself off a cliff. This high elf
lord. Don't matter. He's dead. She's dead. Malekith's
wife's dead. Everyone's dead and Morathi is cackling.
Morathi is having a great time. Ariel, for her
part, is like, no. That was my sister, you bitch.
Cat fight! Said all the members of the court.
The first target wasn't even Marathi, unfortunately.
It was pretty much everyone remotely related
to that high elf prince that did unfortunately
end up killing the lady. Because the wild hunts,
the target this time was Ulthuan, so they went
to one of its provinces and just kind of started
burning it to the ground. Malekith, for his part,
he also learned of his mom killing his wife.
Publicly, he forgave her for political reasons.
Secretly, he kind of went to the wood elves and
was like, hey. Or no. He didn't quite go to the
wood elves, but when they eventually carved their
way to Naggaroth, He was like, did any reinforce
an armies that would go help Marathi? He was
like, hey, why don't you hang back? No, don't
worry about helping. You don't need to get involved.
Just chill. Don't worry about it. It's the only
way she'll learn. Stop killing my betrothed.
Yeah. She gets to Marathi and she could have
killed Marathi, but for both, you know. Narrative
reasons and bribery reasons. Orion was ready
to kill her. She, you know, she falls to her
knees and starts begging. But. She. Ariel holds
back. Marathi promised her some. Some sorceries.
A little bit of dark sorceries. They're definitely
not. Not the nice wood elf, wood life kind of
sorceries. But, you know, Ariel was like, I might
need these. I might need these. The spells are
inscribed in a book made of someone's skin. Probably.
It was well, decent odds on whose skin it was.
Could have been anyone's. It's Dorothy. Yeah.
So. She, of course, doesn't give up her greatest
of secrets, but, you know, if she's got to give
up a little bit to ensure she doesn't get murdered
by the two gods standing in front of her, so
be it. And she teaches Ariel some dark magic,
which kind of does bad things to the forest,
because Ariel's part of it manifested, and when
she starts going crazy with dark magic, it kind
of trickles down to the rest of the forest. Is
that because she's part of the forest, kind of
like the big tree? Yeah, she's part of the big
tree. The big tree is part of the forest. All
the wood elves and spirits are part of the forest.
So everyone kind of starts going just completely
insane. And it goes from like anyone invading
Athel Loren, you know, they take the wood elves
defend themselves to you were within 1000 miles
of a path we once looked at. I'm murdering you
and your family and then dancing in the entrails.
If your five -year -old daughter picked a flower
from any of the gardens we've been cultivating
because she thought it looked pretty, woe be
your entire family. We are going to kill you
all. Like, wow, okay. She just thought it was
a cute dandelion. What's going on? What's going
on, buddy? Bit of an extreme reaction, gotta
say. Yeah. Everyone nearby Bretonnia just starts
getting obliterated. Pretty much the only two
people that are sane are Durthu and Adonhu. Everyone
else has gone nuts. Bretonnia's getting burned
down, dwarf caravans are getting obliterated,
and holds are being slaughtered. And Ariel the
whole time is helping out her underlings with
dark magic, which little does she know is making
things worse. And she uses more dark magic because
she gets a little bit more insane. Which makes
her go more insane. So she uses more dark magic
on and on and on. Morgur's back also. That's
not helping. He's just there being a problem
again. And he doesn't even know. This time, her
plan is to eat him. Because she's fully lost
in the sauce. And she even has a bunch of her
spell singers, what elf mages are called, bind
him. and bring him back to the Oak of Ages, which
is surely a wood elf heresy if I've ever heard
of one. Where at this point, like, Durthu looks
and is like, no. No, this is not happening. We're
done here. And he kills Morgur. She's not happy.
And, yeah. This whole time, Orion was not allowed
to be reborn, so he died one winter, as he always
does, and she didn't let him come back. At one
point, the Phoenix King, the guy in charge of
Ulthuan, he sent some emissaries. He's like,
I know we've got a rough history. I know our
ancestors kind of abandoned you. I'd like to
make some amends. Let's open up some diplomatic
ties, right? Let's get some conversations going.
And then she trapped him within the unseen paths
of the forest. Just threw him in the middle of
nowhere and had it shift around them forever.
Oh, that's not going to help diplomatic relations,
is it? Like, wow. I cast you into the Neverrealm.
Wow, thanks. They did eventually get out into
an army of Bretonnians who didn't quite understand
the difference between the elves and... And another
elf. Yeah, and just thought, elves have been
burning down our homes. These are elves. You're
telling me the ignorant, superstitious peasant
people couldn't distinguish between two different
things that were kind of similar? Believe it
or not, no, they couldn't. Wow. Yeah. Eventually,
like... Adenhu, Durthu, and all of the remaining
sane trees where it's like, we can't let this
happen. I can feel the forest dying now. So they
go to try and talk to Ariel, right? You ever
see the DC animated shows, Hawkgirl, or the DC
Mortal Kombat or whatever crossovers, like Injustice,
where Hawkgirl, she just screams. I think I've
seen photos, yeah. Ariel does that. Summons all
of the wood elves and crazy spirits to her. And
now it's a fight. A Dan who, in some... Because
remember, the forest is all connected. Draws
the darkness in Ariel's heart into her, because
these are still elves. We gotta have some magical
nonsense every now and again. Which kills him,
but frees Ariel of the taint. And she goes to
hide in the Oak of Ages. Literally great Deku
trees. He gets like the evil inside me, but I
must go link, go forth, go forth and save Hyrule.
Yeah. The big tree, which is incidentally cut
down the remaining big tree Lords to just Durthu.
Oh, who has never really been able to process
his PTSD. eventually you know things kind of
get a little bit better uh the forest heals they
stop going completely insane uh the wood elves
kind of a way to make up for like the many manslaughter
that's not man the many murders they had committed
during this time uh they would they they started
kind of helping out uh even even helping out
dwarves sometimes A dwarf army would find itself
about to be slaughtered by orcs. Suddenly the
forest is alive and filled with hate, but for
the orcs. And then they just leave. They're still
wood elves. They're insane and they tell no one
what they're doing. Or if what another person
is doing is harmful to the forest. So they kind
of enter the holding pattern they were in by
modern Warhammer fantasy. The wood elves, they
want to save, they call it the weave, which is
like all the, the, the, the feng shui of magic
in nature. Okay. But again, they don't tell you
they're doing this. So one day they save your
life from like a, a horde of beast men. They
just ask for nothing in return. They just kill
the beast men and leave. They actually, they
did that for Carl France. He was almost killed
by a beast man around the time he was born until
some wood elves saved him because they sensed
he would be go, go on to become the greatest
emperor. On the flip side, you built that mining
tunnel a little bit too close to Athel Loren,
so we've poisoned your water supply. Oi, dwarfs,
is that a high -speed rail I see infringing on
our continent? Oh, you're going to get it. Yeah,
it's not ideal. You didn't ask us for planning
permission. Time to die. They're helping at least
as long as they're hurting, but they're not telling
anyone. why they're helping or how to help themselves.
So they just kind of keep killing people. Ariel,
she's still meditating deep in this time. Orion
was allowed to come back and do things, but Ariel's
still kind of hiding away. He's out of the doghouse
after being like, babes, you're going to revive
me, babes. Yeah. Babes, years pass. What the
hell was that about? I've been asleep for years.
Sorry, I went a bit evil. My bad. Eventually,
Ariel, she's gone, but she gets herself some
emissaries, twins named Nyestra and Arahan. They
were in a Total War DLC. These twins at one point
fuse into one being. Well... Eh. I reversed it.
They were one being who walked into one of the
particularly magical parts of Athel Loren and
then came out as Nyestra and Arahan. Oh, they
blew horrid. Nice. Yeah. They, you know, they're
never seen apart. They finish each other's sentences.
Oh, those twins. They're those kind of twins.
One of them, you know, is... Nystra, she's noble,
she's kind, she's a My Little Pony character.
Abhors violence. Very nice. Very kind. Arahan
is Engron if he was a wood elf. I just like the
idea of her like... I was just like, are we going
to go pick? Shall we go pick some flowers today?
I'm sure there's some pure wars. And then it
was like, and that's like their dynamic. Yeah.
Just like with a leash, like, come on, dear.
And that's kind of their, how they interact.
Now, Andy, I want, I want you, I want you to
take a guess. What event could possibly bring
Ariel back to the world? I want, where's the
thing? Part of me is saying, like, the end times,
but, like... Nope. Too early. Skaven? Skaven?
Not Skaven. Not Skaven. You're getting close,
because this thing also ruins everything it touches.
Nagash? Nope. You're getting colder. Morgur's
back. Oh, again? I wasn't even thinking of him.
I was like, oh, surely the Skaven's gonna cause...
No, it's this guy. This guy just... Doesn't know
when to quit, the guy. Wow. Okay. He's back.
He's kind of just become a permanent thing that
Ariel's going to have to deal with. Like, to
the point they're kind of even linked. And sometimes
he'd call out to her in the darkness. Which,
horrifying and annoying. He's the Joker to her
Batman, basically. You can't have one without
the other. Yeah. And again, sometimes Orion gets
involved if it coincides with the wild hunt in
one of those deaths. He was... Orion did a lot
of the damage as the rest of the army surrounded
him and riddled him with arrows and Orion killed
him. It just, it keeps happening. It keeps happening.
But bright side, Ariel's back. Orion's around
right now. Husband and wife are reunited. The
wood elves are kind of whole again. It should
be noted. Whole is still that holding pattern
of they will help you without saying anything.
And then they will kill you without saying anything.
And you do not get to know why or what's going
on. You just have to accept it. There are no
diplomats. There are no MSOs. Like, just guess.
Just on their board is like, can I stand here?
Raises by an arrow, takes a step back. And she's
like, okay, this is the boundary. Okay, I'll
guess then. Not very helpful. Yeah, they... So
the wood elves, kind of for some more general
stuff, will end with their end times because
I... They have, like, you know, a lot of the
times they live in, like, small little nomadic,
semi -nomadic groups because they are wood elves.
They are forest hippies. They, you know, moving
around Athel Loren, helping out the trees as
they go, making friends with the trees that are
slightly less omnicidal. They do have some more,
like, you know, permanent areas, right? Like
there's, fittingly, the ones that are settlements
in Total War, most notably. Tolson, there's a
place called King Glades, and that's where the
Oak of Ages is. It's where, you know, Orion holds
his court when he's around and sleeps when he's
not. I guess he kind of dies. Where his corpse
waits to be brought back. Where he's interred.
Yeah. There's Ark... Dredanon would probably
be great for saying these names. Argwilon, where,
you know, that's where there's a whole lot of
tree spirits. There's a place called the Anvil
of Vol, because both every high elf or every
elf faction has a place called the Anvil of Vol,
where an elf named Daith, who turns out to be
Vol reincarnated, makes some great weapons with
the I don't know, whatever's around them, really.
Berries? Branches? And a bit of a stone, I guess?
They use metal sometimes. Not often, but maybe
they can. Yeah, okay. They're a lot more fey
than, like, any other elves. And I mean, like,
medieval stories of the fey, where they randomly
gift you all the gold you could ever want and
then steal your first boar. They'll help. They'll
harm. No reasons are ever given by this. One
day, they invite you in for a great feast, and
then they feed you. It's a great time. You're
allowed to leave. One day, they invite you in
for a great feast. They feed you. It's a great
time. And they were fattening you up for a forest
spirit and sacrifice you. Those cheeky elves.
Kind of reminds me of the Fae from Kingdoms of
Amalur. That was a strange game. I never played
it. They're kind of alien. And the annoying thing
about that game, like 90 % of the game is in
like green Fae nature -y areas. And the only
time you get to like the snowy area is the very
end of the game. And you just kind of charge
through it. And you're like, oh, there's not
much variety. There's just a lot of trees going
on. And they're very strange. You do missions.
And you try to help them out to prevent the end
time sort of thing. And they're just very odd.
And no one quite knows what they're about. But
it's an interesting trope, I suppose, for the
Fae. Yeah. There's a lot of the duality. They'll
help, they'll hurt. They're at the same time
incredibly arrogant. And they think they're the
only true, proper elves left. The High Elves
are, ironically. too full of themselves and overbearing.
Of course, then they look at the dark elves and
go, yeah, you deserve every hand you've been
dealt in life for being the worst. Not a wrong
statement. And if they could help it, they would
love to just not do anything and never leave
the forest, except for when the wild hunt happens
and it's time to kill random things. Unfortunately,
we come to the modern era of Warhammer fantasy.
They've had to go out marching more and more.
Even before the end times were a thing, it's
modern Warhammer fantasy. This is the setting
it takes place. Everyone's got to have a reason
to fight. All the prophets and seers were like,
something big's coming. If we don't get out there,
it's going to be bad. That being said, they do
still... hate leaving the forest if they can
help it. They have the shared elf religion, right?
All the elves worship the same pantheon. Different
aspects of it for each race. And of course, in
the wood elves, it's not Assyrian or Cain at
top. It's Kurnos and Isha. They're the nature
gods. But under them, they don't really differentiate
between the good and evil halves of the pantheon.
They'll worship Lilith, who's the kind, the friendly
little sister who sees the future. She's nice.
They'll worship her when they're feeling compassionate.
Sometimes they worship Cain because it's time
to murder. It just is what it is. There's Kurnos
and Isha, and then there's everyone else as far
as they're concerned. Yeah, and Kurnos and Isha
are in 40k as the ones who Cain really doesn't
like. like for betraying him. So does that cross
over into the fantasy lore, or are they kind
of a different thing? He doesn't like them very
much. It's not quite the same as 40k, because
there was never that prophecy where the elves
were going to get him killed, so he started killing
every elf ever. Yeah. There's no spirit stones
and tears of Isha, so like, eh. Yeah, at least
not in the same capacity. Like, they're kind
of there, but they're... In fantasy, they're
more like glorified GPS to help you find a waystone.
Okay. It's not as significant. Like, they don't
like each other, but it's not quite as hateful
as it is. I do think Kane still chained Vaal
to his anvil, though, in fantasy. Because, of
course, he did. Yeah, poor fella. And the thing
was in 40k, it's like, I'm going to chain you
to the anvil while you can hear the screams of
Isha and Kurnas while I torture them below your
forge. Like, thanks, Cain. Swell guy. He's not
doing that, at least. Yeah, he's a bit better.
Not much. Not much, no. Also, I've said they're
insane a couple of times. Their language, right?
Right. like the normal high elf language is all
about duality. Like for example, I, there's a,
there's a symbol I got from the, like the high
elf lexicon. That means I painted on my Eldar.
It means the, like a gentle storm and also scouring
rain. Like a lot, a lot of the language is like
that. The widow of language is like that. But
also it might change based on what day you say
the word. Uh, they might not even know what they
intend to do until the words have finished leaving
their mouth. It's, it's, it's like that. It's
completely insane. Like it is madman logic. There
is logic to it, but this is just madman logic.
Uh, like they might help you like they may offer
you and genuinely mean it just complete assistance.
No holds barred. It sounds like a death threat.
And of course, vice versa. They may, you know,
You might hear the nicest sentence from a wood
elf you've ever heard. It brightens your day.
You've been feeling down, but you know what?
Those words were all you needed to hear, and
it came from a magical forest being. You're feeling
great. It was a promise to cut you in two quarters
and feed you to a tree. Wow. And that's not intentional.
That's not them being like, hey, we're going
to feed off the ignorance of others by like,
oh, it sounds nice and pleasant. when it's a
threat, but it sounds bad when it's aid. So it's
like, no, they talk to each other like that too.
They are just actually like that. That's just
what they're like. That's that chaos influence.
I'm sure. Chaos influence and the forest. Cause
if you remember back to the start, the demons
made note that those tree spirits are not that
different from us. Hmm. It's not kind of like
the, the thing in 40 K where some. creatures
and entities in the warp aren't malevolent they're
just like they exist but they just don't exist
in very big numbers because there's so much negative
energy that like humans create in day -to -day
life they exist but they're not evil they're
just warp entities but these guys are like oh
cut from the same cloth we're not evil that doesn't
necessarily mean we're good and they are an old
one a potentially old one creation that sprang
forth from a giant magical tree And magic either
way in fantasy all comes from the realm of chaos.
So there's something not far off. Like, they
are at least somewhat related to the warp and
the realm of chaos. Sorry, it's just like the
exerted thought noise that you're like, ah, just
feeling your brain. They're a mess, because I
don't even know if, like... The reason they're
a quote -unquote could -be -considered -a -good
-guy faction is because the evil factions, like
the Orcs, Chaos, the Skaven, the Undead, they're
evil in a way that usually permanently alters
the landscape. I guess except for the Orcs, but
that's only because they're not smart enough
to bring about industrial mining equipment. And
Orc energy isn't corruptive, it's just explosive.
They fight those threats more than any other
because when chaos invades, right, they're not
just looking for wood for the forest. They're
looking to turn the forest into a chaos gate.
But they'll still kill anyone, and they frequently
do. Like, they're insane madmen elves. Again,
not helping is even ignoring the forest spirits.
There's all that stuff I was saying about Athel
Loren. Sometimes you walk in, right, and you
walk out. You might be fine. You walk in, you
walk out. You spent 10 ,000 years in that forest.
You didn't know that, but you did. And it all
catches up to you the moment you leave and you
age into dust. Oh, okay. Alternatively, you walk
in, you get lost for like 50 years. You come
out an old man. Two seconds have passed. You
go to mom's for dinner. Mom's son is now older
than her. i that has there ever been a story
where someone's walked in been gone for a really
long time and come out relatively unchanged like
a kind of it does happen like those feasts or
ceremonies they'll sometimes invite random people
in for sometimes they are just invited to the
ceremony and they get to have a fun time with
the forest and then they leave i just like because
i could imagine the forest spirits being like
oh here's this this champion of a faction which
we don't have control of, but we understand they're
quite powerful. Let's keep them wandering through
the forest until we need them to fight something
outside of our domains and be like, ah, there's
a big enemy army coming. We'll lead them for
a merry chase for a few years and then let them
out. And then, oh, look who happened to be in
the way of the forest. Oh, no. What a shame.
Good thing you brought your entire army. I guess
you'll have to fight through them to get back
home. That is a trick they like to do. Of course,
sometimes the forest has a mind of its own too,
remember? Usually you need both blessings, wood
elf and forest, to be allowed in. Because these
trees are alive, remember? So it might turn into
some Dryads and kill you. Might turn into a Tree
Man, which is an Ent, and kill you. Might turn
into a Tree Lord, which is a really big Ent,
and kill you. You might get lost in the Glade
of Woe, in which case it's corrupted by Chaos.
Have fun. The Wood Elves certainly aren't going
in to rescue you. You might get lost in Coedil's
little prison with all of his insane little minions.
So have fun with that. You might meet Draika,
who is insane, even by Wood Elf and Dryad standards.
She will kill you. Has anyone got, like, been...
Because, you know, you said about, like, how
they helped Karl Franz from being attacked by
Beastmen when he was younger. Are there any characters
from, like, completely different factions where
they're like, ah, we respect you, we'll give,
like... give you a gift or help you or like is
there any weird like alliances that you'd think
oh that's like because you know you're talking
about like the ogres and cafe and about the dragon
prince has a weird relationship with uh with
greasers and you would think that's a strange
pairing is there anything like that with the
wood elves or the the trees the closest is bretonia
there's a few like grail knight monasteries that
are allowed to exist in bretonia that they can
make pilgrimages to uh They do help Bretonnia
a little bit more often than they wild hunt all
over the peasants. Usually at least the king
of Bretonnia will every now and again get a little
bit of wood elf advice, maybe even some assistance.
Especially if it's Tuesday and Morgur's back
and someone's got to deal with it. I just like
the idea that they pick on the peasants. As soon
as they see a noble coming their way, it's like,
ah, how much GDP does your town have? Oh, how
much? Yeah, welcome in. Clearly not a dirty peasant,
said the tree. Yeah. Wow. What's going on there,
buddy? There is also, you know, there's Carillion
and Vermintide. She's, you know, it took two
games, but she's warmed up to even the dwarf.
Hmm. I was going to ask about her. Like, that
must be a bit unprecedented to have, like, a
wood elf outside of the forest helping other
people. Or are there those kind of rangers who
just go out? They do have rangers that go out.
The oldest wood elves know the forest is not
quite as isolated as we'd like it to be. And
the youngest wood elves, they just like the adventure.
So they will have rangers go out and help. When
you say young, are we talking about young for
an elf? Yeah, young for an elf. They're only
like 80. Oh, okay. So they do go out and help
every now and again. if insane elves, still living
beings, they can form attachments with others.
They usually don't. They really, like, they take
elven isolationism to the logical extreme of
I never want to see you or anyone that isn't
a tree or another wood elf again most of the
time. But they can be, you know, they hang out.
Yeah, they're basically exodites, but in fantasy.
Yeah, and probably more murder. I don't know.
The exodites don't get enough lore for me to
make that statement confidently. I don't know.
Yeah. Well, again, that whole thing is just like,
we're going to stay on this maiden world. We're
never leaving. And we just tend to things. The
exodites are very much like the wood elf translation
40 K, but they don't have an army or any lower.
Well, but also the trouble is they never leave
their planet. It's like our whole thing is. Kind
of become like the Amish. You get rid of technology.
You tend to the fields. You keep the wild spirit
happy. Never leave. Don't do any vices because
that's how Slaanesh happens. And then all the
other Eldar races like these primitives. Look
at them with plows. Should get a shuriken pistol
or something. I don't know. What's going on with
you? Where's your... where's your spaceships?
And they're like, oh, we kind of don't want them.
Look at this cool dinosaur I get to ride around.
Like, cool. How are you going to get them in
a story unless it's on a maiden world, I suppose?
Yeah. Tricky. Yeah, that's kind of the default
state of the wood elves is randomly helping,
randomly hurting. If you try and talk to them,
you're getting what may as well be utter gibberish.
Real quick to the end time, shall we? Okay. Turns
out the Beastmen had overrun a whole lot of Athel
Loren. When the end times were breaking out,
the wood elves just kind of looked at everyone
else going through shit and laughed. It sucks
to be you. Turns out the Oak of Ages, the Tree
of Life, is full of maggots and rotting from
the inside out. How long has that been going
on for? Some amount of time. how did they figure
that? Like, I just like the idea of one day one
of them's walking around and just sees like a
branch and just goes, Oh, what's that? And then
finds the maggot and then goes, Gary, Gary, Gary,
we have a problem. It's like, Oh no. And they're
just like looking through the holes. It's like
writhing. Like, cause it must be a lot of maggots
for like a, what I assume is like, you know,
that tree in dark souls one where the ash, that's
a big tree. It's a big tree. That's a lot of
maggots. Yeah. Eventually, though, a lot of scheming
is happening during this point. The elven goddess
Lilith, she's doing a lot of scheming. A whole
lot of scheming. And if it's eventually revealed
that Ariel is kind of dying. Well, like Isha
as a whole, like the proper, like, you know,
ethereal goddess version kind of has divine dementia.
Oh, okay. Yeah. Uh, so eventually, uh, Lillith,
uh, convenes away for, uh, a L 'Oreal, the Everqueen,
who also was kind of a little, like a little
bit of a less potent incarnation of Isha. To
absorb Ariel and the rest of Isha, pretty much.
So now the wood elves swear loyalty to Alariel,
the Everqueen, who is a high elf, but she's the
one who lives in the hippie land, so it's close.
During this time, the wood elves, I'm kind of
a little bit sad to say, don't have too much
in the end times. Various characters like that
Daith guy revealed, hey, he's Vol reincarnated.
Orion is Kernos, so he's here. The show is on
Ulthuan and the Dark Elves and High Elves. So
at one point, Tyrion does the funny, pulls the
Sword of Cain, goes nuts. He goes to fight Orion,
and Tyrion slash Cain brutally murders him. But...
Orion does manage to stab a chink in his armor
and keep the wound formed by an earlier elf open.
He hurts Tyrion pretty badly. At one point, Tyrion
goes completely insane, and Durthu comes to,
I think, my favorite realization I've ever seen
in a setting. He's not strong enough to kill
Tyrion. Tyrion's got the spirit of Cain possessing
him. He's the war god right now. He's insane.
Tyrion is still just, like, physically an elf,
right? About, you know, seven feet tall, pretty
thin. Dorthu's a 30 -foot -tall tree. So he just
punts him. Like, out of Athel Loren, just leave.
Get out of here. Yeet! He does the giant thing
from Skyrim. He's not dead, because he's got
Cain's blessing, all this ancient, near -unbreakable
armor. But it's not fighting, it's just physics.
He just kicks them out, which is amazing. I just
love the idea that he's flying through the air
for, like, hours, just contemplating his life
decisions with, like... Like a comet soaring
through the air like, when am I going to land?
This is taking ages. Yeah, it's been forever.
Ulthuan eventually sinks. All the dark elves
left Naggaroth, so Khorne ransacked whatever
was left. So all of the elves briefly take up
home in Athel Loren, which leads to some tension.
Not helped is when the rest of the incarnates
in the various armies also come to Athelorn for
a bit. So not only are the elves they don't like
hanging around, humans and dwarfs are hanging
around. Nagash shows up at one point, so now
he's hanging around. It's not great. It is eventually,
you know, they're sent off. Oh, no, I'm skipping
one important thing because it's such a nothing
that I forget about it. Lilith revealed she had
a backup world. That's in fact why Purtonia had
Grail Knights. She was making them to be the
demigod protectors of this new planet and her
chosen wood elves and would become the gods and
goddesses. Including one named Araloth, who was
kind of like Assyrian reborn, or at least he
would be the Assyrian equivalent. So then, you
know, she sent a whole lot of people over to
that world. Manfred von Karstein. Oh. He was
given to the rest of the people here as a gesture
of good faith by Nagash. Particularly the high
elves, because he was like, Hey, Tyrion, you
know who got your daughter killed? Here you go.
I know who's to bring me back, but you know who
kidnapped her? Here he is. I like that. He's
just such a dick. He's like, I know I can't...
I can't convince people that I'm trustworthy,
but I can give them what they want for like their
basis. Like, I'll give you something to say your
vengeance or you're annoyed. It's like, you just,
nothing he ever does is kind or good. It's just
like, no, I'm going to give you someone who you
really hated so you can talk to them. Have fun.
Like, oh, what a git. Yeah. Then Manfred, he's
freed or no, well, he's imprisoned in this, you
know, It's a magical prison. He can't break out
on his own, right? Who he can break out, who
can break him out is Bellacor. Oh, wow. Who frees
him of his prison in exchange for Manfred telling
him about Lilith's secret world. And the last
thing we hear about that and all the wood elves
and grail knights sent to it is that Lilith just
lost contact with it. Uh -oh. We've got a balacore
problem. I'm assuming something along the lines
of a slipspace rupture detected. Something along
those lines seems like that's what happened to
that world, especially because it hasn't shown
back up in Age of Sigmar. So yeah, with that,
most of the various wood elves eventually become
part of the big ol'... army techless teleports
over to Middenheim to save the end of the world.
Uh, they fight, they die. The world's almost
save Manfred Manfred's the world ends. And the
Oak of ages is the last bit of the Warhammer
world to fade into nothingness as the warp overtakes
the planet. Wow. Uh, it does, it does make it
back into age of Sigmar, the Oak of ages. Less
maggots this time? Less maggots this time. When
the L 'Oreal ate the other Isha bits, it kind
of healed it. Oh, okay. But then the Chaos won
anyways, so it didn't really mean anything. Ah,
strange tree. And that, by and large, was the
Wood Elves. Are there any questions? So have
they transformed into something new in Age of
Sigmar then? Or have they just gone? So... It's...
Complicated. So the Forest Spirits are like their
own army now under a L 'Oreal. L 'Oreal is back.
She kind of leads like the Wood Elf equivalent.
She even brought the Ruined Oak of Ages back
to life in the new setting and used it to sucker
punch Nagash. But... It's weird because there
were, you know, as there were in the old world,
wood elves hanging around, right? They were hanging
around with Elariel's forest spirits, who she
views as her children. When chaos broke into
Age of Sigmar, the wood elves aren't rooted to
the ground. They kind of just started running
wherever they could. And kind of left Elariel
and her forest spirit children to fight on their
own. Wow. Okay. A little bit rude. A little bit
rude, I'm not going to lie. Wow. So... And to
be fair to them, they were like, hey, you let
the world blow up, I'm not... getting involved
in any more of your shenanigans. I'm getting
out of here. I'll check right now, and I know
a lot of former elven spirits from Warhammer
Fantasy were reincarnated as tree people. I don't
know, and I'll check the web store real quick
just to make sure, but I don't think there's
any normal elves in this. Yeah, there's not any
proper normal elves in the Sylvan F range. I
believe... Because those wood elves are called
the dispossessed. And they did eventually, Alariel,
you know, they came back after the Age of Chaos
ended, and Alariel forgave them. A lot of the
tree spirits did not quite forgive them, so it's
a little bit uneasy there. Yeah. And let me check
the Cities of Sigmar range, because I feel at
one point, if nothing else, there were some...
What do you call them? Some, like... old Wood
Elf models you could use in the Cities of Sigmar
range, because there still are a lot of Dark
Elf models you can use like that. In fact, if
you want to get any Dark Elf models, that's how
you get them. It doesn't look like at least anymore
you can get any Wood Elfs as part of the Cities
of Sigmar box, but that might also be because
they've gone back to the old world, so they're
not being sold for AOS anymore. So what's going
on with the Dispossessed and that specifically,
I don't know. I have fears they're going the
way of the Beastmen and will simply not be talked
about anymore. Yeah. Right side. Wood Elves are
back. You can buy them as an army in proper,
you know, old Warhammer fantasy. So, hey, you
can still get all those minis again. They have...
I'm having another eh moment. Because... Some
of those models are real cool, right? Like, you
know, some of them look good. Some of them were
not allowed to come back from Age of Sigmar.
Right. Which is why the nice and cool updated
Durthu model has been replaced with the old equivalent
I'm sending over to you now. The old TreeWorld
model. Wow, look at that guy. He looks... cranky.
The little guy in his skull. What is that thing?
Forest spirit. They got little forest light spirits
that follow him around. He looks like gangly
evil Pac -Man. What's going on there? There's
also... For $110, you too, Andy, can get something.
You can get it like a Toys R Us for $5. Oh, wow.
They look bad. What is going on? What is with
the guy's jawline? I have no idea. It's the guy.
It's the meme of the guy with the long chin.
He kind of looks like, what's his name? Is it
the guy from Crazy Tech? You know, we are number
one. Oh, yeah. What is going on there? There's
also, you know, the Widows are all about duality,
right? So here's a kit of duality and one of
the few times GW's the woman's sculpts weren't
infinitely worse than the man's sculpts. Because
with this lovely image, the two lady mages, they
look like proper arcane warriors. And then the
dude in the back looks like he's desperately
holding in a shit. And the dude in the front
looks like he's realized he's failed that battle.
The guy on the front has a little gremlin fella.
But the guy in the back... He also kind of looks
like a power metal band singer who's just standing
at the front like, yeah, I'm going to do a song.
Wow. I guess, you know, for a little bit of an
end, a little bit of tabletop for anyone curious.
Very good ranged weapons. Some of the best in
the game. Their magic's very good. Their battalion
box is absurdly good. Short of heroes and someone
like the forest creature units, you get the whole
army, essentially. So that's an actual GW savings
box. That's good. And, you know, they're very
fast and they hit pretty hard. Downside, they
can't really take any magical items, so you can't
upgrade your heroes very much. At least, you
know, the trees. Vulnerable to flaming attacks.
So you better hope your opponent doesn't have
any fire magic. No dwarves ever. Yeah. They're
not very strong. I mean, they're not tough. Glass
cannons, basically. Yeah, glass cannons. And
unless my eyes deceive me, which I will take
a quick glance through the web store again. Yeah,
my eyes do not deceive me. This is the, I think,
the only old world faction to not have gotten
new models. That's a shame. And it shows. Are
you holding out hope they might get some new
models? I'd like them to, or at least for some
of these things to be updated, because for the
love of God, please. I know you don't want cross
-sales between AOS and Old World, or at least
I'm assuming, but please just let the Wood Elf
players use some of the Age of Sigmar tree, man.
These things are painful to look at. Wood Elf
model builders, they're just shaving down their
chin so they're less absurd. They don't even
have dryads, at least not on the web store. which
uh was like the the tree man version of the frontline
infantry which is that is that's an interesting
choice uh i yeah the the the wood elves i would
say have definitely come back the worst off i'm
glad they're available and you you can still
form a proper army with them it's just everyone
else who's come back if they don't have the full
set They at least have enough to make a fully
functioning army with without losing... They
have all the functions they had in original fantasy,
if not maybe all the ways to go about those functions.
It looks like the Wood Elves kind of lost their
line infantry. And I suppose all the new models
added to each of the factions was like, here's
my army. Here's the cool new look. Don't look
at the others. It draws your eye away, whereas
these guys, they have no saving grace. Check
out the guys squatting in a weird pose. You've
got the big chin lads. Especially with Cathay
and those models next to the wood elves. It's
like, boy, you did not get the love you should
have. No. The ugly stepchild syndrome, like,
oh, poor fellas. But yeah, those were just about
the wood elves. Oh, bear's brief mention before
I forget. There is one other enclaves of wood
elves. I won't talk about them too much, both
because I am... I don't want to take up too much
time, and I am uneducated on them. I would need
to talk to good old Andy. time when he's on Lawmaster,
or if I'm doing anything with him and Sotek again.
Because he wrote a whole lot of their lore. It
is a group of offshoot wood elves in a lower
Lorne forest, which is in the province of Norbland
in the Empire. They're a lot nicer. They help
the Sigma rights out very often. They actually
trade an ally, and you can even sometimes come
into the magical forest without being brutally
murdered or sacrificed. What an achievement.
They could go there if they wish, but because
they've been separated for so long, they've kind
of grown distinct cultures. So chief among them
being they're much less isolationist. Again,
I don't know everything about them, but they're
like a much nicer, friendlier version of the
wood elves, if less powerful, because they've
only got their one smaller magical force as opposed
to the massive blob that is Athel Loren. I just
like the idea that they were like, oh, we're
near some human civilizations and started trading
with them and go, what have they got that we
don't? And they're like, we have this thing called
wine. Like what? It's made of grapes, but it's
a bit naughty. It's like naughty grapes. Oh,
this is the best thing ever. Oh, we like these
humans. Yeah. What is this? This is called cheese.
We'll trade you five balls for a casket of wine.
Brilliant. Relations secure. The forest is, of
course, split into four parts because seasons.
And they're pretty nice. They're like the closest
Warhammer's ever gotten to like Lord of the Ring
elves in that their arrogance is more tempered
than it isn't and they aren't complete dickheads.
Of course. They were able to negotiate with the
Phoenix King, and they're officially acknowledged
as their own thing. They're not just like offshoot
elves that the Phoenix King would like to try
and get back in. He's like, nope, you're your
own polity, which unfortunately does mean that,
well, maybe not necessarily unfortunately, but
they've tried to negotiate with the dark elves
every now and again, try and get them to stop
raiding. Try. Didn't turn out well. Try. Excuse
me, sir. Could you stop being like a menace?
It's my favorite thing. I'm not going to stop
doing that. No, I don't think I will. And yeah,
that's just about the Wood Elves. Any last questions?
Any last questions? So do they have good representation
on Total War? Because I know you mentioned that
the twins are in, is it the first game? Have
they had many heroes pop up that like, oh, you
get to play? So are they more like... They've
got a few. So there's some mods that can add
a lot more of their characters, but they've got
the Sisters of Twilight. They've got, you know,
Durthu's a playable character. Orion, of course,
is a playable character. So they've got a good
amount, and they went through a rework towards
the end of the second game, which, thank God.
Oh, they have Drek as a playable character, too,
if you would like to play as Wood Elves but really
hate Wood Elves. I would honestly say they're
definitely better off still in Total War than
they are in Tabletop now. Because boy, those
models hurt. Yeah. They've got a very unique
campaign. It's fun. I was going to say, could...
Games Workshop use some of the models from Total
Warhammer as inspiration to spruce up their miniatures?
Or are they just kind of generic? They could,
but some of them, it's like if the Dryads aren't
in Old World now, they're probably not coming
back. So there might be a few they could take
some inspiration from. They could bring back
the Zotes. But they... I don't think there's
much they would bring back. But at least in Total
War, they are quite fun to play. Because it was
interesting that this was such a highly requested
topic. And I'm like, is it a beastman effect
of the fans who really like Wood Elves have been
so downtrodden in the last few years and they've
gotten nothing? They are so zealous. I'm like,
can we have Wood Elves? Can we have Wood Elves?
Because it's like, they're not getting it from
GW. Yeah. I have a feeling it might be some of
that. Especially because even when they were
first introduced in Total War, they did not play
how isolationist wood elves should. Because before
their rework, you were encouraged to build a
massive continent -spanning empire, which is
not what wood elves really do. Because there
were certain resources you need that, without
them, you couldn't build certain units. In fact,
because the roster is split between the tree
people, like the tree spirits, the forest spirits,
and the elves, you would pick Orion. And without
this resource, you couldn't build trees. Or you'd
pick Durthu. And without the resource, you couldn't
build elves. Oh. So it was kind of shit at first.
But they did eventually rework the faction to
be infinitely less awful. They weren't even awful.
It was just like... it didn't make sense how
you should be playing. They added new features.
They made it a lot less awful. They made it better.
At least in Total War, wood elves are a firm
recommend. In the old world, they're a soft recommend.
If you like the wood elves, you will still like
them. With the fair warning, if you have no new
models, a lot of your models are metal or resin.
And a lot of your models didn't come back. Yeesh.
Oh, well. So hopefully we'll get a bit of love
for the wood elves in the old world. But we'll
have to wait and see. We'll have to see. But
if nothing else, they are back, which I can appreciate.
Yeah. And you never know. Do they have any books
or lore? Or are they just kind of on the sidelines
again? They're definitely a lot more of a sideline
faction. They've obviously got a, you know. They're
at Arby. So they've got their CODIS lore and
stuff like that. Orion has a trilogy. Oh, nice.
So hey, there's that. There's Guardians of the
Forest by Graham McNeil. So that's probably a
good book, admittedly. Old reliable Graham McNeil.
Yeah, old reliable. He's done a bajillion books.
Sorry, I was just going to say, like, whenever
you see Graham McNeil, you're like, ah, this
is like the guy you bring in to, like, inject
some life into a faction. Like, oh, they have
no law? Graham, come on, write us a book. Okay.
It is admittedly, you know, it follows a Bretonnian
knight. But, you know, he's an Athel Loren. So,
a lot of wood elves around it. This is, I mean,
like I said, it's a Graham McNeil book. So, can't
be that bad. They don't have that many elves
because as much as the elves in Warhammer Fantasy
and AOS are definitely treated better than the
ones in space, most of that attention goes towards
like the high elves and the dark elves, which
to be fair, a lot of the things about the wood
elves is like their insane, mystical, like fey
nature. You start writing books and explaining
that, it does lose some of that edge. And to
be fair, the most important characters are the
trees and the god. avatars, I guess you'd call
them, of, like, elder gods. Although, I suppose,
what's her name from Vermintide has been, like,
I assume when she was, like, out, that was like,
oh, cool, we get, like, an insight of a POV character.
That's kind of interesting. That's a bit of a
shot in the arm for the wood elves. Her dialogue
gives you some little nuggets of information
every now and again, including making fun of
Marcus Kruber in his Grail Knight form, both
for his shitty accent he's trying to do and...
pointedly going did you look at the lady of the
lake's ears when she blessed you marcus oh dear
so even she knows of course you do then have
to accept that for the entire run you're going
to be hearing lamba foot oh dear wow That was
good fun. We've now covered the Wood Elves. So
that's the Wood Elves, and we've done the High
Elves. We haven't done an episode yet on the
Dark Elves. Other than Age of Sigmar, is there
anyone we've missed with the Elves now? The Dark
Elves? That's most of the Elves. That's the big
heavy hitters. There's a couple Elves that live
in human cities and can be found elsewhere, but
those are usually offshoots of one of the other
Elves. So they're not their own thing. Well,
that was good. Let us know, folks, what you'd
like us to talk about next in Warhammer Fantasy.
We have seen a few suggestions. I think recently
there's been a resurgence of interest in the
Chaos Dwarves for some reason, for whatever reason.
I think there might have been a hint. I read
this online in some tweet or something, so this
is like third -hand knowledge I'm getting. But
there was some hint, maybe some Chaos Dwarves
are coming. to a release sometime soon which
would yeah if i see chaos dwarfs in the old world
i'm gonna go nuts and to be fair they were added
a while ago in total i remember when they were
added to total warhammer 3 yeah and everyone
was like yes chaos dwarves i'm like oh cool chaos
dwarves are a thing interesting so maybe then
maybe someone else will see um but let us know
in the comments what you'd like us to cover next
um and until then we hope you enjoyed today's
episode and we'll see you later folks Bye -bye.